Roger Mantis

by Tom Alan Brosz

  “So, what free weights should I bring in for you?”

  Roger sighed. “Probably all of them.”

  After his last class, English, Roger was more than ready to head home. There would be no school until next Tuesday, and Roger had never been happier about a Spring Break.

  Still getting used to his weird arms, Roger began maneuvering his books into his backpack, but it was a long process. If there was nobody else around, there was no way he could get his pack onto his back himself, so now Roger just carried it by a strap on one claw. Fortunately, his mantis abilities made him a lot stronger, and the full backpack seemed to weigh almost nothing. He waved his antennae across one arm. At least his “piney freshness” smell had finally worn off. He sighed. It could have been worse, he thought. It could have been flowers or something. Or actual bug spray.

  Roger was heading out the door when Jerry ran up.

  “Roger,” said Jerry quietly, looking around. “I just heard something from Henry who got it from Barry Wilson. Mrs. Wilson’s called in some big reporter from the city for an exclusive scoop on the Mantis Boy!”

  “Aw, jeez,” said Roger. “That’s all I need. I get enough attention already just around here. I’m not ready for the whole state to give me a hard time.” Roger took a deep, calming, whistling breath. “Okay, there’s no school tomorrow. I’ll just hide at home while he’s here.”

  “That won’t work,” said Jerry. “He’ll just snoop around town until he gets everything he needs without ever finding you. My uncle used to be a reporter, and he’d hang on like a junkyard dog if he thought there was still any kind of story here. And everyone knows where you live anyway.”

  “So what’ll I do?” said Roger.

  “Hang on,” said Jerry. He looked over at the hallway display where the Statue of Liberty he had made in art class stood. Then he broke into a grin. “Just leave it to the Master of Papier-Mâché,” he said. “I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”

  “Wait … what are you going to … ”

  “Trust me!” yelled Jerry as he took off for the school door. “Tomorrow!”

  That night at home, Roger had eight broiled pork chops for supper. He had an unpleasant feeling that he would find raw pork chops just as appetizing, but he’d be darned if he was going to eat uncooked meat. He could do that much to stay human.

  You start eating meat raw, he thought, and next thing you know you’re eating it while it’s still running around. His nightmare about eating Lou still bothered him. He’d never told anyone about it, nor would he ever.

  Roger’s parents were as supportive as ever. His mother gladly cooked extra meat for him every meal, although Roger knew raw meat would be a lot less work (she was looking into getting one of those new Radar Range microwave ovens). And despite his disgusting mouth, they wouldn’t even consider letting Roger eat alone in another room. Truthfully, his mother never made a fuss about his eating, although she sometimes still avoided looking directly at him while he was actually chewing. Another advantage to being a mantis, thought Roger. Nobody really expects table manners.

  Roger finished chewing a bite from a pork chop impaled on his claw and turned to his parents. “I heard from Jerry that some reporter is going to be in town, snooping around for the ‘baseball-playing mantis.’” He had decided not to mention Mrs. Wilson. He didn’t like the idea of his parents maybe starting some kind of fight with her, however much part of the idea appealed to him. “I think maybe I should kinda stick around the house tomorrow. Maybe with nobody answering the door.”

  “It might just be a rumor,” said his father. “But I agree that keeping a low profile might be a good idea.”

  “What about the carnival tomorrow night?” said his mother.

  “Yeah,” said Roger. He hadn’t really thought of that. “That kind of stinks. Jerry thinks he might have some idea to fix the reporter thing, but I don’t know. I suppose I could stay home that night. And at least the carnival is around through the weekend.”

  “That sounds like a good plan,” said his mother, looking relieved. “I’m sure things will settle down soon.”

  Roger took another bite off the chop and chewed grumpily. Missing opening night at the carnival? That really did stink.

  Later that evening, Roger caught the old movie The Fly on television. He’d seen it before, of course, but that was back when he was human. Roger watched the bulbous-eyed creature, a man who’d had a giant fly’s head transplanted onto his body in a teleporter accident. The monster stalked around the screen, terrifying everyone. At the end of the movie, they showed the other thing created by the teleporter accident: a fly with a tiny man’s head. It was caught in a spider web, screaming, “Help me! Help me!” in a squeaky voice as a hideous spider advanced on him. Roger watched in horrified fascination as the police inspector squashed the little man-fly with a rock.

  “Jeeeeez!” said Roger, shaking his head.

  That night Roger lay on his back in bed and thought about the film. He couldn’t stop wondering what had happened to his human body. Had it really been changed into a giant mantis, or had it just gone … somewhere else, like in the movie? He’d been wearing pajamas on his last human night but not when he woke up as an insect. Nor had he seen any shreds of torn up pajamas lying around. Of course, maybe he’d just missed seeing them, and his mom had tossed the scraps out. There was so much he didn’t know or understand about his transformation.

  Roger thought about the reporter then. How exactly was Jerry going to help him? He tossed and turned and finally fell into a troubled sleep, punctuated once again by nightmares.

  He dreamed he was human again, but the size of a real insect, and trapped in a spider web under the bleachers at the baseball field. The spider slowly advanced, opening and closing its fangs, and Roger was calling for help in a squeaky, buzzy voice. Nobody could hear him. Meanwhile out on the field he could see Roger the Giant Mantis hitting home runs to the cheers of the crowd and dozens of reporters with flashing cameras.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Roger slept in on Thursday morning, the first day of Spring Break. If he’d still been human, he would have gotten up early to watch the carnival roll into town and the men setting up the rides. They were supposed to be bringing in a really big Ferris wheel this year. But as Roger woke up once again with all his extra legs and his worries about the reporter, he didn’t hurry out of bed. Besides, he’d had a bad night.

  When he finally decided to get out of bed, it went much more smoothly than previous mornings. He was learning. Then he opened his door with a practiced tarsus grab and flip, stepped lightly across Lou, who was sprawled out in the hallway, and headed downstairs with Lou scrambling up and bounding after him.

  Roger was still quite pleased that at least a bug didn’t have to get dressed or brush his teeth or anything. Heck, he didn’t even have to take showers! Yet another point in the Giant Mantis plus column. Okay, so his mom hit him with the duster now and then. So far he’d managed to avoid anything more drastic. Roger wondered what he’d do if he ever got a lot of mud on him or something. He didn’t fit in the shower, so his thoughts about being hosed off in the yard were probably real. Maybe his dad would wash him with the car washing brush!

  Roger’s mother greeted him when he came into the kitchen and immediately set to cooking a fat slice of ham. The kitchen still smelled faintly of an earlier breakfast: toast, grapefruit, and fried eggs. Roger’s father must have gone down to his medical office in town a while ago.

  Roger didn’t have an appetite for anything other than meat—from lunch meat up to a haunch of roast beef—but he still missed other kinds of food. Corn on the cob, for one. For his part, Lou seemed deliriously happy with the loads of meat at every meal now, as he could always count on some leftovers.

  Roger washed his ham down with some orange juice his mom had put in a small bowl next to him. Roger could drink lots of different things, but it was easiest to drink out of a bowl, even if he
was pretty sloppy. You wouldn’t think anybody would be a messier drinker than Lou, but somehow Roger managed it.

  Sodas, which Roger loved, didn’t agree with him. Even from a bowl. Apparently, a mantis can’t burp, and after drinking a bottle of soda with Jerry and Marlene a few days ago, his abdomen had felt like a balloon. It was then he discovered, much to the amusement of his friends, that apparently a mantis can fart. Loudly. Marlene laughed until she got the hiccups and declared she would write a science paper on it, offering to give Roger all the credit for the discovery.

  The phone rang, and Roger let his mother pick it up. “It’s for you, son,” she said. “It’s Jerry.” Talking on the phone had also proved a bit tricky, as his talking and hearing were now at the base of his thorax, so Roger let his mother hold the receiver near his middle. Roger thought this looked stupid, but it worked, and it was a lot easier than operating the phone himself.

  “What’s up?” said Roger.

  “Come out to the high school baseball field,” said Jerry. “That’s where the reporter is going to be in a couple of hours.”

  “Are you nuts? I’m staying here in the house all day. Heck, I may head for the woods. Why should I walk right to this guy?”

  “Believe me, I’ve got it covered, but you’ve really got to see this. We’ll hide you, don’t worry.”

  “Martinez, if you get me caught … ”

  Marlene’s voice chimed in on the phone. “It’s all right, Roger. Really. Come on! The reporter isn’t even here yet.”

  “Jeez. Okay.” He nodded to his mother who hung up the phone.

  “You’re not really going out today, are you?” asked his mother, frowning. “With that city reporter snooping around?”

  “Jerry and Marlene want me to see something. They both say it’ll be safe.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “But Marlene is a sensible girl. If she says it’s okay, well … ”

  “I’ll go check it out before the reporter gets there,” said Roger. “If it doesn’t look good, I’ll come right back.” Roger’s trusty baseball cap hung on a hook by the back door. He grabbed it and stuffed it on his head between his antennae. He hoped nobody except his friends would see him today, but somehow he still felt better having it on.

  Roger left the house, scanning his eyes in all directions. Every bush and tree seemed to have an imaginary reporter with a huge camera behind it. Remembering his mother’s warning, he hopped the fence and went toward the woods instead of town. A small creek ran out of the woods about a half-mile away, where Roger and his friends had played since they were little. The creek trickled a long way north and then west through a shallow ravine to within a block or so of the high school. There it ran into a big cement sewer pipe and disappeared. If Roger followed the ravine and stayed low, he could stay out of sight almost to the high school. He wished there was a secret route like that to his school.

  Roger scuttled down the ravine, head held low, something that was a lot easier to do on four insect legs than it would have been on two human ones. When he eventually got to where the creek disappeared into the cement pipe, he carefully poked his head over the edge of the ravine. The high school baseball field and the nearby Little League field were about fifty yards away, across an open grassy meadow.

  The field had a set of tall wooden bleachers behind home plate and two other bleachers, not quite as tall, stretching out from either side of that one along the first base and third base lines. The bleachers hid most of the infield from view, and if Roger could just make it to the back of the bleachers he could stay hidden from anyone on the baseball field. His sharp eyes couldn’t see anyone yet in the outfield or up on top of the bleachers, but Roger wasn’t a very fast runner, and it would be a long run across that open meadow without being spotted.

  Flying, even low, would probably be too noisy. There was nothing for it—he would have to run. Roger jumped out of the ravine and scrambled as fast as he could to the chain link fence behind the nearest tall wooden wall of the bleachers.

  As far as his wide-ranging eyes could tell, nobody had seen him yet. He hugged the fence and wondered where he was supposed to go now.

  “Pssst!”

  Roger squeaked, jumped, and turned around. Marlene was there, poking her head out of a gate in the fence on the far end of the bleachers.

  “Don’t do that!” hissed Roger.

  “Come in this way,” said Marlene. “Don’t worry, everyone’s in the infield near home plate.”

  Roger followed her through the gate and next to the end of the first base line bleacher structure. The bleachers were open on this end. They were hollow and dark underneath, filled with wooden scaffolding. Narrow stripes of light shone on the scaffolding from the gaps under the long, wooden seats. Roger could hear a lot of people talking near home plate, but fortunately the bleachers still blocked that whole area from sight.

  “Quick, get under here,” said Marlene quietly, ducking under the end of the bleacher structure and weaving through the scaffolding. “If we stay toward the back, nobody will see us in here. We can go to the other end of these bleachers and get pretty close to everyone else.”

  “Why am I here, Marlene?” Roger was getting nervous.

  “Shh. When we get closer they might be able to hear you. I really wanted you to see this yourself. Come on!”

  Roger followed Marlene through the dark underside of the bleachers. Roger tried to stay clear of the thin lines of sunlight that shone through the gaps under the seats. At the end of the row, the bleachers came up against the cement block sides of the taller section of seats near home plate. It was really dark here.

  “Move up here carefully,” whispered Marlene. “Watch.” Roger peered out through a gap under a seat, but kept his head back.

  Roger couldn’t see the whole field, but as far as he could tell most of his team was here. Mr. Horowitz, Mrs. Wilson, and her son Barry were also in attendance. Roger heard a car drive into the lot outside the field and the car doors open and close. Then, a tall, well-dressed man with a clipboard came onto the field, followed by a young cameraman in blue jeans and a young woman with a microphone. Roger didn’t recognize the reporter, not that he watched that much news. It occurred to him that maybe news stations didn’t send their most famous reporters after giant insect stories.

  Mrs. Wilson waved the reporter over. “I’m Marilyn Wilson,” she said. “I’m the one who called you.”

  “My name’s Carter Edison,” the reporter said, pivoting his head around. “So, where is this human mantis thing, Mrs. Wilson? You said he’d be here.” He sounded irritated. Roger supposed a reporter who always got sent after things like giant insect stories got irritated a lot. Edison looked toward the bleachers, and Roger moved a little further back into the dark under the seats.

  “This is the ball team the insect boy was playing with,” said Mrs. Wilson. “My son Barry saw him. He says the whole team and school saw him. And he’s going to be here, playing, today.”

  Roger looked at Marlene. He backed up right against the dark rear wall of the bleachers and clamped his slightly-shaking spined forearms tight against his body to keep them from nervously and loudly scraping together. His face couldn’t do expressions, but he hoped it was fairly obvious what he was thinking. Were his friends turning him in?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Marlene must have sensed Roger’s worry. She winked at him, but put her finger to her lips before turning back to watch.

  “He’ll be here,” said Henry, coming up to the reporter. “Roger is sort of a mascot. It’s really cool.”

  Mascot? thought Roger. Mascot?

  The reporter tapped his foot. With the camera trained on him, the reporter probably felt more frustrated than he was letting himself look. “Mrs. Wilson,” he said, “I drove seventy miles to this little town. You say this insect boy was playing baseball?”

  Mrs. Wilson didn’t say anything, but speared Barry with a dark expression Ro
ger had seen a few times on his own mother, and that had been a few times too many. Barry didn’t say anything either and just scowled at Henry. The rest of Roger’s teammates started slowly chanting. “Roger! Roger! Roger!” Then they stood up, cheered, and pointed.

  Roger jerked backwards, hitting the bleacher wall, but they weren’t pointing in his direction. Confused, he leaned forward again to where he could see better. They were pointing at the shed where Roger had hidden before as something came around the end of it and ran onto the field.

  Next to him, Marlene giggled.

  It was a kid, dressed in a green pair of pants and a green shirt, dancing merrily toward the reporter. Over his head, covering it completely, was a huge, triangular mantis head with bulbous green eyes, obviously painted papier-mâché. Stuck on top were two antennae made from what looked like screen door springs. The papier-mâché mouth was made of pipe cleaners and heaven knows what else and looked even grosser than Roger’s real mouth. The boy wore big papier-mâché claws that looked like he could actually pinch things by bending his hands.

  “It’s … Roger Mantis!” It was Jerry’s voice, muffled by the big head. Jerry threw his claws into the air and waggled them. A green spike fell off. The cheers multiplied.

  “Holy Toledo, that’s … that’s fantastic,” whispered Roger. “Did he do all that last night?”

  “Yeah,” said Marlene. “It’s probably still a bit wet.”

  Roger laughed, but there was no danger of anyone hearing him in the din.

  The reporter gave Mrs. Wilson a dirty look, which she immediately passed on to her son.

  “Aw, Mom!” said Barry. “That’s not him! That’s just Jerry! Roger is a real live bug! I saw him! So did everyone here! He was in school! Ask them! Ask Mr. Horowitz! He was on stage with him!”

  “Well?” the reporter asked Henry. The rest of the team quieted down and came up behind Henry along with Mr. Horowitz. The cameraman and sound girl were grinning widely. Roger supposed they were still getting paid even if the big story was a papier-mâché Mantis Boy.