An Ant-y Affair

It all started with a hole, on the wall opposite my bed. Don’t blame me for not checking it out the moment my eyes fell on it, blame the oxygen deprived brain of mine that forced me into the beautiful quietness of a deep slumber at the end of a busy day.

 

My sleepy silence was soon transformed into the acoustic stillness associated with extreme sensory shut-down as I looked into the fathomless depth of the triangular barrel of a Desert Eagle semiautomatic pistol, my favorite.

I heard the gun cock and heard the trigger being pulled. The bullet was invisible but the pain of penetration was so genuine that I was dragged awake from my sleep, my fingers fumbling over my temple for the impact hole. Nothing but an intact stretch of skin with sweat beads running down it. Relief washed over me.

As I sat on my bed, my legs hanging down, the first thing I saw was a trail of red oozing out of the hole on my wall I already alluded to. Am I still dreaming, I thought. A pinch and a slap dispelled the thought. Then what is that red trail already halfway down to the floor?

My senses were awakened by the onslaught of impending danger. Pushing myself off the bed, I made a closer inspection of the void…..

Didn't I have to break my head, the other day, over such a herculean task as hammering nails into the wall for my wall-hanger, I thought, as my eyes followed the single profile uniform march of an army of red-ants down the wall. I picked up my broom and smoothly swept the ants out of my room. As easily as easy can be.

Now don't you even dare, just like me, to form a light perception of such creatures as ants.

I went out to brush my teeth, came back a few minutes later to witness another long line of those infernal tiny lives cascading down the wall, their march commencing at the mouth of the hole and cutting across the square tiles on the floor, leading onto the balcony space.

My jaw just dropped off my mouth. How the hell did they, in spite of their insultingly undersized bodies, cross so long a distance, in such a short interval?

I swept them out again and I do not exaggerate when I say that the situation had only worsened when I got back after breakfast.

Scouring all over my walls, to my great annoyance, I chanced upon a few more such wall-holes that housed those minute creatures, all furnished with long red mobile lines.

I leave it to you to imagine my vexation on finding, later in the day, two of my tee-shirts riddled with a sizable number of pores, with numerous ants running over the fabrics, as if it is their favorite playground.

I was fuming in an instant. All my garments were frisked briskly, all the tiny scoundrels were either swept away or crushed to nothing. Every nook and corner of my room was cleaned thoroughly. It took up my whole day. Satisfied with my ant-massacre that decimated their number in perhaps hundreds, I slept in peace.

I got up happy. I looked at the hole and my eyes were never any wider. The same long line of red ants marched down the wall, as if nothing had happened. But I crushed hundreds of them just twelve hours ago! I was going mad.

And in my madness, I killed hundreds of them again and to frighten them off my room, lined the dead bodies along the balcony door-way. They hesitated to move and I could not help myself but thicken the line of dead ants by crushing more and more of them. So ecstatic was the job for me that I kept doing it for many minutes. 

I noticed one brave ant strive forward in an assay to cross the dead border and I promptly crushed it and put it on the line to scare off the others. But the damage was already done. Some more ants came forward. With unending amusement and frustration I saw a whole army of them briskly walk over their soul-less ones, holding tightly on their jaws, minute whitish spherical things.

For some reasons, my fury subsided as I contemplated the spheres held firmly between the jaws of the worker ants. With my curiosity taking over me, I tried to snatch one of those curious little whites off an ant. It was their seed of survival.

The task was easy but painful. The worker ant bit into my flesh with all its energy and a low growl emanated from my teeth as I crushed it on my palm. The torso fell off but the jaws remained stubbornly lodged in my flesh. I was not angry when I scratched my palm and let the egg fall down.

I was disappointed at the loss of a tiny life!

By this time, the gap to the holes had already been bridged by those identical mobile red lines. I let go. As I sat on my bed, my legs hanging down, I saw a trail of red oozing out of the hole on my wall I already alluded to. Pulling my blanket over myself, I went to sleep. I wanted to dream.