Ants: The Trilogy

Pee Meaw joked that my ant problem was from jealous Thai girls sneaking over to my place and hiding desserts in my shoes. Charming, but impossible, it made me laugh and somehow I didn’t expect the ants to come back. I had torn apart their colony in my curtains and then shook them out of my shoes. They were resilient but I was hopeful I would never see them again.

Not only did I see them again, but this time, the ants came back with a furious, two-pronged attack I never saw coming.

After school today I was taking off my black shoes and putting them on the shoe rack when I thought I should check the my brown shoes, just to make sure the ants weren’t attempting a move back in. I didn’t see any ants crawling around, but then when I touched my shoes, again, my hand was covered in ants. They really are tiny little ones, but I can’t tell you how fast they move. I didn’t expect them and so I grabbed the shoe casually and it was only a matter of seconds before they had my hand covered. Disgusted and pissed off, I threw the shoes outside.

This was only a day and a half after the last infestation but these ants came back with reinforcements. I still cannot f*$&ing believe how many ants were in the shoes. Soon my entire porch was covered in ant chaos. In my fury I began to stomp the ants in a futile attempt to them all. If someone was watching from a distance I must have looked ridiculous. Stomping wasn’t working, so I began to dump buckets of water over my entire porch. Watching the drowned brought me happiness. I pounded my shoes as hard I could on the ground to shake the others out and them promptly drowned them too. Dozens of ants were still scrambling on and in my shoes, but I stopped short of soaking them.

When I gave up and decided to move on, I was still pissed off at tiny little ants, and took a shower to cool off. As usual, there were random ants crawling around the bathroom and, in underserved retribution, I took the shower sprayer and drowned all of them, just for being ants. A Buddhist country or not, I was in no mood, and killed ants without worrying about my reincarnation in the next life. I watched the small trails of ants fall from the wall and wash down the drain with a grim smile.

When I grabbed my towel off the door and started to dry off, I looked down and I noticed there were more ants crawling on the floor. I wondered how they survived the flood but at this point I no longer cared. I grabbed my dirty clothes hanging off a separate nail and noticed there were more ants crawling –frantically- on the wall. Still, it didn’t click.

It wasn’t until a minute later, walking into my bedroom that I felt a little itchy. I looked down and saw tiny ants crawling all over me. I dropped my towel and the little fuckers were all over it. I couldn’t believe it. The little bastards had reinforcements waiting for an ambush in, of all places, my towel. I ran back to the shower, rinsed myself off again, checked my other towel—twice—then dried off and got dressed.

I may have won the battle, but these ants are crawling in more than my curtains, shoes, and towels; they’re in my head. I constantly feel small twitches on my arms and legs and think it’s ants crawling on me. If I see a single ant, I worry that there’s another million coming just like it. When I close my eyes, in the darkness, I see ants crawling on the backs of my eyelids.