Ants

It starts with the black speck in the sea of salt crystals. I call the exterminator. He’ll be over in thirty minutes.

I set the phone on the counter, and an ant emerges from the black shards imbedded in the mixed granite. Then another one.

I look back at the salt jar, and it’s now filled with pepper. They are everywhere. They hide in the black scuff on my shoe. They mimic the quinoa in my salad. They are the poppy seeds on my everything bagel. Who taught ants to impersonate Oreo crumbs?

The internet says they’ll drown in water. I go to throw the salt in the sink, but the sweat makes my hands slippery, and the jar falls from my grasp. Glass shatters against the tiles, and ants flood the floor like a swarm of magnetic iron shards.

They are the dirt between my fingernails. They are the freckles on my arms. They are the itch behind my ear, the eyelashes in my peripheral. They are living in the hairs on my legs, crawling up them with six spindly legs, gnawing on my skin, taking chunks out of my flesh, sinking their teeth in, and sucking up my blood. My body is the host for the parasite.

The kitchen tiles are now completely black. I can’t see my feet anymore. They have started flooding, piling into an ocean of black bugs. They continue to fill the room, and I think they will never go away, this will never be over, it will always be me versus the ants, and the ants will always win. They are too smart, too resilient, too easily disguised, and they will keep getting away with this, and I will get sick of fighting, and they won’t.

They crawl in through my ears and nose and swim through my bloodstream. They swarm my lungs, tickle my chest, cover my heart with a dark shadow. I cannot breathe, I am hyperventilating—suffocating, choking. I cry tears of ants. I lean over to barf and expel a gushing wave of black bugs like a water hose.

The exterminator tells me he finds nothing, that the problem is handled, I was overreacting. Pride is a small price to pay for paranoia. I spend the extra thirty dollars for the warranty, though “satisfaction guaranteed” sounds as flimsy a promise as “I love you.”

Later, when my boyfriend comes home, I check his phone while he’s in the shower. I tap the green message icon, scroll through the texts, hold my breath. Blink a few times at the girl’s name. Sent ten minutes ago: See you again soon.

He comes out of the shower with a towel around his waist, a smile on his cheeks. I look into his eyes. He knows, he doesn’t know, he knows, he doesn’t know, he knows—he doesn’t know what’s swimming in the dark pool between his pale blue irises.