It is truly amazing just how much pain the human body is able to endure with the proper motivation. For weightlifters and athletes, it’s the goal of looking better and becoming stronger that helps them push through the pain of exercise. For those trapped in the monotony of everyday office work, it is their families that keep them working day in and day out through the mental pain of never-ending paperwork. However, the one true motivator that has time and again proven to be the eternal motivator of humanity now remains trapped in my psyche like a song on an endless loop. That eternal motivator, of course, is fear. The pain it helps me push through at this very moment is that of exhaustion. You see, as I sit on my cold kitchen floor typing this out, I have made a stunning realization. I have been awake for over 3 days straight. I didn’t even notice until I looked at the calendar but it’s true. You’d think that with all I’ve endured this last month, I would have gotten somewhat used to my ordeal and the fear would have subsided even a little bit but no! It’s only gotten worse. It’s only further logged its talons in my brain and It’s the only thing keeping me awake and able to transcribe to you what has befallen me. So as I orate to you my plight I ask only one thing of you. Please, keep an open mind ok?
My name is Alex. My story begins last month in the middle of November. I would tell you where I live but there’s not much point since soon enough, it won’t matter. To give you some perspective on my surroundings though, let’s just say in one of the southwestern states and leave it at that. I work at a car wash. Come to think of it, at the time of my writing this it’ll be nearly 3 years I’ve been working there. It’s amazing how fast time flies when you have no aspirations in life, isn’t it? You get used to a routine and are so comfortable with it that you don’t even question it anymore. You just let your life slip away from you because the idea of changing anything about your routine holds the slight implication that it can all be ripped away from you and you’ll have to get comfortable all over again. I did have aspirations for my life, but at one point or another, they just sorta slipped away from me. All of this is to say that I’ve been working this job for a very long time. I started off as a janitor and later as a cashier for the interior section. It’s one of those nice car washes where you can watch your car get washed from the inside through glass. Eventually I moved my way up to the line to the point where I’m the guy who helps vacuum and dry off your car outside.
It’s more physically demanding work than I expected but the pay is significantly better than the clerical work I was doing before. Well, I’d been working that job for the last year and a half and I thought it was time for me to ask for a promotion. Not a big one mind you, I wasn’t expecting to be made manager or anything, but I don’t think it was out of the question to be given a job with a little more responsibility right? I knocked on my boss’s door with my speech already rehearsed in my head of various job positions I was going to remind him were available. The meeting however didn’t go as planned. The speech I had planned in my head would have taken me all of 5 minutes. However, the actual conversation only lasted 2.
“No” My boss interrupted at the very mention of the word promotion.
“No? With all due respect, sir at least hear me out. What about my time in service here? I’ve logged more hours than anyone else here besides you sir” I said raising my voice slightly”
“I understand the time you’ve put in here, and I appreciate it but what you’ve got to take into consideration is effort kid.”
“Effort?” I replied with such disbelief that my voice may as well have been like a whisper.
“Yes, Alex effort. You’ve put in a commendable amount of time here but Time means jack shit when you’re only doing the bare minimum you understand me?” He was standing up out of his chair, leaning across the desk on his hands at this point. Staring me down with those judgemental eyes that seemed to scan me for even the slightest sign of weakness.
“You think I don’t see you slacking off out there every damn day? I’ve owned this business for a long time. I know how this job is supposed to be done. You do the bare minimum to stay employed and what you’re gonna receive is the bare minimum, employment.” he said with a very serious tone.
I sat there for a moment in disbelief while pondering my response. Nothing came to mind however and before I could come up with anything to say he sat back in his chair and pointed to the door behind me, ushering me out.
To say I was furious would be a colossal understatement. What little of the rest of my work day I remember was spent in a rage-filled haze that seemed to occupy every corner of my mind like a fog. “Effort?” I kept saying to myself over and over again. I mean sure, I might go on my phone every now and then during shifts but who doesn’t? Sure, I may take an extra 5 minutes on my lunch break from time to time but that doesn’t make me a slacker. I’m a hard worker dammit! I know I am, and for this pretentious piece of shit to claim that I wasn’t. Well, let’s just say that I didn’t get a very positive reception for the rest of my shift. I don’t think I said hello, let alone cracked a smile at a customer for the rest of that day.
As my time at work ended and I drove home I could sense that I was still seething. My grip on the wheel seemed to tighten exponentially and I had acquired a sort of tunnel vision while driving. Similar to when you zone out and stare into nothingness. Noticing that this was probably unsafe and that I was close to my local park I decided to stop by and go for a walk to clear my head.
I always liked the park. There’s not much that I can confidently claim to enjoy with my life but Fishing has been and always will be one of my favorite pastimes. The lake at the park is the only notable body of water near my town so needless to say I’ve spent a lot of my free time going there.
After a few minutes of walking the path, I decided to sit on a bench overlooking the water. I watched the light shine off the water’s surface for a few peaceful moments and allowed the anger in my heart to subside until all I was left with was a feeling of pure emptiness. A feeling which was quickly refilled again with a newfound sense of depression at my situation. As the newfound grip of sadness took hold of me I leaned forward and allowed my head to fall comfortably in between my hands staring down at the ground ahead when I noticed something peculiar. There was an anthill in front of my bench across the walking path. Not an uncommon thing I know. It’s a park, fair to assume there are going to be ants right? Well, I’d never seen an anthill that looked like this before. Anthill isn’t even the proper term to describe it as there was no hill. Just a perfectly cylindrical hole about 2 inches in diameter in the ground that appeared to devour all of the surrounding light, making it impossible to see down into it. Coming out of the hole was what appeared to be ants. However much like their place of residence they too looked like no other ant species I can ever recall. In the same vanity as their hill they too were as dark as dark could be. On top of that, the insects were huge. They were at least the size of the tip of a pinkie with very defined mandible teeth that jutted out from their heads quite far. I stared at them for a good 10 seconds, soaking in every detail about the colony I had stumbled across when suddenly, the rage I had suppressed earlier came back. Only now it was accompanied by the dose of sadness which had originally filled its place.
I don’t know what it was, something about the creatures just disgusted me on a basic primal level and it reignited that burning anger I had originally come to the park to lose in the first place. I’m usually a fairly peaceful guy but the utterly unnatural look of the creatures just disgusted me on a personal level. Becoming annoyed by the fact that these insects had disgusted me so much and reignited my anger, I stood up, kicked dirt over the hole, stomped on the anthill a few times, and set off back to my car without a second thought. As I said, I’m usually a fairly peaceful guy. However, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to let out some of my pent-up aggression from that day. The rest of my day went off without a hitch. I went back home, watched some tv, and made dinner just like any other night. Everything appeared to be normal with one exception. As I attempted to toss and turn my way to sleep that night, I could not shake the feeling that I was being watched. Now let me clarify, I’m not just talking about that feeling you get that makes people sleep with their backs to the walls or the urge to keep the back of one’s neck covered up by their blankets when falling asleep. It was very deliberately, specifically the feeling of eyes being fixated upon me. A feeling made more uncomfortable by the fact that from what I could see, there was nobody in the room with me. Exhaustion is a powerful weapon however and Despite this feeling and how uncomfortable it made me, I was able to eventually get some sleep for the night.
The next morning, however, is when things officially started to get weird. You see, I live on the first floor of my apartment complex. The different rooms are laid out in a way so that there are 4 separate apartments for each section. 2 rooms on the first floor and 2 on the second with a staircase splitting down the middle, and a little stretch of dirt and grass lining the walls of each of the first-floor apartments. I never paid much mind to the stretch of dirt that lay outside my room, I’ve never been particularly into gardening so I had no incentive to plant anything there or to attempt to upkeep what remained of the patch of grass that clung desperately to the edge of the concrete walkway. The reason That was the first day I ever showed interest in my little patch of dirt was due to one simple detail that stuck out like an uneven shelf of books. There was a pitch-black hole, with the diameter of a golf ball perfectly centered on the patch of dirt right outside my front door.
As I locked my door and turned my head to begin walking down the strip of concrete that led to my car I found my head immediately frozen in place upon noticing it. As I stood there analyzing it I felt a cold chill run down from the base of my neck, up to the top of my head, and down to my fingertips. I can’t describe what it was about the hole that creeped me out. The fact that it was blacker than any shade I had ever seen was a good enough reason but there were others. The seemingly, perfectly cylindrical shape of it gave it an unnatural appearance that made it feel like it didn’t belong there, more so than it already didn’t. However, the reason I felt most unnerved at that moment was due to the simple fact that I had seen this hole before, the day just before that morning to be specific. This was the same type of hole I had seen yesterday, in the park.
“What the fuck?”
I thought to myself as I knelt down to get a closer look at the hole. From what I could see there were no ants, or at least none visible at the moment. Never letting my eyes leave the hole, I reached my hand across the patch of dirt to grab a small twig that just so happened to be there and began to slowly lower it into the hole. The twig was a good 3 inches long but yet, the hole swallowed it up entirely to the point where I could not stick it any deeper into the hole without my fingers themselves going into the hole itself.
“Just how deep does this go?” I thought to myself
With my body at the complete mercy of curiosity, I again reached over across the patch of dirt, this time picking up a small pebble. I positioned it carefully, calculating exactly where it needed to be dropped to fall perfectly into the hole.
“Are you alright ?”
My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a firm grip on my shoulder which caused me to jump damn near out of my skin. I spun around quickly only to be greeted by my 1st-floor neighbor Ron. A very tall bald man somewhere in his mid 40’s who I’m fairly certain did nothing with his free time besides chew ground beef and lift weights. Not the kind of person you’d necessarily be comfortable with grabbing you out of the blue.
“Jesus Ron! You scared the shit out of me!” I stammered out between gasps.
“Sorry about that neighbor,” He said in his gravely southern voice that was so cartoonishly cowboy-esk you’d swear he just got done marathoning a collection of Yosemite Sam cartoons.
“I called your name out about 10 seconds ago but you seemed so focused on, whatever it is you were doing that I guess you didn’t hear me,” he said, chuckling to himself.I collected my thoughts, steadied my emotions, and after a few short breaths responded.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m fine, I was just checking out this weird-looking hole in the ground.”
He made a half-hearted attempt to look over my shoulder and take a peek at the odd hole I was talking about, but quickly re-straightened his posture to look back at me.
” Well alright then “
His sentence was shortly interrupted by one of my backup alarms on my phone going off. Upon pulling out my phone I saw that this alarm, in particular, was to notify me that I had 10 minutes to be at work. I understand the seeming ridiculousness of setting an alarm so soon to my work start time but given the number of times I’ve fallen asleep in the parking lot waiting for my shift to start, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
“Oh shit, I’m sorry Ron! Gotta go! “
I said before quickly running off. He gave me a slight wave as he watched me sprint to my car. However, As I got in my car, threw it into reverse, and began backing up I neglected to wave back. My gaze remained fixated on the hole in my front yard the entire time I backed out. I wasn’t able to make it to work on time. Just barely anyways. Through my complete and total disregard for the very concept of “speed limits” and a fair share of annoyed honks and middle fingers tossed in my general direction as I dodged and weaved my way through traffic like a snake; I was able to make it to work only 2 minutes late.
Except for the scolding I got from my boss for arriving late, the rest of my work day was pretty uneventful. Although I’m not sure if I should attribute that to the mundane nature of the work itself, or if I was just burnt out from the torrent of emotions I had experienced there yesterday. Whatever the case may have been, however, I was able to get through the rest of the work day without incident. I place emphasis on the rest of the “Work” day because As I pulled back into my apartment parking spot, my eyes immediately locked back onto the dark pit that sat in my front yard like an unnatural blemish. I wasn’t even thinking about the hole all day at work or anything. As a matter of fact, I had totally forgotten about the morning incident maybe an hour after arriving at work. No, my attention immediately drew to the hole because I don’t know. I wish I could explain it but I can’t. The best way I can describe it is: like looking at the ocean. Sure, you CAN look away; but every fiber of your being compels you to continue staring for just a little bit longer. So that’s exactly what I did. I stared at the hole for the majority of the walk from my car up to my front door and even then when the front door was closed, the image of it remained ever-present in my mind.
As the night drew near and I got myself ready for bed I once again found myself uncomfortable with the unshakeable feeling of eyes laid upon me. As I brushed my teeth and took my gaze away from the mirror to rinse out my mouth I got particularly large goosebumps as the feeling grew, seemingly exponentially. It continued to do so as I finally got ready to turn off the lights for bed.
However, I was stopped dead in my tracks when I noticed Two black ants staring at me from outside my window. I know it sounds ridiculous but that’s the only way I can describe their behavior. Insects congregating around a window is nothing out of the ordinary. But these were no ordinary bugs. They were undeniably the same ants I had seen that fateful day in the park. Or at the very least they were the same species. As I approached the window and leaned over to get a better look at them, their posture did not waiver. They stood steadfast like statues. Staring right back at me. Much like the day I first encountered the creatures, the mere sight of them filled my stomach with a sense of disgust I didn’t know the human body was capable of conjuring. It was a deep, primal disgust that seemingly begged my arms to move on their own to shut the blinds on them to get them out of my sight. I was more than happy to oblige. The feeling of disgust passed, however As I laid my head down for bed the feeling of eyes on my back did not. It remained that way through the rest of the night.
That was the point where my life took a turn and began to rapidly derail. As I left my apartment the next day I almost instinctively looked down to check on the anthill in my front yard. Sure enough, there were 2 black ants staring at me. I watched them the entire time I walked to my car and sure enough, they did the same. Just like the night before on my windowsill. I never left their sight
This time, I did not forget about the incident while I was at work. It didn’t hinder my work but it certainly occupied a larger portion of my mind this time around. By the time I pulled back into my driveway later that day, I was hesitant to point my eyes any lower than dead straight ahead of me. I knew they would be there, but that didn’t change the fact I couldn’t stand the sight of the vile creatures. However, curiosity is one of humanity’s most powerful instincts. I fought it as best I could, but the closer I got to my door the stronger it became. Inevitably, it took hold of me. Once it did I noticed that there were now three ants guarding the anthill. As always, they stared me down the entire time until I was safely behind my front door.
That was when I decided to finally do something about the apparent infestation and called up my landlord Mitchell.
“And you’re sure it’s been growing? Mitchell asked with a hint of skepticism.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, man. You know what they say on all those animal planet shows. If you see 2 there’s a whole colony” I retorted with all the confidence in the world.
“Isn’t that only a saying for rat colonies or something?” He said with an even bigger dose of skepticism
“Look I don’t know if the saying applies to all infestations. All I know is that I’ve been seeing more and more ants show up around my apartment so clearly, they’ve settled in the area. I’m not asking for much, just an exterminator visit is all you know? Get his perspective.” I said that last line as calmly as I could. I figured the only way to get him to throw me a bone here was by making it not sound like a big expensive task.
He sighed “ alright man. I got a buddy who works for pest control. I’ll tell him to swing by towards the end of his shift for a … mock inspection. You have a good night Alex” and with that he hung up, sounding mildly annoyed at being convinced to actually do his job. The bane of any landlord’s existence I suppose.
The rest of that night went fairly well compared to the previous one. I was feeling very at ease with having a professional come in to help out with the situation. On top of that, there were no ants on my windowsill like the previous night. All was right in the world until I felt the sting. At an ungodly hour of night I can’t even begin to recollect, I awoke to a sharp pain on the stretch of skin between my shoulder and neck. Upon inspection, in my bathroom mirror, I found a small red dot was the source of my pain. It hurt like hell and when I went to touch it sharp burning pain emanated from it that felt like a lit matchstick being pressed into my skin.
I inspected my bed to see if I could spot the culprit. Obviously, my first reaction was to blame my newfound neighbors. I had already grown very tired of them, but bed bugs do exist. I wanted to be thorough and see if it could have been anything else. Despite my investigation efforts I found nothing and went back to sleep. Telling myself that it must just be a strange pimple of some kind. Knowing damn well that wasn’t the case, but nonetheless, I was too tired to care at that moment.
The next morning as I left my apartment I did my now routine checkup on the batch of dirt in front of my apartment. There were four of them now. Sure enough, like the night I first encountered them on my windowsill, they watched my every move without so much as taking a step from their apparent guard-like positions. Just like they had done every other time thus far, filled with annoyance at the pests, I kicked up some dirt at them violently in an attempt to get them to run back into their hole. An attempt that was without reward. They didn’t move an inch. They stood their ground and watched me intensely from my front door all the way to my car, and even though I could not see them while driving out of my parking lot I still felt their gaze on the back of my neck.
When I arrived back home later that day I was relieved to see the exterminator was already hard at work, crouched down alongside my windowsill spraying some form of poison along the edges and underside of my wall.
“Hey man, thanks for helping me out,” I said as I walked slightly to the side of him whilst twirling my keys. He pulled out his earbuds and looked over at me
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” he uttered. I sighed, rolled my eyes internally, and began again.
“This is my place, your um … “I struggled to think of the word to describe the procedure the man was in the middle of.
“Pest controlling?” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
“ Oh! You must be Alex!” he chuckled to himself.
“Yes sir, I was notified of a possible ant infestation so I’m just laying some pesticides around all possible entry points into your home. All natural neem oil pesticides so they are nontoxic to you and any possible pets you may have.” I nodded along pretending to have a clue what he was talking about.
“ That’s awesome man, just make sure you get the anthill in the front yard too.”
He leaned his head over past my shoulder to scout the rest of the front yard.
“Don’t you worry sir, I’ll be sure to hit up any possible entry points as well as possible nest spots. As I go along” he said with a smile. After about 15 minutes he knocked on my door, informed me that he was done and to keep an eye out for any more ants, and left. I breathed a sigh of relief and quickly had my nerves out to rest. Finally, with some peace of mind, I was able to enjoy the remainder of my night relaxing with some video games and staying up late due to my day off the following day. All was right in the world. Until I laid my head on my pillow, and I felt the familiar gaze of eyes on the back of my head.
The following morning was as mundane as mundane could be. After sleeping in for what felt like the first time in weeks I Woke up, went about my morning routine, and sat on my couch watching some TV while thinking about what to do with my day. Eventually settling on going out to see a movie that I wasn’t exactly dying to watch. I just couldn’t think of anything better to do. A plan that was quickly cut short by the discovery of a new anthill on my front lawn. About a foot away from the original and closer to my apartment lay an almost identical-looking copy of the strange anthill that had lived rent-free on my lawn for far too long. I was stopped dead in my tracks upon my discovery of it and was immediately met with a wave of annoyance at its existence.
“Fucking christ Mitchell. Some exterminator friend you’ve got” I thought to myself.
With a deep sigh, I resigned myself to a day of exterminating rather than relaxation and set off for my local hardware store to buy some bug killer. I wasn’t exactly sure what to look for to help deal with my particular infestation. Eventually, however, I settled on a can of bug spray made for ants as well as a few of those little plastic bait traps that ants are supposed to inadvertently poison the entire colony with. Again, I was not an exterminator by any means so I had no idea how to go about using the equipment I had just acquired. I figured that if I sprayed a copious amount of the bug spray along the bottom of my door frame and along my window sills, that would keep them from entering my apartment. As for the ant bait traps I just placed one outside both of the 2 anthills and figured they would have to investigate them eventually. After that little side quest, I was finally able to enjoy the remainder of my day off. Or at least a fair portion of it. It was around 7 pm when I was sitting on my couch watching TV, just nearly drifting off to sleep that I felt a sting. It rattled my whole body from the back of my neck all the way down to the left side of my foot and caused me to nearly jump out of my skin with pain.
I instinctually stood up and threw off my shirt in an attempt to get what I assumed was one of my ant neighbors off of me and began throwing my shirt over my shoulders to try to swat it off. I did this a few times before realizing I was safe and there was nothing attached to me. I looked and looked and there wasn’t any ant to be seen on the couch either. I made sure to pull out every cushion, move the couch and even check the surrounding furniture and I still found nothing. When I went to investigate my back in the bathroom mirror I couldn’t see a sting mark either. A fact that was not relieving in the slightest. I didn’t sleep much that night. I could still feel eyes on the back of my neck no matter which way I faced as I tossed and turned.
As I woke up the next morning I had a sense of looming dread hanging over my head that I couldn’t shake. A sense of dread that was different mind you than the usual morning blues before one gets ready for work. As I closed my front door I took a deep breath and turned around to check on the anthills. To my complete and utter shock, they were gone. I couldn’t believe it. For a few moments, I just stood there racking my brain for answers.
“Did they move out or something?” I thought to myself, unable to come up with any rational answer. “Did my traps work that fast? Even if they did the holes wouldn’t be this covered up so soon” I thought to myself.
My ant traps were still there, looking quite lonely without any trace of an ant colony to accompany them. I chuckled to myself a little bit out of relief that it looked like my infestation problem had taken care of itself and set off for work. A comforting fact. So why the fuck did I still feel it? That uneasiness I had felt that morning was still there. It hadn’t grown, it hadn’t decreased, it just remained there. A constant emotion in the back of my mind from the time I woke up, all throughout work, and even now as I had visual confirmation that my intruders were gone it remained. I opened my front door and stepped inside. The 2 black ants sitting on my kitchen table turned their heads to face my direction and stared at me.
In an instant, I felt my blood turn to ice and felt a cold chill run down my spine that seemingly paralyzed me in the doorway of my own home. I had never felt so uneasy in my entire life as I did at that moment. As I stood there frozen with fear, all the moments that had led up to this moment in time raced through my mind. The encounter at the park, the mysterious anthills, the windowsill encounter, and the dread I felt when I looked at these damn bugs all played back in my mind.
“Something is very wrong here.” I thought to myself.
These were no ordinary bugs. That much was clear from their appearance alone, I had figured out that much and accepted it long ago. I’m not talking about that though. On an almost instinctual, primal level that I couldn’t comprehend at that moment in time, something was simply very wrong.
When I eventually regained my wits, I began to walk past the table and to my fridge to retrieve a paper towel. The entire time their heads followed my every move, and I in return did not dare let the cursed insects out of my sight. With one swift motion, I yanked a paper towel off from its roll and smushed the bugs before they could escape. Their smushed remains left an unusual amount of black liquid on my paper towel that seemed unnaturally copious for something so small. I threw their remains away and pulled out my phone.
“ I need the exterminator back here Mitchell. I don’t know what kind of “consultation” you had this guy run for me but it clearly wasn’t enough because there in my fucking house now”
“You mean the ants?” he retorted
“No, the fucking lawn gnomes YES, the ants Mitchel Jesus!” I spat back at him.
He took a long deep sigh. Even though I had no visual indication, I knew him well and could tell just from the sign that he was at that very moment rubbing his forehead out of annoyance like he always did.
“Alright alright, ill call him just calm the fuck down kid. I’ll text you his response ok?” He sounded very irritated at that last remark.
“Sure, thanks,” I said before abruptly hanging up.
After about 10 minutes I got a text from Mitchell that read: “He’s all booked up. Says he can do it 2 days from now at the earliest.”
I replied back almost immediately “2 days? That’s not soon enough man! You gotta find me, someone, to get here sooner!”
“He’s the cheapest one in town, Alex. He’s the one I’m going with. You’ll be fine until then, they’re just some fucking ants”
I threw my phone at the wall out of frustration and slumped against the kitchen counter, almost immediately regretting that decision before frantically going to check the damage. Just a crack on the screen. As I sat there kneeling I took a very long deep breath to clear my head.
“Ok,” I said to myself before standing up, and calling in sick to my boss for the following day.
The following “sick day” was spent doing what, in my mind, can only be described as a full-on war. I returned from the hardware store with 2 bags in hand that were filled with more of those plastic ant bait traps, stick traps, and bug spray. I spent a good hour placing the various traps throughout my home in high-traffic areas where I thought the ants liked to travel. I sprayed down more bug spray along the windowsill and doorway and when I was satisfied with that, I laid down even more ant traps.
If I had to guess, I’d say maybe … 20 traps in total were scattered around my house. A number that is certainly overkill to anyone who wasn’t privy to my situation, but it wasn’t so comically overkill that one would look into my home and one would immediately write me off as a lunatic.
I half expected the ants to at some point come out and try to stop me. To stand in my way, move my traps, and even commit their usual crime of simply watching me. Not only did none of this occur, however, but I didn’t see them at all that day. Not on my kitchen counter, not on my window, not anywhere. As I laid my head down for bed that night I still felt the now all too familiar eyes on the back of my neck. Aside from that though, it was like they were finally gone.
Whereas the previous day I awoke feeling unbearable dread, the day after I had gone to war with the ants greeted me with a sense of optimism I had long since forgotten existed. There were, once again, no signs of the cursed bugs anywhere. As I left my home and walked to my car there were still no anthills to be seen. My ant traps were still laid in my front yard and I reminded myself to pick them up when I returned from work. As I pulled out of my driveway and began driving to work I found myself in such a good mood that I even found myself singing along a little to the songs on the radio. A state of mind that I truly had not felt in what felt like ages. A feeling that immediately melted away as I noticed the ant crawling around on my hand.
Time slowed down and with what felt like one swift motion I smacked it off of my hand with the other, causing me to turn my car sharply to the left and nearly end up off of the road. I waited for the annoyed honks to pass me by until it was safe to pull over and once I was able to, I jumped out of my car and began to furiously pat down my body in search of any more ants. I found none, however, except for the now-dead one that lay on the dashboard of my car. After removing its corpse from my car I spent a good 10 minutes checking every nook and cranny of my car to see if I could find any more of them. When and only when I was certain that there was absolutely no chance of the insects hiding anywhere in my vehicle, I finally set off to work in complete silence.
I honestly don’t remember if anybody talked to me at work that day. Whether it be because I was so trapped in my own head I didn’t notice anyone’s attempts or because I must’ve looked like a nervous wreck and simply nobody wanted to. Either way, fear was my only companion that working day. The feeling that used to only accompany me as I laid my head down to sleep at night now made itself present at work. The entire day I kept randomly slapping my extremities at even the faintest itching sensation. I’m sure I looked like a madman, but I couldn’t help it. I was paranoid that they had followed me to work and at certain points, I even mistook the pain of a random muscle cramp for one of their stings. It was a very long day at work to say the absolute least.
When I pulled back into my apartment driveway the feeling of being watched grew so intense that it nearly made my eyes water up from the cold chill that ran down my spine. It took me a few seconds to muster up the courage to step out of my car and began walking to my front door. As soon as I did, I checked my front lawn. Still no anthills. This was not a comforting discovery. I had no more optimism about the situation and knew that this did not mean they were gone. It simply meant they had moved in.