Small Places : Nick L Belardes [25 of 128]

• Nine.
• 2 am: I dream about my dead ant farm. I am inside it, lost. There are no ants to show me the way,
• only plastic walls and hulks of dead ants. I split open a dead dried ant and make a sort of shaman costume that I wear while I explore.
• I commune with their dead consciousness. I find a room with ant eggs stuck to the walls and ceiling. One is cracked open.
• Black lifeless eyes stare out at me. I am them. In my shaman ant dream I grow thirsty. I use two broken antenna as divining rods.
• I dig and water springs out. I wake up having wet the bed. Milt's eyeballs are nearly touching the new ant farm I bring to work.
• "Where are the ants?" he asks. "I just mail-ordered them," I say. He seems more impatient than me about the ants arrival:
• "When will they come?" Me: "Any second now." Milt stares for minutes on end. I finally get the ants and dump them into the ant farm.
• They spread throughout like they'd just been on vacation and start digging tunnels. I watch the ants watch me.
• I think they can see me. They gather at the plastic walls. No wait. It's the dead fly I put in there. Never mind.
• After lunch I see the ant farm is a complete wreck. All the sand walls have collapsed. There's no movement. A Post-It reads: "Earthquake."
• Milt walks by. He doesn't look at me but snickers to himself. I follow him to the bathroom where I can hear him laughing insanely.