A very short story
Somehow they got in. The window of the upstairs bathroom was closed tightly.
But there they were, all of a sudden, streaming like a thin dark river around the window frame, across the wall, to the basin. They showed such purpose.
It was the middle of the night and, as if in a dream, I asked them what on earth they could want in my bathroom, so late.
There’s rainwater outside. It tastes much better than town water.
The only new thing was a bag of individually wrapped cough-drops in an airtight bag, It arrived yesterday, delivered by parcel post - just in case.
That’s it, I thought. Amazing that these little creatures could smell them, or sense them, all the way from the garden below.
You can’t have them, I told them, and went downstairs to get a glass jar.
I packed the cough-drops into the jar and screwed on the lid, leaving no crack for an ant to enter.
I didn’t want to do any killing in the quiet stillness of a peaceful night.
I wondered, do ants scream?
I hoped they’d sense I was offering no cough-drop party in my bathroom and I told them to go home.
They did.
In the morning there was just one straggler left.
He might have been waiting for the last taxi home.
The cough-drops are in the fridge.