When I started my blogsite, I promised the occasional short story. Here, for your perusal, is one of them. I give you "The Last Day of a Praying Mantis."
While he waited for the shop to
open, Martin sat on the curb and drank a cup of tea. Something on the sidewalk
caught his attention: a praying mantis. He’d never seen one before. The light
green bug, its front-most legs together, looking like praying hands, stood
balancing itself against the ground breezes. It appeared ready to fly off, yet
it waited, as if not sure how to proceed.
Its
movements were so small as to be nearly imperceptible. Still, it managed to
come closer to a thick black tar line across the sidewalk. Martin watched the
bug so intently he didn’t see the bicyclist coming until the wheel was nearly
level with the bug. Before Martin could utter a sound, the front wheel rolled
over the bug, pinning its head to the cement.
Martin
watched its wings flutter as if in pain, with stuttering attempts to flutter
that seemed a dance of death. Martin could imagine the pain screaming through
the tiny bug, and wondered how long it would be in these death throes. He
watched, hoping the little bug wouldn’t suffer much. It moved in a circle
around that pinpoint that was now its head stuck to the ground.
But death
did not come. As Martin watched, the determined bug managed to get his head
unstuck from the cement, and gradually regained an upright posture. It stretched
itself like a rubber cartoon character, and then stood unsteadily, taking
tentative sideways steps to cross over the tar strip that the breeze and its
efforts to stand had moved it toward.
The shop
finally opened, and Martin stood. As he did so, a woman approached the shop,
and without noticing it, crushed the praying mantis as she passed. Martin
wanted to scream. He had debated about killing the bug after the bicycle had
run it down, not knowing whether to put the insect out of its misery or wait to
see if it lived. He’d had little hope that the bug would live, but a sense of
relief and triumph had suffused the young man when the bug finally regained
itself. To see its life snuffed out so suddenly after all of its efforts to
live made him angry at the carelessness of everyday acts.
He wondered how many creatures he’d consigned
to the grave by just such an ordinary act. He didn’t feel much pity for ants or
mosquitoes, but to watch something larger make such a struggle made him stop to
think. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the man on the bicycle had simply killed
the praying mantis outright. The valiant struggle became meaningless in light
of the fact that it had only prolonged the bug’s life for a few painful moments
of suffering.
Life, Zen, whatever it might be taught
no lessons but cruelty, he thought. Tread softly through life, he thought. Perhaps
that could be his mantra for today, at least. He stood, and went into the shop
for a haircut.
