KINGDOM
of
the
ANTS
By
R. Peterson
Kent Lopez gasped as Ingrid
Bolsø Berdal playing the part of Jillian Everson in the film version of A Box Filled With Darkness started
climbing down a ladder into the seemingly bottomless cardboard container in the
hallway of the daycare center. Something with a creepy hissing voice had taken
one of her children far below. “Don’t go down there you crackly bitch!”
The Bliss living room was dark and light from the big
screen TV flickered as the film played.
“Chicks
in movies always do the most returded
things,” Scotty Target mumbled. He couldn’t take his eyes off from the strange
horror movie either. Johnny Olsen and Sheryl Bliss had started making out after
Jillian’s big-breasted next door neighbor Erma Kite, played by Monica Keena,
stumbled into the scene wearing a wet t-shirt after apparently running through
a half-dozen lawn sprinklers. Sheryl’s parents had gone to a charity function
and wouldn’t be home until after midnight. “See I told you … you stupid c$%#!”
Kent yelled when the ladder slipped and Jillian screamed as she disappeared
into the box.
“Release
the bats!” Scotty blurted. “There’s this gnarly huge rat down there that tries
to eat her!”
“Do
it! Kill the dumb bitch!” Kent was waving his arms wildly and knocked over a
can of Coors spilling beer on the expensive carpet. Sheryl whispered in his
boyfriend’s ear and then glared at his two friends.
Johnny stopped groping Sheryl and cleared his throat.
“You guys can finish watching this movie another night. It’s almost eleven and
me and Sheryl want to spend some time alone before her parents come home!”
“But
we’re just coming to the best part,” Kent complained. Sheryl stood up and
marched to a coffee table, not bothering to button up her blouse that showed
her naked breasts. She flicked the movie off with a remote control. “I’ll clue
you boys in,” she said brushing dark hair out of her eyes. “Ingrid Berdal wins,“
she said. “She always wins … in every movie she plays in.”
Johnny was holding the door open. “We’ll have to do
this again sometime,” he said with a smirk.
“That
sick-flick was radical,” Kent said when he and Scotty climbed into Scotty’s
father’s Suburban. “I wish I had a copy of it!”
“Wouldn’t
it be great if we could make our own scaries,” Scotty told him as he started
the car. “For once I’d like to see those stupid c$%$# get what’s coming to
them.” He started Pink Floyd’s Dark Side
of the Moon playing on the car stereo.
“My
old man has all kinds of video equipment he never uses,” Kent said. “He has an
infrared camera for shooting in the dark and everything. Why not make our own Horno movie?”
“Who
would we get to play the final girl
with the big tits?” Scotty looked over at his friend and smiled. Scotty was rolling
a massive joint laced with PCP.
“Sheryl
Bliss,” Kent giggled. “She’s the best looking girl Johnny has ever wanted to
bang and she has definitely got a big pair of box office attractions.”
“She’d
never do it,” Scotty said. “Johnny told me she hates our guts and doesn’t want
him to bring us over anymore. He’s changed since he booed-up with her!”
“Who
says Sheryl has to know she’s being filmed?” Kent lit the marijuana cigarette.
A smell like stale almonds drifted up from the chemical treated smoke. “If we
planned everything just right … with her home all alone … suddenly the power
goes off. I noticed the breaker box on the wall in the garage when I went out
to have a smoke earlier. Imagine her
face as she’s being chased through the house by two hideous demons holding
butcher knives.”
“One masked
man-beast with a hissing voice and a knife,” Scotty corrected. “If we go to
that much work, one of us is going to have to be holding a camera.”
“We’re
sixteen years old and we have no money. How do we make a movie that doesn’t
turn into a vomit bomb?”
“We
butcher the Blair Witch for real,”
Kent said. “It’ll be totally awesome! We’ll just make sure we get the plasma to splash everywhere on the walls
the floor and record all her screams!”
“That’s
so Brazilian! … Release the bats! I love it!”
“And don’t
even think about putting our names on the credits.”
“Yeah!
The cops would definitely think that was a plate of donuts.”
“Sheryl
is one lucky bitch I’ll tell you what,” Scotty giggled. He took a hit and
passed the cigarette to Kent. He was remembering how sexy Sheryl looked when
she walked across the room half dressed.
“How’s
that?”
Scotty exhaled. “She’s going to be a major scream queen and all she has to do it
stand there with her big mouth open and bleed.”
Both boys laughed for a full minute until snot was
running down their noses.
“We’re
really not going to kill her just to make a film… are we?”
“No
not just for the movie. All monsters need some kind of power backing them up
and we don’t got any, but we’ll still get the c#$% … I promise!”
Kent began to laugh and Scotty joined him. They
laughed all the way home and quietly for hours afterward as they lay in their
respective beds.
-------2-------
Fourth-hour
P.E. was the only class that Kent and Scotty had together. They stood at the
gym sidelines watching a group of seniors play slaughter-ball. Kent was almost
knocked unconscious when a ball bounced off from his head. Rex Hicks stood at
center court smiling. “Hey Rocky!’ he
yelled. “Why don’t you and Bullwinkle
get out here so we can have some fun?” He was poking fun at Kent being short
and squat and Scotty tall and angular. Everyone in the gym laughed.
“I
gave my last drop of sweat to your sister,” Kent called back trying to be
equally as funny.
“I
don’t have a sister … you moron!” Rex bellowed.
“It
must have been your mother then … she was as ugly as you are!” Kent stood
looking defiant even though the senior stood a foot taller and was twice his
weight.
Just then Coach Johnson walked in and the gym became
too silent. “That’s it for today,” he called. “Anyone in my class who doesn’t
shower better be on the rag … if not
… that person will be.”
“I’m
going to get you … you little f#$%” Rex whispered as he filed past Kent and
Scotty.
“We
better shower before Coach leaves to help Mrs. Markland clean her lab,” Scotty
moaned. The whole school knew the coach had a thing for the science teacher and
clean her lab was code for rumored
sexual activity.
Kent was just stepping out of the shower and reaching
for his towel when Rex Hicks snapped him viciously on the upper thigh with it,
missing his genitals by inches. “Coach left early.” Rex snickered. “I don’t
blame him. Did you see the tight sweater that #$%$ was wearing?”
“I
don’t look at older women,” Kent said. “After your mother … nobody else gets a
rise out of me.” He jerked his butt and legs spastically as if he were having
sex.
“Oh
my God! No!” Scotty moaned as the entire football team lifted them both into
the air and carried them into the bathrooms.
“That
toilet at the end still doesn’t flush does it?” Several students laughed as Rex
dragged Kent kicking and struggling passed the line of stalls. One stall seemed
to be occupied with just a pair of boots showing under the door. “I’ll bet it’s
got at least one German Brown
floating belly-up in the bowl!”
Eddy Frazer opened the door and then held his nose.
“Ugghh it’s overflowing!”
“In
you go,” Rex laughed as he forced Kent’s head into the foul water.
“You’re
next!” Eddy grinned at Scotty.
“Why
me? I haven’t done anything!” Scotty wailed as they finally pulled Kent’s head
out of the water and shoved him toward the showers.
“You
swim with a turd … you get flushed down the drain with one!” Rex told him.
It was all over in a couple of minutes but to Kent and
Scotty it seemed like hours. “I’ll get those bastards if it’s the last thing I
ever do. Scotty was splashing water on his face from the sink and Kent was trying to wipe off his head with a
handful of paper towels.
Suddenly the occupied
stall door opened and Coach Johnson lumbered out pulling up his pants. He’d
been there the whole time, now he now sounded angry. “Back in the showers both
of you!” A sadistic smile formed on his pudgy face. “And this time wash behind
your ears.”
-------3-------
Kent was determined that
he and Scotty were no longer going to be Cloverdale High School victims. He
arranged to pick up Scotty just before midnight in his father’s Falcon. “The
jocks have all the power at school,” he said. “It’s time we had some power of
our own!”
Scotty was surprised when
Kent turned into Black Rose Cemetery; they hadn’t visited the graveyard at
night in months … tonight was the first night of the full moon.” A group of
shadowy figures were clustered around a crumbling headstone near the back of
the cemetery with the name Jim Coots barely readable. “Coots was a gunfighter
and the first non-Indian buried in this cemetery,” Joanie Otter told them when
they climbed from the car. She stepped out of the shadows. It was dark but
Scotty could still see the white face-paint and black lipstick. All the others,
eleven in number, were dressed in Goth attire, mostly black robes with pieces
of silver jewelry dangling from various piercings. “He and his death companions
were the first to piedi da tomba.”
“What’s she talking
about?” The group had formed a circle around the pair and Scotty was getting
nervous.”
“Walk from the grave,”
Kent said. Then he went on. “Legend says an old Negro woman named Rose
established this cemetery back in 1878 and the Sheriff paid her twenty dollars
for each coffin and a dug hole to put it in. Cloverdale was called South Fork
back then and it was a wild little town. The black woman made herself a
fortune.”
“She was a hole-witch who
brought back some of the dead to help her run her ranch,” Joanie said. “That’s
why this spot is sacred to Cloverbone.”
“What’s Cloverbone?”
Kent wrinkled his nose. “It’s the name of the coven
that we’re going to join.”
“We
are looking for two kindergoth to
bring our number back to thirteen since the extraction of two of our
hole-witches Terrie Franks and Louise Baumgartner,’ Joanie said. “But you don’t
just become stick-witches. First you have to prove you are worthy.”
“What
do we have to do?”
“Each
of you must bring a natural grown crystal the length of the first finger of
your left hand dipped in the blood of a virgin to this spot on midnight of the
next full moon,” Joanie said. “The prisms will become the property of the
coven. Do this and you will become members with our full protection … fail …
and you will be cursed with death.”
“You
wouldn’t really kill us just because we decided to change our minds,” Scotty
laughed but the sound coming out of his mouth sounded weak and afraid. All
eleven members of the coven crowded closer. Scotty thought he could see the
gleam of knife blades under the dark robes.
“Break
the rules and the coven is forced to perform an extraction,” Joanie said.
“Terry and Louise failed to obey the rules …and had to be extracted.”
“But
those two died when their car plunged off a cliff and burned when they were
coming home from a ball game in Butte,” Scotty blurted. He became silent and
brood-full when he noticed the knowing smiles gleaming from under the hoods.
“Fire
makes a way. Burning is the only way to kill any witch … stick or hole,” Joanie
grinned.
-------4-------
It
was almost a week later before Scotty was able to finagle his father into
letting him borrow the station wagon for a trip to Crystal Mountain. The hillside in the south-western corner of Montana
was discovered to be a vast source of raw quartz crystals after a highway was
blasted through in the previous century. The mountain was pock-marked with
empty craters but only a few rock-hounds were now digging. Kent and Scotty
followed a winding paved path to the top. “It’s going to be hard finding two
perfect crystals the size of our fingers,” Scotty sad looking around. “This
place looks like an exploded mine field.”
“That’s
because people are only allowed to dig on this side of the hill,” Kent told
him. “We have to search the other side to know what we’re looking for.”
There
was no trail and an hour later the two boys found themselves halfway down the
steep hill with scratched arms, faces and legs from brambles and wild raspberry
bushes. “We better go back,” Scotty gasped. “Every bush we pass feels like it’s
trying to grab me.”
They were on a rock ledge about twelve feet wide. Kent
walked over to peer off the edge. “This is it! This is why we came!” Kent was
almost shouting and pointing down.
“Release
the bats!” Scotty exclaimed as he looked over the edge. A gigantic red-ant pile
at least four-feet tall was crawling with what looked like millions of tiny
insects. Just then the sun peered from behind a shroud of clouds and reflected
rainbow colors of light from a massive quartz crystal stuck upright in the top
center of the nest. “That thing is as big as my hand!”
Between dancing for joy the boys gazed at the
magnificent gemstone and wondered how they were going to retrieve it without
being eaten alive.
“No
way a bunch of ants could have dragged and erected that crystal there,” Kent
said. ‘It had to be some acid-tripping hippie who was trying to start his own
animal kingdom.”
“We
have to test their defenses,” Scotty declared. He began to gather stones and an
hour later succeeded in killing a Robin with a pitched rock. Both boys gasped
as Kent flung the dead bird onto the pile and it was consumed in a matter of
seconds. “Those things are evil and it’s almost like they are worshiping the
crystal like a God. There’s no way we can even get close to it,” Scotty
decided.
“What
was it Joanie said in the cemetery,” Kent was thinking out loud. “Fire makes a
way?”
“All
I have is a Bic lighter, a pack of orange slow-burn Zig Zag papers and an
eighth ounce of Columbian skunk-bud,” Scotty said. “You want to try to get
close enough to start that nest on fire?”
“There’s
no way we’re leaving this mountain without that crystal,” Kent told him. “We
passed a gas station with a store a few miles back. I’m sure they have lighter
fluid … five or six cans should do it. When the smoke clears we’ll be in
control of the insects God and all they’ll have is memories.”
“That’s
what I’m afraid of,” Scotty whispered. “That an army of ants are never going to
forget what we did to them.”
-------5-------
It was sunset by the time
Kent and Scotty made it back to the Falcon and drove three miles to the gas
station and back. They had purchased six cans of Rosonol lighter-fluid, all the
tiny store had. They spent at least a half hour tossing dry brush and twigs on
the nest from a distance before squirting the flammable liquid all over the
pile. Kent lit a torch made from a torn piece of his shirt wrapped around a
stick and then doused with fluid onto
the nest.
The pile burst into
flames with a terrific whoosh sound. Kent and Scotty had to stumble backward as
far as they could in the thick brush to get away from the flames. A screeching
sound like thousands of tiny doors being opened filled the air and both boys
covered their ears. At first they thought it was the tiny bodies burning and
popping like corn, but when they felt the insects beginning to bite their legs
they knew they were under attack.
Running downhill is easy
when you are scared out of your mind. They made it to the bottom of the hill
and to a waist-deep creek in less than two minutes. They both plunged into the
water still sapping their faces arms and legs. After the biting stopped the
swelling began. Kent was looking out of one eye and Scotty was nearly blind as
they made their way back to the nest.
It was completely dark
now and the only illumination was from a thin new-moon and Kent’s i-Phone app.
The massive red-ant nest was reduced to a pile of smoldering black ash. The
crystal was gone! “They’ve taken it underground!” Scotty exclaimed.
“It would take a thousand
ants … and they haven’t had time!” Kent used a long stick to poke around in the
ashes. “I didn’t think about ants going to sleep at night,” Kent said. “All we
really had to do was wait until dark and we could have taken what we wanted
without the death and mayhem.” The ashes were deep; the lighter-fluid soaked
nest had burned with a ferocious and frightening fury. “But what fun is that?”
Kent laughed then suddenly shouted. “Here it is!”
The crystal had fallen on
its side and been buried by smoldering ash but was still ice cold to the touch
as Kent held it up to the new moon and turned it in his hand. “The power that
belonged to the kingdom of the ants is now ours,” he told the night sky.
“This is only one
crystal,” Scotty looked worried. “We were each supposed to return with our
own.”
“This one is so large the
Cloverbone witches are going to be thrilled,” Kent said. “Relax! Something
tells me we have the power now!”
Scotty was the first to feel the vibrations
underground a moment later Kent felt them too. It was like the aftershock of an
earthquake, common in the northwest of the U.S., but nether boy had felt the
original tremor. ‘I think we’d better make like birds and get the flock out of
here,” Kent said just before they scrambled back up the mountain.
-------6-------
A half-hour later they
were roaring down the highway leaving Crystal Mountain behind. Both boys sighed
relief. If they had stuck around the parking area for another two hours they
would have seen the carnage as millions of ants descended from the mountain,
tearing the aluminum siding off from a fifth-wheel trailer and stripping every
bit of flesh off the retired couple sleeping inside. Two hours before dawn, the
gas station where they had purchased the lighter fluid was drowned by an
enormous swarming black wave. The gasoline pumps exploded sending a ball of
fire into the night sky as the station attendant ran screaming from the
building as he was being eaten alive. A Montana State Trooper, responding to a
call from a concerned citizen, made the mistake of getting out of his patrol
car at a rest area and was literally carried down the side of a mountain by an
enraged insect army.
“Our troubles are over,”
Kent told Scotty as he dropped him off at his house. It was 4:19 AM. Both boys
looked at the crystal one last time before Kent took it home. They struggled
and fought to see which one could hold it. The raw gemstone seemed to be
vibrating. Tiny shockwaves sent delightful shivers and nausea up and down their
arms and legs promising delightful things in the future and an equal amount of
fear. Both boys felt like they were finally becoming the all-powerful deities that
they were destined to be … and they also felt the impending doom!”
“All we need now is the
blood of a true virgin,” Kent whispered as if he held the key to Hell in his
hand.
“I heard Johnny say that
Sheryl’s parents are going out of town again this weekend but his parents
grounded him and he was jacked that he wouldn’t be able to go see her!” Scotty
was staring at the bag Kent had slipped the gemstone into.
“Perfect,” Kent said. “It’s
movie time! Let’s just hope Johnny has left her hymen intact and her virgin blood
will power up my crystal!”
Both boys went to bed
feeling both sick and wonderful. Scotty kept thinking about Kent using the word
my.
While on both sides of
the highway eighty-seven miles from Cloverdale the new moon shown on a deadly
army of murderous black insects, drawn by strange vibrations emulating from the
stolen crystal, slowly marching ever onward
to reclaim the power what was once their own.
TO BE CONTINUED …
