“Ugh, What the Fuck?” groaned Max as he woke up extremely disorientated and confused. His head was thumping like he had 1000 drums inside his head, and he groaned in discomfort as he felt a feeling of nauseousness wash over his entire body.
Readjusting himself, he brushed the microscopic dust particles off his school trousers and quickly rose to his feet, rubbing his eyes vigorously and glancing around, trying to make sense of his surroundings. What his eyes fell upon wasn’t exactly comforting to say the least.
It appeared that he had been transported to a very dense jungle of some sorts with green stalks and some giant plants surrounding him on all sides, with a density of just 0.5 to 1 metre apart from his perspective. He could still see the glowing orb of the dark yellow spring afternoon sun in the blue sky overhead however he felt he was much distant from it, and it was partially covered by the dense green canopy above, casting a twilight shadow over much of the surrounding area.
He also saw some much bigger unfamiliar giant plants; however, they were less frequent with one appearing every 10 to 15 metres from his perspective. The closest one to him was more than three times the height of the unfamiliar giant green stalk plants and had a white fluffy canopy at its top with little spike star shaped leaves with a tail stem detaching itself from the canopy and floating around with the wind current. ‘That’s really weird’ he thought to himself ‘I know in biology they said leaves were light and could be transported by the wind, but I don’t recall them being so light they could stay suspended in the air for such a long period of time….’ For some reason these plants looked a bit familiar to him……
Looking in the distance he spotted more of those giant towering plants with very colourful canopies of yellow, red, blue, and violet with the leaves sprouting out in a sun-star shaped structure with a brownish centre. Max had never seen plants so tall; they were even taller than the giant 200-year-old Eucalyptus gumtrees he had seen at the Arve Valley national park in Tasmania with some specimens reaching 100 to 120 metres in height. ‘This can’t be possible’ he worryingly thought to himself ‘I must be dreaming…’
He approached one of the common green stalk plants and wrapped his arms around the trunk. The trunk was so thick in diameter he couldn’t wrap his arms around it completely. The trunk had a set of vertical grooves running all the way to the tip of the plant at the top which had no branches and no canopy, just a single stem ending in a triangular point. ‘Why does this plant look so familiar….’ he thought to himself.
Glancing towards the ground he saw something that made his blood run cold.
The ground was slightly crumbly and more unstable with his weight slightly sinking into the ground. Picking up a grain of brown clayey silt soil he studied it with horror as he realised why the ground felt so different to him.
In the past, a grain of soil was almost microscopic with a single grain being able to fit, just in between the grooves of his fingertips or underneath his fingernail. Now however they had been significantly enlarged to the sizes of small marbles as Max’s eyes bulged with horror as his mind couldn’t fully comprehend what he was seeing.
“What? Why are they so fucking big?!” he gasped to himself.
Suddenly a lightbulb clicked inside his head and suddenly it made sense.
Max started tearing up and shaking uncontrollably. He remembered a scene from one of his sister’s favourite Disney films called Honey I Shrunk the Kids where a group of kids were in the exact same predicament as him where the surrounding green foliage looked almost identical to his.
He hadn’t been teleported to a strange alien world nor had anything else been grossly enlarged. He hadn’t even moved the exact location where he was standing just a few minutes ago.
He had shrunk.
Shaking and hyperventilating, Max estimated that he roughly stood around 5 to 7 millimetres tall. Those giant green stalk plants that were completely surrounding him in very high metropolitan density? Those were grass blades.
But even worse he realised that the even more enormous colourful star-canopy shaped plants were flowers and the one closest to him with its fluffy white canopy and the floating spike star shaped leaves made sense now….
It was a dandelion.
“NO! NO! NO!” Max screamed to himself. “I MUST BE FUCKING DREAMING!” he wailed.
Suddenly he heard a snap of microscopic foliage and rustling behind the giant grass blades.
“What……?” he stammered, “Whose there?!”
“Well, Well, Well” cackled a cruel voice that pierced the still quiet air. “I have been waiting a long time for this….”
Meanwhile……
Rebecca sighed as she exited her office building in the Melbourne CBD which was a large shiny metallic grey blueish skyscraper which was covered in a layer of glass panels and had 25 floors with her floor located on top. Surrounding her office skyscraper was a mixture of other old style modern and retro buildings with a blend of English and Chinese architecture.
She had a slight respect for her boss for allowing her some time for her dirty habit. Still a smoking break was only 15 to 20 minutes long and she still had to stay another 2 hours in the office.
Luckily a Coles supermarket was located literally on the opposite side of the road. Unfortunately, that meant she needed to cross a tram track at a pedestrian crossing which was quite busy with several trams passing in and out and one tram arriving every 5 minutes.
She readjusted her flowery blouse top which consisted of a white background with pink flowers and pulled up her blue jeans. Sighing she wiggled her dark green painted toes inside her saltwater sandals as she waited for the green light.
Finally, the green light flicked on, and relieved, she crossed the tram track and road and walked inside the big automatic sliding doors of the Coles supermarket.
Inside Coles, the supermarket was already quite busy with several people darting back and forth between the different isles trying to buy chips, biscuits and ice cream and loading their shopping carts and trolleys. Weaving through the multitude of busy shoppers annoyingly she finally reached the front counter where a young man was waiting.
“Hello, can I please get a pack of Marlboro cigarettes?” she beckoned to the man, pointing at a locked metal cabinet behind the counter.
The man sighed guiltily and took out the keys in his pocket, opening one of the drawers and pulling out a 25 pack. He felt quite ashamed every time he sold a pack because he knew from his lectures at university just how unhealthy and lethal prolonged cigarette smoking could be. Every time he sold a pack, he felt like a drug dealer who was helping to fuel an addiction and in the long run assisting with a homicide.
He placed the pack on the table and tried to explain “Ma’am I really don’t think you should be having these”.
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “I don’t need your lectures just give them to me and mind your own business”.
The man’s eyes drooped sadly and stated, “Ok that comes to $45.99”.
Rebecca gasped. “$45.99 just for a single pack! That’s utter bullshit!” she complained.
The man held up his hands defensively. “Hey, I don’t make the rules!”
“Fine” she sighed “Just put it on my card”.
Rebecca picked up the pack and looked at the front. Since the Australian Government had banned all cigarette logo advertising on their packaging, the packs now came in yellow and black with big health warnings and grotesque shocking imagery of smokers suffering a variety of different health problems. This particular pack had an image of a young girl lying in a hospital bed on a ventilator with the phrase ‘Don’t let children breathe your smoke’.
Rebecca rolled her eyes and thought to herself ‘It’s probably just exaggerated’. Even though she kind of knew smoking was probably bad for her she continued to smoke anyway to cope with all the stress in her life. She found whenever she smoked, she felt a feeling of happiness, relaxation, and bliss.
Putting the cigarette pack in her handbag she walked towards the exit. Now she just needed a place to smoke. However, one of her cigarettes in the pack had trapped a few unexpected prisoners…………
Meanwhile…….
Max scrambled back frantically on his hands and bum towards a green trunk of the grass blade in horror as 4 intimidating giant insect looking figures with 6 limbs approached him from behind the green plant foliage in a very aggressive manner, pounding their fists into their feelers.
“What do you reckon we should do to her first lads?” barked one of the figures.
“I reckon let’s bash her fucking brains out!” sneered another.
“Slit her throat!” remarked another.
“I have a much better idea” said the voice of the most scariest, largest and most intimidating figure of them all. “She must die painfully, so let’s skin her alive, slowly!” he sneered.
When he approached Max however and studied his face more closely, he was shocked to discover that it wasn’t the face of a girl.
“What the actual fuck?!” he gasped. “You’re a boy with long hair, not a girl!”
Annoyed by his aggressive interrogator Max sarcastically remarked “Yes thank you for acknowledging the fact that I was born with a penis and a set of testicles!”
Max studied the aggressive interrogator more closely and observed that he was a giant bug of some sort with a head, thorax, and rounded abdomen. He had 12 segments on each of his antennae which sprouted from the top sides of his head, two big yellow eyes with black pupils and 2 nodes which connected his abdomen and thorax. The most intimidating thing for Max however was a vicious set of mandibles around his mouth area with rows of razor-sharp teeth shaped like a grabbing extended scissors claw, snapping around, and was absolutely ripped. He also oddly noticed that this ant was wearing a green military jacket with a dark green splotches pattern on a light green background, with a row of medals on his front pocket. Max also noticed that several of the other creatures were also wearing green military style jackets.
Remembering year 10 biology and his studying of invertebrates he suddenly identified the creatures in front of him.
“Wait, are you guys’ ants?” he gasped. “How are you speaking perfect English, wearing clothes and behaving just like humans?”
Max facepalmed and remarked to himself ‘Now I really feel I am in a Disney movie with talking animals’ he remarked to himself.
Ignoring Max’s questions General Sting, who was the most intimidating figure to Max yelled out “DR. THROAX GET YOUR FUCKING ASS OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!! AND BRING THAT MACHINE FOR GOOD MEASURE!”
Max’s eyes then fell upon another ant revealing himself from behind the plant foliage, wheeling a large cylindrical cannon of some sorts, which was shiny, silver, metallic and about the length of 2 ants lying end to end. This black ant however, unlike the others was wearing a white lab coat and green translucent lab googles.
“Yes sir, did it work?” asked Dr. Thorax. “Did my shrinking serum dart actually manage to shrink her?” he enquired with excitement.
“Get over here!” snarled General Sting, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, dragging him away from his machine across closely to where Max was sitting. “This is the boy, not the girl!” he snarled. “You have shrunk the wrong human!”
“Oh, I am sorry sir!” gasped the engineering scientist. “From the way she was described to me, she was enormous, and with his hair reaching down to his shoulders, his head looks like a girl from the back”.
“His head looks like a girl from the back!” spluttered General Sting, spit forming at the mouth absolutely fuming with rage. “You know what I don’t have time for this just hurry up and go fetch another shrinking dart”.
“I told you this was a stupid idea” remarked one of the other soldiers. “One of us should have been allowed to fire the weapon instead, someone who has actually seen the outside world and can recognise human faces better, not someone who has never left Antopia!”
“Um yeah, I don’t think I can fetch another dart….” mumbled Dr. Thorax meekly, hanging his head down in shame.
“WHAT!” screamed General Sting. “WHY NOT!”
Before Dr. Thorax could answer back, he was interrupted by a very angry Max.
“You did this to me?!” gasped Max. “FUCK YOU!!” he screamed and quickly scrambled to his feet and made a lunge for Dr. Thorax tackling him to the ground.
Fun fact, despite being very small, ants are among the strongest creatures in the animal kingdom in terms of body weight ratio, being able to lift 10 to 30 times their own weight. So, Dr. Thorax was very easily able to throw Max off him with a single arm, throwing Max onto his back. Max landed heavily on his back, grunting in pain.
“Get the fuck off me, you little fucking faggot!” snarled Dr. Thorax getting up to his feet. “Swear to Gaia cunt, touch me again and I will make you feel pain in ways you have never imagined before! Who the fuck do you think you are?!”
“Speaking of little faggots….” growled General Sting grabbing Dr. Thorax by the scuff of his lab coat, bringing his face closer to his and remarked “Care to explain to us why you can’t get another shrinking dart?”
“Well funny story actually…” Dr. Thorax explained sheepishly. “It took me 4 years to perfect the ingredients for the formula for a human to be shrunk to that size, inside the government labs the Queen provided for me.” The more Dr. Thorax explained however the angrier General Sting became.
“It took me another 3 months to build the machine and device and measure the amount of formula needed to shrink a human. For this reason, a very large dart structure had to be built to contain the volume of formula needed and on top of that I had to build a machine strong enough to shoot the dart at least 2000 millimetres into the air!”
“Get to the fucking point!” snarled the General.
“Well, the truth is, since you guys in the military kept asking me to provide it without any patience for months, I didn’t exactly have enough time to make any more replicates……” confessed Dr. Thorax .
“So, you are telling me that was our only shrinking dart?” gasped General Sting in horror. His horror then turned to red hot rage.
“WELL, GO FUCKING MAKE SOME MORE THEN!!” he shrieked.
“Um yeah about that….” said Dr. Thorax meekly. “It is going to take me at least another few weeks to prepare the formula, measure the volume needed and construct the dart needed since the darts can only be used once…”
General Sting was so full of rage at this point his eyes were bulging out of their sockets, his limbs were shaking with fury, and he had lost his usual yelling voice, he was so enraged he could barely speak.
“You stupid……. You stupid unprepared little fucker……” he sputtered with rage, spit flying out of his mouth.
Grabbing Dr. Thorax even closer to his enraged face by the scruff of his lab coat, he uttered a few more menacing phrases.
“If it wasn’t for the fact that you were the only ant in the colony who could make the shrinking serum, I would have the queen send you on fucking death row right now!” he snarled. “Go back to the lab and start working on multiple darts right now! And I don’t care if you must work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to achieve it. You better do as I say, or I swear I am going to shove my gun so far up your fucking ass”.
Terrified, Dr. Thorax quickly obeyed and quickly scurried back in the direction towards the anthill.
“And take that piece of shit machine with you!” barked General Sting. “I don’t want that getting destroyed and taking even longer!”
Dr. Thorax quickly hurried back and grabbed the metal cannon and quickly wheeled it out of sight behind the green plant foliage.
General Sting and his soldiers quickly then turned their attention to Max who was lying on the ground in front of them and groaning in pain.
“Well, what do we do now boss?” enquired one of the soldiers.
General Sting remarked “Well we might not have our arch enemy. But we certainly have her accomplice. He is not exactly an angel either……”
He smiled menacingly. “He will do as an appetizer for revenge….”
Meanwhile…….
Rebecca found a nice little quiet place, a place on the main street just a few blocks away from her office building and directly in front of the shopping strip and tram station. On her right lay a small green island surrounded by a concrete pathway and a few medium sized trees and a garden bed. Glancing around a few times to make sure there were no smoking signs she sighed and pulled her pack of cigarettes out of her handbag.
Using her sharp purple painted fingernails, she tore an opening in the box and pulled out a cigarette out of the box.
Now it just so happened that the very cigarette she had selected had a few unexpected prisoners trapped inside the tobacco roll.
“Mum where are we?” piped a very tiny voice inside the cigarette. A very tiny creature was trying to move around but it was almost pitch black and the surrounding environment was very dense with leafy matter, making the creature unable to move. However, this matter was shrivelled and brown and lacked any moisture, almost completely dry.
“I don’t know sweety, I am trying to find out!” replied another very tiny voice.
Rebecca didn’t know this, but a tiny family of sugar aphids had become trapped inside a cigarette roll in a freak manufacturing accident. Sugar aphids were incredibly small, even smaller than the ants with an average size of 0.5mm to 1.1mm, the size of a pin prick and barely able to be seen with the naked eye. The mother aphid had no idea what had happened, one minute the mother and her 6 children were just nesting on the leaf of a tobacco plant and within the next 24 hours a giant pair of human hands had plucked the leaf and chopped up, pressed, dried, and rolled the remains of the leaf into a cylindrical shape and surrounded it by a layer of filter paper. It was a miracle they had survived the entire manufacturing process, largely credited to their small size and ability to hide in any small nook and cranny.
Unfortunately, they were not going to survive what happened next……….
Rebecca popped the cigarette in her mouth, savouring the tobacco taste.
“Ugh mum, why is it so damp and humid all of a sudden?” piped the voice of mother aphid’s daughter Sophia. “Everywhere smells like peppermint!”
Rebecca took out an orange lighter and flickered the flame on, drawing it closer to the tip of the cigarette and cupping her hands to prevent the flame from blowing out. Within 15 seconds she started a burning reaction in her cigarette with the tip glowing bright reddish orange and a trail of smoke trailing out into the atmosphere. She curled her dark green painted toes inside her saltwater sandals, wiggling them vigorously as she took her first drag.
“Ahhhh….” sighed Rebecca as she gripped her cigarette between her pointer finger and middle finger and blew a cloud of smoke from her mouth.
Things were going horrifically for the poor family of aphids to say the least.
Mother Aphid looked up in horror as a blinding orange light suddenly swallowed up the darkness and the temperature suddenly more than tripled. The blinding orange light dimmed down a little bit to be replaced by a softer orange glow. Mother aphid watched in horror as she realised that the orange glow was getting closer and closer, and the surrounding leaf matter was starting to smoulder.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” screamed her daughter Sophia. “I think I am melting!”
Mother Aphid slowly realised what was happening. “Oh my gosh, I think the cylinder is on fire!”
“Help mum!” screamed another voice further up from where her daughter and her were located. “I think I am being cooked alive!”
Mother aphid recognised that voice, it was her son Bobby Aphid.
“Hang on sweetheart I am coming!” she screamed. She heaved and pushed and pulled but she was well and truly stuck, the leaf matter density was simply too thick.
Suddenly the cylinder started jerking backwards and forwards violently, like they were inside an aircraft experiencing violent turbulence. All the aphids felt like they were going to be sick….
Rebecca flicked her cigarette up and down with her purple painted thumbnail, moving her cigarette butt up and down between her pointer finger and middle finger. She was flicking the ash that had built up at the smouldering end of her cigarette, flicking specs of ash towards the ground with some microscopic specs of ash landing on her dark green painted toes and sandals. Long multiple plumes of smoke were now bellowing out of the end of her cigarette butt, polluting the surrounding air.
“That’s fucking disgusting tar lungs! You really shouldn’t smoke out here on a public street, polluting the air for everyone else!” remarked one bystander as he walked past her.
Rebecca’s response was to give him the rude finger with her free hand and yell back “I don’t recall any no-smoking signs being around here, dickhead!”
Inside her cigarette butt however, a massacre was taking place.
Mother Aphids 4 youngest hatchlings, only 3 days old and hadn’t even been properly named yet were stuck closest to the smouldering burning end of the cigarette. Not able to even properly speak yet, Mother Aphid could hear her babies screaming, crying, and wailing for help.
“Oh my God my babies!” she screamed. “Don’t worry mummy is coming!”
No words of pain, hopelessness and despair can describe a mother who is unable to do anything to save her children who are in immediate danger right in front of her. Mother Aphid pushed and screamed and sobbed but her 6-legged invertebrate body was completely immobile.
As the flame became closer and closer as Rebecca continued to take multiple drags of her cigarette, the temperature continued to increase tenfold. As the temperature increased tenfold, the gooey juices inside the hatchlings’ bodies began to boil and evaporate, swelling their bodies like a balloon. Pressure gradually started to increase as the gas inside their bodies continued to expand with the increasing temperature.
Suddenly the poor hatchlings’ bodies couldn’t take it anymore and just popped, their cooked sugary residue gas becoming sucked through the cigarette and into Rebecca’s mouth as she took another drag, inhaling the smoky fumes of her cigarette into her lungs. Mother Aphid screamed and wailed as she heard the 4 sounds of simultaneous pops, knowing her poor babies had died a most horrific death.
Rebecca raised her eyebrows in delightful surprise as she tasted a slightly sugary texture as she inhaled.
“Mmmm” she hummed. “Marlboro is making them a bit sweeter than I remember!”
Rebecca puffed out another cloud of smoke and continued flicking her cigarette which was now 75% done. However, when she flicked out her specs of ash, two additional prisoners were sort of freed, being flung from the end of the cigarette butt.
“Holy Fuck!” screamed Bobby Aphid as he went flying out at a tremendous speed after being flicked out by Rebecca, clinging to a dandruff sized spec of ash. Slamming into the concrete ground at a terrifying speed, thankfully the speck of ash he was holding onto helped cushion his blow. Grunting in pain he looked around in horror. Everything was so big, bigger than his mind could comprehend.
The garden bed, trees and buildings were towering so far above his head and so wide, he couldn’t even identify what they were. The concrete ground he was standing on had small grooves and microscopic potholes that he could stick his invertebrate legs into.
Directly in front of him were Rebecca’s freshly pedicured dark green painted toes resting inside her saltwater sandals, twisting, and wiggling as if they were giant worms. Her sandals and feet were so large they were the size of an entire metropolitan area and as for the surrounding CBD square metre of area, well let’s just say it was like the size of France.
Poor Bobby Aphid started shaking uncontrollably. He wanted his mummy.
The other additional prisoner who was flicked out of her cigarette butt was Sophia Aphid who was also clinging on an identical dandruff sized piece of ash. Unfortunately, her landing place would be a lot more unluckier. She slammed into a brown, spongy surface where the ground felt almost like hard fabric and plastic and long patterned white stitches traced around its perimeter.
Sophia Aphid stumbled to her feet and brushed the ash off her body. An unearthly disgusting smell washed over her from behind, smelling of stale sweat and corn chips and she felt extremely nauseous.
“Ewww something stinks!” she complained, turning around. When she turned around however, she was terrified of the sight that lay before her.
An enormous mountain sized big toe lay before her with an ivory dark green nail coating on top, slightly wiggling and pushing up against the top sandal strap running across the top of it. She observed 4 other slightly smaller toes were also twisting and writhing, pushing against the top of the sandal strap. She could see the intricate toe print patterns on the underside of her toes as well as the layers of microscopic dirt caked onto her sandal and stuck in between the grooves of the toeprints of Rebecca.
Sophia Aphid had landed on the front tip area of Rebecca’s sandal.
Sophia started bawling her eyes out. She wanted her mother however her poor mother was still trapped inside the cigarette butt………….
Rebecca looked at her watch and gasped “Oh shit, it’s almost time for me to go back inside!”
Not even bothering to put her cigarette butt in the bin, she flicked her cigarette butt towards the ground, committing littering in the process.
Bobby Aphid screamed as an ocean cruise liner sized cigarette butt crashed next to him, the wind generated from the impact throwing him several metres onto his back.
Rebecca was just about to head back inside then quickly remembered something. She looked at her smouldering cigarette butt on the ground and smiled.
“Oh yeah I almost forgot” she giggled.
She raised her sandaled foot and hovered it above the cigarette butt………………
Meanwhile…………
“Accomplice?” gasped Max. “What do you mean accomplice? I didn’t do anything!”.
“Precisely.” replied General Sting. “Haven’t you ever heard the phrase bad things happen when good people do nothing? Actually, scrap that, you are not even a good person.”
Max stumbled to his feet and brushed the dirt off his school blazer, tie and trouser pants and held his hands up defensively. He glanced at General Sting and all his fellow soldiers who were glaring at him with hatred in their eyes and began approaching him in a very menacingly and terrifying manner.
“Oh, come on guys, I don’t want any trouble!” said Max fearfully, his brow starting to sweat, and his limbs starting to shake uncontrollably.
“We have been watching your behaviour for quite some time as well” remarked General Sting as he approached closer and closer. “Not only did you turn a blind eye at times, sometimes you even thought it was funny and encouraged her!”
General Sting then, in a shocking display of aggression, grabbed Max by his shirt collar and tie and pressed his mandibles just centimetres from his face.
“YOU ON THE OTHER HAND!” barked General Sting with specs of spit flying out from his mouth, “SAID SOMETHING REALLY DISGUSTING. WHAT WAS IT YOU SAID? THAT HER BEHAVIOUR WAS CUTE!”
Max froze with fear as a million thoughts went through his head. It was true, at times he had thought her behaviour was funny and cute, especially when they were younger around 2 to 3 years ago. He hadn’t really given it much thought for the ants however, not even thinking of them as individual creatures with souls so now he was stuck in a really awkward position, having to explain himself to a creature who he thought was so inferior to himself.
“Oh Fuck….” he cursed under his breath. “Listen I can explain. You see what I was trying to say-”
“Oh, spare us the fucking quackery boy!” snarled General Sting. “All you fucking humans are all the same. You all think you are the centre of the universe, god’s chosen people. Thinking you're so big and powerful and nothing can ever touch you”
Max gasped in awe and horror as he continued listening to General Sting’s enraged philosophical rant.
“Humans walk over entire worlds every time they leave their nests, almost never looking down as they trample over everything. I guarantee you boy, you will never look at a little bug in the same way ever again…” he snarled.
“Is that why you shrunk me?” gasped Max. “To teach me some fucking philosophical moral life lesson!”
“When you are small as us boy...” growled General Sting, “There are new threats I bet you would have never ever even dreamed about!”
“Including us…” he sneered, winking menacingly at Max.
Max’s blood ran cold. ‘What does he mean by that?’ he thought to himself.
Max didn’t have time to enquire further.
General sting raised one of his fists and slammed it into Max’s stomach with full force. Max gasped as he felt the air being knocked out of his diaphragm and he was flung back a few metres, landing painfully on his back. He gingerly felt his stomach area and felt a large purplish bruise on his stomach.
“Uggh…” he groaned as he rolled over and hoisted himself up on his hands and knees. After glancing at his palms, he noticed they were slightly bleeding.
Things were going to get really ugly now.
General Sting stomped over in a rage, hovering himself over Max’s injured body.
“You’re asking yourself-” he sneered and then viciously kicked Max in the ribs, sending him rolling another few metres away from the impact of the kick onto his back.
“Aaaahhhh!” he screamed in pain.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you to……LOOK……. BEFORE…………. YOU………. LEAP!!” he shrieked while repeatedly kicking Max in the ribs, each kick sending further screams of pain from the poor boy as he lay on his back.
“Siblings they’re amazing, aren’t they?” he sneered. “They imitate the actions of their older siblings…. Kind of like a little sister inheriting the traits of her OLDER BROTHER!” he screamed, protruding another violent kick, this time across his chin, leaving him with a deep bleeding cut on his chin.
“Your family has caused so much suffering and pain on this colony….” snarled General Sting. “I am just RETURNING THE FAVOUR!” he shrieked, attempting to kerb-stomp Max’s face with his hard exoskeleton foot. However, this time Max managed to catch his stomp and gripped his foot tightly, making General Sting slightly lose his balance.
Suddenly another one of General Sting’s fellow soldiers hurried over, bent down and grabbed Max’s face with his arm, wrapping his sharp clawed feeler around Max’s nose and mouth and proceeded to drag him away on his back. Max responded by violently thrashing his arms and legs around and moaning in pain.
“MMMMPHHHHH………. NOOOO I AM STILL BIGGER THAN YOU!!!” he screamed with muffled cries.
This soldier proceeded to hoist Max up on to his feet, into a head lock, with him coughing and spluttering, his face turning red and gasping for air.
As mentioned before ants are very strong creatures, being able to lift 10 to 30 times their own weight. So, the soldier with his strength and Max’s light frame was very easily able to flip Max’s entire body over his head like a rag doll. Max backflipped at least 3 metres into the air before roughly landing on his ribs, feeling a sharp snapping sound in his ankle.
“AAAAAHHH” he screamed.
Desperately, he hoisted himself up and crawled on his hands and knees through the dirt and he could feel blood crawling across his face. Out of the corner of his eye he could see 3 more soldiers approaching him.
“Oh nooooo…” he cried
One soldier loomed over Max’s seemingly pathetic crawling, smirked, and very violently proceeded to stomp on Max’s back, forcing him painfully onto his stomach while another soldier delivered another kick to his ribs, resulting in further screams of pain and moaning.
Seeing Max approaching a muddy microscopic droplet puddle, one soldier came up with an even more humiliating punishment. One soldier gripped the back of his head and shoved it into the muddy puddle, rubbing his face vigorously in the mud while all the other soldiers laughed and jeered.
“How do you like that, you little piece of shit?” jeered the attacking soldier as he released his grip. Max opened his eyes and peered at his reflection in the water. He had a black eye, bloody nose and mouth and several bruises all over his torso. He thought to himself he might have even fractured his ankle.
General Sting was laughing and jeering as he continued to watch and enjoy his soldiers deliver further attacks to his perceived enemy.
“Ok, that’s enough fun and games” stated General Sting. “Let’s end this…”
The soldiers swifty obeyed and hoisted Max up on to his knees, with two soldiers wrapping their arms under Max’s armpits and around his shoulders in a locked position, while the third soldier wiped the mud off his face.
Slowly General Sting approached a crying and sobbing Max pulling an object from one of his pockets in his military jacket.
It was a crystalised gem shaped knife.
Max started bawling his eyes out and pleading for mercy as soon as his eyes fell upon the knife.
“Oh, please don’t kill me!” he wailed. “You don’t have to do this; we can settle things diplomatically!”
General Sting ignored his pleas for mercy since he had been taught from an early age that an enemy deserves no mercy.
“It will give me great pleasure killing you….” he sneered. “I will be welcomed back like a hero!”
Meanwhile….
Mother Aphid screamed with a terror she had never known in her entire life as her entire world was turned upside-down and spun around as the tobacco leaf matter rustled and jostled around her. Suddenly with a loud bang, the leaf matter slammed downwards on to her body with a measurable amount of gravity force, making her grunt in pain. Dazed and confused, she tried to figure out what had happened.
Rebecca in fact had flicked her almost finished smouldering cigarette butt to the concrete pavement, since she was too lazy to find a bin and, in the process committed environmental vandalism. The 34-year-old gingered haired woman was just about to head back inside to her office before she remembered something. That burning cigarette butt on the ground was a potential polluting fire hazard and needed to be extinguished.
She needed to crush and grind that cigarette butt into the ground.
“Mum!” screamed Bobby aphid rushing towards the burning cigarette butt. The closer he got to it however the more wheezing and sputtering he did as he got closer to the tobacco smoke, emitting from the cigarette butt end. After a few metres, he couldn’t approach it closer anymore, the thick tobacco smoke too thick to breathe properly and the heat radiating causing a searing pain all over his body. The orange light glow emitted might not seem very strong for a human, however for a microscopic bug at his size, the light was so strong it was almost blinding his eyes.
Then Bobby Aphid saw something looming over him that made him shake in absolute terror.
A giant light brown sandal sole was looming above him, casting an enormous shadow. Criss-cross treads ran across it with the remains of dozens of insects, many of them several times larger than him were stuffed into the grooves of the sandal, their corpses all twisted and mangled beyond recognition. Despite the bodies being so broken and mangled with insects’ guts squeezed and spread out everywhere, Bobby Aphid could actually still recognise some of the species of the once living creatures. Beetles, ants, pill bugs; all of these creatures were much bigger than him from his perspective ranging in size from elephants to sauropods. This looked like an insect graveyard with so many different insects meeting their demise under the sandal sole which was also coated in a thin layer of dust and soil.
This was Rebecca’s sandal, and this was going to become Bobby’s grave very soon.
Sophia, on the other hand, was going to meet an even more horrific death as she lay at the front end of Rebecca’s sandal. When Rebecca raised her sandal, her toes slightly raised off the actual inside sole of the sandal itself, pushing up against the top sandal strap due to the forces of gravity. This allowed a small gap to be created between the underside of her toes and the inside sole of the sandal itself.
The laws of physics were not on Sophia’s side.
The angle of the sandal caused a slight slope which made Sophia slide towards the underside of her toes. Screaming in absolute terror, she desperately tried everything to stop herself sliding into the gap, using her pincers, mandibles, and claws to dig into the plastic fabric inside sole surface of the sandal to keep herself steady. However, the sandal had developed a thin layer of foot sweat on the inside sandal sole, making the surface too slippery to establish a proper grip. Sophia slid underneath the gap between her toes and her inside sandal sole.
Then she saw something that petrified her.
Stuck on the underside of her big toe was a twisted and mangled corpse with a small puddle of haemolymph surrounding it. The corpse was around 6 to 7 times bigger than her, and she knew exactly what it was.
It was a dead, squished ant. Given the fact that ants usually trampled over their kind all the time, since they were the size of elephants to them, never before had she felt so insignificant and pathetic.
“Oh, my fucking gosh no!” sobbed Sophia as she saw the toes beginning to come down again. She knew now her fate was sealed and she was going to end up exactly like this ant. “Not like this….”
The deaths of the 3 family members seemed to happen simultaneously with each other.
When Rebecca brought her sandal down, Bobby was instantly crushed into a twisted mangled corpse ball, his body wedged in between a tread line under her sandal sole, joining the grave sites of dozens of other bugs. Sophia was liquefied into a microscopic droplet of green goo as her big toe pressed down into the inside sole of her sandal, her body so small Rebecca wouldn’t even feel it as she joined her fate next to the dead ant. As for Mother Aphid……
The poor aphid screamed as the tobacco leaf matter began to compress all around her, like a trash compactor, squeezing out all the tiny pockets of oxygen that was still left inside the cigarette butt. The leaf matter wasn’t hard enough to pop her body or squeeze her guts out like a tube of toothpaste but rather the tobacco wrapped around her like a suffocating blanket. As Rebecca pressed her sandal on top of the cigarette butt, flattening it like a pancake, more oxygen was squeezed out. The mother aphid finally breathed her last breath and died, dying due to the lack of oxygen and heavy compression.
Rebecca stepped on top of the cigarette butt, twisting the heavy ball of her foot and pressing her green painted toes into the inside sole of her saltwater sandal to add extra pressure.
“There we go….” She sighed “All done”.
Rebecca lifted her sandal off the cigarette butt to reveal a flattened piece of tobacco paper, with small ash specs surrounding it.
“Ok time to go back inside….” she stated and cracked her toes at the joints, bending and flexing them inside her sandals. Readjusting herself, she calmly walked back inside her office building.
An entire family of 6 aphids had been wiped out in 20 minutes, all because of the simple action of a stressed-out business accountant and a mother of 2 wanting a smoke break……
Meanwhile….
General Sting looked right into Max’s eyes as he saw tears streaming down his face and out of his eye socket.
“I have so much to live for, I am only 16!” wailed Max.
“Say your prayers, you little faggot!” jeered General Sting as he raised the crystal knife in a stabbing strike, preparing to plunge the blade right through his chest and straight into his heart.
“STOP!” screamed a female voice. “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!”
Both Max and the male ants spun their heads around and looked in surprise to see a beautiful young female ant standing behind them, around 22 years old, wearing a grass stitched silk woven dress with a crystal tiara on her head. She had big yellow and black eyes with very large pupils and smaller more delicate mandibles feelers, claws and long eyelashes. She was indeed very beautiful.
“Your majesty?” gasped General Sting. “You are the future queen, Princess Penelope, you’re not supposed to leave Antopia! It’s too dangerous up here on the surface!”
“Never mind that!” lectured the princess. “What do you think you are doing, beating this poor boy to a pulp and behaving like violent savages!”
“He is the enemy!” replied General Sting. “An enemy deserves no mercy. Isn’t that right lads!”
“Right!” shouted his fellow comrades in unison.
“I don’t have time for your macho war nonsense!” remarked Princess Penelope. “Let him go. No matter how heinous the crimes committed by a criminal, in our civilised society everyone is entitled to a democratic, diplomatic court trial.”
General Sting rolled his eyes.
“Also, I think my mother, the queen would prefer to see him alive” concluded the princess.
“Fine…..” groaned General Sting. “Lads release him”.
The soldiers let him go, letting him faceplant into the mud.
The princess quickly hurried over and helped Max to his feet.
“Oh, my goodness, how much did they hurt you? What’s your name?” she asked with concern.
“My name is Max Firewall….” croaked the teenage boy. “Can you help me stand up? I think I fractured my ankle”.
Princess Penelope shot a very angry glare at General Sting then quickly turned her attention back to Max.
“Wow, I have never seen an actual human up close before!” she asked with inquisitiveness. “I have so much to ask about human society and culture!”.
Suddenly their conversation was interrupted by a large booming female voice echoing from the Firewall residence.
It wasn’t Lucy.
“WOW I CAN’T BELIEVE WE HAVE BEEN BEST FRIENDS FOR 4 YEARS AND NOT ONCE DID YOU INVITE ME TO YOUR HOUSE BEFORE!” boomed the voice of another young 11-year-old tween girl. All the ants in the grass pricked up their antennas, trying to distinguish the young unfamiliar human voice.
“You see!” barked General Sting, pointing aggressively and accusingly at Max. “The enemy has brought reinforcements! Having one monster is bad enough to deal with! What demon have you summoned on us now!”
“Don’t be a fucking moron General Sting!” snarled Princess Penelope. “He has been with us the whole time; how can that be even possible!”
“YOU SAID YOU NEEDED MY HELP URGENTLY WITH YOUR HOMEWORK!” boomed the young tween female voice again. After listening to a voice for a second time, a lightbulb clicked inside Max’s head. He recognised the person that had been invited to their home.
“Ugh Lucy, sis, you’re not supposed to invite your friends over!” muttered Max angrily.
“You see, he knows who she is!” yelled General Sting, pointing at him.
“Actually, who is that human Max, do you know her?” inquired Princess Penelope.
Before Max could answer, Princess Penelope said again “You know what, lets climb a grass blade to get a better view of this mysterious human”.
Hoisting Max onto her back she replied to him “Max since you are injured and can’t walk, you can ride on my back. Don’t worry that I am a girl, I am a lot stronger than you think” she winked at him.
Due to the tiny, clawed grooves lining their appendages, ants made excellent climbers, being able to scale almost any directly vertical surface due to the ability of their tiny sharp claws to dig into the vertical surface, creating hundreds of tiny hooks and ensuring that they don’t slide downwards. Within less than a minute all the ants had scaled a grass blade the size of a 50m Eucalyptus tree to the top and looked across the green lawn, towards the backyard concrete pergola.
Their eyes widened with shock and surprise as the back sliding door slid open to reveal a mysterious, shadowy female human figure.
It wasn’t Lucy.