“Myrmecia Pyriformis” by Chris Milam

In the backroom of an exotic pet shop, a gentleman from Australia handed the owner a sealed box. The man was excited, he had been waiting for this package for months. He peered into the box and smiled. “Welcome to America,” he whispered.

Two days later he took the box to a nearby wooded area in southern Ohio and set them free. Now, all he needed to do was wait. He was a dark-minded man with twisted thoughts who wanted to cause mayhem because he believed the town had persecuted him whether it was real or just in his head. Time will tell, he thought, as he walked away, climbed in his car, and drove away.

 

•·•·•

 

Fairfield, Ohio. 3 months later.

All was quiet at 924 Catalpa Drive on a boring Thursday night. Wayne Richards was dozing on the couch in the living room, Dateline playing on the TV. He was worn out from his shift at the steel factory and fell asleep after a dinner of meatloaf and green beans. 

Outside the front door a line was forming, a tiny buzzing coming from within the pack. The bulldog ants began to enter the home beneath the front door, over the threshold. There were thousands of them, maybe a million. A swarm of death. They crawled onto the couch and all over Wayne. The ants made their way to his nose and eyes and ears, rooting themselves inside and biting him, releasing their venom. He was eventually covered in bulldog ants like a live blanket. They bit into him at every part of his body, eventually reducing him to a red-stained corpse. 

Next, the giant line moved through the kitchen into his wife’s bedroom. Becky was sleeping, a book open on her lap. She was tired from her job on the assembly line at Metal Sales Manufacturing. After dinner, she had put the toddler to bed and went into her room to read for a while.

The bulldog ants found her. They climbed up the legs of the bed frame and violated her, biting her as they formed a massive ball around her head. They injected their deadly toxin from head to toe. She briefly woke up, but couldn’t yell because the ants filled her mouth. She died a fast death. The ants were not satiated.

 

•·•·•

 

Across town, the exotic pet store owner, Tim Rivest, read the local paper. He laughed out loud at the article about the invasion of deadly ants native to Australia. Seal your windows and doors, the article read. They can kill a human in a matter of minutes. Tim thought about everyone in Fairfield who snitched on him for having illegal animals at his store and house. This was his revenge. He drank his beer as he finished reading, a smile never leaving his face. 

What Tim didn’t know was that his front lawn at that precise moment was filled with hungry movement.

•·•·•

 

The swarm left the body of Becky Richards and marched to the next bedroom. They inched their way up the crib. Little Joshua was still awake. The ants moved in, their legs moving quickly across the boy.

The last sounds coming from inside 924 Catalapa Drive were the horrifying screams of “Mommy, Mommy.”

 

—

Chris Milam lives in Middletown, Ohio. His stories have appeared in JMWW, Jellyfish Review, Lost Balloon, Bending Genres, Molotov Cocktail, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter: @Blukris.