Arthur sometimes hated the house. As a widower of 17 years, to him the place still felt empty without Janene, and in the dark even a bit creepy.
He had become familiar with the nail pops, creaks, wind whistles, and moans, but at night the empty room where she had dressed was a black hole sucking him toward imagined intruders armed with knives or guns. Such thoughts were irrational, foolish. Yet when he switched off the lights and retreated to the bedroom, his imagination embraced these phantasms.
He had also noticed another factor. As he lay in bed, he would hear regular thunks — at the edge of auditory recognition — from the crawl space beneath him. He tried not to pay attention but often found himself counting the seconds between sounds and the minutes before they abated. This too was childish fear-chasing.
After all, he reasoned it was the effect of the metal ductwork contracting when he turned down the thermostat. Yet there was nothing metallic in the sound, an actual thunking like flicking one’s finger against the underside of card table. And it never happened before bedtime or early in the morning. One day he even crept into the crawl space to investigate, inching on elbows and knees over the plastic-sheeted dirt. He found no tears, animal nests, or disruptions to explain the thunks.
It the morning light, as Arthur sipped his chai tea at the dining room table, watching birds peck at the lawn, he forgot the night terrors. Confident and in command of his environment, although at times desperately lonely for his life mate.
Yet this morning he confronted a new challenge. As he washed his face, a line of small ants made drunken trails from behind the countertop to the soap dish next to his toothbrush cup. Several crawled over the soap bar, drawn by something in its ingredients. Was it glycerin? Janene had introduced it to him, and he found the silky feel and fresh smell preferable to typical face soap. But why had the ants taken notice after so many years of disinterest? Strange. Anyway, there were but few. He crushed them beneath his thumb and sprinkled them into the waste can.
Later, as he relieved himself — tea seemed to wash through his system these days — he noted the trickle of ants had grown into a march. There must have been fifteen or eighteen scurrying about, following scent trails from previous explorers. Most he killed with his fingertip; a few others he washed down the drain. It was evident they had a communication link back to their nest, reporting they had discovered something of value. In the kitchen he snagged a sandwich-size baggie to cover the soap dish. That would stop the parade.
After lunch and a nap, Arthur washed his face again. The ant trail had not slowed, so he snuffed out a good twenty-six of the annoying creatures. Extra measures would be necessary. He remembered that Janene used a solution of ground shell powder to kill bugs on the perennials, so he found the bag and mixed up a cup, spraying it liberally around the edge of the sink top and cabinet. The buggers would not transport it back to the colony, but those who tracked through it would find their bodies pierced, confirming his message in the form of pallbearers. He sprayed the solution anew before watching the evening news and again at bedtime.
That night the low thunking sound — first six seconds apart, then seven, nine, ten, thirteen ? troubled his attempt to sleep. Finally, sweet silence. It took another hour for the adrenaline to drain from his bloodstream, and the approach of blessed sleep.
In the morning, it was obvious the shell powder was worthless. Time to send poison back to the nest. He found the box of ant traps under the kitchen sink and placed one near his toothbrush cup.
The ants ignored the trap. So, he drove to the hardware store, where the clerk recommended Terro Liquid Ant Baits. “They’re Borax-based, the best stuff out there,” she said. Arthur hoped she was right. He had killed at least a hundred ants since their invasion.
“This is war,” he announced as he exchanged the ant trap for the Terro bait. “Be sure to tell all your buddies.”
Arthur took a stronger sleeping pill that night and drifted off without a single thunk to disturb his tranquility. Lying in bed the next morning, he remembered a red super ball he had as a boy. He loved to bounce it off the side of the house and between buildings. At times he used it on the sidewalk to eliminate lines of red ants. Childish sadism, but such fun.
When he stepped into the bathroom and flipped the light switch, he saw a few ants ferrying carcasses from the Terro tray. “I win,” he shouted. The Borax worked. Later in the day he noted the sink was ant free. He smiled at his success, pleased the episode was over.
***
Three days later, when the police forced entry into Arthur’s home, the smell took away their breath. Donning masks, they found a sickening scene before them. Half a human torso lay on the blood-stained carpet next to a ragged two-foot hole in the floor. Feeding ants coated the body, sliced as if by giant pincers. Beneath the floor, the other half, clothed in Arthur’s jeans, lay equally infested. A search in the crawl space revealed nothing unusual except fresh earth beneath the plastic in the far corner of the house.
As they lowered Arthur’s remains onto a gurney, one of the paramedics quipped, “Hey, look at this.” Just inside the doorway hung a plaque that read: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, have dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth. Gen. 2:28’ “Looks like the ants won this round,” he said with a laugh.
“You’re sick,” his partner replied, and lifted her end of the stretcher.
The founding editor of BGC World and Point magazines, Bob Putman a graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop Program. He also studied under novelist John Gardner at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and has published stories in Purpose, Reddit, Leadership Online, War Cry, Valley Living, GRAND and others. He is working on his second memoir, An Inconvenient Child, prequel to his first: The Cat Lady of Highland Park. He lives in Minnesota, where he enjoys teasing two or his five grandchildren.
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