Serve the Queen

The sun poked its unwelcome fingers through the crack in my burgundy curtains, creased, wrinkled, and faded from many years of being pounded upon by the heavy rays of light coming from the sun each and every morning. I struggled into a sitting position and was startled to see that the room was empty. My thick rusty colored rug was taken from beneath my bed, and my mirror, which usually hung beside the window, was pulled from its place, leaving the wall looking dead and empty. As the sleep started to drift away from my mind, I dragged myself to my window and ripped open the curtains to find that mother, father, and my two older siblings were already loading all of our belonging into the back of rusted truck. We were moving.

Father was riding along our ranch last Friday morning to check on the farm when a rat scurried across the path, spooking the Palomino and making him buck and rear. Father could not control the strong beast and was thrown off the animals back onto the rocky ground below. His right arm and left leg were snapped into two and he also suffered many minor sprains and fractures. Three days ago he opened the mailbox and found a letter from his boss. He was being fired because of his disability to work efficiently. With him having no job, we could not afford our rent and have to move to a smaller place up in the city.

The car ride was long. I stared longingly back at our old home where I had grown up, spent my childhood at, for as long at it was visible, until it was a small, black speck. As we went on, the roads erupted with different cars and trucks as they bumped along, and sometimes we even came to a complete stop because of all of the traffic. I never knew Los Angeles was so busy!

At last, we creaked to a halt in front of a run down, beaten apartment building. It was five stories high and a faded yellow color. We hauled our luggage up to number 301 and my father grabbed the grey and dusty door handle and hesitantly creaked it open. As soon as the door opened the smell of mildew rushed up our nostril and made us all cough with disgust. My father gathered up the courage and hobbled inside. I was startled by how different this place was from our cozy home back on the countryside. The walls were a pale blue and were covered in cracks and holes with loose wires making their way outside. A few chairs and tables were scattered across the room, like they had no purpose at all and no reason to be there.

I made my way to the back of the dining room to the hall where the bedrooms were placed. My room was first to the right. The door slowly creaked open, and I almost choked with fear. The room was empty; the walls were a dark washed out gray, giving the room an eerie tone, but in the middle of the floor, smeared with stains and dirt, a small antelope toy sat. He was staring at me with those small beady eyes like he wanted something. He was expecting me. His head, incessantly bobbing up and down, was telling me “Yes, I am waiting for you.”

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Bugs, insects anything that crawled I despised, despised with all of my heart and wish they had no place on this earth. Back at our farm, they were everywhere, invading each and every room, crawling along trees, my swing set and every toy or ball that we owned. A truly disgusted feeling swept over me every time I saw one and made my stomach churn and my head spin. I smashed them right and left, with shoes, napkins, towels, anything that I had on hand. I had absolutely no respect for them at all.

When we moved they invaded every area of our new home. Flies swarmed around out dinner table and ants crawled out from the most unlikely places. It seemed that no matter how many I manage to kill, they still came back. Mother seemed to have a weird respect for them and their revolting ways. My shoe was raised in the air, about to come down hard on a small group of ants and Mother walked in. Immediately she started on one of her lectures, “George, they have feelings just like you and I.” She went on and on, but even her words did not sway my opinion. They were foul creatures and nothing could make me believe that they had feelings like us humans.

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City life was very different from our old life on the farm, and I missed the open fields and leafy trees dotting the land, but my toy antelope acted as my comfort blanket. Whenever memories started to flood back to me, I would take out my little toy and run my finger over its smooth and perfect back. I would watch his head bob up and down until I was comforted once again.


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Hail popped off of my window, hitting the glass so hard that I though it would split into pieces. I was not allowed outside because of the harsh weather and I was truly bored. There was nothing for me to do besides study each and every detail of my small antelope toy, twist and turn it around in my hand and let its smooth edges brush the tips of my fingers. I began to notice all of the little details of my room. I became aware of a strong metallic ticking sound. I looked up and noticed a clock, an unstained white color with bold black lettering. That was for sure not here before. I was about to shout for my mother and ask her why this clock was in my room when the ticking became a loud bang, penetrating my ears, echoing off each and every wall and making my head pound. The room started to spin slowly, becoming faster and faster until everything was a blur, except the clock. It was the only thing visible in this whirlpool and the ticking was the only thing I could hear. I fumbled through my pocket for my antelope, my good luck charm and source of comfort. It was where I had put it last, but it felt different, not giving me the same sort of comfort that I had always known it to give. It knew what was happening, it wanted me to be here. My eyes focused back on the clock, the only thing now visible in this sea of blackness. The hands were racing around, passing each number and never stopping for a break. Black and swift, they spun forward. Dizziness penetrated my head, causing a black veil to come down over my eyes.

Rumbling and shaking caused my eyes to snap open with fear. I searched the room around me. Chairs, the same ones that had been in our new house, loomed over my head, mountains making me feel uncomfortably small. I was positioned on a carpet, the small threads from it towering over my head, placing me in a sea of reeds. Home, this was my home. The same place that I had just moved to, but everything was huge, bigger than I was! Droplets of water lay idle on the floor from the leak in the ceiling, a long way above my head. These too were waves, almost as big as I was, threatening to crash down onto me. Reflection bounced off the droplets and I could see myself. Legs, there were six of them, little black and covered in small feelers and moving three at a time when I walked. My eyes gleamed back at me in the water droplet. Small and beady, showing no color, just blackness, they glittered every time the sun hit them. They were those disgusting eyes that I had seen the life being drained out of so many times as my foot came down, smashing lives to pieces. I closed my eyes, and reopened them to find that nothing had changed, I was not dreaming. The form of an ant glittered back at me from the water droplet.

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Serve the queen, that is all there is to life in a colony of ants. Feed her, scout for better places to build the colony, hide from predators, try to stay alive and keep the colony going. Days were uncountable and time did not exist in their world. Life was just a line, one giant line of black bodies following one another to the food source. Conversation was not an option, we were all numb, too tired, too used to the dull life of serving the queen to laugh.

Our colony was positioned in a hole in one of the walls, so small, it is almost invisible the naked eye. No wonder I could never figure out where the never-ending supply of ants had come from.

I forgot my past life as a human, the cursed antelope that had put me here, and the joys of being free and able to do as I wished. The tedious work callused all of us over, turning us into mindless robot workers, programed to serve others, and try to keep ourselves alive at the same time.

Humans often came, walked through our line, and tried to smash our frail bodies to pieces one by one. Most of the time, they could not achieve to kill more than three of us because every time we heard the ground creak and groan under their weight we knew they were coming. We hid in the threads of the carpet and under the chairs and desks, but we all knew never to run back to the colony, for then we risked it being sought out by the humans. My mistake was made there.
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Bodies lined up in front of me for many feet ahead, on the tile floor, all the way to the kitchen, littered with the crumbs of last nights dinner. Ants swarmed around, gathering as many crumbs as they could, trampling over each other to be the first to get to a piece of bread or a grain of rice. Not one was focusing on the deep rumbling sound resounding from the ground under our feet and the loud shout of the humans as they entered the room. The door to the kitchen was thrown open and two very large white canvas converse loomed viciously over my head, making me cower to the ground and freeze with fear. Then fright took over, spreading throughout my limbs, boiling through my brain and I bolted to the colony. I raced through the hole in the wall and threw myself behind the loose wire inside of the wall. The two giant Converse were positioned outside of the hole, looking confused to where I had disappeared to. Then a middle-aged face, topped with a tuft of jet-black hair that looked so familiar, unusually familiar, replaced them. Old memories were fished out of the back of my head and I remembered. My father’s eyes darted back and forth searching for me in the darkness.
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Guilty thoughts echoed through my head the whole next morning. Nobody had known of what I had done and I did not know what the consequences were going to be. The whole colony of worker ants including myself went inside the hole to our home to take a break from the tedious work that had to be done. We all became aware of footsteps that were not normal, not the regular ones that were audible throughout the day. They were heavier than a child’s and even an adult’s. They sounded dark. With every footfall that we heard, our hearts were chilled and goose bumps sprung up on all six of our arms and legs.

Two pairs of booted feet appeared in front of our home. A long pipe with a sharp metallic colored nozzle was stuck through our hole into the wall. Green gases started to fill the room, swirling up our nostrils and getting into our throats. Everyone could hear coughing and gagging as the sounds penetrated our ears and bounced off the walls. We were being exterminated. Then I remembered the antelope. If it could get me in this position then it could get me out! I called for it, shouting and shrieking its name until I was exhausted. Everything began to spin around me and my vision became fuzzy. I had a pounding headache and I could feel my lungs aching for a breath of fresh air. The chemicals had spread through my body like a wild fire and entered my blood stream. I was done for.

The last words I heard was my father saying, “Thank you so much sir. We greatly appreciate your services. My son will be very happy to hear that our house is pest free! Now I wonder where he is?”