I could feel the little passenger car vibrate under me as my stalker, who made me a bit nervous, drove the twenty-minute stretch between Cottonwood and the city of Sedona.

I considered falling asleep for the ride,but my companion wouldn’t have it. Maybe he’d done so much meth in his human life that some of it carried over into his quail life. Glenn had more energy than that lame electric pink bunny that was popular on TV commercials back in the day. He squirmed so much in the gym bag we were hiding in that I feared our unknowing cab driver would see it. Luckily she was too busy talking to a reporter on the telephone to notice much else. And yet again, she was talking to him about me–particularly about my end-of-days leap off Coffee Pot Rock yesterday, which had been caught on camera by a drone the woman owned.

It seemed Mantula and his new sidekick ManQuail was already making the news. That would make my son laugh, I was sure. Were he watching, I’m sure my whole predicament was cracking him up.

ManQuail interrupted my thoughts. “So we got a little sidetracked and you never answered my question.”

“What question?”

“Your addiction, man! What was it?”

Ever since Glenn mentioned his “cure” from the disease of methamphetamines, I’d been pondering that very question. Besides having woken up in the body of a hairy insect with eight legs, nothing else felt different. He told me about Dick and Christine and the others as well, and they all reported cures from their various addictions. I had no addiction that I could recall and, as a result, nothing that felt removed from my life after I woke up as a bug.

So I answered his question. “I don’t feel any different, Glenn. I wasn’t addicted to anything in the first place.”

“You had to be. You can tell me, man. Everybody who wakes up as an insect or a bird had an addiction. It’s the way it works,” he replied.

“Look, I wasn’t hooked on anything. I don’t drink really, except recently, but I’ve never been an alcoholic, and I don’t smoke. No drugs, either. No addictions to anything.”

“Dude, that can’t be right.”

I growled. “I’m not lying, Glenn. I can’t think of anything. I feel the same way today as I did when I was a man.”

“That can’t be right,” he mumbled to himself. “There’s always an addiction.” He eyeballed the hundred-dollar bill I sat on with his sideways bird gaze. “Maybe it’s money. You could have a money addiction.”

“Glenn, everyone has a money addiction.”

“But maybe yours is unnaturally strong or something. You ever think about that?”

I positioned myself over the bill, covering it with my body. “I wouldn’t still want it then, would I? Wouldn’t I be cured of the money addiction now? Well guess what, I still want it. So try again.”

Up in the driver’s seat, I could hear the woman talking to the reporter. He’d apparently called back again. I figured we had to be getting close to Cottonwood by this time. Thunder rumbled the skies above us. I could also hear the faint sounds of rain hitting the roof of the car.

“I just don’t get it. Maybe it will come to you,” Glenn continued. “We all had an addiction, man. I know that much.”

“If I think of something I’ll let you know.”

A few minutes later we pulled to a stop. ManQuail and I buried ourselves under the smelly gym clothes to avoid being seen when she got out of the car. I figured she’d just disappear into her house. Neither of us expected her to open the passenger door and reach for the bag we’d picked to hide inside, but that’s exactly what she did. ManQuail fell on top of me as a result of the sudden gravitational shift, but didn’t move after landing on my back. He played it cool, which was a good thing. I doubted the two of us weighed all that much, however. A few drops of cool, moist rain landed on my legs and seeped through the hair on my legs.

Humming, she carried us at her side, up what sounded like a short set of stairs, and into her home. She hefted us a bit further once inside, her footsteps echoing in the place, and then finally set us down. Breathing a sigh of relief, I listened to her footsteps walk away before shoving my bird companion off of me.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.

Quietly, we both lunged from the bag and found ourselves in the woman’s bedroom near the foot of her bed. Boxes lay scattered throughout the place. Some were turned on their side with apparel spilled out on the floor. Rather than dart into one of them, ManQuail dashed into a nearby closet. I skittered and flopped right behind him. Once in shadow, we turned back to watch for our host. I could hear her footsteps heading back to the room. The woman with the business attire hummed her way over to a dresser in the far corner. Once there she began to remove her large silver hoop earrings.

For now, we were safe. We’d also made it to Cottonwood, but where in Cottonwood? It could be we were miles from my crappy little apartment, but I supposed we would cross that bridge when we got to it.

For now we’d have to wait things out. Maybe when the woman went to bed we’d find a way to sneak our way to freedom. Being that it was still morning, we might have a while to sit there in the closet.

But then she yawned, and it raised my hopes a bit. She did say she hadn’t slept last night after all. Placing her earrings on the dresser, she reached over her head and pulled her bun loose. Waves of black hair cascaded over shoulder. The woman kicked off her high heels before reaching around her waist to unzip her skirt.

We had a perfect view of the whole thing.

ManQuail giggled and said, “Oh hell yeah.”

Gagged on pop culture, polluted by

depression, comes Mantula!

A special fiction series!

My second day as a tarantula quickly turned out tobe just as weird as the first one. Here I sat in a meditation garden in Sedona, speaking telepathically with a former meth addict who was now a quail, about heading to my apartment in Cottonwood. I also had a hundred dollar bill in my possession, as if there was anything I could do with it, but I thought, “You never know,” and held onto it.

“How in the hell would we get there, Glenn?” I asked the bird. “Hitchhike? When we’re as small as we are, it would take forever to get there.”

Not only that, I thought, but also predators are all over the place in Arizona, especially in the Verde Valley. I’ve seen javelina, coyotes, snakes of every length and design, and birds bigger than a microwave oven. It was only a matter of time before one of them made a lunch out of me. And maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing either. But I also wasn’t thrilled with the idea of being eaten alive. Animals, however, cared less for the price of life than people did. Not when it wasn’t their life at any rate. They didn’t mind eating another animal while it was still alive so long as it didn’t fight back. Eventually it would die and that was good enough.

“Not sure how we would get there,” ManQuail said. “You’re right about animals too. Lots of big cats out there hankering for a bit of quail meat. But we can always find a way. It’s like I always say: be the change you want to see in the world.”

I scowled. “You actually say that?”

Before he could answer, we heard an approaching voice at the far end of the garden. The voice, a female by the sound of it, got closer as she talked.

“I know. That’s why I’m here, Darren,” she said. “It’s the damnedest thing, and definitely worth looking into, but it’s been hours now. It’s probably gone. But I may as well take a peek anyway. Yes, yes. I know it’s not work-related. The thing did fall in front of the Eye though, then ran away into the night holding a hundred dollar bill. Don’t you think it’s worth checking out?”

I burrowed a little deeper into the soil as the woman came into view. Just to be sure, I used my stick legs to kick some dirt over my money. She looked to be in her forties perhaps, tall, thin, with jet-black hair tied into a severe bun behind her head. The woman wore a business suit, grey skirt that stopped just over her knees, a white blouse and a grey blazer. I ran my eyes over the curves of her body, taking in her shapeliness, then realized ManQuail was doing the same thing.

“She’s a hottie,” he said in my head. “And stop calling me ManQuail. Otherwise I’ll call you Mantula.”

“I don’t care what you call me,” I answered. “And stop reading my thoughts.”

“Sorry, man. Can’t help it.”

Speaking to no one in particular I asked, “This woman is talking about me?”

“It sure sounds like it.”

The woman bent over to examine a nearby rose bush. As she held the phone to her ear, she squatted down and looked carefully into the shadows. I knew she was looking for me.

“Why not share the image of it with the press? Sure, send it to him,” the woman said. “And let him know I’ll call him while I’m headed to Cottonwood for an interview. I haven’t gotten any sleep since last night and I still have a lot of unpacking to do at the new place. Talking about the flying tarantula might make for a good story, and good press for the drones, right?” (CONTINUED BELOW)

ManQuail chimed in at that moment. “She must have parked outside the garden in the parking lot. Let’s check it out!”

I followed him, not sure about his plan, but I didn’t want to hang out in the garden with some strange woman digging through the bushes looking for me. With her back turned near the fountain, we darted out as quickly as we could. I kept the money flapping in the air over my head. I wasn’t about to give it up. We ducked under a gap in the fence and bounced into the parking lot. Luckily there was only one car parked in the lot, a silver Camry, or something along those lines. Even luckier, the windows were down.

“I’m not so sure about this, Glenn. If that woman is curious about me, and out there looking for me in the meditation garden, should I really try to stow away in her car?”

“You heard her. She lives in Cottonwood! This is the change we want to be!”

I lurched my body, imitating a shrug again, and thought, “What the hell?”

To be honest, I was just flying by the seat of my pants and had no idea what I was getting myself into.

ManQuail lowered his back to me. “Get on my back. Just do it. It’s nothing for me to leap through that open window, even with you holding on.”

I climbed atop the bird. He smelled kind of musky, like dirt I suppose, which made sense. I’d no sooner positioned myself between his stubby wings than he took flight. It was brief, but it made my stomach flip. A second later we’d plopped onto the backseat. The car felt humid and hot, a product of the monsoon season, but it was also dark, which counted as a good thing for the two of us. Boxes were scatted all over the place. There were a few clothing bags as well, including one quite close to where we landed. I couldn’t smell like I could before yesterday, but the old gym clothes I saw stuffed in there probably had a sweaty funk to them. Nonetheless, we chose to hide ourselves in that bag just as the woman made her way out of the garden into the parking lot. She hung up her phone, humming what sounded like the theme song to Flash Gordon by Queen.

“Flash, ah ah! He’ll save every one of us.”

And we were off to Cottonwood.

Mantula will return.

Gagged on pop culture, polluted by 

depression, comes Mantula!

A special fiction series!

Glenn seemed to have a much easier go of walking than I did. Maybe because the bird only had two legs to work with, like when he was a human, so it wasn’t difficult to get used to. I had eight friggin’ legs. That made it harder for me – that and I insisted on brining the hundred-dollar bill with me. I skittered and flopped after him as best I could, but he had to stop a lot to wait for me. Luckily, he knew his way through the underbrush pretty well, despite the night skies overhead. We soon made our way under a few fences and through a wide gutter placed at the foot of a concrete wall.

How long had this meth-head been in the body of a quail? I couldn’t really ask him that question since he’d left his notepad behind. He seemed to know far more about my predicament than I did. He didn’t seem that worried about it either, which was weird. Could be he liked being a man in the body of a quail. Maybe his human life sucked ass. He did say he was hooked on meth after all. That’s nasty stuff.

After a few minutes we came out into a small hidden garden area lit by strands of white Christmas lights. The strand clung to the sides, and was draped over the top, of an oak trellis. A series of solar lights, staked into the ground, formed a path that could be seen easily in the darkness. The lights glowed rainbow hues as we strolled into the garden. Shrubs and small trees surrounded us. A small fountain bubbled water nearby, with additional recessed lights submerged under the soothing pond. While there were stone benches through the meditation garden, ManQuail chose a spot for us off the gravel trail where we would be submerged under low-hanging leaves and out of sight from human eyes. At my tiny size, the garden looked like a forest.

With a simple head gesture, he called me over. We both settled in the darkness to clear our minds, or rest, or just sleep. I wasn’t exactly sure what the quail expected of me. I could see him watching me from the side of his head. The light of the pool reflected off his weird little eyeballs. Those little beady black eyes were making sure I didn’t try to bolt again. I thought about bailing, of course, but I was also feeling pretty damn tired. I’d already committed to coming here with him, so why not ride it out a bit further and see what happened? So I spread my hundred out like an expensive throw rug and sprawled out on top of it. Someday (God help me) maybe I’d get used to how floppy my legs were.

I nestled into the money and dirt and let the gargling pond fill my ears. It couldn’t be that late, but it felt like it. As far as I figured, it was still early evening, but this was also Sedona. Here folks with white hair rule the town. The streets roll up by nine at night. Even on Friday. They cherish dark skies and quiet evenings in which to plan their next metaphysical experience. Some nights you can hear drum circles, but they usually sound pretty far away. The cops probably get called nonetheless. Cottonwood, where I lived, sounded more like a drum circle manned by police sirens and totally off-key. Shouts, squealing brakes, the laughter of children (my son included), and ambulances are pretty much the name of the game day and night there.

But, early or not, I fell asleep. I dreamed of climbing Coffee Pot Rock, sitting at the edge with my son in my lap. But I wasn’t afraid I’d lose him. I wasn’t worried about the height at all. We just enjoyed how the sun felt on our faces. We laughed and chatted and, just like we used to, didn’t get serious. Rather we made up our own super heroes, our favorite thing to talk about. He was good at it.

But then I woke up. I could see the morning light edging over the lush meditation garden, bathing the chilly water in the pond with a pinkish hue. I’d slept through the entire night. Slowly, wishing I could still drink coffee, I stared at my legs. They were furry and hideous. The crap storm that is my life continues for a new day, I thought to myself.

I heard a sigh in my head, followed by a strange voice. It was a man’s voice, but high-pitched and rather whiny.

“It is what it is,” the strange voice said.

I tried to shake my head, but it wouldn’t shake, and tried to scratch it. That did work, but the voice was still there.

The whiny voice sighed. “It’s me. It’s Glenn. The quail. My meditation worked. It always does. Now we can talk to each other through our minds, man.”

I looked up, seeing him before, with his one eye cocked in my direction.

“You can hear me?”

The quail nodded. The flap on his head fell across his cheek. “I can now. The meditation garden does the trick every time. We’re tuned in to each other’s frequency now.”

“That’s not creepy at all,” I said.

Mantula will return.

Airplanes always scared the crap out of me. I can’t understand why something so heavy stays up in the air without just dropping like a brick from a window. Passenger jets, to me, are like coffins with wings. I felt like I was being swallowed into the belly of a metal mortician every time I stepped foot in one.

But falling from the sky without the benefit of wings, metal or not, felt entirely different. It almost felt like a dream. The air was louder, windier, than I expected, but I didn’t think it would take very long for it to all go away. I was wrong. For some reason, my hairy little body started drifting sideways, almost as if I were flying. I wasn’t exactly falling to my death, which kind of sucked.

It could have been that I shot webs out of the black spinnerets on my backside, creating a spider-chute like Spider-Man or something. My flight to the bottom of Coffee Pot Rock went way slower than I thought it would, and I didn’t end up splatting to death like I wanted. I nearly crashed into a car when I got low enough over State Route 89A. I thought for sure I’d splatter all over the windshield. My guts, I was thinking, would have been too plentiful for the wipers to handle.

Before that I saw this helicopter-thing following me for a minute there. Turns out it was smaller than a real copter, though. A drone of some sort I think – silver with four small props at each corner of the box-shaped thing. Not sure if it saw me or not, but I got a good look at it before the wind blew me away.

I hoped I’d fall into a pile of goop at some point. That’s what I wanted. But it’s not what happened. Instead I got blown over Sedona’s main road, after getting loose from the car I nearly smacked into, and landed in a mound of dirt on the shoulder. I managed to survive the experience without so much as a single damn scratch. Not that I could tell on my new bod.

Once past the car, I skittered and flopped my way back onto the sidewalk and under a small rose bush, near what looked like a spa of some sort. Sedona was full of these places. Locals really couldn’t afford them. But actors liked them. Folks like Robert Downey Jr. and Nicholas Cage came here a lot I heard. Not sure if they went to spas or just hiked, but they were spotted here frequently. The fact that I’d graduated from scrambling and flopping, to skittering and flopping, didn’t really make me happy, but it got me under the bush faster. I was off the street and out of the dark night. With luck no one would see me.

The earth felt cool and safe against the hairy bulb at my rear, my abdomen I think, and I hunkered down for a quick respite from the insanity of my life. I looked at my pedipalps by the orange glow of 89A’s new street lamps. Pedipalps, I remembered, were the name for the stiff joints next to my mouth. I examined the way they looked through my freaked-out kaleidoscope eyes. That’s when I spotted the bill laying a few inches away. I focused my eyes on it and mentally ticked off the one and two zeros. A one hundred dollar bill! I went over to it and knocked a few dried leaves from the top of it. I scooped it up and started folding the thing.

What would a tarantula need one hundred dollars for? The absurdity crossed my mind, but I gripped the wadded bill anyway. I’d be stupid to toss it.

It was at that point I noticed something even weirder. A quail hung out in the bushes next to mine, partially lit by the nearby street lamp. He gave me a curious look before reaching down to peck at something by his feet. The bird must have been standing super still before, otherwise I would have noticed him. It made me a little uncomfortable. While I could remember a bit about tarantulas, as I once tried to convince my dead mom that one would make a good pet (not to mention make me the cool kid on the block), I couldn’t remember what they ate – or what ate them. But this quail seemed a little off.

I realized he wasn’t pecking at the ground for food. He had something in his mouth, a pen by the look of it, and was holding it in his beak and scratching something in the ground with it. I then realized he wasn’t scratching in the ground. A notebook sat in the dirt by his clawed little feet. The quail, using his beak, was trying to write something if you can believe that.

When he finished, the feathered thing with the dark blob at the top of his head, spat out the pen and picked up the notebook. A saw one word scrawled on the grime-streaked paper, which the quail held up for me to see. It looked like a two-year-old had written it. That one word made my heart skip a beat.

Human?

Mantula will return. Click here to read a news article about his recent encounter with the drone.

By KIP MOONEY

Sedona Daily Reader

SEDONA, Ariz. – Sedona Eye’s maiden flight took a turn for the weird on Tuesday when the controversial drone’s robotic cameras captured what appeared to be a tarantula flying through the air.

A screen capture provided by Flight Services, L.L.C. owner Diana Sturgis, backed up that claim on Wednesday. According to Sturgis, the Eye was coming in for a landing at the West Sedona Sugarloaf Trailhead when something passed in front it. That something, after closer examination, proved to be what looked like an Arizona Blonde Tarantula, typically known as the Desert Tarantula, she said.

“Once we grabbed an image from the playback and got a good look at it, we were pretty amazed to see this giant spider staring back at us,” Sturgis said. “Our sUAS (Small unmanned aircraft systems) was at least 600 feet in the air at that point.”

Sturgis compared the image to a Google search for Arizona tarantulas and quickly determined the type of arachnid spotted high in the air over the city, but nowhere did her search reveal an uncanny ability to fly without wings.

“The sUAS didn’t track where it went unfortunately. What was a tarantula doing soaring through the air so high up?” she asked.

Neil Thomas, Arizona Fish and Game biologist, offered a likely explanation for the odd sighting. According to him, it isn’t uncommon for a bird of prey to capture a tarantula to enjoy as a light snack while looking for larger meals.

“A juvenile Northern Goshawk, for example, might snatch one off the ground. In this case, it might have dropped the thing later, and from a decent height,” Thomas said.

Discounting a suicide attempt from the tip of Coffee Pot Rock, Sturgis said she was inclined to believe Thomas’s explanation.

“It’s still a weird sight. Not what we were expecting to see fly across the camera,” she said.

The Sedona Eye, operating on an FAA flight permit granted to Flight Services last December, has met with a great deal of resistance from community members in recent months, who fear the drone could be used for spying and government purposes. Sturgis, meanwhile, has said the Eye would only be used for permitted applications related to public safety and agricultural work. A second test flight is planned for next month, she added.

“We’ll likely stick with the same flight plan, but I hope there aren’t any more flying spiders this time,” Stugis joked.

Mantula will return.