We Are the Ants

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  I never thought I’d have feelings for anyone after Jesse, and I wanted to carve them out of my brain. I wanted to shove an ice pick through my eyes and give myself a transorbital lobotomy, scrape Diego from the inside of my skull. The best thing for me to do was go home and forget about Diego Vega.

  When I’d pulled myself together, I stood at the sink and washed my face. The barbecue sauce was still on my nose; it looked like dried blood. I wet some toilet paper and used it to scrub the stain off.

  Diego’s bathroom was messier and more disorganized than his bedroom. Inside the medicine cabinet were three kinds of deodorant, shaving cream, a razor, and two bottles of face wash. Globs of spent toothpaste were stuck to the side of the sink, and the shower was covered with a soapy film. My mom would have beaten me with the toilet brush if I ever let our bathroom get so filthy.

  When I opened the door, I crashed into Diego. We hit the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. His elbow dug into my stomach, knocking the breath out of me.

  “Sorry!” Diego said, laughter tingeing his voice.

  “Just . . . It’s fine.” I disentangled myself from Diego, but he didn’t move.

  “I came to find you so I could apologize.”

  I already felt like an asshole for accusing Diego of smashing Marcus’s car windows and then running off, and now he was apologizing when he had nothing to be sorry for. “I should go.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Henry, I’m sorry.” Diego grabbed my wrist when I tried to stand, and pulled me toward him. I opened my mouth to tell him to let go, but he swallowed my words. He pressed his lips to mine and wrapped his arms around my waist. Diego tasted like root beer and barbecue sauce. He smelled better than summer. Bigger than the ocean.

  “Is this okay?” Diego whispered. His lips grazed my ear. All I could do was grunt.

  The first time I’d kissed Jesse was the first time I’d kissed anyone, and it had felt like remembering the name of a song I’d forgotten but had been humming for days. Marcus was the second boy I kissed, and it was best described as frustrated mouth wrestling.

  When Diego kissed me, I forgot about every kiss that came before. His kisses were impatient but cautious. They teetered on the edge of losing control, and I imagined him painting with the same kind of frenzy—stripped to the waist and covered in smears of more colors than the human eye was capable of detecting. My arms trembled, I could barely breathe, but I pulled him closer than a blanket on the coldest night.

  I lost track of time, but eventually Diego rolled onto his back with a contented sigh. “I’ve been dying to do that.”

  I leaned on my elbow. “I thought you had a girlfriend.”

  “Ex-girlfriend.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Ex-girlfriend.”

  “Yeah?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” I said, motioning at myself. “No girl parts.”

  Diego winked impishly. “Oh, I noticed.”

  “So, when you said you liked Space Boy, you meant you liked Space Boy.”

  “Definitely.”

  Tangles of my hair were plastered to my forehead, and I brushed them out of my eyes. “I’m so confused.”

  “Don’t be,” Diego said. “I like people, not the parts they have.” Diego frowned. “Well, I mean, I definitely like the parts; they’re just not why I like the person.”

  “It’s . . . whatever.”

  Diego laughed and reached for me again, but I pushed him away. “What?” he asked, like I’d physically hurt him.

  When Diego was kissing me, nothing else had existed, but now that there was space between us, Jesse rushed in to fill it. My breath came in gasps. I tried to put into words what I was feeling, but every time I tried to speak, my tongue felt leaden and dry. It was a worthless chunk of meat in my mouth.

  “Jesse?” he asked.

  “I miss him, and I wish he were here.” I couldn’t look Diego in the eyes, but I felt him looking at me. Looking into me. “In a way, he is. He never leaves. Jesse never leaves. And how can I kiss you while Jesse’s here?”

  “You’re not the one who died.”

  I bit back a laugh. “Maybe I should have.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  I leaned my forehead against Diego’s, and all I could think about was kissing him again, and Jesse. Two thoughts that couldn’t coexist. “What if I’m the reason Jesse killed himself?”

  “You’re not,” Diego said.

  “But what if I am?” I closed my eyes, and I expected Diego to have disappeared by the time I opened them again. But he hadn’t. He was still there. “Sometimes I think it’s my fault. Other times, Audrey’s. Or maybe his parents’. I just need someone to blame. Might as well be me.”

  “Sometimes things just happen, Henry, and they’re no one’s fault.”

  I pulled back and looked into Diego’s eyes. They swirled like slugger skin. I wondered what they were saying. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted Diego and I missed Jesse and the world was going to end, and I didn’t know what to do. “I . . . Do you think I could have a drink?”

  “Done.” Diego hopped up and headed for the door. He darted back and stole a kiss before disappearing into the kitchen.

  There were only so many ways this could end. Jesse had said he loved me but hanged himself, Marcus had claimed to have feelings for me but then beat me up in the showers. I couldn’t see Diego doing either of those things, but I didn’t really know what Diego was capable of. There were so many ways I could screw this up, and even if I avoided them all, the world was still going to end in sixty-four days.

  Yet I found myself wanting to see what could happen next. Diego managed to keep surprising me. I wasn’t exactly having second thoughts about the end of the world, but I was glad I had a choice.

  Diego had been gone awhile; he should have been back with the drinks. When I opened my eyes, the room was draped in shadows. I couldn’t move my arms. I tried to yell for Diego, but I was voiceless.

  The shadows creeped. The darkness collapsed.

  I don’t want to go.

  But the sluggers didn’t hear me or didn’t care.

  Mind’s Eye

  It’s unveiled at the Commercial Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where it is hailed as the greatest technological advancement in entertainment since the television. Its inventors, Nate Duggin and Taylor Bray, call it Mind’s Eye. Mind’s Eye promises to deliver entertainment directly to your brain through its patented NeuroFace technology.

  Smaller than a pack of gum, Mind’s Eye attaches to the base of the skull and inserts microfilaments into the brain. It is painless, harmless, and worry free. That’s the Mind’s Eye guarantee™.

  The pornography industry is the first to embrace Mind’s Eye, followed by gamers. People don’t play games anymore; they live them. The experience is so realistic, few people can tell the difference, and many consider Mind’s Eye better than real life.

  Within a year, people hardly have a reason to leave their houses. Mind’s Eye devices allow them to visit their friends, work, and relax from the comfort of their couches. Crime falls to its lowest levels in recorded history, while airline corporations and automobile industries across the globe collapse. People no longer need to travel to see the world.

  On 29 January 2016 the South Korean government passes a law giving incentives to citizens who use Mind’s Eye for a minimum of sixteen hours daily. The program reduces pollution and conserves natural resources. South Korea becomes the model for the rest of the world. The first Mind’s Eye is introduced that can be used continuously, and it is quickly adopted.

  Other nations rush to pass mandatory Mind’s Eye legislation, and in a matter of months every person on Earth is living in a fantasy world.

  30 November 2015

  I sat alone and watched the stars and dreamed of Diego. I saw the world from the stars’ point of view, and it looked unbearably lonely. It took so long for starlight to reach me in the slugge
rs’ ship orbiting Earth that some of those stars were already dead. When their light set out, we were younger, not even born. Our parent’s parents weren’t born. Humanity was still waiting to crawl out of the ocean and evolve. It was beautiful to think that starlight persisted even after the star itself had died, until I realized that humanity would vanish from the planet, the planet would disappear from the cosmos, and no one would remember we existed. No one would care.

  Jesse was my star. He was gone—buried and rotting and cold—but he lingered. He sat with me in the transparent bubble of the slugger ship as I dreamed of Diego and watched the clusters of stars, other galaxies filled with other people like me and not, staring back, touching their lips and wondering if anyone would remember them. Spoiler alert: they won’t.

  I blinked. I was in Diego’s bedroom, waiting for him to return with sodas; I blinked, and I was on the slugger ship. No sluggers greeted me; none poked at me or prodded my body with their strange alien instruments. The holographic Earth and the button were missing as well. I think I would have pressed it. I screamed for those slug-headed bastards to send me back, but they didn’t. When my voice was raw, I walked into the darkness and arrived in the star room, where I remained.

  I wonder what preventing the destruction of Earth means to the sluggers. In all of the universe, are we unique? Is there something humans possess that makes us worth saving? Maybe out of all the billions of planets, music is unique to Earth. Or books. The sluggers have fallen in love with Kerouac and Keats and Woolf and Shakespeare, and hope I’ll press the button to preserve our literature for other alien races to explore. Then again, maybe we really are the ants. If I don’t press that button, the sluggers will simply collect a couple of breeding pairs and restart the human experiment on another planet.

  It seems unfair that an entire civilization could vanish from the universe and leave no trace behind, while Jesse lingers on. It isn’t fair that he burned out, but his light remains to remind me of everything we had and would never have again.

  But that’s the difference between people and stars. A star’s light still shines even if there’s no one to see it, but without someone to remember Jesse, his light will disappear.

  Maybe I would have pressed the button when the sluggers abducted me from Diego’s house if they’d given me the chance. Maybe it was better that they’d taken me before things with Diego went too far. Maybe we were better off just being friends.

  It doesn’t matter. Maybes won’t save the world.

  • • •

  The one thing I never thought to hope for was to not be awakened by a sandy kick to the ribs from a homeless man with curled, yellow toenails because aliens from outer space had dumped me in the middle of nowhere mostly naked again. I’d prayed to God for money and for my parents not to get a divorce, I’d begged Santa for a new computer, I’d even offered the devil my soul in exchange for a passing grade on my Beowulf exam, but I’d never thought to hope for something useful. Not until after the fact, anyway.

  “Kid, you okay?” I peeked through my crusty eyes as a fungal zoo of a toe prodded my arm, and a grizzled, bearded face framed by ashy predawn light leaned over me. He reeked of piss and seaweed.

  My mouth felt like I’d gargled used urinal cakes, and my cracked lips stung.

  “Kid?” The man dipped nearer. His foul breath jolted me awake as surely as if I’d been electrocuted by sluggers.

  “Where am I?” I asked instinctively, though the familiar sand dunes and sea oats were a dead giveaway. A cool breeze blew off the water, misting me with salt. Though it could have been any beach on any part of the planet, I knew it wasn’t. It smelled like home.

  The old man cackled and coughed and hacked up a glob of phlegm that he spit into the sand too near my feet for comfort. “Must’ve been some party.”

  “What time is it?” I asked. The sun was still little more than a vague promise in the eastern sky. “God, what day is it?”

  “Bit young to be living so rough,” the bum said, and I wanted to laugh at the irony of being told off by a man who clearly hadn’t showered since Clinton was president.

  “Just . . . what day is it?”

  “Monday. I think.” He scratched his beard and tapped at the sky, mumbling about dates, trying to recall where he’d been yesterday. “Definitely Monday. Maybe.”

  That meant I’d been missing since Thursday, which wasn’t possible. People only went missing for that long in sitcoms, which always ended happily, or horror movies, which rarely ended happily unless you were white and chaste and not gay.

  I remembered kissing Diego—Diego who liked me and wanted to kiss me and didn’t care who knew—and he’d gone to get us drinks. Then the sluggers abducted me. Which meant that when Diego had returned to his bedroom, I’d disappeared without saying good-bye. He must have thought I’d freaked out and run away. I instinctively reached for my phone, but the aliens had stripped me of everything but my festive turkey boxers. Gobble, gobble.

  “I have to go.” When I tried to stand, I stumbled, but the old man caught me. His fingers were rough and grimy, and left streaks of filth on my arm that I fought the urge to wipe off. “Thanks,” I muttered, and pointed myself toward the road, ignoring his offer of help.

  • • •

  Charlie’s legs stuck out from under the Wrangler when I trudged home twenty minutes later, and country music filled the morning silence. It wasn’t loud, but I was still surprised Mr. Nabu hadn’t called the cops to complain. He complained about everything, including the fact that we still had our Christmas lights up in July. By that time, Charlie refused to take them down because it was already closer to next Christmas than it was from last.

  I exaggerated my stride, letting my feet smack the driveway so I didn’t startle Charlie. When I got within two feet of the Jeep, he froze and said, “Zooey?”

  My throat felt like a lemon was lodged behind my Adam’s apple, and I tried to work up a mouthful of saliva to swallow so I could answer. “Nah, I’m much prettier.”

  Charlie scrambled out from under the Jeep. His face was smeared with grease, and he was wearing his WIZARDS DO IT WITH WANDS T-shirt. In one motion, he embraced me and squeezed out my breath, wordless but shaking. He’d pinned my arms to my sides so I couldn’t even hug him back, not that it seemed to matter.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” He held me at arm’s length, examining me.

  “Nowhere.”

  “We called the fucking police, bro.”

  “When?”

  “Saturday.” Charlie knuckled his temple. “Some guy came by looking for you Friday. Said you were at his house on Thanksgiving.”

  “Diego?”

  Charlie grabbed a rag from his back pocket and tried to clean his hands, but they were so filthy, all he did was smear the dirt around. “Maybe. Yeah, I think so. He was worried about you.”

  Diego had come to look for me. I was an asshole. He’d probably spent the weekend searching Calypso for me. I had to let him know I was okay. “Do you have your phone?”

  Charlie swore. “I gotta let Mom know you’re home.” Even though Mrs. Melcher was standing in her front yard with her fluffy dog, Barron, and I was in my boxers, shivering, I waited while Charlie called her. “Yeah, Mom? He’s home. I don’t know. I don’t know. Okay, hold on.” He shoved the phone at me.

  I shook my head and backed away. I couldn’t deal with Mom until I’d had coffee and a shower; I needed time to figure out what to tell her. She couldn’t handle the truth, but I didn’t know what lie I could conjure up that would satisfy her rage. No matter what I said, I was in for it when she got ahold of me.

  Charlie curled his lip like he wanted to punch me. “Yeah, Mom . . . he’s going to take a shower. He’s fine. Okay . . . okay . . . I’ll tell him.” Charlie tossed the phone into the Jeep. “Mom wants you home right after school.”

  “Thanks, Charlie.”

  “Don’t thank me.” Charlie frowned at me with disgust. Growing up, he’d called me a
botched abortion, shit stain, fucktard, faggot, asshat, dipshit, and Henrietta. But in all our years together he’d never looked at me like he was ashamed to be my brother. “Where the fuck were you, Henry?”

  “Nowhere.”

  Charlie shoved me with so much force that I stumbled backward and fell onto the lawn. I threw my hands behind me as I fell, and landed on my ass. Dew soaked my boxers, grass stained my palms. I scrambled to my feet. “What the hell, Charlie?”

  “You’ve been gone for days—days, Henry—and ‘nowhere’ is all you can say? Mom thought you were beat up again, or worse!”

  I had a pretty good idea what worse meant. When I found out that Jesse had hanged himself in his bedroom, I overheard my mom tell Nana that she couldn’t imagine anything worse than finding her son’s dead body, but I knew that wasn’t true. Worse would be never finding me, never knowing what had happened, but I wouldn’t have done that. Not to her, not to anyone.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered.

  Charlie shook his head. He could barely look at me. “No shit.”

  “What’s wrong with the Jeep?” I asked, unsure what else to say.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why aren’t you in bed?”

  Charlie sneered. “If you think any of us could sleep not knowing whether you were dead or alive, then you don’t know dick about this family.”

  • • •

  I walked into Faraci’s class, rubbing my head to try to ease the persistent pounding in my temples. Not even ten minutes brushing my teeth had been enough to scrub the sticky film from my mouth, and if I took any more aspirin, I’d probably start leaking blood from every orifice.

  Relief flooded Audrey’s face when she saw me, and she started babbling the moment I sat down. “Your mom came to my house, looking for you. Did you talk to her? Are you all right? I told her you were probably fine, but she said you hadn’t come home in a couple of days and I hadn’t heard from you and you weren’t answering your phone. She was really worried.”

  My eyeballs throbbed, and it hurt to smile, but I forced one for Audrey. “I’m good. She knows I’m okay.”