She would often think about murder. She would wonder how it must feel, to want to kill somebody. She wondered how someone reached the point where they are murdering their lovers, their clients or total strangers? She would ask herself, ‘under what circumstances could I be a murderer?’ Perhaps, she thought, if someone chewed in her ear. If they rolled a half chewed burger around in their mouth, and opened it periodically to take in large gulps of fresh air around soggy pieces of dead flesh. If her neck hurt, and her hair stuck to her face, if there was something in her eye and this great fat man just kept eating, chewing, smacking his lips open with satisfaction. If this were inescapable, she would do it. She would close her hands around his throat. In jail, at least, no one expected a thing from you. Really, not a thing.
On the 15th of October she started to feel the ants. The scuttling, acidic tickle of ants running all over her body. A week later as she lay in bed she began to feel them inside her, squirming around laying eggs in her stomach, making her mouth fill with salty excess saliva as though she were about to vomit. She imagined what it would look like. If she were to vomit straight in the toilet would she be able to wash the ants down? Or would the ants be able to cling on inside her, withstand the pull from inside and live on eating through her insides? So she drove away.
On the 15th of November she had forgotten the way home. Although she had tried her hardest not to learn the name of the small portion of bush land she had ended up in, it was written in the name of every store. Gordon’s Quality Butcher, Gordon Take Away, Gordon Fucking Coles. She was surprised that in a town so small there would be enough people to staff a Coles, and to sit in the local pub at the same time. She had been sleeping in her car for two nights now, neglecting the idea of showering or buying food. At the very least the ants had gone away to be replaced by only the sensation of her heart calmly pumping blood around her body.
She wondered now if she could ever slip back in to where she came from. Could she return and say ‘Here I am, I’ve been here all along!’ Would she remember what to say, or the things she was supposed to do? She wanted to drive her car through shops, crash through walls as customers scurried like ants to safety, laugh as dust and rubble fell on the windscreen and dented the roof. She wanted to drive and laugh. She wanted to have sex with somebody and leave without saying a word.
It was fast approaching the time at which she would run out of money. Her car would have no petrol, she would have no food, and she would be stranded in the hot dusty bush. The ants crept up her ankles, and built nests in her hair. They whispered in her ears and crawled in to her brain at night. She drove due east overnight and reached the coast shortly after dawn. There could be no place greater than the coast, she decided, no smell better than salt breeze. She was filled with so many impulses at once, to swim, to scream, to tear off her clothes, to run and run and run. She stood, feet planted on the shore and allowed the sun to wash over her, to burn the ants living in her hair, to chase away the creeping black hoards as they filled her insides from the bottom of her legs to her throat. She ran forward in to the salt waves, awkwardly splashing and stumbling until she fell in past her head. The water was so cold, and the shore so close. So she swam. She swam until the shore seemed a thin pencil line in the distance, until the water grew darker and cooler. She dived straight down, always pushing away from the sun, she closed her eyes, the sun, the sky, the sandy bottom were nothing. The ants were gone, the hunger had washed away, and she was a wave forming under the surface, barrelling over and over toward the shore, gaining momentum, white froth building as she threatened to rise and crash on to the sand. But the fall never came, just the never ending rise. She rose with great speed, and the sun filled her with white heat, she was burning, evaporating, becoming like so many dust particles floating in the atmosphere. She was laughing. Laughing and driving.
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