April 2019 - Flash: The Ants

April 2019 Flash
The Ants

Z turned the air off, but immediately the car got too hot. Her sweat made the fuzz on the seats stick to her skin, creating itchy spots. The nerves inside her arms and legs were tingling. She clenched and unclenched her right fist, pushing on her knuckles, rubbing the fleshy part of her thumb with her index finger. Her brain was shouting, we have to get out of here, where to? To the police, no to the priest, no to the rabbi, no to the therapist on the ritzy side of town, no to her mother, no to her great-grandma’s grave rest in peace, no to her bed. Yes to her bed. All it required was a u-turn on the freeway.

The black car next to her drove too close. She tried to dodge it by swerving, but got too far in the next lane without looking. Another car rushed down the freeway and woosh! That driver blared his horn and stuck out a middle finger yelling “Watch yourself fucker!” That’s how the bumpy freeway road under her was talking to her, fuck you fuck you fuck you. She turned the air back on, and pulled over to the freeway shoulder.

Eyelids, they’re not black on the inside. She closed hers to test them out, to see the pulses of light, to try to really see what their interior looked like. Her car shook as others zoomed by.

Her stomach ached as she itched that part of her scalp her fingernails loved. Her black hair was hot from the sun’s rays. Z had been sure she’d get it this time, because the odds were just not possible of her getting nothing again. Yet now she saw the answer was indeed, nothing from the food lottery. She knew that she had depended on the sheer probability of not dying for too long.

The People have been working on a project to revolutionize the city. First came the sheets of white crushing everything in their paths and then the plumes of toxins numbing Z’s friends’ bodies and brains. Still, Z knew of those who marched on through inlets and shallow ravines to get to the food. They persevered, they drove after their own futures. They marched on, and on, hurrah, hurrah.

At the place she stopped she surveyed the city below her, the colossal gothic and new age buildings all next to each other. Z sat there until the sun started going down. She saw her life, how along the way there were all these characters she had thought about becoming but missed meeting at the intersection.

She closed her eyes, and opened the door. I need to get out and march, she thought, hurrah.