Ant House Dr. (Short Story)

                   “How many casualties, Johnson?”

“375 and a half, sir,” Johnson responded, cleaning his six legs.  Johnson flicked his mandibles towards his commanding officer and wiped off a sweat.  

“Damn it, Johnson, that’s thirty percent higher than an hour ago.”  

“We need food, sir!”

“I know, we’re working on it,” Staff Sergeant Andy Florian said, shouting at the ant behind him and then back at Johnson.  

Jim Ross, an ant peering around a wooden building corner, was listening to this conversation deeply; he was the highest informant there was in the city.  His missions were sporadic, but they were important.  Jim wore a torn piece of cloth around his thorax and a piece of straw with a hole in it as a hat; he appeared to be a gaudy private dick.  His eyes were blacker than most; his legs were shorter and his body was portly.  Jim got his microscopic-sized camera out from under his cloth and snapped a few pictures of the Sergeant and his right-hand man gawking like spiders.  Jim sneered.  

“I got you right where I want you, old man,” Jim whispered.  

He put the camera back under and held his arm underneath as he sprinted back down the avenue back to the compound; his client was there pacing the floor.  Jim’s secretary was frantically typing away at an invention only the ants would’ve created.  The ant’s typewriter.  It was a large body of metal—mostly made of an old nail—that had other pieces of rubber bands and small wires; Jim never really could get along with that new stuff.  Her half-moon spectacles were dipping down her nose; she had a dollop of sweat collecting at the bridge and was ready to run into her pinchers.  She nodded her head while she typed away.  Jim said his salutation and pushed open the door as his client, Norm Madison, jumped from the corner he was staring at; his legs were sore from pacing.  

“What’s the word, Jimmy?”

“They’re struggling.  I got them with their trousers down,” Jim said, holding up the camera and putting it on his desk.  Jim reminded himself of something; he opened the office store and got the attention of his secretary.

“Call Chase please.  I need some photos developed.”

“On it, Mr. Ross.”

Jim closed the door back and lit himself a cigarette; Norm stuck his hand up in refusal when he was offered one.  

“Florian and Johnson are out of food, Norm.”

“You’re kidding?”
“No, sir, I’m not.  They’re casualties are preventing them from strike plans.”

“Good God!”

“We’ve run out of food for the city.  We’re bound for downfall.”

“Good God,” Norm repeated less emphatically, but more full of emotion.  

He inhaled the smoke; it was gone after another two puffs.  He smooched it in the wooden knot dug into his desk; it was overflowing.  

“Jimmy, we got to do it now.  We don’t have a choice.”

“We have to wait it out, at least for the rest of the day.”

“Hell no, Jim!  I mean, you can’t be serious!”

Jim crossed his four arms and looked off into the corner; he saw that the wood was rotting and starting to show sunlight from splitting.

“We need to get that wall fixed,” Jim said, mindlessly.  

“What?”

Jim didn’t repeat what he said, he only moved his head around Norm and followed the crack across three quarters of the room.

“I need to get somebody to fix that.”

“Jim, focus!”
Norm locked eyes with Jim; Jim shook his head and grabbed his seriousness out of his pocket again.  

“Tomorrow morning, 0500.  Your job is to recruit the whole west side of town.  We need strength in numbers, Norm,” Jim said, walking towards Norm; he was a half centimeter taller than Jim.  “Promise me, old boy.”

“You got it, boss.”

Jim clasped his shoulders and grinned genuinely.  Norm took his daybag sitting next to the chair and started to run on all sixes back to the west side.  Jim sat back down and drew out a battleplan; in the middle of the paper was a large blob that looked like a  cage.  A birdcage.  Jim, after he was done, got up from his chair and went outside to his balcony; he was lucky to have  second story P.I. suite for only a few small metal pieces a week.  He saw the cage in real life, it was forty-five human feet away from the city; a two hour round trip.  In the cage was a large green mass with beady blue eyes and a large orange beak; it was the bird.  

Jim inhaled and exhaled; he wanted to call that marble and granite company to start preparations for the statue of him.  He was going to be the savior of the city; he was going to reign superior of the whole attic in that stupid human house.  

Jim met Norm early the next morning in the square near the town hall; the morning fog was dense and sticky.  Jim saw the distant window open and radiating sunlight like it was liquid; the humans were moving around downstairs.  Norm had roughly a hundred ants gabbing deliriously about the recent evening post from the previous night.  Somebody robbed the drug store; they stole some paper and pencils.  Jim suspected it was a flash of fear when they were spotted; they grabbed whatever was near them they grabbed and bolted down the street.  The police were still on the verge for the ant, but he wasn’t the highest on the list. 

“They ready, Norm?”

“As ready as they’ll ever be, sir.”

Jim nodded his head and raised his hand in order to take command; the crowd fell silent and they all stared blankly at Jim ceasing the day.  

“I suggest we get a move on before the sun aligns with The Window,” Jim shouted and pointed to the left.  They looked where he was pointing like kindergarteners; they didn’t know any better.  Jim and Norm climbed the large plank wall; the loose wood splints were too large and smooth to do any real damage to the ants.  The ants followed Jim and Norm to the top; they waited for the OK signal once they peeked over the top and saw no movement of any kind.  The ants proceeded past boxes a million times their size; they were filled with abnormally large books, rulers, lamp shades, and whatever other garbage those humans thought were sentimental or a keep-sake item.  Jim never understood the presence of things; it was all useless clutter—he was a down-to-earth minimalist.  In the ant world, items were smaller and pocket size.  The knots were deeper than the city pool at the recreation center at the edge of the town; the planks were longer and wider than all of the ants in the group to line up head to toe sideways.  Jim was grossly intimidated by The Window; it held a power like no living being he ever encountered before.  The cage gleamed like freshly polished silver; it was faded and older than the human’s were.  The bird was motionless; it appeared ready to strike down any hostile contacts.  Jim crawled on all sixes; Norm walked like a distinguished human man.

Jim noticed the sun move after fifty-five minutes of walking; the metal pole connecting the cage and the floor was looking taller and taller.  Jim stopped right when he approached it and breathed heavily; he had a good five or six human feet to climb.  Jim and Norm nodded to each other and began climbing; the journey was shorter than anticipated.  The metal was cold and calming; it felt like a block of ice had smooched Jim; he had gone under.  Jim and Norm climbed down the inside of the cage and saw the bird from the back; it was still motionless. Its large green feathers mocked the vegetation that was packed in by unfertile soil at the front of the human house; Jim had only seen the front of the house once when he got curious one weekend.  He was a relatively lonely ant and wasn’t too busy with paranoid clients.  

“Norm, what’s wrong with the bird?”

“Nothing, Jim.  It seems pretty normal.”

“It’s not moving.  That’s the problem.  Birds have an acute sense of earring.”

“Never heard that before.”

“It’s true.”

“Hmm.”

The other ants waited at the edge of the cage, while the two made their way to the front of the bird; its eyes weren’t blinking and the ants didn’t hear any breathing; it was dead.  

“Dear God, Norman,” Jim said, grabbing Norm’s arm.

“Jim, that bird is dead.”

“Yes, I see that.”

“How the devil is it standing like that?”

Jim responded by climbing the post that held the perch; Jim felt the bird’s rubber-like feet under his own.  He grabbed at the feathers and went to the mouth; no breath came out to blow him across the cage.  He poked at the bird and felt the roughness not of flesh and bone, but something tougher.  

“It’s stuffed, Norman.”

“You’re kidding?”

“God, Norm, just believe something for once!  All you seem to do is question the obvious and believe the impossible!  Come back to Earth please, I’m begging you!”
Norm looked hurt; he bowed his head down and took a short step back as if failure had pulled him away.  The other ants flexed their pinchers and shook their legs spasmodically.  

“We’re taking the bird,” Jim said, shouting amongst the crowd; they all cocked their heads and looked at him funny.  Jim wasn’t thinking straight; it was that gaudy mind of his.  He wanted that statue more than any crack in his office to be filled and reformed.  

“Jimmy, what does stuffed bird taste like?”

“You’re gonna find out soon enough, dear friend.”

Norm nodded his head and began to climb the perch post; he signaled for the other ants to come and assist.  Norm noticed that the bird’s feet were superglued to the perch; those humans thought he might come back alive and fly away.  Norm was speechless.  

“Can we eat superglue, Jim.”

Norm apparently thought that Jim “the lousy dick” Ross was the walking encyclopedia of the city; Jim in reality pulled things out of his abdomen very matter-of-factly.  It was almost believable to the average Joe Schmoe.  

“Consume, no.  Chew up and spit out, probably.”

Norm nodded again, and signaled the ants to start gnawing around the bird’s feet.  They were mostly in-editable to be fair.  The bird’s beak was slightly open; it was as ominous as a dead body in a coffin; those taxidermists always wanted to illustrate life both nocularly and with the beak.  As if it were speaking, singing, chirping, dancing, talking, or even eating.  They were the true imaginative ones; they were also extremely brave for skinning the bodies of those poor souls whose life spans are less than a quarter of a human’s.  They were the ones with the hide; they were the ones with the knife and sewing kit as they caressed the skin and smooched it on the wool surrounded by a thin wood paneling.  Norman admired them; he so desperately wanted to meet one after they got back into town.  

Once the glue was gone and spit into a pile next to the backdoor of the cage; it looked like a wadded up ball of cellophane.  Jim and Norm saw the bird barely standing up now; they and three other ants got on its neck and started to push it over.  Its feet snapped off like twigs; the beak shattered when its face was planted on the metal cage floor.  

“Jesus Christ,” Jim said after the echo of the thud dissipated.  He pictured the real sound to be something of a little ding of the metal; something so natural that you could kill someone with that sound as a cover-up.  Jim shook that thought out of his head and called over the ants to crawl underneath and lift it by its belly; he then told them to pause after realizing something blatant.  

“Norm, I need you to unlock that lock on the cage.  Can you do it?”

Norm scratched his antenna and raised his head muscle; he pretended that it was a human eyebrow.  

“I can try the best I can, but will I succeed?  Statistics show that it could go both ways.”

“Forget that philosophical jargon you read about and go unlock the lock.  We can’t last all day.”

Norm crawled down the lock and into the keyhole; he could fit about half of his body through it; he was gaining more pounds than any ant his size and age was.  He sucked it in and pushed through the cavity.  The lock joints were all jagged and rusted; he needed something to align the joints and push them up.  

“Jim, you know where the key is?”

Norm shouted from in the lock; he hoped his voice traveled that far.  

“I’m not sure.  How lazy are humans?”

“Pretty lazy.”

Norm sprouted an idea like a third antenna.

“Jim, take a party of ants and circle the cage.  They could’ve taped it on the bottom or side, or maybe have it tied to a string of some sorts.”

Jim didn’t respond, but nevertheless took a party and found a key blatantly taped to the left side of the cage; the tape was covered in dust; the key was clean.  Jim got on troops on all four corners and lifted the tape.  Another group of thirty or so ants lifted the key from the top and pulled; it was a thousand times their strength capabilities.  Those ants sweat like no ants had done before; that metal key had better be a savior.  Jim grabbed his portion once the tape was out from on top of the key; the others did as well.  Once the key was level with the metal floor they dragged it over and had to do the whole process over again, but they had all hands on deck for this.  The key was angled on the side of the cage to perfectly fit in the lock; Norm would direct it like he was landing a 747.  He didn’t even know what a 747 was, but he heard rumors that it was the world’s largest metal bird.  Whatever that meant.  

“Keep coming, gang!  You’re almost there!”

Norm directed the key into place and heard the joints click and clack like a typewriter; the lock was straight and the key was turned.  

The lock clicked open obnoxiously; Norm felt the vibration of the release.  Norm was blinded by the sliver of sunlight that seeped into the lock; it was his escape route.  Norm climbed back out and signaled the ants to come to the top; they had to push the lock off of its cavity now.  The hundred ants pushed the lock with all of their might; their legs shivered like melting icicles.  

“Come on, fellas, we’re almost there,” Norm shouted through his teeth.  He grinded down the top enamel of his teeth when he was under pressure; he was lucky to have teeth still.  The ants all grunted like middle-aged men trying to sit in an armchair.  The lock tipped forward, leaned back when some of the ants let go, but nevertheless was pushed off and fell to the floor; the ringing sound would’ve caused more alarm to the humans now.  They were oblivious, though; they never really cared about that stuff.  They seemed to think about that stuff and think of themselves as crazy; they were for not acknowledging the sounds rather than ignoring them.  The lock sent a soundwave rippling through the ants antenna; they seemed to rattle like a snake.  The ants retired back to the metal floor and stood up on each others shoulders to push open the backdoor; it swung open with an ear-splitting cry of bloody murder.

“All of this for a dead bird,” Jim said under his breath; he placed his hands on his hips and puffed out air.  Smoking took a toll on his health.  

The ants congregated in the middle of the floor; they waited for their next command.  The last big break was the one they all were dreading.

“Alright, Jim, that bird is the only thing left,” Norm said.

“Can we get a break, Norm the Man?”

One of the ants split off from the group; he was told by Norm to only assert him by “Norm the Man.”

“No, Number 68, we’ve got one also offensive to get rid of this bird and bring it back to the city.”

Number 68 bowed his head and nodded, he went back to his comrades and they looked at him with false hope; he shook his head and they sighed, having a pestiferous sense of mind.  Norm shrugged insouciantly.  

“Jim, The Window is getting awfully bright now.  We had better get a move on,” Norm said, watching Jim stare at the bird still.  

“Right-O,” Jim said, turning around.  “Alright Pismires, let’s get a move on before we fry like an egg.”

They shook their heads and went back underneath the bird’s belly again.  Jim paused again; he screwed that light bulb back above his head.

“Wait a minute, Norm, I have an idea to keep that bird from falling off.”

“What’s that, Jimmy?”

He went back over to the pile of superglue, put some in his mouth and rubbed it on his hands; the sticky subsistence was activated once again.  The other ants rushed the pile and copied Jim.

“Alright, fellas, I promise that was the last fake attempt.  We’re ready now.”

The bird was stuck to their hands; they marched with a silent cadence out of the cage and back down the pole with their four legs.  The pieces of the shattered beak sat next to the perch like loose bird feed.  The sunlight bled through the knotted wood floor as the morning winked its eye; it was around 0630 now.  Jim pictured Florian and Johnson tossing and turning all night, wishing they knew what to do.  Johnson was most likely up all night writing to the other ant cities,—via Wind Mail (a chain of mail travel that allows letters to travel by the natural wind of the attic)—but they would never respond.  

They veered around the scattered sunlight and made it back to the city with minutes to spare before the city woke up.  Jim and Norm carried the bird from the front and strutted into the city limits with a feeling of jocund pride.  They dropped the bird in front of the town hall on Ant House Drive.  The bird was twice the size of the building.  

“WE DID IT, ANT HOUSE 4!  WE DID IT!”

The mayor burst through the front double doors of the town hall and cowered before the large dead bird; he almost soiled his bathrobe.  

“Jim Ross, Norm Ungar, what’s the meaning of this?”

“Why don’t you ask Staff Sergeant Florian, Mr. Mayor.”

Florian sprinted down the Drive, with Johnson at his left; they didn’t notice the bird until the Mayor gave them a look of scrutiny and pointed to it.  

“M-M-M-Mr. Mayor, I-,” Florian stuttered, but the Mayor held his hand up. 

“We out of food, Florian?”
“Not anymore, sir,” Norm said.  

The Mayor smiled.

“Alright then, good job boys.  Florian, why don’t you and Johnson start making the trip back with the bird.”

“I’ll call the backup.”

“No, just you two, I think.”

Florian started to talk back, but held it back in his throat and marched to the bird.  

The Mayor went up to Jim and clasped his hand on his shoulder. 

“Ross strikes again, eh?”

“ I think we should start my statue, sir.”