Fear and loathing in Compostville

Constable Hilaris reckoned he was as hard as nails, but he visibly blanched as his eight eyes were fixated on the half-eaten remains of Grubby the Homeless Worm.

An examination of the grisly scene in the last pew of the Manti church churned his stomach as he realized that something was indeed rotten in the hamlet of Compostville. In his few months as police chief, this was the third unexplained murder, and the garden wolf spider and his four deputy tunnel web spiders were left clueless. Worse, thought the Constable, this latest killing had eliminated a possible witness.

After making arrangements at the Dead-End funeral parlour for Grubby, the Constable and his faithful deputies wended their way through the dank foliage towards the Copse Station. The Constable had to do some hard thinking followed by quick action if peace were to prevail in tranquil Compostville.

The conversation amongst the law-enforcement officers was rudely dissipated by the buzzing sound of a lawnmower interspersed by audible curses, punctuated by multiple exclamation marks. The team gathered at a break in the foliage to watch a grunting Henry wrestle the whining machine across an unkempt lawn that bordered the sprawling hamlet of Compostville.

The buzzing sound and curses were the bane of the inhabitants of Compostville, made worse by the excitable yapping of a Shih Tzu who would occasionally plunge its snout into the vicinity of the Copse Station and sneeze; its gale-force breath causing the officers to tumble in all directions. When all was quiet, Constable Hilaris and his team would surface from their hiding places, and wondered, not for the last time, when the cloak of tranquility would enwrap the environs of Compostville and preserve its sanity.

Compostville is any small-scaled city anywhere in the world, usually tucked below the visible surface of land—a kind of Middle Earth.

There are scores of Compostville clones in each country scattered throughout the land, and while not exactly a pleasing sight (or smell for that matter) to the humans above ground, the inhabitants of these colonies are quite content leading peaceful lives bereft of bureaucratic interference.

These creep-and-crawly infested habitats are found in the corners of gardens, decrepit compost bins, large rubbish dumps, polluted riverbanks, wet grasslands, and other sodden areas. Human administrators of policy in City Councils find it convenient to blithely ignore such enclaves of creature comfort, as it would warrant the wearing of a gas mask.

The inhabitants lead a peaceful but fulfilling life. No housing rates, no traffic lights, free parking of one’s butt anywhere, and no asinine laws that forbid sleeping on benches of twigs. If there ever was a thriving, most-livable habitat it was Compostville, notwithstanding the claim constantly advertised by the occupant of Mar-a-Lago.

The hamlet of Compostville of which Constable Hilaris was the police chief sprawled beneath the surface of a garden, abutting a stream that trickled and meandered to the nearby duck pond fondly nicknamed Quacker Oats. ‘Oats’ because it sat alongside Oates Road, and ‘Quacker’ because it aptly described the paddling fowls that, every now and then, would even startle the Devil with a cacophonic burst of bickering. Peace only reigned late in the nights when the ducks tucked their bills into their feathered wings, smothering the sounds of any nightmares that caused imperceptible shivers and muted mutterings.

Compostville was prime real estate considering the water views of the gurgling stream, plus the scenic tranquility of a landscaped garden that gently sloped down to the stream. The residents of the classic villa that squatted beside the garden were Henry (of lawn-mowing fame) and Henrietta. And, of course, maintaining the fertility of the soil on his early morning sniffing visits to Compostville, was the couple’s Japanese Shih Tzu befittingly called Poo-Bah (if your taste for opera includes the works of G&S).

The garden was the pride of Henrietta with its blooming flowers, fruit trees, cobbled walks, and ornate water bowls that doubled up as birdbaths. The lawns were trimmed to a velvet feel by grouchy Henry. Grouchy because he was constantly supervised and instructed by his garrulous better half. Henry’s other task in this sylvan paradise, honed through thirty years of marriage, was to constantly replenish the Compost Bin at the bottom of the garden, which of course, unbeknownst to him, contributed to the flourishing state of the hamlet beneath the surface.

In Compostville, the population is centered in the Compost Blooming District. The CBD forms the core of life within Compostville with mud-and-leaf dwellings, random eat-outs, and bars; a paper-scrap library, a roving ‘radio station’, and of course the police precinct. (Aside from the occasional murder, there is a bit of petty crime and wanton behavior usually during occasional weekend binging).

The tendency to imitate the behavior of the humans above ground is recorded in Darwin’s Origin of Species and the works of Gerald Durrell and Gary Larson -- immensely popular moth-eaten scraps of browned-off pages at the library run by a large metamorphosized beetle called Franz K-K. Another colorful character is talk-back host Freddy the ‘Radio’ Frog whose audience is limited to those who only boast receptive antennae.

But as Nature is wont, the tranquility of Compostville was not destined to last forever. Two weeks earlier, the discovery of two half-eaten, unidentifiable bodies by Grubby the Homeless Worm in a derelict part of the Dead-End cemetery shocked the inhabitants.

However, when Constable Hilaris, the garden wolf spider, arrived on the scene, Surprise! Surprise! no bodies were found, and he was reluctant to peek into any of the graves. Grubby received a right-royal bollocking from the Constable who warned him to stay clear of Mushroom Corner with its hallucinating properties.

But Grubby stood his ground (if worms can stand) claiming that the cannibalization looked like the work of the Manti. “You should check with Pastor Knowgood. He’s the Head Manti,” said Grubby fearfully. “I heard that the females chomp their lovers, but there are devilish mutants in the congregation. They will eat anything that moves. And, do you know Constable,” added Grubby hoarsely, “The only hymn they sing is Amazing Grace and that too before meals. And then they go on a feeding frenzy through the dark alleys of Compostville, leaving no evidence of their grisly appetite. Folks are talking about a number of unexplained disappearances, and it doesn’t seem to be migration to the nearby compost towns.”

Constable Hilaris returned to the Copse Station thinking it was just another absolute bull cook-up by Grubby to get attention. Besides, he could not believe that the Pastor would be up to no good, notwithstanding his homophobic name.

However, that did not stop the chitter-chatter, and the mystery deepened when Loretta the Weta and Lizzy the Skink reported that their loquacious neighbors—Howzzat the Cricket and Mousy the Click Beetle—had disappeared. And Horrors Galore! They were Compostville’s undertakers! And Grubby had claimed that unidentified mutilated bodies were found in the cemetery!

The hysteria received a boost on Freddy’s talk-back show. Whispered Lizzy, her voice choking in fear, “Found near the graves, under a crooked Cross of twigs. It’s a sign, Freddy. A definite sign. There’s monstrous evil lurking in our neighborhood.”

Freddy the Frog dismissed the ‘disappearance’ as the natural cycle of life, but the posts went viral on Archie Arachnid’s website with imaginative doses of exaggeration. “There are Monsters in our midst. There is whispered talk that they are mutant creatures with slimy skins, flapping wings, and forked tongues.”

“Fake News,” snorted Molly Monarch the flitting drone, who in her stop-and-fly travels about the garden, had seen no sign of any lurking danger.

Yet an uneasy calm prevailed in the community. Although Molly had given the all-clear, folks were skeptical as she was rather flighty and seemed to have her eyes set only on Valentino the Horny Toad; an inter-species relationship that was destined to never get off the ground.

The buzz surrounding the cannibalization of the cemetery’s undertakers died down in Compostville until Grubby’s wife Ms. Wriggles expressed her concern that she had not seen Grubby for two nights. Freddy set the search in motion over his talk-back show with a plea to all listeners to check their habitations and leave no leaf unturned.

However, it was a desperate SOS through the grapevine that had Constable Hilaris scurrying to the Manti church. The homeless worm’s mangled body was discovered in the last pew of the church. Pastor Knowgood, under pointed questioning, protested the innocence of his congregation and displayed a heightened sense of shock at the desecration of the holy precincts.

The funeral in the afternoon attracted a large gathering of Compostville’s residents, for Grubby indeed was a popular figure who had, as the saying goes, wormed his way into the hearts of many. Constable Hilaris consoled the hysterical Ms. Wriggles and swore that he would track down the perpetrators, who now were responsible for three unsolved murders.

Following a brief prayer led by Freddy the Frog whose voiced croaked with emotion, the folks of Compostville dispersed in the quietude of grief. Constable Hilaris, accompanied by his deputies, made his way back to the Copse Station in slow measured steps, his mind perplexed at the three unsolved murders. The only clue he had was Grubby’s hysterical claim of cannibalism by the Manti. ‘Devilish mutants’ he had called them. Constable Hilaris did not trust the Pastor who came across as a mantis who did not exactly believe in the act of prayer. ‘More like prey’ thought the Constable giving reluctant credence to the rumors of cannibalism swirling through Compostville. He needed more solid proof than the ‘eye-witness’ hysteria of Grubby; and of course, Grubby was no more, and the investigation had lost a witness to the prosecution. ‘Oh Christie!’ he blurted impulsively.

Constable Hilaris suddenly paused in his tracks. “Where the hell was the Pastor?” he asked himself loudly. “He always presided over the community’s funeral prayers, and yet… strange, none of the Manti attended the service.”

And for good reason. In the leafy section beside the trickling stream, in a large broken-off section of gutter piping, Pastor Knowgood was addressing his congregation of praying mantises. In a rambling tone, he lectured his audience on a range of subjects from hydroxychloroquine to social distancing to tourism of virus-infected human habitation that he had discovered in his travels. His regular sermons also included warnings of predators lurking in the undergrowth such as frogs, bats, birds, and unpalatable body-armored spiders; especially permanent residents such as Anoteropsis wolf spiders in the shape and form of Constable Hilaris.

Pastor Knowgood was a giant imposing mantis almost 12 cm long. Born somewhere in Asia, he found himself wedged amongst cartons of white powder that were unloaded in the garage of a rundown Florida garage. Sensing an opportunity and feeling slightly stoned, he crawled out of his confinement, squeezed under the doors of the garage, and flew off into the unkempt garden foliage. From there he traversed the various dumps before deciding to settle in Compostville, postal code 33480. His sheer size spread fear amongst the inhabitants of Compostville and it was just a matter of weeks before he announced the setting up of the Manti Church in the cavernous section of a disused plastic gutter pipe and anointed himself as the Pastor, Mayor and Great Leader, plus other superlatives of self-praise. He christened himself ‘Knowgood’ because ‘he knew better’, and woe betide anyone who misspelled or uttered the name in a derogatory tone.

Like all praying mantises, Pastor Knowgood had a head, thorax, and abdomen but almost triple in size to the average mantis. He had large eyes on each side of his head which he could rotate 360 degrees, keeping an eye on all within his circle of vision. He also had two antennae that sprouted from his head which he used for navigation. His four back legs were used for walking, while the front two legs equipped with sharp spines would clasp his struggling prey before the fatal chomp. The overall effect was one of meditative prayer which of course was illusionary.

He commanded total loyalty from his congregation of mantises, both male and female. He also enforced the singing of the hymn Amazing Grace at all church functions as a grand prelude to feasting. The humming sound of the hymn at odd hours would send shivers through the inhabitants of Compostville, who feared that their very existence could be featured on the menu. One of the recorded practices about this insect is that the female will often eat the male following a dalliance, but the Pastor issued a revised Kipling edict that the “female of the species is no longer deadlier than the male”, which helped the Manti tribe to increase its numbers.

But the Pastor had a soft side. He loved movies and had a fondness for cable news and the classics that were shown on Netflix every Saturday in the manor house of Compostville’s human neighbors.

The mantises knew when it was Saturday hour because peace descended over the mansion. The lack of any high-pitched verbal hostility and the muted crackling of the tv set was a signal that it was showtime. A select group of mantises, led by Pastor Knowgood, would then hop and wing their way through a cracked skylight and roost on a green floral-patterned curtain ─ the perfect camouflage for ring-side seats.

As for the human audience, the arrangement followed a set ritual. Henrietta would curl her beefy legs under her ample bottom and lounge deep in the two-seater sofa with the little Shitz, nursing a goblet of wine and feeding her face finger-chips with relentless automation. Banished from the sofa, Henry would pudding-plonk himself onto a tiny wicker stool, which disappeared beneath a sagging middle and inflated hips, nursing his one beer-a-week allowance.

And so, every Saturday was a delightful escape into the world of human emotion, gripping tension, crime and punishment, fantasy, and memorable one-liners, gleaned from such classics as On the Waterfront, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Godfather and Dirty Harry.

Henrietta would squirm languorously, imagining herself as the enthusiastic heroine in the arms of Humphrey Bogart; reliving every moment of the dreamy, misty look of the lovers, heaving gently in awkwardness before passion overtook them as they grunted and gobbled each other. ‘The typical Mantis touch’ mused the Pastor, as the female mantises clacked their mandibles in erotic anticipation. As for Henry sprawled in his lay about pose, his only thought was his favorite phrase he dared never utter aloud, “Quite frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Henrietta flopped out of her sofa with a creaking of springs with the little Shih Tzu barking a high-pitched approval. The mantises knew that the peaceful evening was drawing to a close. Noise levels would rise as Henry would receive a volley of snarls to get his drunken butt off the stool and heat up the dinner. It was the ideal distraction for the mantises to head for the exit and wend their way home to Compostville.

On this particular Saturday, following the wonderful distraction of an evening at the movies, the Pastor settled into his pulpit and gazed at the faithful in the leafy pews. There were some serious matters that needed his attention, matters that took the shape of prowling and suspicious spiders. His deadpan face betrayed a dark and sinister thought, as his forelegs came together in the act of prayer. An inspired solution bubbled up from his favorite Dirty Harry movie. He cocked a spiky claw in the shape of a Smith & Wesson Magnum, and hinted menacingly: ‘Make my day, punk!’

Pastor Knowgood condemned any form of killing within the precincts of the Church yet showed no remorse for Grubby whom he suspected of being a mole for that interfering and nosy Constable. And it was time for decisive action. The Pastor ended his sermon with an unmistakable commandment in his best Henry II imitation: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent cop?”

That night in a secret conclave of the Manti church a plot was hatched to fulfill the Pastor’s wish. It would be a classical trick-and-treat operation and would take place during a forthcoming spooky night.

It was late in the evening on Halloween. Human kids, bewitched with excitement, dressed up as ghouls and played Knock! Knock! on their elderly neighbors who were deemed to be a soft touch for treats. But such was not the practice in Compostville. Tricks were but a prelude to fatal treats.

And soon, not unexpectedly, Constable Hilaris received an urgent vibration through the underground grapevine that a ghastly incident had taken place at the Gastropod Bar. He dropped everything, rallied his deputy spiders, and scuttled off.

At the bar, Constable Hilaris told his deputies to scatter and remain hidden outside the entrance and to remain alert if things got messy because he sensed an arrest. “If all goes well, I’ll take the untrodden way through Side-Track Alley back to the station. Keep an eye on me in case of any nasty surprises.”

The Constable pattered into a scene of deathly quiet with patrons frozen in silence at their twig-and-mesh tables. ‘Sticky’ Insect Hops Cassidy, the jovial barman, had a worried look on his face and pointed a crooked feeler at Thelma immobile on a toadstool and weeping if snails could weep.

Constable Hilaris trotted towards the emotionally shattered snail, who let out a low wail that reverberated around the leaf-and-banana-skin walls causing an involuntary shudder amongst the patrons.

In the eerie atmosphere lit by the taillights of scores of glowworms, the Constable approached Thelma, murmuring quietly so as not to trigger another wailing spasm. After all, he was a tough, beefy, brown spider who measured 2.5 cm in length and had even scared the wits out of Henrietta who lived in the big house, and who was 38,469 times larger than Hilaris. ‘Women’ he muttered to himself, as he paused inches from Thelma who slithered slowly into a pair of his outstretched legs-turned-arms for comfort.

“She’s a monster, a horrible monster, Constable” whispered Thelma fearfully.” She chomped my Harry, chomped his head off… Arrh. And then she spat it out! It was horrible.” Constable Hilaris listened patiently as the story unfolded, wondering who ‘she’ was.

“We thought we’d have a night out in the town,” she sniffed. “We contacted Uber and they sent a slow-coach cockroach for our pub crawl.”

“And your first port of call was the Gastropod Bar,” interrupted Constable Hilaris.

“Yes,” nodded Thelma grimly. “That was when Harry caught sight of Christina Mantis preening herself on a bar stool, flashing her sleek long legs, a bewitching slow burn in her liquid-green eyes. That was enough to galvanize Harry into top gear,” snarled Thelma, her tone changing from grief to contempt.

‘A mantis, eh?’ thought the Constable. “And then what happened, Thelma?” coaxed the spider, opening out his ‘notepad’ to a blank leaf.

“I’m not sure, Constable. To be honest, I was distracted by that gorgeous bullet-headed Marciano the Slug, and one thing led to another…” blushed Thelma. “And since Harry was otherwise mesmerized with Christina, I thought I’ll show that damn creep” she hissed.

'Creep indeed', thought Constable Hilaris, tapping a shorthand code onto the leaf, which was something he learned while watching a secretary-bird in action from a distance.

Thelma finished wrestling with her conscience and sighed loudly. “Marc and I had a little hanky-panky on the moss behind the brown bark, when the sound of Amazing Grace filled the bar. It’s a beautiful hymn Constable, and the drunken blokes joined in when suddenly Hops Cassidy let out a blood-curdling chirp of horror. A gurgling shriek was cut off midway and folks were covering their eyes and ducking for cover. That cry of pain triggered a pause in our canoodling, and then I caught sight of my Harry lying prone next to Christina with half his head and a tentacle missing. It was horrible. She is a Monster, Constable. A man-eater. And Harry is not even her @#$% husband” said Thelma, her voice rising to a shrill wail.

Something suddenly clicked in the mind of Constable Hilaris, and he smacked his forehead repeatedly with his forearms and growled to himself. “@#$% that Grubby was right. This is hellish stuff. It was a Mantis all along and a praying one too. I should have realized that the clincher clue was the singing of Amazing Grace before meals at Pastor Knowgood’s satanic church. I had this gnawing feeling all along that he was up to no good.”

With a sense of determination and purpose, the Constable approached Christina, quoting Spike Milligan from his moth-eaten training manual: “Christina Mantis, Irish Stew in the name of the Law.” Spouting a fine thread of webbing, the Constable wrapped it around Christina’s two spikey limbs in a sturdy cuff.

Christina’s last words before she was led away by Constable Hilaris were haughty. “That was no treat, Constable. I could have done with some salt. That Harry has no taste.” Thelma shriveled visibly as she wondered if that last statement was directed to her.

An army of Hypoponera eduardi or Crypt ants from the Dead-End funeral parlor carried the remains of Harry in a banana-skin hearse to the cemetery, accompanied by a grieving Thelma.

Outside the Gastropod, Christina turned to the Constable and glared at him with a Medusa-look that would have petrified a writhing prey and hissed sensuously, “After that tasteless Harry, I could really do with some dessert.”

The Constable laughed. “That will be the day when a Mantis takes on a spider. In case you have forgotten my dear, we spiders think that mantises make a delicious meal. So, don’t tempt me, as I skipped lunch today.”

The Constable set off with his prisoner, taking the short-cut route to the Copse Station through the seldom-used Side-Track Alley. The tunnel-web spiders kept a discreet distance, matching the pace of the pair as they wended their way through the garbage and appealing stench of the Alley.

“You’re making a grave mistake, Constable” hissed Christina. “If you’ll pardon the pun,” she added haughtily, knowing the trap was set at Hairpin Bend, with the Manti Death Squad in waiting.

As they moved into Hairpin Bend, Christina let out a low grunt of pain and tumbled, her cuffed hands grasping her left leg. The Constable hurried forward to help her up when she turned and nipped him hard on one of his legs. The Constable yelled and cursed loudly as he backtracked in pain and felt another painful sting on his lower right hind leg.

“Bloody Manti,” he yelled as three airborne Death Squad drones buzzed him and launched themselves at his quivering legs. “Arrgh!” yelled the Constable. “Get ‘em lads!”

The tunnel-web spiders streaked back and forth across the low leafy ceiling of the Hairpin Bend, crisscrossing each other, trailing strands of silky webbing into a network which they snipped and dumped onto the scrapping combatants, immobilizing the Manti.

The Constable laughed as he clambered across the spidery net and joined his tunnel-web deputies, smirking at the Manti struggling in the folds of the webbing.

“Disable the @#%$” thundered the Constable, as the deputies backed up by a swarm of other spiders descended on their hapless victims. Resistance was futile as the killer Manti were vastly outnumbered.

‘Boss, dinner is fresh and ready” said a tunnel-web deputy, referring to the ‘catch’ in the web net.

“Justice, like dinner, must be served,” said Constable Hilaris gravely. “Let us pray.”

In the stillness of the night, in the Hairpin Bend of Side-Track Alley, a guttural version of Amazing Grace reached a crescendo.

Two days later, the folks of Compostville gathered at the Dead-End cemetery for a brief but solemn service. Pastor Knowgood was fulsome in his eulogy.

“I honor the memory of the team of resolute officers who have given their lives for maintaining law and order in Compostville. Their sudden demise during a celebratory feast of dining has been attributed to hydroxychloroquine. Powdered traces of the medication were found in a discarded blister pack.

Unfortunately, this medication was ingested by certain members of our Mantis drone squad and was willy-nilly passed on to the brave officers during the feasting.

Tragically, we do not have ventilators in Compostville that fit a spider’s snout.”

That night at a condolence meeting to honor the memory of Christina and the three male mantises of the suicide squad, Pastor Knowgood dwelt on the supreme sacrifice of life in the line of duty. As a special mention, he singled out the three female mantises widowed by the tragic event and invited them to a personal blessing in his private Confessional-and-dining grotto.

The Pastor took a sip of a mushroom dewdrop from the shell of a peanut. As the drug seeped into his brain it triggered his favorite come-on line.

‘Here’s looking at you,” leered the Pastor, sipping from the peanut shell.

In the eerie silence that followed, the response from the female mantises was measured and deliberate, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

The whispered hum of Amazing Grace filled the narrow confines of the church.