Minutes to Burn

Chapter 11

The creature drew herself to her full nine feet, rearing up on her hind legs. Pigmented a leafy green and dappled with dusty brown high-lights, she picked up the hues of the Scalesia forest, blending with the crisscross shadows of the branches.

She was segmented into three major parts: a head with antennae, a thorax, and a long, full abdomen heavy with eggs. Her brown forewings, the tegmina, were leathery, covering and protecting her delicate under-wings.

The creature was for the most part slender. Her abdomen and wings, which made up most of the length of her body, ran parallel to the ground. When she raised her head, her thorax swooped upward from her abdomen like the torso of a centaur, giving her a remarkably human erectness and orientation. Her abdomen, normally the breadth of two oil drums, was swollen even wider with her eggs, striking a con-trast with her lean muscular thorax and four spindly rear limbs. A series of holes ran along her abdomen on each side, spiracles through which she drew air.

Her enormous raptorial forelegs protruded from the top of her tho-rax, just beneath her head, and they were usually held close to her body. The insides of these legs were furnished with sharp spines, those on the femurs angled in the opposite direction from those on the tibias so that they'd snap shut on prey like a bear trap. At the end of both tibiae were two curved hooks that served to rake her prey to her.

Rotating her head nearly 180 degrees to face behind her, she tried to detect something in the rustling bushes. She twisted her thorax and it bent easily, pivoting her jagged front legs. Her head was shaped like an inverted triangle, with her eyes forming the top corners and her mouth the apex. Two long, thin antennae protruded from her head between her eyes like wayward wisps of hair. She cocked her head to one side, her antennae straightening to pick up odors and subtle vibrations in the air.

A male hesitantly emerged, following her through the thick brush. Because of her compound eyes, the female could see several directions at once, but she focused on the male's approach, watching him like a mosaic in the many facets of her eyes.

Significantly smaller than the female, the male regarded her warily, his large eyes protruding like bulbous growths from the top of his obcor-date head. One of his hind legs was slightly smaller than the others, having regenerated after being lost in a molt. His antennae bobbed as his sharp mouthparts quivered with curiosity.

He fixed the female in a gaze, but she broke eye contact and moved slowly away, weighed down with her unfertilized eggs. In a gait that was at once halting and graceful, the male stalked her, drawn by the sexual pheromone she excreted from two shiny protuberances near the tip of her abdomen. Occasionally, she turned her head on her elongated neck, taking note of his progress.

After about an hour of this strange and delicate ritual, the male spread his wings and curled his abdomen to attract her attention, but she turned and kept moving away. He pursued her again, launching into an even more rigorous sequence of abdomen movements. His folded wings rubbed against his cuticle, the hard exoskeleton, producing a high-frequency courtship song.

She slowed. Gathering his courage, the male approached her, drawing near as if to smell her before fading back. Extending her forelegs, the female responded with a few pumps of her abdomen. The male watched her against the backdrop of the trees, cutting back and forth before her with terse motions. She spread her raptorial legs in front of her, as if offering an embrace. He took a few tentative steps forward and she stroked his front legs. Finally, in a quick burst, he mounted her.

His legs were a flurry of movement around her as he bent the end of his abdomen in a sinuous motion to explore her genital area. He lowered his head, distracting her by rattling her antennae with his own. Twisting his abdomen to one side, he joined the tips of their bodies and began to copulate. She stayed still for a few moments as he labored, then calmly turned and bit into the armor covering the back of his neck.

As she chewed through his head, the male convulsed, continuing to pass sperm cells from his body to hers. With steady palpitations, she gnawed her way down through his neck and into his prothorax, contorting herself so that she could strip tissue from him as his genitalia contin-ued to pulse away.

The sperm cells safely deposited in the spermatheca in her abdomen, the female wriggled forward, shedding the male's body like an unwel-come piece of clothing. On the ground beside her lay his head, the antennae still twitching.

Though his main nerve ganglia were severed, the headless male stum-bled forward, spreading his wings in a futile attempt to fly. With a lightning flash, she snapped her raptorial legs around him. The body trembled in her grasp.

She bit into his choicest abdominal segment and pulled his body apart with a moist pop. His corpse, skewered on her spines from both sides, would serve to nourish the lives taking shape inside her. She tore off chunks of his abdomen, strips of tissue dangling from her mandibles. When she finished, she began the elaborate process of cleaning herself.

Her body was functioning at a rate much quicker than that for which her instincts were programmed. Though she had just mated, her eggs would be ready to be laid by nightfall.

The creature drew her front legs together, folding them like a jack-knife. They curved up under her chin, positioned in an attitude of prayer.

She swayed, and she waited.