The problem started about a week ago along with the warming weather. I'm sure my roommates and I weren't the only ones grumbling about already dealing with fruit flies and those almost microscopic sugar ants beginning their ceaseless march for scraps. My roommates are three other girls, so even though we're all fairly tidy, someone usually has a mess that's waiting to be picked up. None of us minded until the ants seemed to sense when any food was left on the counter for more than 20 minutes. A dirty plate left by the sink would be covered in a matter of minutes by a black-specked writhing mass of tiny armored bodies. For two days they seemed to pick their way into anything resembling something edible. I hate to kill anything but I've never figured out how to possibly catch these things and let them outside. It's always the same with them, no matter how many you kill there seem to be thousands more waiting just underneath the floorboards and between the walls. It's always the same, but seeing so many was starting to make my skin crawl when I shut my eyes. After they ruined much of our perfectly good food in the period of a few days, I felt less guilt and more pleasure in drowning, squishing, poisoning them and wiping up their half-dead bodies with bleached paper towels.
A couple of days was all it took to call the landlord and ensure our apartment would be sprayed by the exterminator shortly. By this point we had most of our food in the refrigerator or sealed plastic bags. A man came and coated the nooks and crannies around the house with mists of poison and left a note saying he'd return in 6 weeks. We all let out a big sigh that night and hoped the headache was over, at least for a little while.
The next morning I woke up to an empty house. All the girls had finished their morning routines and left for work and school. I poured myself some coffee and noticed they even followed the new house rule of cleaning up completely after each meal. They were sweet girls. In my sleepy haze, I noticed one pack of cookies, opened, laying on the dining room table. I was immediately angry and rolled my eyes back in my head, brooding over who I suspected the culprit to be when I noticed more reasons to incite my rage. I am not stingy over food, and as roommates we share quite a few things around the house. But these cookies, as my roommates knew, were off limits. They are one of my favorite things in the world and my grandma sent them to me internationally. What I saw was a half-eaten, precious sleeve of them, covered in little evil legs and pincers, skittering greedily around and around the delicious contours of my cookies and carrying them away, one barely perceptible speck at time. That's when my mind went red. The amount of animosity one can feel toward an insect shouldn't be taken lightly. Something went off in my head and I snagged the cookies and ran to the sink, carefully but quickly brushing off the ants and replacing the cookies in their container. In a panic, I thought I could salvage them. But the dirty feet and mouth parts of my army of enemies had soiled my lovely treats. That's when I remembered the poison. Before the exterminator came, I purchased a small bottle of ant poison that came with instructions to place a little drop of the liquid on a provided cardboard square where the problem occurs. Of course it didn't work with those instructions. But this time it would. I soaked the sleeve of cookies with the entire bottle of ant poison. I then left a note, "DO NOT EAT" and replaced them back on the dining room table.
I left for work in a foul mood, but by the end of the day I had almost forgotten what happened that morning. Pulling into our driveway and seeing my roommates cars jolted my memory, and I nearly laughed thinking of how worked up I'd been over some snack food. I realized then that it was the unceasing presence of the ants that had slowly been driving me crazy. Every time I saw a black speck in the corner of my eye, I'd imagine it crawling. I'd been seeing little phantom ants for what felt like weeks. Then I remembered my ant trap. My roommates weren't supposed to be home before me. But I knew they wouldn't eat those cookies, especially since I left the note.
I walked into an eerily quiet house. The familiar sounds of loud pop music did not greet me when I walked through the door. "Hellooooo?" I asked, as I slowly padded into the kitchen. No response. Weird. I figured they probably got picked up by another friend and went out to dinner or something. That's when my eye caught the cookie wrapper. The sleeve was now completely empty, with no ants to be seen. My "DO NOT EAT" note had been turned over. On the underside was written,
"NO NOTE REQUIRED - We knew you'd kill us if we ate your cookies!! hahahah ;) We set these up as a joke because we found them at a local store and bought you about 5 boxes. This note is simply to say that we ate your cookies, and they were delicious! xoxoxoo"
The blood rushed out of my head immediately as I ran into the living room. I had one glimpse before I slipped into unconsciousness. My roommates were propped limply on the couch, as if they had suddenly fallen asleep while kicking off their shoes. Except something was different. Every inch of them was coated in a swarm of crunchy black insects. Three tidy lines of ants threaded each body to a single crack in the floorboards. I screamed. Everything went black. I woke up to the ambulance siren wailing and a strong stinging smell as the the paramedics brought me back to.
I will miss those girls dearly. But they shouldn't have eaten my cookies.
Submitted March 11, 2015 at 11:28PM by chess_and_sex http://ift.tt/19cr9Jd nosleep
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