The parties were over, and we found a praying mantis in the basement. It was green enough to be a miracle. Two inches of tropical while the snow turned black outside and we tried to sop carpets and make the place smell like anything but sweat and spilled beer. Bigby put the bug in his hand. Reg dared him to eat it. He laid $500 on the poker table as an incentive, twenty-five crisp new twenties blooming in the middle of the room.
“I’ll do it,” said Bigby, “but only after it’s dead.”
“Better go ahead and stomp it then, because this here’s a limited time offer.”
Bigby refused. He said something vaguely Buddhist. There was a protracted negotiation. I was halfway listening but mostly just staring at the insect. It craned its neck a little. It slowly moved onto Bigby’s wrist.
After a while, Reg agreed to terms. “Natural death,” he said, “but you only get $240 for that,” and then we made a little terrarium and did research on lifespans and diets and fed the thing beetles and crickets and spiders. We named it Berry. It seemed to like the television, soccer games especially. When people came over, it lived upstairs, and one of us stayed bolted up inside a bedroom with it, on account of Bigby demonstrating how easy it was to bypass a lock with a credit card. I think it was March when the thing finally died. Or April. Everything else was getting reborn, but its clock was off or something. It had entered the human plane.
Bigby insisted on a funeral. We brought it downstairs on a plate. Reg fanned the cash again. The bills looked like weeds on the felt, like grass in desperate need of water. Bigby read Dylan Thomas. Then, he popped Berry into his mouth all at once. I saw legs curl and said it was basically just some kind of debauched salad. Reg said nothing. Twelve Andrew Jacksons stared at the three of us, their jagged jaws in alignment, their eyes onyx and unconcerned.
Hear Brett Biebel read his piece.
Brett Biebel is the author of 48 Blitz (Split/Lip Press, 2020), Winter Dance Party (Alternating Current, 2023), Gridlock (Cornerstone Press, 2024), and A Companion to Mason & Dixon (University of Georgia Press, 2024). He lives and writes in the Quad Cities.