K0piI

My grandfather and I were distant. I had never talked to him for reasons I should atleast explain. As a young kid, living in the country house that said grandfather owned ever since, all I could hear about him was of his splendor. At that time, I was not able to understand the politics he was a part of or his contribution to the greater good of the townsfolk.

It also did not come to me the reason why I never saw him outside. Despite it all, He was a strange man, eating in his room where the ants could get to his food, if not careful. I noticed a trail of these insects leading up to his door but the people never said anything about the conundrum.

I was curious so I did what was plausible to me at that time. I snuck into the small opening, not wanting to alert the people that told me to stay away, because they wouldn't allow me in. His room was far too dark when the night arrived and so I waited for morning to sneak in as he slept, watching as his chest rise and fall in a slow rhythm. It was barely noticeable to me that he was alive.

He lay ontop a tall frame, tucked in with velvet blankets. It was difficult to see his face, I wanted to put an identity to this mysterious man. He bore the name Chevrol Barrington before I did. He was born the 27th of February in 1801. My child like intution wanted to ask him personally when I woke him up, "What do you think about us having the same name, Grandpa?" I had not thought this interaction through.

So got on the top of my toes. I hoisted my little body up on a stool I found, thinking, yes this is sturdy enough. It wobbled of course and I nearly fell over when he caught me. Or something that resembled him. A hand held my arm, a thin skeleton with incredible strength for its size. I wanted to thank him or apologize at that moment.

More than everything, I was even more curious about his appearance. His eye sockets were prominent, but the eyeballs themselves where not there. Like they had been, eaten away, leaving the eye lids edges frayed. What was I looking at? I thought it was a trick of the light. Until the curtain blew gently and I saw him more clearly.

It was, horrifying. To see so many ants at once.

Lest one took to destroying a colony and watched them squirm across a patch of land, this was the same on a man's face. They had hollowed out his eyes, dug deep into the entrance of his nose and his mouth. And as he bent his spine, I writhed at the sight of his open collarbones. I heard them run across eachother's tiny red abdomens, that is, I do not even believe is possible.

What I remember, I was frozen in shock. A trick of the wind and comes inside another ray of the sun from outside. Lighting his form once again, the thin muscle barely on his protuding spine, or the boney hands was too much to see. And maybe that's what he also thought. If he still had a brain left inside of his cranium.

He releases me and I hit the ground with a wet thud. I feel the splinter on my knees I crawl to the door and run to my room, thinking that everything was just a horrific nightmare.

Two days after my inflitration of his chambers I saw them dig his grave. Where he was put into a dark maroon casket now underneath the soil of his once backyard. I figured, he was dead without final words. They grieved about him, many people did. Saying things such as "he was taken too young." I didn't agree, remembering what I saw in that room.

When I asked my parents what took him away so soon? My eyes wide with quiet terror behind them.

My mother reassured me he was in heaven now,

but as they saw me stare at the ground my father answered, "we return to the earth at some point. He is in our hearts, and now nature has taken his body back." I do not know why he would say that to his child. It must be the ant trailing his room, I cannot stop hearing them.