when I awoke this morning, I noticed a trail of well, it must have been 500-1000 tiny ants marching across the clean surface of my floor exactly parallel to my bed, almost underneath it, they were so close, just underneath the shadow of the bed, and all of those ants were carrying on their heads wee white egg sacs. I had noticed them hastily because they hadn’t gotten far, I could see their front runner steaming through on hurried legs, and with that I went to the bathroom and ripped off an ample piece of toilet paper, doused it quickly under the tap, then came back to the trail. I swiped nearly all 500 odd of them up in one decisive movement and our war was over. I saw them afterwards , a rich brown stain on the white paper like brown sulphur, with some limb-movement scrunched up patches of brown. I went back to the bathroom and dispatched the paper in the toilet and ripped off another piece and wiped up the rest of the failed marching egg army. I’m already possibly going to hell for worse crimes although ant massacre counts as the worse thing I have done so far today.
The next morning the surviving rest of the ants corp I saw exiting from a gap in the wood frame of the old desk mirror in my room. They had formed a line all the way down to the floor via a rotting desk leg, armed with stark white eggs. I swept them up, admired how they became so concentrated and insignificant on the toilet paper suddenly, a brown smudge with the odd moving micro-leg. In the wood-hole I squirted mosquito spray, smelly stuff, and the rest of the ants wept out. I wiped them away with the same paper and folded it. I wandered if the Queen lay behind the wood , then I went out. I wondered if she would be there waiting for me when I came home.
On the way to the beer shop a young woman fell off her moped on the opposite side of the busy market road. I heard the crash of metal on tarmac and then she was frowning at the gravel rash on her hands and up her arm. She was picking out the largest pieces of gravel. Time stopped when you saw an accident before everyone else and the cars kept moving. I crossed the road and was first to her, she was still frowning on the floor. I picked up the bike, they always felt heavy because I don’t ride. I balanced it upright and then a Thai man appeared, he said, “thank you, let’s move it out of the road.” We were in the middle of the road. I had assumed the wheels wouldn’t move or they were brake-locked because I don’t ride. He and I wheeled it to the side. He said thank you again and she had already gotten up and rubbed the gravel off by that time and was speaking to the older female shopkeepers. I left them, crossed the road again. It made up for the ants was what I thought. There were heavy clouds above the hills, casual squares of blue sky otherwise. I reached the bottle shop, bought a bottle of Leo beer. It went down as it should.
( cap off, bottom up)
ants
