All smiles everything
I’m wading up to my neck in bliss. I can feel the ants crawl beneath my skin, and their rhythm is brand-new and more alive. They feel the joy too, and if ants can smile, then I know they're smiling as wide as I am.
They've been with me for a few months, and at first I hated how their crawling raised my flesh. But now, I can understand them. They move constantly and they never stop and when I try to scratch where they walk (itches), they simply get agitated and move even more, even more. Because the scratching is more like being crushed, and instead of crumbling from the pain, they rage. Moving must hurt in such a state, but they move even more. It's not good for them. Their bodies pile up beneath my skin and then their fellow ants go and take the corpses elsewhere. It's a spot right above my lips, and the ant corpses turn to dust there slowly.
My heart is in my head and in my neck. My thoughts are racing and I'm on the edge of an epiphany, I can feel it. My body feels beautiful, radiating with energy, every cell savouring every little nutrient that’s gone inside, and the vitality is so great it flickers in my blood. The ants can see it too. From their movement, I can tell it excites them. Perhaps they're scared. Perhaps they're reverent. Perhaps they (like me) think it's the work of the kindest god ever known. Or they (like me) think it's going to burn up everything they've ever known if given enough time.
The burning is an interesting thing. I rage at pain too, and it gets me high sometimes. But pain is pain, and ashes are ashes, and if the energy turns me into ash then I can't do much of anything at all. There are people who are more ‘here’ and who are doing more important things than I am. I am not ‘here’ at all, because the ants distract me from everyone else. But I will help the sensible ‘here’ people as much as possible. I feel invincible because of the radiance but something is wrong, so my abilities might be limited, and so I’m not really doing anything meaningful myself. But the ants have become my friends now, no longer mere annoyances, so maybe I can change.
I'm wading up to my neck in bliss — invisible to most, not even recognisable as bliss to those who see — and I think the bliss is ant pheromones. The stuff which ants leave behind so their friends can follow their path. MY bliss, MY joy, MY radiance is all counterfeit. Racing thoughts, racing thoughts, going nowhere.
The ants’ bliss is real though, because they are together and they are many but one and they can keep raging against pain even if they die (and I don't get to die), they live on as a collective body instead of being imprisoned in an individual's body. THEY are racing too, but they're going somewhere. I don't know where. But unlike my thoughts, they have direction and purpose.
I'm happy to be these beautiful creatures’ host though. Isn't that enough? Absolutely not, I'm not satisfied, and the epiphany which was brewing has ARRIVED: The only thing keeping me from TRUE bliss is the barrier between the ants and the bliss; it is my skin. If the ants beneath my skin were in the chemicals drenching me right now, they would know, “I am where I am supposed to be” at a level of intensity they never knew before. They wouldn't know of pain at all, because the belonging would become so strong it would negate it. It's already so solid even without the pheromones.
I am not like the ants. I am not where I'm meant to be. I'm in a city with filthy air and I am choking. There's no other place where I'm meant to be, and certainly this cityscape is the most familiar thing I know, but I am not meant to be here. There are people here. And I'm choking. I have my debit card. I used my debit card to make some purchases. It asks for the CVV, the card number, and it asks for the name on the card. And the name on the card is not my name, but it will be the name which will be seen by MOST people when I die, and it will be on my death certificate, and that person will be the one to be ‘here’ (not myself, never myself), and the people who ARE ‘here’ will know about it. It's stupid, isn't it? Who fucking cares? Even I forget sometimes, gone off somewhere else (fake can take my place, must take my place), and then I come back and get hurt and feel the sharp BURNING and then I laugh. Because there is nothing else to do. Just smile. Feel the ants smile too.
It's a little bit okay that no one knows me and I'll die false, I don't really know the ‘here’ people either. I know of some of their efforts, and some of them are admirable so I admire them, but I know nothing and I do nothing and I know nothing. I drown in counterfeit bliss. I know nothing. My efforts go to base-level survival (done poorly) and falsehoods (same thing as survival) and no one will know my real name (the ones who can know are rare, and not here; they're ‘here’, they're not here), nor will anyone know of the ants.
The ants do not have names. They don't have ‘real’ names, and they don't have non-existent replacement people who seem more real than their own selves, and they are not stung with a sense of wrongness at being called a name which is not their own. They don't care. I want to be like an ant. No, no, not an individual ant, because there's no true individual there, they're connected. They are truly, truly holistic and connected. Are the ants ‘here’? They are ‘here’. ‘Here’, as long as they MOVE and have a purpose. Everyone is a piece of a puzzle, right? Everything is interconnected, that part’s guaranteed. I’m wrong most of the time, but NOT about this. A broken clock is right twice a day, even if it's only twice a day. And it's not the fault of the clock for being broken, is it? Everyone is a piece of a puzzle and the ants are that. And the ants are forever SOLVING the puzzle which they are a part of, SOLVING the puzzle which they ARE, solving the puzzle by being the puzzle and being its solution and being its pieces.
I’ve pieced it together, all strung together (connected connected connected) but the pieces in my mind are so scattered because… they take other random bits as dance partners, whichever other idea catches their own fascination. How does an idea itself feel fascination? Who cares. Who cares. I don't. The ants don't. I lied, I do care. I'd like to not care because the ‘here’ people don't and the ants don't. I do care because it's interesting even though it hurts, a lot, because the thoughts in my head have companionship and direction while I do not. The thoughts are abstract and do not have anything cementing them as people, yet they are more ‘people’ than I am because they can dance with a partner.
I scratch at my face. I don't want to, I'm sorry, it's instinct now. The thoughts made the ants go faster and that made my face itchier. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Now the ants are going even faster. They don't mourn the crushed, they just move.
I think they have a real chance at breaking through my skin. I like that thought. It's sweet. It's hopeful. I'm rooting for them. It itches. It itches. Don't scratch, don't kill them. I love them. I love us. The bliss– the pheromones only come up to my neck, so they'll have to plan their path accordingly. I can see it already. I already have my horizontal smile on my face as I share in the ants’ radiance, cheering on their efforts. The ants will make a vertical smile from my face to my neck when they finally break through, and in this smile they'll soak in the pheromones.
Everything is already smiles anyway in my miserable counterfeit bliss. But the ants beneath my skin will make it real. All smiles, all real smiles. In my head and neck, they'll ride upon the pulse of my heart, and it will be done. Our work will finally be done.
This was my 2nd flash fiction for April. Every month I post 2 new flash fictions, and 1 re-run of an older piece. You can find this month’s first flash fiction at this link and the re-run is over here.