“War with the Magi” by Salvatore Sodano (_fiction_)

In the flicker of the inaudible television, casting its dull blues and whites on my apartment walls, there was a silhouette of a thing peeking from behind my propped barefoot on the coffee table. It hung onto my heel with one hand, leaning out and watched at me like a recon sniper. I said, “Hey there, little buddy. You want to watch Cops with me?” He lowers himself prone, feeling around with his antlers, and his six legs carried him across the glare on my coffee table. Three sections of his body, like small ebony pebbles, glean like tiny diamonds. “Okay, buddy, I’ll catch you later.” And he took off and vanished under the cloak of a dark apartment.

I wasn’t actually watching the television. It was just on, barely audible, keeping me company while I swiped between the same three apps on my cell phone, occasionally studying the ‘read’ tag on my last text message to her. When we were younger, we lived for the Friday nights. Now, I stacked beer cans next to me, one on top of the other, until I fell asleep.

I woke with my head tilted back and my mouth open. Saliva pooled behind my ear. A sharp pinch, like a single hair rooted well into the back of my neck was yanked out, and I slapped myself, instantly awakening, and I shook my head as a wet dog would before going to the kitchenette. My refrigerator’s interior light hummed and emitted an inescapable fluorescence. There was an empty carton of milk, a green bottle with an ankle-deep serving of champagne at the bottom, some suspicious eggs, and a full container of strawberries. The strawberries glowed like rubies with emerald caps offering themselves to remove the taste of stale cigarettes and cotton from my mouth. The strawberries and champagne were meant to celebrate an anniversary last week that never happened. I open the carton and place a strawberry in my mouth—stem and all. I closed my eyes and listened to the masticated fruit slop from one cheek to the other, mopping up the dryness with its sweet and medicinal flavor. I swallowed, and my breath tickled the back of my throat causing my stomach to seize on itself. I looked down at the strawberries and realized that they were coated in a white cloud, and in some places, mold has coagulated them into a dark mush. I dropped them on the floor and launched the contents of my stomach in the sink.

I have to get the hell out of this apartment, I thought. But Saturday mornings are for the aimless wanderers when your single and forty. Weather permitting, I might have gone to the beach, but the overcast skies are stubborn and threaten to shower soon. The mall was too crowded and not my thing. I called my parents in Florida; they didn’t answer. So, I decided to go sit by the community pool outside in the courtyard of my building. It was empty, and I grabbed a chair next to a row of personal propane grills. I set my Irish iced-coffee on the ground next to me after a long pull and opened my book. The cawing of birds distracted me, as does the hum of the pool filter. I stared at the page, read it, digesting none of it as my thoughts wandered about last week. I tried to push it aside: the phone-call from Dalia, so I began reading from the top: The officer remained mute, turned to the machine, caught hold of the brass rod, and then, leaning back a little, gazed at the Designer as if to assure himself all was in order… The image of myself sitting at the table next to an unlit candle, a bag of take-out cooling next to me, and drinking most of the champagne alone forced its way onto the page. My eyes followed the text blankly like a printer printing without ink. I took a deep breath and re-entered the book: The soldier and the condemned man seemed to have come to some understanding. The image of the last time Dalia and I had sex burst into the forefront of my mind like it was inside a broken pipe: Me savagely convulsing on top of her, avoiding her ethereal stare toward the ceiling. Me sweating too soon, and her rolling to her side, giving her back to me while I lay supine, selfishly sucking all the oxygen from the room. I stood up and threw the book into the empty pool. It spun and slowed to a bobbing planetary rotation.

When I got back into my apartment, I was greeted by a fleet of ants marching to and from the kitchenette, harvesting a rotten strawberry hidden beneath the refrigerator door. I couldn’t help but admire their teamwork. I imagined them singing, in lowest decibel, “Hi-ho, hi-ho.” I squatted over them like a titan and decided on a lack of mercy when I brought my size twelve foot down on them in a series of stomps. The others scattered.

I returned to the kitchen to clean the floor, and the survivors dragged their moribund into the dark crevices behind the walls and refrigerator. The departed lay in a row as if ceremoniously arranged. I didn’t know ants could do that, I thought. After I cleaned the floor, I left to get supplies to rid myself of the uninvited tribe of ants. My apartment would never be clean enough to dissuade them from staying, and I knew this; so I needed some heavy artillery. I sprayed the floor with Raid and laid small white traps under the furniture that looked like little huts. The smell of the Raid irritated my nostrils, and I imagined it working immediately. I imagined the coughing and the keeling-over going on in the darkest canals of the apartment. I imagined the ants clutching their black obsidian chests with their fingerless hands, ichor foaming at their mouths, looking up at the sky and being told tales of Elysium with fallen chocolate-frosted donuts and fountains of maple syrup. Maybe I will clean the apartment after all, I thought. I got as far as picking my clothes up off the floor in the corner of my bedroom, and not knowing what to do with the in-between pile of laundry halted my progress and put a pin in my effort to clean.

I hadn’t seen a single bug for a few days. I’d come home from work on Monday, and in a blip, I was back on the sofa stacking beer cans on a Friday watching DVR’d episodes of Cops. I dozed off but awoke again at three in the morning to a crick in my neck and a blurred infomercial of a man selling Samurai swords on the television. When my vision returned, I saw the silhouette of three ants at the edge of my coffee table. These ants were more massive than the others. The tall one was translucent brown, and I named him Tony. I said, “You will be Tony. And you…you will be Franky. And you, you big bastard, you can be Gregory.”

They looked at me like thugs sizing up a mark walking alone in a dark alley. Tony looked at me as if to say, “You lost, fella?”

“Yeah, you lost?” I imagined Gregory repeating as the big goons often do.

Franky stood there between them flanked by his henchmen, stoicism of a general.

I said, “You gentleman come for your revenge. I will not go gently.” I slowly reached down to the floor and grabbed my sneaker, which still might have some remnants of their fallen brethren, and swung it high over my head and brought it down in a windmill strike. The sneaker made a jarring sound, and the table leg might have fractured. I cast the venomous smile of a barbarian and raised the sneaker only to find nothing underneath. Disappointed, my expression changed. “Okay, gentleman. War you want, war you’ll have.” The red flag has been raised, and the battlefield was clear, but it was late and I needed sleep. I stuffed a towel under the opening of my bedroom door and went to bed.

I awoke to a prickly pain on the side of my calf. It was riddled with small red bumps. “No way,” I said. I looked at the towel, and a hole had been burrowed through. This could only be done by a mouse; I have mice! I thought. I headed to the store and returned with mousetraps, garnished them with peanut butter, and scattered them like landmines. I sprayed two and a half full bottles of raid around the apartment, creating a stagnant haze. I coughed, and the back of my throat hurt with a sticky chemical pain. Outside I lit a cigarette, and the first drag rekindled the burning in my throat, but oddly relieved the chemical taste. I broke into a coughing fit so violent that people scurried past me when they exited the building. I recognized my neighbor, an older man, unkempt thick white eyebrows forever furrowed. He was a curmudgeon of sorts, and I turned to him with sticky drool clinging to my chin to offer salutations. He grimaced and hurried away.

I returned to my apartment and assessed the battlefield. I opened some windows and turned on all of the lights. I saw a black dot, and when I got closer, I saw that I had defeated at least one of the three. My venomous smile returned, and I stood over the corpse that belonged to Gregory. I finished the last of the champagne to celebrate and tossed the bottle on the floor. I picked him up and held him in the palm of my hand. “Well, Gregory. You were a good lieutenant. I am glad I had been the one. It was an honor.” I took Gregory, still a giant of an ant even in death, to the trash and dropped him in. When the lid slammed shut, I felt as if I was being watched. With a demonic turn of the head toward the hall near the bathroom, I saw Franky standing there, making himself tall on his two hind legs, antlers gyrating in a frenzy.

“The end is near for you,” I imagined he said. “Count your blessings, your time is up.”

“Franky, it’s nothing personal. If it’s you or me, it’s going to be you,” I said.

His antlers stopped gyrating, and we stood a distance apart, inert with anticipation. Even the dust motes floating in the light hung breathlessly. I dashed at him, my sneakers pounding the hardwood floor, causing him to bounce in my vision. I raised my shoe, and our eyes locked briefly. If his eyes had lids, I’d imagine he’d wink just then because, after my foot came crashing down, I lifted it and he was not there. “Alright, Franky. Let’s take this up a notch.”

I pulled from the plastic bag on the kitchen table a pack of items I hoped I didn’t need to use. They were bombs or sometimes called foggers. I placed six of them around the apartment and left. I went to the pub down the block for an early dinner and stayed until I was fully saturated. I tried telling the bartender about the ants and what I had done. He scoffed at me and cut me off. I was done drinking anyway, but being cut off in an Irish pub is insulting. I felt like I was swimming through an enraged dream as I yelled at him, cursed him for his ungratefulness of my patronage. He snarled at me, wide-eyed, and commanded me to get out. He pointed with one finger as the other fingers held a small, white towel. I stumbled out.

The sidewalk helped me along as if they were lily pads floating on a pond. I swayed and only saw the feet of people shuffling to avoid me as I passed them. I desired my boon of two dead insects and maybe a mouse. I stuck my arm out to balance myself on the mirage of a tree and fell into a thorned bush. The small slices on my face and hands stung immediately. I lay there a moment, resting and looking up through the branches at the streetlight that reminded me of a full moon from inside the forest. My breath was cool and hot at the same time. When I became rested enough, I worked my way out of the bush and staggered back to my feet. A family stood there watching me: a man, a woman, their daughters. The wife wanted to hurry past, but the man approached me.

“Are you alright?” He said and held a hand outward behind him to signal his family to stand fast.

I pulled a cigarette from a crumpled pack and put it in my mouth. It was crooked and dangled. I struggled with the lighter and the man helped me light it by steadying my hands with his. “I have bugs,” I said instead of ‘thank you,’ a statement that his altruism was no match for. He nodded, backed away, and left with his family.

When I got back to the apartment, the only light was coming from the television. I used the wall as a guide and turned the lights on in the kitchen, living room, and hall, revealing a thick noisome fog still present. I blew the last of the cigarette smoke into the apartment creating a toxic stratocumulus and flicked the butt into the sink. I searched the apartment and found Tony, frozen, post mortem on the kitchen table under the wire-hood from a champagne cork. His translucent brown body was slender and fit. He was an handsome ant, and he appeared young. I lifted the wire hood and held him between my thumb and forefinger, carefully as not to damage his corpse. I placed him on the floor by the entry door as a message to Franky, who I knew was lurking somewhere. He can still flee and save himself. I would prefer to see the look of defeat on Franky’s face, but in a way, I am tired of war. I was too drunk for it. I would be too drunk for it tomorrow too. I sat on the sofa and glanced periodically at the small brown dot on the hardwood floor by the entrance. I decided if Franky came for the body, I would attack and end this. I faced the television, watching the trap I left through my peripherals.

I started to doze off, and before my eyelids shut like a vault, I caught the glimpse of a distant outline of Franky pattering his six little feet across the hardwood floor by Tony’s body. Franky was a black mountain of an ant, and he was taking the bait. I stood and stumbled, knocking the coffee table to the center of the room. I went for him like a panther—or a buffalo. I came down hard with the sneaker as if spiking a football. The slap echoed. I raised my shoe to discover only Tony, flat, splintered and wedged within a crevice of the rubber. I turned my head and saw Franky scamper off toward the back of the television. That’s right—the holes for the wires; I should have known, I thought. I pushed the TV stand out of the way, knocking it over with a loud bang. My doorbell rang furiously. “Open up. Open the door right now,” the muffled voice of the old neighbor said from the other side of the door. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t because I had Franky cornered in front, his little antlers spinning in a fever. The cables behind the television fell, resembling a fence that confused him. “Open the door, damn it.” I raised the sneaker high above my head. My eyes were lidless, and drool escaped from the corners of my mouth. I stepped forward to bring the sneaker down like a sledgehammer, but there was a loud snap and I jolted from a jarring pain in my big toe. The top of my toe was caught in a mousetrap as the bottom of it oozed with peanut butter. I hopped around and yelled, dropped the sneaker and ripped off the trap, doubling the pain. “What the hell are you doing in there? I’m calling the police.” The old neighbor banged on the door, rattling the hinges into a subtle clangor. He struck the bell repeatedly. It felt like someone had a pot over my head and was doing the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida with wooden spoons. I spun through the cloud, disoriented. I tripped over the fallen television and braced myself with my left hand on the coffee table. The leg snapped from the weight of me. I fell as if through a cloudy sky—it felt like forever. The empty champagne bottle broke my fall when it met the side of my neck. There was a pop and a flash. I couldn’t move my arms or legs. It felt like I was awake and my body was dreaming. The ringing and the banging stopped. In the newfound silence a high-pitched tone sang. My head was twisted just enough to see the mouse by the hallway looking at me. His nose twitched, making his whiskers dance.

“This is the end,” I imagined the mouse said. I didn’t feel well and knew the mouse was right.

As the pain behind my eyes crescendoed to the brink of nothingness, I said to the mouse, “I’m sorry.” The last thing I would do is wonder if the mouse believed me—or if I did too.

<<<(_wane_)(_wax_)>>>