A Quiet Picnic

In the company of thousands

Photo by Juan Pablo Mascanfroni on Unsplash

Carol and I stretched out on the red wool blanket. The sun peeked through the trees as it moved across the sky, trying to see what we were up to I guess. But it was nothing, we’d long outgrown that phase. We were happy for this quiet moment of proximity. Birds sang in the branches, songs too intricate to be real. Dust motes, flecked gold from the sun, floated in the light breeze. It was the perfect summer afternoon. The kind that feels like it has to be enchanted.

The slight ache in my gut felt real enough, though. Carol packs an irresistible picnic, and I’d left nothing but crumbs. We’d flopped down next to each other, bellies distended. Full and happy. Ready for a nap in the blissful caress of a damn fine pastoral scene. An ant scurried across my hand and I flicked it off.

“Maybe we should move. There’s never only one ant.”

“I’m too full to move,” Carol said, lacing her fingers in mine.

“Mmmm.” Was the best I could do as my eyelids drooped closed.

When I woke it was to the sound of rushing in my ears. Like high winds through leafy tree tops. But the trees barely moved above me. The sun was lower now, we’d slept for quite some time. I smiled.

“Carol, did you poison the wine?” She didn’t answer, still asleep. The noise hummed on, a weird, muffled clicking multiplied by the thousands. It was irritating. I turned my head to see a column of ants stream by me on the blanket. Glistening workers flowed like water through a tunnel other ants had made of their own bodies. I’d seen them before, army ants or something.

I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move. My body tingled, but didn’t respond to my command. Maybe Carol really had poisoned the wine. An ant crawled across my face and I went to swat it off, but my arm wouldn’t move either. The ant scurried across my cheek toward my mouth.

“Ugh!” I blew helplessly toward it to try and keep it away from my mouth, but it didn’t work. Before I had time to close it, the ant slipped in. I screamed. Swallowed. Gagged.

“Carol! Carol!” More ants marched toward my mouth, I clamped it shut. Why couldn’t I move? Panicked, I looked down. Blinking with pain as ants swarmed into my eyes I looked at my leges. Barely visible under the writhing swarm there were ragged, pale craters rimmed with wet red in my flesh. Bone gleamed in white patches beneath the shifting insects, like sun through the trees. I crammed my eyes shut, feeling the ants’ bodies scraping between my soft eyeball and the thin skin covering. I ached for breath, ants squirmed inside my nose, clogging it up, eating away the tender flesh inside. I begged my brain to move my arms. The tide of ants clinging to my lips pushed against the barrier. I opened my eyes, eyelids rolling dead ants with them as they moved, and looked down at my hand. It had been entwined with Carol’s.

Two skeleton hands, white fingers threaded with red tendons lay next to each other on the blanket. My eyes were streaming blood and tears as I turned my head. There, next to me, was Carol’s skull, jaw agape, as though she’d tried to scream, tried to wake me.