Chapter 5: Annalise's new Louboutins sink into the soft abdomen of a massive cockroach pinned beneath Tom's bare foot as she rides him in the steamy greenhouse - with each downward grind, the insect's hissing scream vibrates up through his soles directly into his throbbing cock, his climax synced perfectly to the moment its innards burst beneath their joined weight.
The humidity hit Tom first, a solid wall of warm, wet air that coiled in his lungs and beaded instantly on his skin. The scent was overwhelming—loamy soil, blooming orchids with a cloying sweetness, and beneath it all, the faint, green decay of things constantly growing and dying. He stood just inside the door, disoriented, the cool, sterile air of their apartment a distant memory.
Annalise’s fingers were laced with his. “No peeking,” she said, her voice a tease as she adjusted the silk blindfold. The world went dark.
She led him forward. His other hand stretched out, brushing broad, waxy leaves that yielded like leather, and then the coarse bark of a tree fern. The flagstone path was uneven under his bare feet. The air hummed—not with machines, but with life. A high whine of a mosquito near his ear, the deep thrum of a fat bumblebee, the skitter of something through dry foliage.
“Just listen for now,” she whispered, her lips close to his ear. Her breath was cooler than the air. She guided him to sit on something cold and ornate—a wrought-iron bench. The metal pressed through his thin shorts.
He heard her steps move away, the light tap of her boots on stone. A latch clicked. A rustling, like thick paper. Then a new sound: a dry, assertive hiss. It wasn’t a snake’s hiss. It was rougher, like air forced through a stiff brush. It was answered by another, and another, a chorus of static.
“Madagascans,” Annalise said, her voice floating from a few feet away. “They’re magnificent. So… deliberate.” Something landed on the path with a soft, solid plop. Then another. “Listen close.”
He did. In the blindness, his hearing stretched. He could track them. The slow, scratchy drag of spined legs on stone. The hesitant tap of an antenna. The gathering hiss, a warning broadcast into the steamy air. There were dozens.
He felt his breath quicken.
Then, the first crunch.
It wasn’t the sharp pop of the crab. This was a wetter, deeper sound, a bursting. It was followed by an immediate, frantic scraping, the sound of the others scattering.
Annalise let out a soft, breathy laugh. “They’re faster than you’d think.”
Another step. Another viscous crunch, this one directly in front of his bench. Something warm and minute spattered against his shin. He flinched.
“Don’t move,” she said, a gentle command.
Crunch. Scritch-scritch-scritch-scraaaape. Crunch.
Her steps were a slow, methodical patrol. Each footfall ended in that same soggy explosion. The hissing grew more frantic, a chaotic protest. The sweet floral air now carried a new, acrid undertone—something nutty and sour.
Tom’s hands clenched on the cold iron. Heat pooled low in his stomach, tight and shameful and irresistible. With each wet sound, he felt a corresponding pulse through him. He could picture it: the glossy, coffee-brown carapaces, the frantic antennae, the way they’d fold under the implacable pressure of her boot. He moaned, the sound escaping before he could strangle it.
Her footsteps stopped.
He could feel her standing before him. The heat of her body. The new, unclean scent of the crushed things clinging to her.
“You like that sound,” she stated. Her hands found his knees, pushed them apart. She stepped between them. The toe of her boot, slick with something, nudged his inner thigh. “The inside-out sound.”
He nodded, helpless.
“Tell me.”
“I like it,” he whispered, his voice ragged.
Her fingers hooked into the waistband of his shorts, pulling them down. The air, thick and hot, felt shocking on his exposed skin. She climbed onto the bench, straddling him, her boots planted on the stone on either side of his hips. He could feel the gritty residue against his legs.
She lowered herself onto him in one smooth, demanding motion. She was already searingly wet. She rocked once, twice, establishing a rhythm, then paused, her body sheathing him completely.
She leaned forward, her lips against his blindfold. “Listen.”
She shifted her weight, lifted one foot, and placed it slowly, deliberately, back onto the flagstone. He heard the skitter of a survivor trying to flee. He heard the final, wet compression as she found it. She ground her heel with a slow, twisting rasp.
As she did, she drove down onto him, a fierce, claiming stroke.
The connection was absolute. The wet sound outside became the wet sound inside. The destruction was part of the rhythm. She set a brutal pace, each forceful thrust down punctuated by the shift and crunch of her boots on the stone, mangling what was left.
He gasped, his head thrown back. Vines brushed his shoulders. The blindfold was damp with sweat and condensation.
“They’re all guts,” she panted, riding him harder. “No bones. Just… pulp.”
His orgasm built not in a wave, but in a series of brutal, percussive surges, timed to every splintering sound from below. He shouted, a raw sound lost in the humid jungle of the room. He clutched her hips, fingers slipping on the sweat-slick leather, as he spilled into her.
She kept moving, slowing, milking the last of him, her own breath coming in sharp, satisfied gasps. Finally, she stilled, slumped forward against his chest. He felt the rapid, birdlike flutter of her heart against his.
For a long moment, there was only the drip of water from leaves and the hum of the greenhouse.
She shifted back, lifting off him. He felt a sudden, shocking coolness. Her hands went behind his head and untied the blindfold.
The light was a fuzzy, green haze. He blinked. She was standing before him, flushed, triumphant, her shirt clinging to her chest. Her boots were a disaster of dark smears and stray, twitching leg segments on the stone path. Behind her, the scene was a surreal painting: a path of gorgeous, dripping orchids and lush ferns framing a trail of carnage.
She watched him look. She saw him take in the crushed, glistening forms, the frantic escape of one last hissing cockroach into the shelter of a philodendron.
“I ordered them last week,” she said casually, wiping her hands on a nearby broad leaf. “After the crabs. I wanted to see what you’d do with the noise.” She smiled, a genuine, sparkling smile. “It’s better than I imagined.”
She offered him a hand to stand. His legs were weak. He looked down at the mess, then at her, this beautiful woman in her garden of death.
She leaned in, kissed him softly, a kiss that tasted of salt and perfume. “Let’s shower,” she said. “I’m sticky.”
She led him back through the steamy maze, leaving the powerful, complicated smell of life and violation hanging heavy behind them.
The shower ran cold before either of them spoke.
Tom stood under the spray, watching pink-tinged water spiral down the drain. Crushed shell fragments had lodged in the grout lines. He'd have to scrub them out later, before the cleaning lady came. The thought felt absurdly domestic given what they'd just done.
Annalise stepped in behind him, her palms flat against his shoulder blades. She pressed her cheek between them. The water plastered her hair to her skull, dark and sleek.
"You're shaking," she observed.
He hadn't noticed. He looked down at his hands. They were trembling, fine and constant, like a tuning fork still ringing.
"Adrenaline," he said.
"Sure." She kissed the knob of his spine. "That's what it is."
She reached past him and killed the water. The sudden silence was total, broken only by the drip of the showerhead and the distant hum of the city below. She stepped out first, wrapping herself in a towel that cost more than his first car.
He followed, mechanically. The bathroom mirror was fogged. She wiped a streak across it with her forearm and studied her reflection. Her pupils were still wide, dark saucers in the green of her irises.
"I want to show you something," she said.
He watched her in the mirror. "Now?"
"Now." She left the bathroom, trailing water across the travertine. He heard her moving through the bedroom, opening a drawer, then the click of her phone. A brief conversation, her voice too low to parse.
He dried off with a towel that felt like clouds and found clean clothes folded in the dresser—boxers, a soft grey t-shirt, jeans. She'd laid them out days ago, he realized. She'd planned all of this.
When he emerged, she was dressed in loose linen pants and a silk camisole, barefoot, her hair twisted into a wet knot. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, scrolling through her phone with one hand and eating a single strawberry with the other. She looked entirely normal. It was deeply unsettling.
"That was the concierge," she said, not looking up. "There's a delivery."
"For you?"
"For us." She bit the strawberry in half. "For you, really. But I'll enjoy it too."
He sat beside her. The bed dipped. Her thigh pressed against his. "Annalise—"
"Don't." She held up the remaining half of the strawberry. "Don't ruin it by asking if I'm okay, or if you're okay, or what this means. I already know what it means."
He took the strawberry from her fingers and ate it. It was tart and sweet and perfect. "What does it mean?"
She finally looked at him. Her expression was unguarded, open in a way he rarely saw. "It means I pay attention. It means I see you. And it means I'm not scared of what I see." She stood, extending her hand. "Come on. It's downstairs."
The elevator ride was interminable. The marble lobby gleamed under chandeliers that cost more than the building Tom grew up in. The concierge, a silver-haired man with the bearing of a retired diplomat, handed Annalise a wooden crate roughly the size of a shoebox. It had air holes drilled into the lid.
"Thank you, Marcus," she said, tipping him with a folded bill. "You're a treasure."
"My pleasure, Ms. Voss." His eyes flickered to Tom, curious but professionally blank. "Shall I have the car brought around?"
"Not tonight."
They took the stairs back up. Tom carried the crate. Something inside it scratched against the wood, a dry, persistent sound like sandpaper on a matchbox. The weight shifted with each step, suggesting movement, mass, a cluster of living things.
He didn't ask what was in it.
Back in the apartment, Annalise cleared the marble coffee table with a sweep of her arm. Books, a vase, a laptop—all clattered to the floor. She took the crate from him and set it in the center of the gleaming white surface.
"Sit," she said, pointing to the leather sofa behind him.
He sat. She knelt on the floor before the table, her silk camisole glowing in the dim light from the bedroom. She looked like a priestess before an altar. She pried the lid open with a screwdriver she produced from somewhere.
The scuttling intensified.
She reached in and lifted out the first one. It was a mantis. Not the small, brown, garden variety he'd seen as a kid. This thing was massive, nearly the length of her hand, pale green and segmented, its triangular head swiveling with alien awareness. Its compound eyes were black mirrors. It tracked her face. Then it tracked his.
"Hierodula membranacea," she said softly. "Giant Asian mantis. They're ambush predators. Completely without mercy."
She set it on the table. It stood there, regal, forelegs folded like a monk in prayer. Then she lifted out another, and another. Six in total. They spread across the marble, a constellation of slow, deliberate hunger.
"They won't attack each other tonight," she explained, arranging them in a loose circle around the crate. "They're not cannibalistic unless they're starving. I've instructed the vendor to feed them well before shipping." She smiled at him, that detective's smile. "I want them strong. I want you to watch what they can do when they're not desperate."
She stood and walked to the kitchen. He heard the opening of a drawer, the clink of metal. When she returned, she was holding a pair of long tweezers and a clear plastic container. Inside the container, something small and brown hopped frantically.
Crickets. A dozen of them.
The mantises sensed it immediately. Their heads all swiveled toward the container, a synchronized movement that was more insectoid than anything Tom had ever seen. A low, collective twitching rippled through them.
She sat beside him on the sofa, close enough that he could smell the clean linen of her clothes and the faint trace of something loamy stuck beneath her fingernails. She handed him the tweezers.
"You do the first one," she said.
"I—"
"You'll like it." Her voice was patient, encouraging, as if she were teaching him to drive. "Pick one up. Don't crush it. Just grab a leg and drop it in the middle."
His hand wasn't steady. The tweezers slipped once, twice. Finally, he trapped a cricket by its hind leg and lifted it, twitching, into the air. It felt like holding a beating heart.
He dropped it.
It landed on the marble, disoriented. Before it could right itself, the nearest mantis moved. The strike was so fast it was a blur of green, the forelegs snapping around the cricket like a bear trap. The cricket didn't even have time to scream, if crickets screamed. The mantis held it, head tilting, examining its prey with what looked almost like curiosity.
Then it began to eat. Methodically. Head first.
Tom heard a small, wet sound. He felt his pulse surge in his throat.
"See?" Annalise whispered. She reached over and placed her hand on his thigh, her fingers spread wide. "They don't play. They don't hesitate. They just take what they want."
She opened the container and shook the rest of the crickets onto the tabletop. The mantises descended. It was a slow-motion massacre, elegant and merciless. Six sets of razor forelegs, twelve crickets reduced to scattered legs and twitching antennae in under a minute.
Tom couldn't breathe. His vision tunneled until all he could see was the slaughter, the green bodies rapturous in their feeding.
Annalise's hand slid higher. She pressed her palm against the hard ridge of him through his jeans. He was harder than he'd ever been in his life, harder than he'd thought possible.
"Still think it's just the killing?" she asked, echoing her question from the marble floor of their bedroom.
He shook his head. He couldn't speak.
She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear. "Neither do I." She squeezed him once, firmly, then withdrew her hand and stood. "There's one more thing."
He watched her walk to the bedroom, her hips swaying under the thin silk. The mantises were cleaning their forelegs now, dainty and satisfied. The carcasses of the crickets were a battlefield around their feet.
She returned with the wooden crate. She set it on the floor now. She knelt beside it, and this time she didn't need the screwdriver. The lid lifted easily.
"Come here," she said.
He slid off the couch, kneeling beside her on the cool marble. He could feel the heat of the minting crickets radiating from the table above. He could hear their desperate, dying chirps.
Inside the crate, coiled at the bottom, was something new. Something thicker. It was a centipede—no, two centipedes, each the length of his forearm, segmented in black and orange. Their bodies moved in waves, a hypnotic, muscular undulation. Their forcipules, the venomous claws at their heads, twitched.
"They're scolopendra," Annalise said. "Vietnamese giants. The pet store guy said they could eat a mouse. I told him I had something smaller in mind."
She reached in and let one of them crawl onto her hand. It coiled around her wrist like a living bracelet, its antennae mapping her skin. It moved with a sinewy purpose that made the mantises seem clumsy by comparison.
She looked at him, her eyes dark with anticipation.
"These," she said, "are for later. When you're ready."
She let the centipede crawl back into the crate. She closed the lid. She stood, and she offered him her hand.
"Bed," she said. "I'm not done with you tonight."
He took her hand. His legs barely worked. As she led him toward the bedroom, he glanced back at the marble table. The mantises had finished their meal. They stood among the remnants, watching him with their alien eyes, utterly still.
One of them raised its forelegs slowly, deliberately, as if in salute.
Tom turned away. The bedroom door closed behind them.