The Ants Attack!

Sometimes a day at the beach isn’t a day at the beach. Alright, I didn’t cut my leg open on coral. I wasn’t stung by a jellyfish or devoured by sharks. Neither was I sucked into a dangerous riptide or suffer sunstroke. I just lost my watch. Not the end of the world. The weird thing is, I can’t figure out how the hell it happened.

I’m sure I threw the watch in my bag before going for a swim. I was only in the water for about an hour and kept one eye on my bag the whole time. Nobody went near it. I lay on the beach and read for awhile, head resting on the bag, the palm leaves casting gentle shadows like Venetian blinds across my pasty New York skin. Then, after the sun, huge and blood red, had made its glorious exit from the sky, I gathered my things and went to put on my watch. It wasn’t there. I checked all the pockets, even the ones in which I knew for certain I hadn’t put the watch. No watch. I emptied the entire contents of the bag onto my blanket. I scoured the beach, retracing my steps. Nothing. The watch had vanished into thin air.

Later that night as I lay in bed awaiting sleep, it kept bugging me. What had happened to the goddamned watch? It couldn’t have just vaporized. Maybe a very patient and skillful thief had lain in wait behind the bushes and had darted out to snag the watch just as my head was turned. It didn’t seem likely. Why had he not swiped my wallet and passport as well? Maybe a bird had flown off with it. Aren’t there supposed to be birds in the tropics that decorate their nests with bright, shiny things to impress the ladies? Maybe some thieving monkey had grabbed it. There were monkeys in the forest; I’d heard them, but never seen them, and certainly had never seen them working on their tans or doing the backstroke. A kleptomaniac crab, perhaps? A flying fish with a clock fixation?  I gave up. It was only a 20 dollar watch and I could get another.

I was standing in line at the gates of unconsciousness when somebody shoved a sharpened screwdriver up through the mattress and into my spine. What the hell? Adrenaline kicked in. I tried to roll clear, but he stabbed me again, this time right in the crotch. It was the bastard who took my watch and now he meant to take my life! I leapt for the light switch so I could at least see the face of my assailant. My bed was crawling with red ants. An expedition had been mounted, my bag serving as base camp. They must have snuck in while I was searching the beach. The bulk of the troops could be seen marching out of the bag, single file up the bedpost, but the forward reconnaissance forces had already penetrated my T shirt and jockeys and were in the process of pitching camp. Tent pegs were being driven simultaneously into my armpits, belly, back and genitalia. Tearing my clothes off, I sprinted toward the shower. The water was freezing, but I didn’t care as I blasted the little creeps to a watery grave. With their bites still stinging and beginning to swell all over my body, I watched with glee as great clumps of ants, clinging together in their desperation -- and probably emitting tiny insect screams of terror beyond the range of human hearing – were swept along in the inescapable current, swirling clockwise, ever closer to the whirlpool and unavoidable oblivion.

In the morning, I looked like the victim of some medieval disease, covered in strange bumps, like buboes. After my shower, before passing out the night before, I had managed to clear the ants from the mattress with an ancient roll of cellophane tape. But I had been too terrified to get back into bed, afraid that some renegade ants were still on the prowl, unaware the war was over and that humanity had triumphed. So I slept in the chair, aided in this enterprise by the dregs of a bottle of bad whiskey. I did not rest easy. I dreamt of ants: thousands, millions of them, standing on the backs of their insect brothers, forming the undulating shape of a man. And the man was wearing my watch.

Comments

[Josef Osterneck]

Man, the latest rendition of Firewater is some of the best damn music I ever heard. For a tone-deaf musician turned engineer to make a living, I have played with many budding musicians that “made it” long after leaving me: Ryan Adams, Lee Wall and Sean Eden of Luna, and Dietrich Bader. But, your music has always been a substantial part of my life’s soundtrack. And that includes “Black Jackets,” Divine Right,” and “Zero Hour.”

[sonya b]

they could have been playing kazoos. that would have been worse.