We Are the Ants(4)

“This group of fifteen strangers has been locked in a bunker for six months. With only one hundred and forty-four days remaining, you won’t want to miss a single minute as they compete for food, water, toilet paper, and each other’s hearts.”

“You guys get the worst stations up here.” The commercial faded and Earth returned. “So, one hundred and forty-four days?” It took me longer than I’ll admit to do the math in my head. “That means the world is going to end January twenty--ninth, 2016?”

SWEET EUPHORIA.

I never got tired of being right.

When my head cleared, I came to the conclusion that the sluggers were screwing with me. It was the only logical explanation. I refused to believe that they had the power to prevent the world’s end but had chosen to leave the decision up to a sixteen-year-old nobody.

But if it wasn’t a joke, if the choice was mine, then I held the fate of the world in my sweaty hand. The aliens probably didn’t care one way or another.

“Just to be clear: I have until January twenty-ninth to press the button?”

EUPHORIA.

“And if I do, I’ll prevent the planet’s destruction?”

EUPHORIA.

“And if I choose not to press it?”

The earth exploded, the projection disappeared, and the lights died.





8 September 2015


I darted across the dawn-drenched lawn in front of my duplex, gushing sweat in the muggy Florida heat and shielding my privates with a trash can lid I’d stolen from a house a couple of streets over, hoping Mr. Nabu—who sat on his patio, reading the newspaper every morning—was too busy scouring the obits for names of friends and enemies to notice my pasty white ass scramble past.

After my second abduction, I began hiding a duffel bag with spare clothes behind the AC unit under my bedroom window. The sluggers don’t always return me totally naked, but when they do, I assume it’s because it amuses them to watch me attempt to sneak from one end of Calypso to the other without being arrested for indecent exposure.

As I dressed, I tried to wrap my brain around the possibility that the world was going to end, and the absurd notion that aliens had chosen me to determine whether the apocalypse would happen as scheduled or be delayed. I simply wasn’t important enough to make such a crucial decision. They should have abducted the president or the pope or Neil deGrasse Tyson.

I don’t know why I didn’t press the button for real when I had the chance other than that I don’t think the aliens would have given me such a long lead time if they hadn’t wanted me to consider my choice carefully. Most people probably believe they would have pressed the button in my situation—nobody wants the world to end, right?—but the truth is that nothing is as simple as it seems. Turn on the news; read some blogs. The world is a shit hole, and I have to consider whether it might be better to wipe the slate clean and give the civilization that evolves from the ashes of our bones a chance to get it right.

I used the spare key under the dead begonia by the front door to sneak into my house. The smell of cigarette smoke and fried eggs greeted me, and I sauntered into the kitchen like I’d come from my bedroom, still bleary-eyed and sleepy. Mom glanced up from reading her phone. A cigarette hung from the tips of her fingers, and her curly bleached hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. “About time. I was calling you, Henry. Didn’t you hear me calling you?” My mom is shaped like an eggplant and often sports bags under her eyes of the same color.

I leaned against the door, not planning to stay. Alien abductions always make me feel like I need a boiling bleach shower. “Sorry.”

Nana smiled at me from the stove. She slid a plate of pepper--flecked fried eggs onto the table and set the mayo beside it. “Eat. You’re too skinny.” Nana is gritty and hard; she wears her wrinkles and liver spots like battle scars from a war she’ll never stop fighting. She’s the gristle stuck between Time’s teeth, and I love her for it.

Mom took a drag from her cigarette and jabbed it in my direction. “I called you a hundred times.”

Before I could reply, Charlie stomped into the kitchen and swiped my plate. He ate one egg with his hands as he flopped into a chair, and then set to work on the rest of my breakfast. Sometimes it’s difficult to believe Charlie and I come from the same parents. I’m tall, he’s short; I’m skinny, he used to be muscular, though most of it turned to fat after high school; I can count to five without using my fingers. . . . Charlie has fingers.

“Henry didn’t hear you because Henry wasn’t home.” Charlie smirked at me as he grabbed a fistful of bacon from the plate in the middle of the table. He grimaced at Mom. “Do you have to smoke while I’m eating?”

Mom ignored him. “Where were you, Henry?”

“Here.”

“Liar,” Charlie said. “Your bed was empty when I got home from Zooey’s last night.”

“What the hell were you doing in my room?”

Mom took a drag off her cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. Her mouth was pursed and tight like a bright pink sphincter, and her silence spoke louder than any slammed door. The only sounds in the kitchen belonged to the eggs frying on the stove and Nana whistling the Bunker theme song.

“I couldn’t sleep so I went for a walk. What’s the big deal?”