Crawling.

‘The ants are back again,’ said John through his large beard. Those bastards! I’d love to get them out in the open – then they’d let us alone!

            ‘Relax, John,’ said Angela. ‘They’re only ants!’

            Only ants, thought John. Red ants, thought John – the worst kind. He felt a burning in his soul, a fire in his conscience, the gnawing of a thousand tiny jaws – the pang he quickly dismissed.

            ‘Get some Bugzapper out the cupboard, and then fill in the hole,’ Angie called out.

            I know that, thought John. ‘Okay, honey.’ But they always come back, he thought. He looked at himself in the mirror – he was old, greying, his hair was only now streaked with a small sliver of black. He was wearing a black sweater, slacks, and open-toed sandals. John stood a fatigued and shaggy mock-joke of his youth.

            ‘He got the Bugzapper (a nasty-smelling concoction that meant whatever offending room had to be closed off) and some high-strength bleach out from the cupboard under the stairs. He went back into the kitchen, knelt down by the back door, and sprayed the ants. They were manic in the stinging foam, their antennae twitching and burning under the action of the abusive chemicals. He sprayed down the hole, too: that would keep the buggers from coming back, he thought.

            John left the kitchen and went into the living room. He would come back later to sweep up their small, dried bodies. He sat and watched television with Angie. They shared a bag of corn snacks. Then they went up to bed, and before they made love, Angie read a chapter of the novel she had on the go.

            John slept more uneasily than usual. He occasionally swatted his neck in his sleep, heard a steady, seamless, eternal crawling sound; then he heard a low buzz – a plane engine – and heard the sound of rushing flames, crackling wood, screaming women. He could see a dead elephant in a tortured clearing, and he could smell the burnt flesh of something else. And then he woke up with a violent turn. He went to the kitchen for a glass of orange, heard a familiar sound, but he dismissed it. John went back up to bed.

Angie was restless as he lay down to face the other way. He turned over, snuggling up behind her and pushing himself into the backs of her knees. He held onto her tightly. John closed his eyes to usher in sleep. Please come, he thought.

            The next day, he and Angie went to work. John worked in a bookshop; she worked in a grocery. They didn’t earn much, but they earned enough to pay the bills and put food in their mouths. The shop John worked in was big and full of old books – there were three floors; a strange shop, he’d always thought – but a lovely one because of this. He worked for a friend – he’d work there four days a week, usually, sitting behind the desk out front, sipping his black coffee, one sugar, and perusing the books at his leisure. Business was good – the local university had a prestigious English department – actually, it was reasonable more than anything else; the students appreciated a flow of good, affordable books – the more worn the better. Then he got the regulars in – Mr McCaffery, Stephen Blanche, Michael Dubois, Martin Oliver (otherwise known as Big Martin), Elizabeth Prigg, Mary Parker (who he swore was a bull dyke), and others.

            John closed up at six that afternoon and it was getting dark outside. He got the bus home and got in shortly after half past. When he got in, he found a note in the kitchen: Gone ‘round Susan’s. Be back late. Love you, hun. P.S. Dinner’s in the fridge. He scrunched up the note and threw it in the bin, then went to the fridge and found steak, potatoes, and string beans with gravy – he’d always tried to give up meat, but he liked the taste and the texture – especially of beef. Besides, it was not a big deal – he’d seen his fair share of blood.

            John ate it whilst watching the box. He couldn’t really concentrate, though, so he turned it off. He decided to run himself a bath and try to read something short and manageable – perhaps some short stories, beat, sci-fi – or maybe the Russians, those great visionaries. The warm water felt good – the steam went to his head. The window was closed and he felt relaxed but exhausted. He shut out all thought from his mind, submerging himself in the water; he did not open the book that lay beside the bath in the bundle of towels.

            After the bath, he went downstairs for some pudding and some orange. He flicked on the light and held the carton up to his mouth. And then he noticed something in the corner of the kitchen: the hole he’d sprayed the day before seemed bigger. He went over to it, put his finger in it, and felt the hard wood floorboard crumble at the touch of his fingers. He suddenly became scared: he put his ear to the floor. The sound was back: a steady crawling. As he listened, it seemed to grow louder and louder, closer and closer, until he imagined the whole house should be shaking. The floor under his feet started to crack and buckle, and with a terrible sound half the kitchen descended into a great hole in the earth. He rummaged around in the damp hole and then looked up – he could see the kitchen lights above his head, metres up.

            John could feel something crawling over his skin – he lifted his arm up to the light above him: thousands of ants, biting at his flesh! He desperately brushed them off, and then something from the other end of the hollow made his flesh crawl with chill fear: a scuttling sound was building and coming towards him. In the faint light, he saw two massive hairy red legs emerge, followed by a pair of barbed jaws. The ants were all over him. ‘Sorry!’ he cried. ‘I’m sorry!’ But it was too late for that.

            The following week, an old friend had rung Angie with condolences, and an odd reticence of manner, after reading a disturbing article in the local paper: 

Wednesday, May 17th, 1995

John Patmore, Vietnam veteran and respected member of the local community, mysteriously disappeared Monday evening. He was last seen at his place of work - Bohemian Books - that afternoon. A strange hollow, which has been put down to subsidence by the city council, was found beneath his house on Monday evening. However, no body was found. His grieving wife, Angela, has expressed that if anyone knows of his whereabouts, or has any vital information, please.... The man could not read on and threw the paper down, terrified. He had a creeping fear that that something was now coming for him, hungry, marching in unison; the champing of their jaws the military drums; the underground caverns their chambers of blood: lifting one’s foot to quash them only made them bolder. The days of the bully were coming to an end, and all those with even the tiniest flecks of blood on their hands would be irrevocably consumed.

George.

She’ll have me, he thought. I’ll take her; I know she wants me. Florence was walking through the park and it was 10.22 pm – not too late, but the park was gloomy and open. She’d just been to see a film and was walking the five-minute walk home.

            He lurked behind the big elms in his black, felt cape - which he entertained was velvet; he’d purchased it from a fancy dress shop. He was sixteen, and he’d masturbated over a picture of her he’d got from Facebook that afternoon – he’d done it in the school bathroom, although his friends didn’t know.

            She liked the Twilight series. He knew that. He wondered whether she ever... touched herself. Did she touch herself in bed? Did she think about him when she did it?

            He had the chloroform in his pocket, and a rag; he’d stolen it from the chemical cupboard, along with other noxious things he kept at home. He had a razor and plastic tubing, and he had a condom in his back pocket that he’d stolen from his elder sister’s room.

            Florence heard light footsteps near the trees. He came out: ‘H-hello,’ he said. ‘Excuse me, I'm a bit lost, I....’ Wait, she thought, aren’t you –

            He lunged at her. She struggled, but he had the cloth over her mouth and she was beside the path now, muddied and struggling vehemently. He climbed atop her and worked his knees in between her shoulder blades. She lost consciousness. He dragged her over towards the wall and opened up her wrist; then he heard something across the way.

            A voice was shouting out. ‘Who’s there? What’s going on?’ It was a man’s voice, and the man was running over. Charles fled, leaving behind his things.

            The man had heard the girl’s stifled screams. When he got to her, he found she was unconscious but alive. He turned over the body and tapped her flushed cheek lightly. And that’s when he saw the blood: one of her wrists had been punctured. There was a length of fat tubing beside her, bloodied at one end, along with a spent razor.

            He called the ambulance. The sky hung lightly with patches of cloud, the moon was not out. Sirens convened upon the serenity from far away and gathered like a point slowly finding itself, moving gradually to where she lay beneath the dark and hazy night.

            George got in and went to bed. ‘It never happened,’ he told himself. Of course she’d be at school tomorrow – the same as always. He turned his face into his pillow. His dreams were peaceful, but he awoke to a pulsating tide of crimson. He always did, and it filled everything.