When I was twelve, I found a praying mantis in our backyard. I was instantly transfixed by this beautiful insect. Its long, leaflike body, its enormous eyes that took up most of its head, the spiny raptoral appendages from which it draws its name. Everything about this insect enraptured me. Twelve year old me grabbed a spare aquarium from the garage and set up a permanent home for the creature.

	My favorite part of my new pet was feeding it. It was a voracious eater that consumed anything I supplied. Earthworms, spiders, crickets, and small centipedes and millipedes I found around our garden and under stones in our local park were all consumed by the creature in the same manner. A swift strike, during which the mantis would grasp and squeeze the helpless creature between its forearms, the spikes penetrating the soft flesh or hard exoskeleton of its prey with ease. This never seemed enough to kill the hapless animals, however, simply immobilize them. The mantis then ate the victim alive, its sharp mouthparts shredding past the exterior and into the soft and juicy bits, dissecting the still squirming creature alive.  As I learned more about them (from a few guidebooks checked out from my local library.) I found out that the female mantis, upon mating with the male, eats his head. Often the body of the male, even decapitated would continue to mate until it had dutifully finished its task.

	I still keep preying mantises, eight years later, I always make sure to have one or two in my house. Though I've found better uses for them. My boyfriend Matt thinks it's weird, but he accepts it, like most of my flaws. He's kind of great that way.

	“I'm home!” His singsong voice echoed through our medium sized apartment, reaching me in the living room, where I shouted a quick response before returning to my article. He sauntered into the room and landed a quick kiss on the top of my head. “How was your day?”

	“Fine I guess.” I shrugged. I felt bad. He was always so nice and I was always somewhat distant, or at least I had been recently. If I was being honest with myself, I was becoming bored with the relationship, though I would never admit that to him. He was more than I really deserved.

	“How about I make us dinner?” He gave me another kiss before moving off to the kitchen. Damn, I really didn't deserve him.

	“That sounds great honey.” I wished I could muster more enthusiasm. He cooks, he cleans, even after a long day of work. And yet here I am, bored of him. I cannot keep going on like this, I realized. I tried desperately to think of anything that he's ever done wrong. Any slight offense to me, any missed birthday or late arrival. Any argument I'm still hung up about. Anything that would make it easier to do what I'm about to.

	After dinner (delicious as always, somewhat to my chagrin) I sat him down in our shared bedroom and took a deep breath.

	“We need to talk.”

	“Sure. What about?” He gave me a comforting smile, which only made the next part harder. I concentrated on him and imagined him smaller. He began to shrink, unnoticeably at first, but at a steadily increasing rate. The expression on his face was priceless as the world must have appeared to suddenly enlarge from his point of view. When the process was finished, something that only took a minute at most, he was an inch at most in height. After sitting in a daze, he finally spoke, his voice coming back to him as he looked up at what to him would be a literal giantess.

	“What? Honey?” His voice was confused and scared as I looked down at him. He was barely the size of my pinky.

	“What's wrong dearest?” I cooed, sweetly, finally, after weeks, being able to muster some genuine emotion towards him. He looked at me with an expression that was equal parts fear and amazement.

	“This... this is a dream, right? Or some sort of joke?” He shivered in my hand, attempting vaguely to cover up from my gaze.

	“Forgive me, please, I wanted to do this before, but I just... I was nervous. I'm breaking up with you.”

	“Okay, okay. Tha-that's fine. I mean...” He looked genuinely crestfallen at this news. “As long as you don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me.” His voice was so small and timid, it was actually somewhat adorable. His body in my hand felt so light and fragile. I could break him with barely a squeeze of my fingers. But no. He was good to me. I wouldn't be the one to end him. I couldn't be the one to hurt him. I moved over towards one of my mantis tanks. As I did so, his eyes became saucers, and as I opened the lid, he fell to his knees and started begging, barely comprehensible between long, choking sobs. I ignored these pleas and dropped him into the container, right next to the stationary predator.

	He sprinted, instantly, but at his size, he didn't cover much ground before the mantis had him in her sights. She moved forward, almost tentatively. I've seen this so many times before I knew instantly what was going through her mind. She's sizes up her prey, its speed, its distance. Deciding the perfect angle to strike. And when she does strike, it's lightning fast, and punctuated by a scream that somehow managed to be earsplitting even at Matt's size. Part of me wanted to turn away. Part of me wanted to tell myself that this wasn't inexplicably turning me on. I'd done this too many times to delude myself though. I was going to watch my sweet, caring, sensitive, supportive boyfriend get eaten alive by my pet mantis.

	He was still whimpering, despite being punctured in several places and held quite firmly between those fearsome arms. His leg twitched reflexively as she brought him to her mouth, her mouthparts twitching in anticipation of her meal. The first bite made a wet crunch as she shredded his flesh and ribs like they were nothing, taking a bite out of his stomach and paying no attention to the blood and intestinal fluid that was staining her normally green appendages a bright crimson. She was always so finnicky when she ate and this was no exception, she turned him like a kebab and took another bite from a different section, eliciting a much weaker moan of distress from him, likely already beginning to pass out from shock. He was limp except for a vague and rather insectlike twitching of his legs at the third bite, and yet still she watched intently.

	Once she had sufficiently shredded his midsection, so that his body hung in two pieces, legs on one end, upper shoulders and head in another, she began to work at his head, puncturing the skull to suck out the succulent brain within. After she had finished, she seemed to lose interest in the meal, letting the rest drop out of her talons and onto the ground below. It was now that she took an interest in the blood spattered over her appendages, carefully licking and grooming them clean of the sticky red fluids. I turned away, disgusted at myself but hardly surprised. It had happened before, and it had happened again.

	When I was seventeen, I discovered I had the power to shrink anyone I liked to only a few inches tall. Ever since then, my mantises have dined like queens.