Princess Penelope, Max Firewall, General Sting, and the rest of the soldiers cocked their heads in fearful curiosity from the top of their perches and narrowed their eyes to observe the enormous figure which was another 11-year-old tween girl that had just opened the glass sliding back door and stepped out onto the backyard concrete pergola.

The girl was a human none of the ants had ever laid eyes on before and had never set foot in the backyard or the Firewall residence before.

The girl was also in her blue and white chequered school uniform dress and white school-socked feet with her black hair styled in twin braids with bright red bows tied at the base of the triangular cone-tipped ends. She had a medium brown reddish skin complexion and piercing dark brown eyes with her resembling a South Asian appearance.

This girl’s name was Divya Bandaranayake.

Divya Bandaranayake and Lucy Firewall had been best friends since she was 7 years old. Many had described the 2 friends as inseparable, doing everything together from reading books, to tea parties, doing almost all their group school assignments as partners and until recently always hung out together at recess. Despite being such close friends, Divya had never been invited to her best friend’s house before.

Divya was the Australian-born child of Sri Lankan Singhalese parents who had immigrated to Melbourne, Australia 3 months before she was born. Her mother had tragically been killed in a violent carjacking, rape, and murder when she was only 18 months old, leaving her an only child. Since her father was so grief-stricken by his wife’s death, he had refused to re-marry any other woman, leaving her lonely and unable to make many friends due to the lack of social contact with her would-be siblings of kids similar to her age. In fact, before she met Lucy, Divya had never had any friends or close contact with anyone other than her own single father who only had each other. Lucy was almost like a sister to her.

Despite being best friends, they had some very clear differences.

While Lucy was absolutely shit in maths, who always got E’s and F’s, Divya was a child genius, studious and what many others would call a nerd, always excelling in all the core subjects, especially maths. The girl had never gotten below an A for all her maths tests and was quite literally the smartest girl in Grade 5 with no other girl even coming close to matching her grade point average. This gave Lucy an advantage due to having such a close amicable relationship, her best friend Divya had offered to tutor her in maths for free in order to get her grades up for maths and stop her from getting repeatedly scolded and punished by her mother for her shameful and shocking grades.

Divya hadn’t exactly started tutoring Lucy yet since she was too busy admiring the spaciousness and wealth of the Firewall residence which was so much more extravagant than her own. Darting her pupils around in her eye sockets and sweeping her glance across the backyard, she took in the breathtaking sights. These sights consisted of a green lawn with a row of flowers and colourful shrubs lining the left side of the lawn, a vegetable patch growing carrots, lettuce, and a range of other vegetables on the right-hand side and finally a large cherry tree, orange tree and medium-sized eucalyptus tree lining the back lining of the green lawn. On the left-hand side next to the flower and shrub patch also lay the gravel walkway which stretched around the side of the house towards the side garage door.  

“This is quite the big lovely spacious backyard you got here girl!” gasped Divya in awe as she stood with her hands on her hips, clutching an Oreo cookie in her right hand and moving her pupils around to observe her surroundings. “It is almost like the botanical gardens!”

One more detail about Divya is that she had particularly very sharp eyes.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she spotted a few tiny black shapes scuttering around near the edges of the backyard concrete pergola. Curious she took a few gingerly soft steps forward in her white school-socked feet and crouched down in a squatting position to get a better view of the tiny creatures crawling around, much to Max and the rest of the ants’ horror. They were utterly helpless and could do nothing but shake and hyperventilate in absolute fear as another enormous human approached another group of Harvester ants who had once again defied the Queen’s orders and once again illegally crossed the barrier into no-man’s land. Judging by the past experiences, the ants had with the other human girl in the past they braced themselves for the worst and closed their eyes and looked away, not wanting to look at another perceived violent gruesome spectacle.

Divya crouched down, with her face looming less than a metre above the ants, casting a dark shadow over them.

“Are those ants?” she inquired with the corners of her lips twitching upwards into a smile.

Meanwhile……….

“Ok Footstool, stop jumping around!” ordered Lucy as she tried to keep the energetic golden retriever pup still and stop him yipping, yapping, barking, and jumping around. “You will get your food in a minute!”

Lucy Firewall was in the kitchen area, pulling out all the bottom cupboard doors, drawers and pantry doors trying to find Footstool’s favourite kibble since it was almost afternoon teatime. The naive puppy however didn’t seem to understand that food didn’t just magically appear in the silver-coloured dog bowl and required some preparation and as a result, was yapping and jumping around like a manic.

“Oh, finally…” sighed Lucy as she spied a yellow packet of Pedigree Puppy Chicken and Milk dog food located in the left back corner of the bottom pantry cupboard next to some uncooked spaghetti and pasta packets. “Thank fucking god….”

Usually, her brother would help her with the heavy lifting but since she assumed that he was in his room busy with something she decided to do this chore all by herself, struggling to lift and heave the 5 kg yellow plastic bag onto the black kitchen countertop near the sink. Crouching back down she rummaged around in the bottom pantry cupboard once again and snatched the big sharp metal scissors and cut a slit in the top left corner of the Pedigree yellow plastic bag packet to create an opening in the bag to pour the contents out.

“Some little doggy is a little bit too fucking eager to scoff themselves full of kibble!” giggled Lucy as she nudged the named plated silver dog bowl across the white tiled kitchen floor to right next to the brown wooden dining table, gripping the edge of the dog bowl with her white painted toes to drag it across the floor.

“Okay boy, just give me some fucking space so I can pour it for you!” laughed Lucy as she tried using frantic hand gestures to keep her beloved over-excited puppy from jumping up and down with his front paws, fawning all over the front of her school dress. Finally, though he got the message and calmed down enough for his mistress to pour about 100 grams of chunky kibble into his bowl, tongue hanging out of his mouth, drooling at the sight of delicious food.

“Damn you must have been really fucking hungry!” giggled Lucy as she watched Footstool devour his meal, shoving large mouthfuls of food into his jaws and wolfing it down. Leaving him to enjoy his meal she then glanced at a half-eaten Oreo cookie packet on the dining table which she had taken out of the fridge to share with her best friend and potential tutor Divya.

“There are still some more Oreos left if you want Divya!” called out Lucy to her best friend who was standing outside in the backyard concrete pergola.

“Yeah, I will be inside in a sec, just playing around a bit!” replied Divya. 

Lucy then turned her attention to her toes in which the white nail polish was starting to peel off and cracked patterns and splotches in the paintwork were beginning to be noticed. Lucy frowned and wiggled her toes.

“My little guppies need repainting...” she stated, quickly hopping out of the room, and dashing back upstairs to retrieve her bottle of white nail polish which was sitting on her study table.

Meanwhile……

“Oh, my fucking gosh!” grimaced General Sting, closing his eyes and shielding his face in his feelers. “I can’t watch this, it’s too horrible!”

The other soldiers, terrified out of their wits and shaking in absolute fear also covered their tearful eyes into their feelers from the tops of their perches from adjacent grass blades. Around 3 to 5 ants were perched on each grass blade which were directly in the vicinity and next to each other. This meant that Princess Penelope, Max Firewall and General Sting were perched on one grass blade while the remaining soldiers were perched from directly adjacent grass blades surrounding them, around 5 to 6 surrounding grass blades.

All the ants shuddered as tears trickled down their faces as the giant South Asian girl crouched closer and closer to the harvester ants on the backyard concrete pergola and even began reaching out with her giant hands. They could not bear to watch another gruesome massacre of their comrades.

But instead of a cruel, sadistic squishing massacre something very different happened……….

“Awwwww you guys look so cute and adorable!” cooed Divya. “You must be hungry! Don’t worry I have something for you….”

Divya then proceeded to pull out her Oreo cookie and break off a few tiny pieces and then grind them into black crumbs and specs of white cream goo using her pointer finger and thumb. Very gently lowering her right hand she dropped the sugary treat directly in front of the stunned harvester ants.

Princess Penelope gasped in shock and her pupils dilated as she couldn’t fathom the sight that was taking place in front of her eyes.

“Fuck me……” she gasped. “My hypothesis was right all along….”

“What….” snarled General Sting opening his eyes and narrowing his vision on the giant girl in front of him. What he saw utterly shocked him to his core. Here was a human, not sadistically killing ants for sport like he had thought of all humans for so long but instead was a child who was treating ants with a degree of dignity and respect. Almost as if she thought their lives were worth sparing….

“Impossible!” growled General Sting.

“I think you owe me an apology!” smirked Princess Penelope proudly, putting her fellers on her nodes and turning her head around 180 degrees to face him. The joints in an ant’s exoskeleton were a lot more flexible, making them a lot more manoeuvrable.

“Mmmmm” tisked the Princess. “It is almost as if humans are individuals with different traits and personalities and not a hivemind like you had lectured me for so long! It is almost like different humans behave differently like there are good humans and bad humans!”

“Whatever!” angrily retorted General Sting. “One nice human does not mean the majority of humans are good! It’s like a needle in a haystack! Better to be safe than sorry!”

Meanwhile, the Harvester ants couldn’t believe their luck. Initially expecting a violent death from a cruel sadistic goddess, instead, they had been gifted by a gentle giantess who was rewarding them with enough food to last several weeks. As more Oreo crumbs and white cream blobs were deposited on the concrete ground around them, more harvester ants started gathering around Divya to lap up the rewards.

Many harvester ants looked at her enormous white socked feet which were the size of 2 ocean cruise liners, were situated on the balls on her feet and were pointing outwards. Slowly they began looking upwards to her blue and white chequered school uniform dress and finally her enormous moon-sized head with her black hair neatly platted in twin braids and her metropolitan-sized dark brown eyes looking down on them with delight and her lips plushed into a wide semi-circle closed smile. It wasn’t a cruel menacingly smile and look of evil however, it was a nurturing smile a mother or carer might make when looking after the vulnerable. Behind her enormous brown face lay the galvanised iron ceiling of the backyard concrete pergola with rows of grates lining across its surface.

Max Firewall was also surprised by the current encounter as he sat and watched from Princess Penelope’s back, clearly expecting her to treat bugs just like his sister. ‘How can two best friends be so alike and so different at the same time?’

 Divya Bandaranayake was quite the adorable little sweetheart who had been raised as a peaceful non-violent pacifist her entire life towards all living creatures. She loved animals, even the widely perceived non-cute ones and ones many people called gross and disgusting and the tiny little ones that grovelled at people’s feet and were often overlooked as too insignificant to be of any concern. Her love of animals had motivated her to pursue a degree in veterinary science when she grew up and also follow a strict vegetarian diet since she was 3 years old to minimise as much cruel suffering to animals as possible. She had decided to do this specifically after learning about the cruelty and horrors that happened inside the abattoirs and slaughterhouses. Divya refused to eat any red meat including beef, lamb, chicken as well as fish, shrimp, and lobster, basically any body part that came from a living creature.

Divya’s immense respect for the sanity of life was due to the fact both she and her father were both devoted Theravada Buddhists, which was the official and dominant religion in her parent’s home country of Sri Lanka. One particular core aspect of Theravada Buddhism was the concept of rebirth which believed that souls were reborn or reincarnated into the body of another living creature after death. This theory also known as rebirth or reincarnation believed souls were transported once their old body had died into a new body that had just been born with the memory slate wiped clean 99.99% of the time so the soul would have no recollection of its previous life. This cycle would continue onwards in a never-ending cycle unless exceptionally spiritual beings such as Lord Buddha himself were able to break this cycle and enter the blissful state known as Nirvana.

Now the reborn body didn’t necessarily have to be human, and a previously human soul could easily be reincarnated into a mighty blue whale or a tiny ant based on karma, which determined what type of creature a soul would be reincarnated into, based on all the good and bad things a person had done in life. This was also partially a big motivator for Divya’s immense love and care for animals since she believed her dead ancestors, friends or family members could possibly be reincarnated as some of the ants grovelling at her socked feet.

“Ok, who wants seconds!” giggled Divya, extending her fingertip which had a few black crumbs and gently lowering it on the ground. Since the harvester ants had essentially calmed down and lost their fear, some of them were even brave and trusting enough to crawl and hoist themselves on her fingertip, carefully treading to avoid trapping their feet into her fingerprint grooves which were as deep as small potholes.

“Hehehe that tickles!” giggled Divya. “Let me raise you guys to my eye level so I can take a better look at you…”

Since ants had tiny, clawed grooves lining their appendages, they weren’t worried about falling down at all since they could easily sink their grip into her skin. Divya’s skin was thick enough so that it wasn’t painful, but it was still sensitive enough to trigger her nerve endings in a slightly ticklish way.

The harvester ants stabilised themselves on the grooved fingertip surface and began to scoff themselves full of cake-sized black crumbs as the fingertip surface gradually began to lift itself off the ground like an automatic mechanical viewing platform would rise slowly inside the tower. The harvester ants gasped in surprise as they saw a spectacular view they had never seen before since they had never been this far up off the ground.

For so long the harvester ants thought the backyard grass was their entire world, with this dense green foliage being so expansive, it was like the entire Amazon rainforest. However now at the height of 40 mount Everests, they could now see that the world was so much bigger than that. Beyond the grass jungle lay the rows of even larger enormous plants, some even taller than the human herself, separate sections of brown soiled areas containing a different kind of even stranger, larger more exotic shaped plants, and an even more sinister no man’s land, even longer and more dangerous than the one the queen had forbidden to enter, where its lifeless grey rocky exposed surface winded its way on their left-hand side forever from their perspective like it was never-ending. Surrounding all of this was an enormous wooden fence barrier and beyond that, they could see the start of another human nest and more gigantic greenery foliage. The harvester ants now understood that their current perception of the world consisted of only a handful of sand taken out of a golden yellow beach. It certainly was a big wide world.

Turning their head around they then saw the giant face of the human child, her face so large it was the size of the moon with eyes as big as cities and her smile now showed rows of sharp white incisor teeth the size of buildings and the corners of her mouth forming slight dimples. However, the harvester ants knew now that this human was different and that no harm would ever come to them.

“You are kinda black and really small….” said Divya inquisitively as she narrowed her eyesight on the little black shapes scuttling on her fingertips. “You must be Lasius niger! Otherwise known as the common black garden ant by its common name.”

Princess Penelope was absolutely awestruck by this display of interest and respect she had never seen towards her kind by a human before. “Oh, oh, oh I have got to film this! Max, can you get my camera in my satchel under my abdomen?”

‘Ants have invented cameras?’ thought Max perplexed as he slid his hands underneath the hem of her grass-stitched dress. Suddenly his hands brushed up against something wet and squishy with folds of sensitive flesh folded inwards in a slit opening structure with white transcalent goo coating the surface.

“Ooooh Max!” moaned Princess Penelope erotically. “That’s quite the sensitive touch you’ve got there!”

“What?!” gasped Max immediately and jerking his hand off and raising his hand to his face. He could see white translucent goo coating his fingers with long white gooey strings stuck between each of his fingers like a spider’s web.

“Umm Max?” Princess Penelope said sheepishly and red-faced. “My satchel is a bit further up my abdomen. You just accidentally stuck your hand inside my vagina…”

“Ewww fucking gross!” squealed Max and began frantically rubbing his gooey-soaked hands against her exoskeleton, trying desperately to wipe the fluid off. “Don’t you ants wear any type of underwear?!”

“Well, my grass-stitched dress only covers my thorax, two nodes and a quarter of my abdomen” replied Princess Penelope. “Ant abdomens are too big, spherical round and rigid to have any tight constricting underwear.”

General Sting was also not too pleased with the fact that a human had just sexually pleased the Princess. Creeping up beside Max he whispered a death threat in his ear just low enough so the Princess wouldn’t hear.

“Careful boy…. Get your grubby little hands off her! Do that again and I swear I will rip your fucking head off….” growled General Sting sinisterly into a fearful Max’s ear.

“Look on the bright side!” laughed Princess Penelope as she pulled the camera out of her satchel. You can tell your lads that you are not a virgin anymore and stuck your hands inside a girl’s pussy!”

“Ugh no thank you!” snorted Max. “I’m not a fucking perverted weirdo freak who is into fucking bestiality!”

Rolling her eyes, Princess Penelope raised the camera to her eye level and switched on the device to begin filming the pleasant encounter the ants were having with the adorable sweetheart Divya.

The harvester ants had gained so much trust in Divya that by this point they were viewing her as a gentle, nurturing mother goddess. Around 5 to 6 harvester ants were perched on her left hand and were treating it as their personal playground with some individuals doing a variety of different activities. One ant was running angular circles around the circular diameter of her brown pointer finger while two other individuals were bouncing around on the creased patterned cream palm, using the stretchy skin of her palm as a sort of trampoline. One other individual was lying across the greyish pink of her nail plate, sunbathing while the final individual was hanging off the sharp long keratin distal edge, upside down, doing sit-ups.

While Divya was cutely giggling and busily preoccupied with her new little friends, an ant mother was screaming out in the backyard green grassy jungle for her missing son who had snuck out of Antopia onto the surface, motivated by morbid curiosity………….

Squirt was a rather foolish child who had repeatedly refused to listen to the majority of adults about how dangerous humans could be, let alone his own mother. Ant children and youths under the age of 20 had been banned from ever visiting the surface or venturing out of the locked chamber halls of Antopia since the outside world was terrifying when you only stood around 5 millimetres tall. Tougher and more severe restrictions had been put on the ant colony population in recent years especially due to the massacres and genocides that happened from the arch enemy human which they had dubbed the ‘demon child’. Now only soldiers and harvester ants were allowed to venture onto the surface for only 2 reasons: to collect food scraps for processing and to defend the colony from relentless attacks from the ‘demon child’ which were only becoming more and more frequent.

Squirt had never seen the outside world before and Antopia, with its bustling metropolis area and multiple transport tunnels and chambers, had been the only world he had ever known. However, he had known that there was a much bigger, thrilling and slightly scarier world that lay outside above the walls of Antopia, just waiting to be explored. He knew this since he and several other ant children had been forced into the bomb shelters multiple times while the demon child continued to rain her attacks from a much bigger scarier realm outside Antopia, raining chunks of soil and grains every time entire chambers and tunnel walls shook violently due to the force being exerted by the demon child.

Humans weren’t really described properly in the ant literature of the textbooks he was given in ant school. Humans were so large, being millions of times larger than them, it was almost impossible to describe their entire bodies and presence with ant explorers often only describing a single body part, such as enormous white teeth, giant fingers and most commonly the gigantic toes, shoes, or feet of humans since these features were the ones that filled the vast majority of their perceptual vision. Ant scientists had attempted to piece together the complete appearance of a human by piecing together different feature descriptions like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. However different human models had been created by different scientists and no one could 100% confirm what a full human truly looked like.

This was Squirt’s ultimate goal: to observe and photograph a human from a distance from several different vantage points and accurately depict a truly remarkable, scientifically accurate human model. He wanted to go down in history as the first ant explorer to accurately depict the appearance of the human body, The scientific community would adore him for decades and might even imprint his legacy in the hall of fame.

Due to the actions of a stupid drunk ant guard who had gotten too intoxicated on sugar whiskey while on the job, he had left the tunnel gate unlocked which allowed access to the exit tunnel onto the surface. This had allowed him the perfect opportunity to sneak past the guard for the first time in his life and take his first steps onto the surface.

Unfortunately for him, his sharp-eyed mother had quickly realised that her 11-year-old son was missing. Seeing the drunk ant guard sleeping and the gate unlocked she quickly put the pieces together. She screamed and quickly alerted the soldier search party, and they quickly ran out onto the surface to find him with the drunk guard arrested and swiftly fired for his negligence.

“WOW!” gasped Squirt as he wandered through the dense grass Amazonian jungle with dozens of towering green stalk plants surrounding him in all directions in very high density. Raising the camera (which was attached to a lanyard wrapped around his neck) to his eye level he took a picture of the top of the plants which had no branches and no canopy, just a single stem ending in a triangular point.

“I bet none of my friends back home have ever seen this before…” he chuckled to himself.

Continuing his journey through the backyard grass he continued snapping pictures and clicking his camera at the amazing sights. His favourite sightseeing features were the even more enormous, towering plants with colourful canopies of yellow, red, blue, and violet. Looking closer he saw the leaves sprouting out in a sun-star-shaped structure with a brownish centre which he now realised were called flowers. Now he had seen them up close and personal.

“This must be the nectar that is harvested to make sugar whiskey…” he said to himself. He cheekily smiled at the time he had stolen a bottle of sugar whiskey from his father’s cabinet and taken a sip to celebrate his first steps into adolescence. He was going to start puberty in less than a year. Oh, he had gotten in so much trouble for that….

As Squirt continued his journey he came across a giant concrete wall, around 50 feet high from his perspective towering into the sky above. The grass Amazonian jungle had now abruptly ended and fresh sunlight was streaming in into a small clearing between the concrete wall and the grass.

Squirt had now reached the edge of the concrete backyard pergola. No man’s land was just one climb away…………

‘I wonder what’s up there on the other side’ thought Squirt to himself. Having never ever even been told about no man’s land before since the Queen and the Antopia government had never ever even fathomed the idea that a child could escape onto the surface. This poor naive soul had no idea what was in store for him and how dangerous this territory could be.

Positioning himself and sinking his clawed grippers lining his feelers into the concrete wall he began to climb………….

Meanwhile……

“There you are!” exclaimed Lucy, picking up a bottle of white nail polish from her study table, next to a laptop and open maths exercise book on the left-hand side. Giving a quick glance at her toes, she quickly realised that she was missing one final item for her at home, do-it-yourself pedicure. Rummaging through her drawers inside her study desk, she pulled out a stack of working-out papers, a protractor, used pens and a bunch of other useless hoarded junk until she found exactly what she was looking for.

“Gotcha you little shit!” sneered Lucy as she gripped a green toy soldier holding a rifle, about three-quarters the length of her pointer finger. Narrowing her eyes, she observed a microscopic blob of toe jam the size of a dandruff spec glued to the top of his helmet.

Lucy then looked down at her partially painted white toes and flexed and cracked them at the joints, giggling to herself. A few months ago, unable to find a proper separator to use when painting her toes, she had decided to nick a couple of toy soldiers from her brother’s toy soldier bucket buried inside his closet. Her brother would kill her if he ever found out what humiliating use, they were being used for now, but she figured that since he hadn’t played with them in several years, was so pre-occupied with schoolwork and pursuing a music career and had almost grown up, now he didn’t need them anymore. What he didn’t know didn’t kill him and she thought to herself that it was better to put them to some use than no use at all. A girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.

“Time for you little buddy to help a girl be a girl!” she snickered to herself.

Meanwhile….

“Okay guys restaurant is closed!” stated Divya as she lowered the 6 harvester ants back down on the floor. Satisfied with their meal and playtime the 6 workers jumped off her palm happily.

Another young intrepid explorer had also made his way onto the scene…….

“Un-fucking believable!” gasped Squirt as he trudged away from the edge of the concrete pergola and towards an enormous set of feet that seemed to be covered in white fabric skin. Glancing upwards he saw an enormous creature towering 50 mount Everests above all of them, casting a shadow so large the surrounding area was cast in a cloudily lit state for several kilometres. The head of this human was so far above he couldn’t even properly make out her features, just an enormous brown sphere blotting out most of the sun. Squinting his eyes, he could make out part of her mouth, one partially viewable eyeball and one long platted hair braid stretching down to her shoulders with a red bow the size of a skyscraper to him and the braid so long it was 10 times the length of the transporter tunnels. 

“Now I understand why the explorers had such a hard time describing humans….” he gasped.

Suddenly his expedition was interrupted by a cold hard angry voice piercing the air.

“HEY, YOU BOY!” barked a furious voice.

Startled out of his wits, Squirt swung his head around to see the fuming leader of the harvester ants walking towards him with his thorax pumped out and eyes bulging out of his eye sockets. Two harvester ant workers were also trailing behind him.  

“How did you get here?” remarked one of the workers.

“He’s not even 20!” barked another.

Squirt was horrified. Ironically not at the harvester ants but at the possibility of his mother finding out about what he had done. Not wanting to take his chances he bolted in the opposite direction.

“HEY, YOU! STOP RIGHT THERE!” yelled the leader of the harvester ants.

Other harvester ants had also been alerted to the presence of Squirt by now and turned their heads around to look at all the yelling and commotion.

They were so shocked to see an 11-year-old tween ant on the surface that they just stood and sat there with their mandibles opened outwards in shock.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” screamed the leader of the harvester ants as Squirt ducked and weaved between the frozen, dumbfounded workers.

“Don’t just stand there like a bunch of retards!” he snarled. “SOMEBODY STOP HIM!”

Broken out of their shocked trance by their leader’s furious orders the harvester ants rose to their feet but by now Squirt was already well beyond their grasp, having travelled several hundred meters away from the large group of workers gathered and the pile of Oreo crumbs. He was quite fast for a kid.

Then they realised what two giant behemoths he was heading towards….

“HOLY SHIT! STOP! STOP! STOP!” the workers screamed at the top of their lungs. “JUST FUCKING STOP!”

Squirt paid no attention to their words as he reached the base of some sort of a giant white rock, the size of an ocean cruiser. So desperate was he to get away from his punishment that he didn’t even stop to check what this rock actually was.

“We not going to hurt you!” warned one of the workers

“We are not even going to punish you immediately!” chimed another.

“The strong and weak can’t keep close company!” piped the third one.

“WE ARE TRYING TO FUCKING SAVE YOU!” screamed the fourth one.

‘What are they babbling on about?’ thought Squirt and he sunk his clawed appendages into the white surface and began to climb.

The ground surface of this white rock had a very strange texture. It was very elastic and stretchy, almost like a bouncy castle with some areas being very unstable, almost like the underground was hollow underneath. However other much larger areas were a lot more solid, and they smelled a bit funny, like the stench of salt and vinegar and the surface had a slightly moist texture.

Suddenly the ground wobbled slightly, and Squirt lost his balance, falling onto his abdomen. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement just under the white surface like giant earthworms were moving just under the surface.

Suddenly it clicked into place in his mind and realised what the workers had tried to warn him about. He just realised that he had made the dumbest, most stupidest mistake of his life.

In his mad scramble to get away from the workers, he had accidentally climbed onto Divya’s white-socked foot.

‘I have to jump off’ he trembled to himself and tried to take another step. However, shockingly when he tried to move his leg it wouldn’t detach itself from the fabric and stretched from the surface until it elastically snapped back into place. Sweaty and anxious he tried all the other legs which had exactly the same result.

The wobbling had put Squirt in the area where the sock fabric was at its thinnest, right between the solid areas where Divya’s big toe and second toe rested underneath. Here the threads spread much further apart than the rest of the sock causing the tiny, clawed grooves of his appendages to be snagged right inside the deepest threads.

He was well and truly stuck……

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he squealed. “This can’t be happening. I am such a fucking retard…..” he moaned to himself.

Desperately he tried everything; sprinting, tugging, pulling using strength. But with every attempt, his body just elastically bounded back into place.

“Noooo….” he moaned, holding his head in his feelers.   

In a twist of fate, more fuel was added to the fire……

The white sock fabric ground started shaking, this time more violently with Divya’s big and second toes twisting and writhing just under the fabric surface like they were giant earthworms trying to break the earth’s crust. Squirt was thrown like a paddle ball on a string attached to a racket, being repeatedly jostled up and down like he was on a roller coaster.

“I think I am going to be sick” groaned Squirt as he felt his lunch coming up. “Oh no, I am sick…”

“BLAAGHHH!!!” vomited Squirt all over the white socked surface. As he vomited the shaking intensified and now the threads had been spread out so far out it was like wire mesh. Now he could see the part of the dark cream-coloured toenail plate peeking out from underneath, the light brown skin surrounding it and the razor-sharp distal toenail, pushing up against the edge of the white sock with all its force, pushing the elasticity of the sock threads to their limit.

Twang!

Squirt swung his head around in horror to witness a terrifying scene. A long sock thread on the edge had actually snapped in half, being sliced in half by Divya’s long sharp toenail. Squirt heard more horrible sounds as smaller threads were also splitting as Divya’s sharp toenails kept wiggling under the white fabric sock surface. Squirt knew that if he didn’t detach himself soon, he was going to be sliced in half like a cucumber.

“Somebody, get me out of here!” he wailed.

Divya frowned as she wiggled her toes inside her white socks vigorously, so frequently rubbing against the fabric surface that she could see the faint outline of her toenails as the threads stretched and spread out.

“God, I hate these fucking socks!” complained Divya. “They are so itchy and feel like tissue paper! Why does dad have to be such a cheapskate who buys the cheapest, the most shittiest brand available?”

Once again Divya’s sharp eyes and colour coordination were about to save Squirt’s life.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw another tiny, black dot right in between her big toe and second toe fabric area. Because of his black body colour, he stuck out against the white surface like a sore thumb.

“Oh my god….” gasped Divya as she lowered her head downwards and held her hands up to her gaping open mouth.

Meanwhile….

“Max, I hope you’re not mad!” called out Lucy outside Max’s bedroom. “I invited a study buddy over to help me with homework!”

“Max?” she frowned.

“You’re a 16-year-old, year 10 student. I know maths isn’t your strong suit but surely you must know year 5 maths better than us, I mean you have done it all before!”

There was no response from outside his fully closed bedroom door.

“Wow?!” snarled Lucy angrily. “Is this what you are giving me? The fucking silent treatment!”

Scoffing and wrinkling her nose, she turned her head away and stomped away angrily.

‘He’s probably playing his stupid online video games on his computer with his weirdo friends online’ she angrily thought to herself.

Meanwhile…….

“Gosh……” stammered Divya, her lip trembling. “I am so sorry…..If I had known you were there…” she stuttered.

To her absolute horror, she saw a minuscule runty little ant, half the size of the other ones she had played with earlier, twitching and wiggling with slight frantic movements in the sock area between her big and second toes. However, given the fact that the poor creature wasn’t moving anywhere, she quickly deduced that he was stuck. It was an animal that looked like it was in pain and suffering and she hated any animal suffering, especially one that was suffering because of involuntary actions she was doing. It made her feel so ashamed.   

Very slowly and gently she extended her hand outwards with a single pointer finger extended outwards towards her right sock area between her big and second toes.

“I think you are stuck, little guy. Let me help you out, ok?” gently whispered Divya in a tone that would often be used for a wounded animal so as to not frighten or alarm them.

“I promise I won’t hurt you….”  she whispered with teary eyes as she extended a fingernail outward.

Squirt looked up in horror to see a dark shadow cast over him and the sun blotted out by an enormous brown appendage around the size of a suburb with 4 long worm-like structures and a giant thumb, with the worm structure being as long as an apartment tower. One of these worm-like structures was reaching out to him with a razor-sharp distal nail edge.

“Holy fuck!” he gasped. “No! No! No!”

He had heard horror stories in the past from the adults back home around him about a cruel demon child human who toyed with and killed ants for her own sick amusement. Soft comforting words meant nothing to him since he knew humans were very cunning and deceptive creatures which were part of the reason, they were so cruel.  He didn’t know if it was this human since 90% of the adults, he knew never ventured onto the surface so no proper descriptions were ever relayed back to him, but he did not want to find out.

However, his situation made him like a sitting duck.

With tears trickling down his face, he closed his eyes and braced himself, thinking her finger was surely going to squish him to a pulp. ‘Not like this….” he cried to himself.

But then something totally unexpected happened, something he never expected in a million years….

Hearing sharp snapping sounds around in surprise, Squirt spun his head around in surprise and his pupils dilated in shock. Divya’s finger was not squishing him, in fact, her long razor-sharp fingernail was actually precisely cutting the threads at strategic points.

She was helping him escape.

Within 10 to 15 seconds Squirt could move his legs freely as the threads frayed and released their grip. Overjoyed, he jumped up and down in happiness.

 Divya gave a sympathetic smile as she saw the runty little ant crawling on her sock freely.

“If you want you can climb up onto my finger” she cooed, extending her fingertip like a platform onto her sock directly in front of Squirt. “I have a special treat for you….”

Squirt didn’t really know why he did it, but now he had gained a little bit of trust to wander onto the cushiony surface of her fingertip.

Clutching onto the pothole deep fingertip patterned grooves using his limbs to stabilise himself, he gasped as her finger slowly raised itself off the ground like an automatic mechanical viewing platform inside a tower, revealing a sight that the adult harvester ants would have seen earlier in the day.  The Amazonian backyard grass green jungle, the towering plants that reached up to heaven, the different types of plant terrain surrounding the grass and winding gravel pathway that stretched all the way around like a never-ending pathway; never before had he expected the world to be so huge. 

Turning his head around he was greeted by a gigantic brown face taking up all of his perpetual vision, her face so wide that it stretched towards a horizon in both directions.  He saw 2  metropolitan-sized brown pupils studying him closely, two black pigtails sprouting from the sides of her head touching her shoulders and a nose with nostrils so large they were the diameter of the transporter tunnels, sucking litres of air in and out with every breath she took, creating a chilly windy draft.

The fear inside him returned when her closed lips parted themselves apart to reveal two rows of incredibly powerful incisor and molar white teeth, so large they could shred and grind the entire ant city centre and their skyscraper buildings to dust and rubble. Behind her ginormous teeth, an incredibly powerful red tongue was dancing and flickering just behind her teeth with the sneak preview of a maw so large it could fit the entire Antopia city comfortably inside and a tongue so wide and long the city’s entire population could fit on it alone. His fear intensified when her tongue darted out and licked the top of her lip, coating it with a layer of saliva.

“Oh no she’s going to eat me!” he cried.

Divya’s thumb on her free hand then moved inside her maw, making it almost look like she was sucking her thumb. Parting her mouth fully wide open, she used the sharp fingernail on her thumb to slide in between the grime lines between 2 of her teeth and began picking and prodding, trying to flick out whatever gunk was stuck in between them.

“What?” gasped Squirt, completely baffled by what she was doing.

Finally, she got what she wanted, pulling out a slobbery saliva covered Oreo crumb that was stuck in between two of her teeth inside her mouth, her thumb now coated in spit with the Oreo crumb resting in a small pool of spit and enzymes. Using her pinkie finger on her free hand, she gently tapped her thumb and pinkie together, absorbing and transferring the excess spit to her pinkie finger.

Very carefully she padded her thumb onto the lower section of her pointer finger on her other hand where Squirt was resting just in front of it. Squirt gasped as he could actually feel the air resistance and wind generated from the movement of her thumb push up against him. A jumbo jet-sized thumb landed just metres in front of him with a height of 4 stories and a razor-sharp distal edge.

“Sorry if it’s a little bit slobbery and mushy” stated Divya as she deposited the Oreo crumb right in front of him. “But hey ants eat food scraps anyway, right? No offence”

Divya didn’t really understand why she talked to ants let alone any other animals like they were people, but she always had the feeling that even if they couldn’t respond back, they could understand what she was saying…….

Squirt’s stomach growled loudly. He clutched his stomach and sighed; he hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch.

“Beggars can’t be choosers I guess” he sighed as he slowly approached the soggy Oreo crumb around the size of a basketball in front of him.

Sinking his feelers into the black mush, he scooped up some and took a bite.

It was delicious.

He was shocked by how tasty it was, it was the best thing he had ever tasted!

Frantically scooping up and tearing up more bite-sized chunks with his mandibles and began wolfing down the sugary treat in order to gain that tasty pleasure and sensation. If this was how partly digested, regurgitated Oreo biscuit tasted like, he couldn’t fathom to think how tasty the real untampered version would be.

Within 2 minutes he had scoffed the whole thing, down to the very last morsel.

Lying on his back, he rubbed his swollen belly and gave a satisfied burp.

Divya snickered as she saw the ant consume the entire portion of her sugary treat gift.

“Damn you must have been really fucking hungry!” she giggled

Squirt looked up into the face of this human girl, surely this couldn’t be the monster demon child all the adults were warning him about.

“Oh, what am I doing out here?! I am 11 years old, almost turning 12 soon!” she sighed. “I can’t keep playing around and wasting time like this!”

Squirt mandibles dropped open in surprise and shock. ’11 years old!’ he thought to himself. ‘That’s the same age as me!’

So, this human was a kid just like him who hadn’t fully grown up yet. If this was how large a human kid just like him was, he wondered how big the adults got. Probably double her size just like the adults in his life were double his size.

‘We really are specs of dust’ he thought to himself. And yet this young kid treated his life with almost an amount of sincere respect.

“Okay, I have to go now, ok?” Divya said to Squirt. “I am just going to put you in the grass, okay?”

Squirt spun his head around to where his destination was as he saw Divya’s pointer finger approaching the top of a grass blade that was sprouting just next to the concrete edge of the backyard pergola. Approaching the grass blade just close enough so that Squirt could reach out and touch it, she gave one final request.

“Okay you can go back home little guy” she smiled.

Squirt jumped off her pointer finger and on top of the grass blade, the ground slightly wobbling underneath as he made his transition.

Looking back, he saw Divya smiling and beaming happily and blew an air kiss at him which made Squirt blush red with embarrassment. Touched by how lovingly she had treated him he waved all 4 of his arms around in a big circle to wave goodbye.

“Okay bye now,” said Divya as she waved her fingers cutely and padded in her socked feet towards the backyard glass sliding door, being very careful not to tread on and step on any of the harvester ants still crawling around on the concrete pergola.  

“I’m heading back inside now….”  she sighed as she opened the sliding glass door and went back inside.

Squirt slid down the thick green trunk of the grass blade like a fireman’s pole, using the vertical grooves that ran parallel to each other to create a smooth descent onto the ground below, thrilled with the adventure he had today. He couldn’t wait to boast to all his friends at school about what had happened to him and the spoils of the rewards. His happiness was short-lived however when he saw his very angry and trembling mother waiting for him at the base of the trunk of the very green grass blade surrounded by several members of a soldier search party.

His mother was an older-looking woman, around 35 to 40 years old and was wearing a grass-woven bonnet on her head with her antennae peeking out the bottom sides of her bonnet and a plain grass-stitched dress with brown dots.

“Mum!” gasped Squirt. “How did you manage to find me?”

“Squirt!” she cried with tears trickling down her face and throwing her 4 arms around him, embracing him in a tight hug. “My baby!”

“What you did son was momentarily stupid” lectured sternly one of the search party members.

“Beyond stupid” added another.

“Are you hurt?!” sobbed his mother with angry tears as she looked at him. “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!”

“Look at the amount of emotional pain you caused your mother because of your arrogance” lectured the leader of the search party.

“DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY ANTS ARE KILLED ON THE SURFACE EVERY DAY?!” she shrieked. “YOU STUPID BOY, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!”

Squirt was rather annoyed that the search party members were inserting their big noses (figuratively speaking) into his and his mother’s private conversation.

“Why don’t you mind your own business” he replied back to the search party angrily.

“It became our business boy because your mother begged us to come find you!” retorted the leader

General Sting, the rest of the soldiers, Max and Princess Penelope who had just finished filming heard a loud commotion not far from where they were perched at the top of the grass blade, down on the ground below a few hundred metres away.

“What’s with all the shouting?” questioned Princess Penelope. “What’s going on?”

“Yeah, I think we better take a look at that…” replied General Sting, signalling all his men perched on the top of their grass blades to start heading back down onto the ground.

Meanwhile….

“What took you so long?” asked Lucy as she lay seated at the dining table next to the backyard glass sliding door as she saw Divya stroll in, brushing Oreo crumbs, soil, and dirt off the front of her school dress. Bunching up her long ginger red hair towards the top back of her head, Lucy tied up her hair in a tight long ponytail using a black hair tie.

“Oh, nothing I just got a bit carried away and distracted playing around a bit” replied Divya sheepishly, her face turning red with embarrassment.

“Playing with what?! The dirt!” laughed Lucy.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter anyway,” said Divya, waving her hand in dismissal.

Divya then approached her blue school bag with green straps and a kangaroo and emu clutching a royal staff printed on the front pocket which lay resting against one of the legs. Unzipping the main, largest storage area, she pulled out her own maths exercise book, a pencil case and several old test papers and printed notes. Gripping the stack of study materials, she placed it directly in front of Lucy on the dining table.

“You are so lucky I live just a few blocks down the street, and I was able to run over within 5 minutes as soon as you called” boasted Divya. “With my help, you will be getting A+’s in no time!”

“Come on Divya you know how shit I am in maths…” sighed Lucy. “I highly doubt that!”

“Well, it’s a good thing your best friend is an absolute maths viz who was awarded the highest honour trophy for outstanding academic excellence in the whole year level!” beamed Divya. “Since you are one of my best friends consider my tutoring services completely free of charge!”

Lucy gave a closed smile at her friends’ generosity. “Thanks, Divya for taking the time to help me out, I really appreciate it,” she said.

Divya craned her neck and stood on her socked tippy toes, bobbing her head like a flamingo, as if trying to look for someone else.

“Don’t you have a 16-year-old brother?” Divya asked. “I know maths isn’t Max’s strong suit, but I really think he could help us, I mean he has probably done all of this before and achieved satisfactory grades!”

“We don’t need him!” scoffed Lucy.

“What?! Why!” asked Divya, completely baffled.  “Having satisfactory grades is better than completely flunking a subject!”

“He’s being a complete asshole!” snarled Lucy. “I called him over to come help us, but he is so preoccupied in his room, probably glued to his screen and completely giving me the cold shoulder!”

“Oh, don’t be too hard on him!” laughed Divya. “It’s not nice to make assumptions about people. He’s 5 years older than us, he’s probably doing something else more important.”

“Whatever!” remarked Lucy sarcastically.

“Now back to the tutoring,” remarked Divya preparing to open up her notes.

“Hold that thought for a moment,” remarked Lucy pulling a toy soldier out of the front pocket of her dress and reaching out for the bottle of white nail polish. Hoisting her left leg up onto the adjacent chair next to her, she bent her knee all the way up to her chest area and craned her neck just over her kneecap. With a satisfying sigh, she cracked all 5 of her partially white toes at the joints, the cracking so loud it sounded like potato chips crunching.

“Just what do you think you are doing?” questioned Divya.

“Giving myself a pedicure, what does it look like?” replied Lucy.

“At a time like this!” replied Divya angrily

“Oh, this won’t take too long!” said Lucy.

“Unbelievable!” groaned Divya. “What a waste of time!”

“Like you would know!” sneered Lucy. “You have never had a pedicure in your entire life!”

With this sarcastic remark, she stuck the head of the toy soldier in between her big and second toes, scrunching her toes slightly together to establish a proper grip. Giggling, she waved her foot around, showing the toy soldier being hung by his head, his head being used to separate the two toes from touching each other.

“I got you!” Lucy snickered.

“Hold on a minute, isn’t that a toy soldier!” gasped Divya. “Where did you get that from?”

“Oh, it’s not mine, it’s my brother’s” replied Lucy. “Well, was my brother’s…”

“Does he know you have it?” questioned Divya.

“Don’t be stupid, of course, he doesn’t….I kind of nicked it!” giggled Lucy. “But it’s ok, he’s a big boy almost becoming a man soon and he hasn’t played with them in years!”

“That’s not the issue here Lucy!” lectured Divya angrily. “You can’t just take people’s stuff without asking. And I highly doubt he would be pleased seeing one of his once favourite toys being used now as a fucking toe pedicure separator. How Degrading!”

“Who are you……My mum?!”  scoffed Lucy sarcastically as she pulled the bottle cap off the white nail polish, revealing the brush underneath. Reaching her right arm over her kneecap, the bristles of the brush made contact with her big toenail plate and began to move up and down in very short strokes, covering up the painted portions of her big toenail plate with a fresh white coat.

When she was finished with her first big toe, she then absentmindedly pulled the toy soldier out and pushed it into the next crevice between her second and third toe, repeating the same process all over again.

In and out. In and out. Within a few minutes, she had fully completed all ten toes, wiggling them with glee as the white nail polish glistened in the afternoon sunlight.

“I have got quite the knack for art, right!” boasted Lucy, wiggling her toes in front of Divya to show her handiwork.

“Yes, yes, yes” replied Divya. “Can we get back to the issue at hand here?”

“Not only does the toy soldier make a good separator…” giggled Lucy. “He also makes a good toe jam scrubber!”

Lucy placed the toy soldier on the table where his head was covered in grey blobs. “Oh, dear maybe I should stop wearing my lucky socks, 5 days in a row. The toe jam really starts to build up!”

Divya wrinkled her nose in disgust and frowned like a sour puss.

“Wanna see?” she snickered picking up and moving the toy soldier closer towards her face.

“Ewww, no, gross get that away from me!” squealed Divya swatting Lucy’s hand holding the toy soldier away from her.

“Why are you even giving yourself a pedicure, your feet are covered by shoes and socks 90% of the time anyway!” retorted Divya. “It’s not like anyone is going to see them.”

“The little critters will!” snickered Lucy, glancing outside the backyard glass sliding door towards the concrete pergola and grass lawn.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” questioned Divya.

“Oh, you wouldn’t get it” replied Lucy, reluctant to tell her best friend about her childish ant homicidal hobby.

“Now can we get started” moaned Divya. “I haven’t got all day!”

 Suddenly they were interrupted by the yapping and barking of an adorable 2-month-old golden retriever puppy and scampering of paws across the wooden floor.

“Oh, what is it now!” moaned Divya.

“Don’t worry Footstool is adorable!” laughed Lucy happily. “You can’t stay mad at him for very long!”

“Footstool?” laughed Divya. “What kind of a weird name is that?!”

“Funny story actually!” giggled Lucy. “When I first got him, he liked cuddling by and licking my feet so much I decided the name suited him perfectly!”

Divya smirked and remarked, “Dogs can be pretty weird sometimes…”

“Oh, here he comes now!” giggled Lucy as Footstool scampered into the room. “Here boy!”

Footstool approached his mistress with his tongue drooling and panting out of his mouth, the nametag on his red collar jingling and tail wagging happily towards where the two girls were seated at the dining table. However, as soon as he saw the unfamiliar other girl, he whimpered and recoiled back a little bit.

“Don’t be shy” cooed Lucy. “Footstool this is my friend Divya. Say hello!”

Hanging his head down he very slowly approached Divya who smiled and reached out her hand very slowly.

“Roll over boy!” encouraged Lucy. “Divya is really quite the angel at heart, she won’t hurt you!”

Footstool wasn’t sure about this new girl, but he trusted his mistress with his life and so rolled over onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly.

“He likes being scratched on his belly” giggled Lucy. “Come on Divya, give it a shot.”

Smiling meekly and nervously, Divya reached out her hand slowly and scratched his belly with her long unpainted fingernails causing Footstool to whine happily.

“Awww I think he likes you” giggled Lucy.

“Awww you’re a cute little puppy aren’t you!” cooed Divya.

Whimpering once again, Footstool rolled and got back up on his feet and trudged out of the room with his tail drooping between his back legs.

“Don’t be offended by that, he’s just really shy when meeting new people” snickered Lucy.

Divya cocked her head slightly and looked at Lucy, giggling.

Suddenly Lucy felt a strong sensation between her legs and groaned. She knew exactly what her body was telling her and crossed her legs and put her hands over her crotch.

“Oh no!” she groaned. “I knew I shouldn’t have drunk 2 cans of solo. I really need to piss! Bad!”

Divya was getting really annoyed at Lucy for constantly delaying their study session with excuses, excuses, and more excuses.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me!” she groaned.

“I promise I will be right back, ok?” said Lucy. “Just wait right there and make yourself comfortable.”

Lucy then jumped to her feet, and clutched her crotch tightly with her hands, slightly wrinkling her school dress and quickly hobbled out of the kitchen area.

“You can make it! You can make it!” she groaned as she quickly hurried towards the toilet.

Divya meanwhile slumped herself on the dining table and held her head on top of her palm.

“For fuck’s sake” she groaned.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The few seconds turned into a few dozen seconds and a few dozen seconds trickled into several minutes as Divya lay slumped in her chair like a banana, staring up at the ceiling, groaning, and rolling her eyes with boredom.

Little did she know that a tiny intruder had snuck into the Firewall residence………

Jack Feeler was an ant who had managed to sneak into the kitchen dining area using the tiny gap under the backyard glass sliding door and crawling over the black plastic lining onto the wooden floor of the household. The ceiling of the gap entrance was very low, only 2 millimetres high which meant Jack had to crawl on all 6 limbs, crouching down in a fashion that his chest area was almost scraping against the ground. This gap was usually completely unnoticed by larger organisms since it was so narrow and small in which minuscule amounts of heat could leave the house, microscopic particles could enter through the natural elements if blown in and barely any other creatures could use it as an entrance. Not even the larger insects such as beetles could use it however it was the perfect size for ants to harvest as a secret entrance.

And Jack Feeler had a perfect reason for using this entrance, he was a man on the run from the authorities of Antopia for a crime he had committed. He certainly had no reason to be on the surface and was looking for any means of escape to get as far away from Antopia as possible.

And let’s just say Jack feeler wasn’t exactly a good person….

Jack Feeler had committed the most heinous and depraved of crimes, the sexual assault of a child. In this case, it was actually 2 children, 2 sisters aged 11 and 14 years old. He remembered drugging the older sister first and raping her while she was unconscious and then later proceeding to tie up and gag the younger sister before masturbating in front of her and ejaculating on her face. These two sisters were meant to be the students he was meant to be teaching as a tutor and instead he had committed something as cruel and depraved as this.

He remembered his trial in front of the queen and her government ministers around 3 months ago like it was yesterday….

3 months earlier….

“Well?” stated the Queen. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“They were just too cute….” he sneered, drooling out of the side of his mouth like he was in an erotic trance. “I just couldn’t help myself!”  

The queen couldn’t believe the filth that was coming out of his mouth. Enraged and fuming with anger she yelled “YOU TRULY HAVE NO REMORSE FOR YOUR ACTIONS AT ALL, DON’T YOU!”

“Nope,” he jeered. “I am not sorry for what I did!”.

This was too much for the Queen who decided he deserved the maximum sentence possible.

“You really deserve the maximum sentence possible” she angrily stated with tears in her eyes since she had a young daughter as well. “I hereby sentence you to death by the Mortein chamber on the 22nd of September 2016. You shall be executed on the stroke of midnight!”

This wiped the smile off Jack Feeler’s face as the reality sunk in for him and he looked up pale-faced and sweating as 7 angry government ministers glared down at him with disgust and rage in their eyes from the top of their high court chairs and tables.

“If it were up to me alone, I would castrate you and chop off your dick and balls right now!” snarled the Queen. “But since this is a diplomatic democracy, I and the 7 other government ministers have decided that this is the more suitable punishment for you.”

After this trial Jack Feeler had been held in solitary confinement at Hell’s gate prison, the largest underground prison chamber in Antopia, reserved for the most dangerous and most violent of Antopia’s criminals. Jack Feeler had to be placed in solitary confinement after other inmates had found out he was a child rapist and had repeatedly tried to murder him numerous times. To ensure that he lived until his execution date they decided to put him in solitary confinement on death row.

However, the Queen, the government and the authorities had underestimated how cunning and manipulative he was. Using illegal earthworm communicating technology he had smuggled into his solitary cell from an illegal stash that the general prisoners had, he had called on a 50ft long earthworm to dig out a long secret elaborate tunnel over the course of 3 months all the way to the surface. It was just in the nick of time as well since the tunnel had only just reached the surface 6 hours before he was due to be executed.

Snapping out of his trance, Jack rubbed his eyes and trudged away from the backyard glass sliding door and across the wooden floor. He had never anticipated actually entering the human nest, but he knew the authorities were too much of pussies in his eyes to ever enter a place so dangerous. And that is what made this place a perfect cover.

However, he had never anticipated a human being right here right now……

Craning his neck, he gasped to see a south Asian girl in a blue and white chequered school uniform seated on a fabric cushion wooden chair the height of 25 mount Everests. However, since the human was sitting down with her knees bent at 90 degrees, he estimated that she stood at least double that height at 50 mount Everests.

“Damn” he croaked. “That’s one big fucking cute child….”

He knew how to distinguish human children from adult humans because since he was a tutor, he had access to all the educational material. Human children were described as having smoother, thinner limbs without any of the protruding muscle, bone, and fat on all parts of their bodies.

Feeling something inside him he touched his abdomen crotch, which was rounded with a closed semi-circle opening containing his penis. Inside he could feel his dick starting to prick up and become erect, signalling he was getting a boner.

“Oh, fuck yeah….” he moaned.

Divya was getting really annoyed by having to wait for Lucy since 10 to 15 minutes had already passed. In frustration she leapt up suddenly, pushing the chair away at least 30 cm back forcefully.

“What’s taking so long?!” she shouted, stomping her foot. “Is she taking a shit or something?!”

The sudden movement of the chair and Divya jumping up to her feet and stomping created shockwaves that produced a magnitude 7.5 Earthquake for several hundred metres from Jack’s perspective. The force caused Jack to be violently thrown off his feet and land roughly and painfully on his back.

“Ouch!” he screamed. He looked at the giant human girl and began waving his fist furiously at her. “What the actual fuck, you stupid little bitch!” he yelled however he knew she couldn’t hear him.

Socks against a wooden floor have very little friction and tend to slide meaning bad news for Divya.

As soon as she stomped her foot, her socked right foot slid back making her lose balance. Her left socked foot was thrown up into the air as she tried to regain balance and her back was arched at an almost horizontal angle. Frantically she began waving her arms in long circles forward, trying to regain balance.

“OH SHIT!” she screamed as she began to fall backwards.

Jack looked up to see a horrifying sight. He saw the skirt section of her school dress inflate like an umbrella due to the air resistance, revealing her triangular white panty-clad bum cheeks and her brown thighs heading right towards him. A dark shadow was cast over him as a terrified Jack began sprinting to get out of the shadow-cast area.

“Fuck!” he shrieked. “When I said I liked ass this is not what I had in mind!” 

Time seemed to slow down as Divya’s bum reached closer and closer to the ground. If Jack didn’t get out of the way soon, he was going to be buried under tonnes of flesh from Divya’s ass.

Crash!

Divya fell heavily onto her bum with both her ass cheeks absorbing the majority of her weight.

“Fuck!” she groaned, rubbing her sore bottom on both sides with both her hands. “That really fucking hurt…”

Jack Feeler coughed and sputtered as he literally dived onto the ground to save himself, landing heavily on his chest. Shaking and hyperventilating he looked to his side and saw the hem of Divya’s blue and white chequered skirt was just micrometres from where he was. He had literally dodged being squashed under Divya’s bum and had a brush with death.

Nothing can escape the sharp eyes of Divya….

Glancing to her left, she saw another little ant crawling just next to her dress. She smiled then realised what she had almost done and held her hand to her open mouth in horror.

Hastily getting up to her feet, she backed away into the table behind her with tears trickling down her cheeks.

“I am such a clumsy stupid bitch….” she cried with tears freely flowing down her cheeks. Today was the second time she had almost killed a bug.

Looking at her socks, she realised what needed to be done.

‘Socks are not made for walking freely; they belong inside my shoes’ she thought to herself as she hooked two fingers into the back of her left sock and pulled back. A crackling peeling sound was heard as the foot glue sweat binding the sock to its owner’s foot was breaking its bonds. She had to yank harder for her clenched toes where most of the foot sweat had built up. Removing her left sock, she put it on the kitchen dining table out of instinct, not thinking about the poor hygiene that used socks have. Repeating this process, she balanced on her left leg and swiftly removed the right sock, hearing the same peeling sound and threw the right sock also onto the kitchen table.

 With a satisfied sigh, she flexed her cramped unpainted light reddish-brown toes and flexed her ankle joints and balls of her feet after 7 hours of being cramped in shoes and socks all day. She could feel a slight coating of sweat coating her feet, leaving slightly sweaty footprints as the slightly sticky flesh peeled itself from the wooden floorboards making a slight peeling sound.

‘Now my feet have extra grip’ she sighed happily, gripping her toes into the wooden floor and happy to be barefoot. She then redirected her attention to the little ant she had seen earlier. Narrowing her eyes, she spotted the little critter in the open space area of the wooden floor between the dining table and the backyard sliding door.

Very carefully, she padded barefoot towards the ant. However, no matter how softly she padded barefoot, the sheer size and weight difference between her and the puny little ant would always create some sort of shockwave.

Jack feeler was once again terrified as he saw the human child approach him once again, seeing her now gigantic bare feet approaching closer and closer to him creating ripples and shockwaves of 3.8 earthquake magnitude intensity. Every time her feet raised themselves off the ground he could see a sneak peek of a thin layer of dust, grime and sock fuzz coating the underside. He also observed that in every area the sole of her foot made contact with the ground, a damp salty moisture coating was produced in the shape of a footprint in the same way rain might leave a wet imprint on the asphalt after a shower.

His heart almost stopped as her gargantuan bare feet stopped 3 to 4 metres in front of him. From here he could see the light reddish-brown toes which looked like giant worms, standing as high as a two-storey building with a razor-sharp cliff face peeking over the side, these were Divya’s long pointy toenails.

Divya crouched down in front of the little ant, looking at him with sad tears in her eyes.

“I am so sorry for almost squashing you with my ass” she apologised. “Here let me make it up to you”.

Despite whispering in a soft tone due to the size difference, it still sounded to Jack like someone was speaking to him, close up through a megaphone.

“I am going to get you a treat all right…” she tearfully smiled, putting two of her fingers inside her mouth and started poking around in her gums.

Jack was completely baffled. Never had he ever seen a human behave like this. Usually from what he read in his literature and from eyewitness accounts from ant explorers, humans usually just either unknowingly squashed them and even if they ever did see them, they were killed on the spot either through bug spray or squashed knowingly.

‘What is this stupid little girl doing?’  he thought to himself.

Divya pulled out a large chunk of partially chewed Oreo crumb, stuck in the grooved section of her molars and held it between two of her fingers, once again her fingers covered in saliva. Rubbing the crumb like a ball between two of her fingers to get the excess spit absorbed out she deposited it in front of a stunned and disgusted Jack.

“Eat up, little guy!” she smiled

A decent ant would have been grateful for receiving such a large sugary snack about the size of a volleyball. However, Jack Feeler was no decent ant.

“Fuck off!” he snarled. “Get absolutely fucked! I am not eating that filthy, disgusting regurgitated shit! Go fuck yourself you stupid little bitch!”

Divya was absolutely baffled as to why this particular ant wasn’t eating her sugary treat and taking her gift. “Huh, why aren’t you eating little guy?” she asked.

Jack Feeler really was an arrogant, ungrateful individual. He really didn’t deserve her kindness………

All evil people eventually get their karma in the end though. Fate and karma were just around the corner……

Imagine Jack Feeler’s shock when he saw a dark shadow being cast over him again and rapidly growing bigger every second as the darkness became stronger and stronger as more and more light was snuffed out. Jack Feeler looked up to see a giant barefoot the size of an ocean liner rapidly descending downwards towards him, blocking out more and more of the afternoon sunlight as more of his perceptual vision was covered by the view of the giant foot. This foot had a thicker layer of dark brown dirt covering her sole and thicker more stickier splotches of sock fuzz coating the ball of her foot.

“What?” he gasped. Glancing back quickly he quickly realised that Divya’s bare feet were still in front of him and looked back at the other foot with the horrifying realisation that this foot had white skin. As he observed closer, he saw the massive toes wiggling slightly as they descended downwards and saw reflections of sunlight glistening off the white-painted toes.

 “Oh fuck….” he gasped. He now realised that this foot that was going to flatten him belonged to a completely different human who had none of the redeeming qualities as the one that had fed him. He had been so engrossed with rage that he hadn’t even noticed the other human that had approached him on his left side. Filled with regret he wished he had just jumped onto Divya’s hand when he had been given the chance when she was offering him while depositing the crumb instead of shouting obscenities at her.

 Divya was so engrossed with the little ant on the floor that she hadn’t noticed Lucy had returned from the toilet and strolled back into the living room after finishing taking her dump. Now Divya was about to get a nasty shock about the dark side of her best friend about her bug homicidal hobbies as well as what she does to bugs that enter her house.

Things happened so fast that there was no time for either Divya or the ant rapist Jack Feeler to prevent what happened next.

“FUCK HAVE MERCY!” screamed Jack Feeler as he curled up into a ball, shielding his face and underbody and tucking his 6 legs in. There was no escape now, the foot was approaching him way too fast. He wished he had been paying more attention and wished he had been nicer to the girl that had treated him with dignity and respect earlier. He looked up one final time to see Divya’s enormous face with a blank reaction on her face, she hadn’t even reacted yet. Humans were known to have much slower reaction times than insects, so now he was absolutely doomed. By the time Divya reacted to what had happened, he would already be dead. 

“I am sorry for calling you a bitch little girl….” cried Jack. “Oh well, I guess I deserve it after all the people I have hurt. I was going to be executed tonight anyway….”

A hundred tonnes of Lucy’s foot flesh crashed on top of Jack like an avalanche of snow would when collapsing onto the top of a mountaineer.

“MMMMMMFFFF!!!” screamed Jack as he struggled and heaved to get free of the tonnes of pungent flesh pinning him to the ground. He couldn’t breathe now, since there was no oxygen flow, and he was suffocating.

Divya’s confusion turned to horror and her blood ran cold as she saw Lucy’s barefoot crash on top of her ant friend, scrunching her white painted toes inwards to add extra pressure to the ball of her foot.

“NOOOO!!” shrieked Divya with tears in her eyes. “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!”

“What does it look like I am doing?” snickered Lucy, visibly taken aback by her best friend’s hysterical outburst as she proceeded to twist and grind her foot into the ground. “I am dealing with a stupid little bug”

Divya was absolutely gutted and devasted by the friend she had known since she was 7 years old, was now showing her true colours, having no appreciation for the sanity of life. She was so angry with what Lucy had done, she wanted to punch her right in the face but the shock hormones flowing through her body made her freeze her body and limbs.

“Oh yeah...” sneered Lucy. “I can still feel him twitching and squirming a bit. It’s kind of like a foot massage!” 

Jack was already dead by this point but that didn’t stop Lucy from further desecrating his body even more, twisting and scraping his corpse against the ground and applying more pressure from above. His organs including his lungs, stomach and intestines were grossly and violently squeezed out of his body through his mouth like a tube of toothpaste while the twisting and grinding action of Lucy’s foot first cracked his exoskeleton, then was shredded into several pieces by the twisting and grinding.

“Yuck…. That was a crunchy one…” giggled Lucy as she felt a series of crackles and pops under the ball of her foot.

This was too much for Divya who leapt up to her feet and roughly grabbed her ankle before shoving it violently backwards then raising her right hand into a fist and taking a swing at Lucy’s face. Her two knuckles brushed up against the bridge of Lucy’s nose. Lucy screamed as she almost fell backwards and frantically started rotating her arms in long circles to try to retain her balance.

THWACK!

Lucy rubbed her nose and noticed that a little trickle of blood was coming out of her left nostril. Frowning angrily, she glared at Divya who was kneeling on the ground in front of her softly crying. Divya tries to look with her sharp eyesight for any trace of her new little friend but there doesn’t seem to be anything left apart from a tiny black brownish single smear.

“Are you crazy bitch!” yelled Lucy. “You could have broken my neck! And why did you punch me in the face?! Fuck I think my nose is bleeding! What the fuck is wrong with you!”

“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME!!” screamed Divya pointing her finger threateningly. “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”

Lucy seriously could not understand why her best friend was so upset.

“You crushed that poor ant for no reason!” sobbed Divya with tears trickling down her cheeks. “He didn’t do anything to you! You murderer!”

To her absolute disgust, her so-called best friend started laughing hysterically. Lucy seriously could not believe any human could become so emotionally attached to this pathetic grovelling puny little creature that no one cared about.

“Oh, I am sorry!” sarcastically replied Lucy. “I didn’t know you were in a relationship with an insect! Was he your boyfriend or something?”

Divya was shocked by how arrogant and inconsiderate Lucy was. Lucy then raised her foot showing her the underside of her sole.

“Here, maybe you can scrape off what’s left of him from the bottom of my stinky, smelly sweaty foot!” snickered Lucy.

Divya found herself on the urge of vomiting and shaking and hyperventilating with horror at the sight of what lies under Lucy’s foot. There is no way of identifying her little ant friend among all that dirt and sock fuzz grime as well as the remains of dozens of other bugs and insects flattened under her foot. Beetles, ants, pill bugs, earwigs, Divya felt like she was looking at an insect graveyard over a timeline by a fucking psychopathic monster. Her best friend’s cruelty towards bugs leaves her dumbfounded and heartbroken.

“Why…” she croaked weakly, sniffling a few tears.

“Well, the reason is pretty simple” announced Lucy proudly. “I hate bugs. They are disgusting and belong outside. Any bug that I see in this house is getting squashed under my beautiful puppies immediately!”

This flew Divya into even more of a rage. “You evil bitch!” she screeched. “Oh, wait who am I kidding?! All you fucking meat eaters are all the same! No respect for the sanity of life and choose to kill out of convenience and sick pleasure!”

“Oh wow!” groaned Lucy loudly. “Is that what this is all about? All this gay shit about vegetarianism and veganism!”

“You know what I mean!” replied Divya angrily.

“For the record, humans are at the top of the food chain and are omnivores. We must eat meat and some animals were made to serve us” stated Lucy.

“Some people in the world eat fucking dogs as well!” argued Divya angrily. “How would you feel if someone ate Footstool or killed him for fun!”

“Footstool is an intelligent creature and really cute!” laughed Lucy. “Humans don’t eat intelligent and cute creatures! All the animals we eat though are mostly fucking stupid and bugs are ugly and disgusting as fuck!”

“Your argument doesn’t even make sense!” retorted Divya. “Several scientific studies have shown pigs can be just as intelligent as dogs, yet you still fucking eat them!”

“You know what, fuck this!” snarled Lucy. “Sophia Jackson was right; I should never seek help from a preachy snobby nerd!”

“Sophia Jackson!” gasped Divya. “The queen popular bitch at our school who looks and acts just like Regina George from that Lindsay Lohan 2004 film Mean Girls?”

“Yep” confirmed Lucy.

“Wow!” gasped Divya. “So, this is who you have been grovelling at the feet of for the last 3 months! I was wondering why you stopped hanging out with me as much at Recess!”

“I am sorry girl; I just need a new public image!” justified Lucy.

“And I’m your little embarrassment am I!” sniffled Divya angrily.

“You know what Ms Perfect Coconut Girl you need to stop being a massive fucking nerd!” shouted Lucy angrily. “You are really bringing shame on the both of us!”

Divya flinched when she heard the word coconut being uttered. “What did you just call me? Did you just call me a coconut?”

Coconut was a racial slur used in the South Asian communities for children born in western countries to south Asian migrant parents. The slur meant that while the person was brown on the outside like a South Asian, the child was actually white on the inside behaving just like a white European, having no interest to learn their parent’s native language or cultural traditions.

“I am sorry that was what Sophia Jackson was saying about you. And in a way it’s true!” explained Lucy. “I mean who was too lazy and dropped out of Sinhala school because they had no interest in Sri Lankan culture and customs?!”

This was the final straw for Divya, now the attacks had become personal.

“You know what?!” cried Divya. “Fuck you, asshole! You are not the nice supportive Lucy I met 4 years ago. Who even are you? What have you turned yourself into?!”

With angry tears trickling down her cheeks she grabbed her white school socks off the dining table, scrunching them into a tight ball with her tight grip from anger, dumped her study notes lying on the dining table back into her school bag, slumped her school bag over her shoulder and headed for the front door.

“You do not deserve my help!” stated Divya angrily. “Have fun being used by Sophia Jackson and her gang of cronies! And for the record, I hope you get a fucking zero for your next maths test!!!”

Lucy realized she had gone too far and had now driven away one of her oldest childhood friends.

“No wait Divya, I didn’t mean it!” she cried, running after her but she had already gone through the front door. Divya didn’t even look back as she padded down the street barefoot with her school bag slumped over her shoulder and holding her school shoes and socks with both her hands.

Meanwhile….

“All right everyone just shut the fuck up for a second!” announced General Sting loudly in front of the squabbling group of search party ants which was composed of Squirt and his mother. “You are all saying different shit!”

General Sting, Max, Princess Penelope, and the remaining soldiers had now climbed down from the tops of their grassy perches and made their way to a small clearing, a small distance away from the concrete pergola, where they had heard a lot of yelling and shouting and wanted to investigate.  

“One at a time please...” sighed Princess Penelope. “What exactly happened?”

“What happened was my idiot son decided to play out his idiotic fantasies in his head and almost got himself killed!” shouted an angry Squirt’s mother, while readjusting the bonnet on her head.

Both General Sting and Princess Penelope were shocked to see an 11-year-old ant standing meekly and shyly behind the rest of the adults with his head hanging down in shame and limbs shrugged over.

“What the?......” gasped Princess Penelope. “How did you get onto the surface?”

“Wait a minute…” snarled General Sting. “Were you the dumb fuck little runt we saw from the top of our perch that got stuck on that clumsy monster’s sock!”

 “Hey!” retorted Squirt angrily, his face turning red with embarrassment. “Don’t call her a monster! I happen to think she’s quite cute!”

General Sting couldn’t believe the words that were being uttered out of this stupid tween’s mouth. Even after almost being torn to shreds by the simplest of movements from the giant human girl he still had the inclination to defend her.

“Do you have shit for brains or are you high on cinnamon crack boy?!” snarled General Sting. “That vicious beast almost killed you!”

“Don’t call her a beast!” replied Squirt. “It was an accident; she didn’t realise what she was doing! She is only a young girl, around the same age as me!”

“Wow!” snickered General Sting. “When the boys get to this age, they will really start simping for the girls no matter how poorly they treat them!”

“Hey I heard that!” retorted Squirt. “She didn’t treat me poorly, for the record she apologised, fed me and gave me the best thing I have ever fucking tasted!”

“Yeah, I saw that!” added Princess Penelope. “It was an incredible interaction; I have never seen an ant interact like that with a human before! Good thing I caught it all on film!”

“Wait…. What?!” gasped Squirt’s mother. “Really? Can you please show me?”

“Sure thing,” said Princess Penelope, handing over her camera to her. Squirt’s mother held her feelers to her mandibles in shock as she watched the footage of the interaction between Divya and Squirt with tears in her eyes. So intrigued were all the ants in the footage that Princess Penelope had taken of Divya, they hadn’t even noticed the shrunken teenage human boy Max yet who was still piggybacking on the back of the Princess.

“You really have no idea how lucky you are!” cried Squirt’s mother with tears in her eyes.

“What mum?” inquired a confused Squirt. “I don’t understand!”

“I never told you about my job properly, did I?” explained his mother. “I am a funeral director and organiser. I have planned hundreds of funerals in the last year alone.”

Squirt could do nothing but listen to his mother with shock with his mandibles open.

“In the beginning ants would just die of natural causes like old age. But now I am having to stitch corpses back together. Corpses that have been brutally mangled and mutilated beyond recognition!  Do you know how those ants died?! DO YOU!” she cried.

Squirt shook his head.

“They had all been viciously killed by humans! Sorry to burst your bubble but 99.9% of humans are vile cruel psychopaths who either kill ants unknowingly or kill ants on the spot if they are ever seen!” stated Squirt’s mother.

“That’s why am so emotional” she cried with a few tears trickling down her cheeks. “Because never before have I seen a human being so gentle. Out of all the humans that could have found you, the 0.01% of the population which have this mindset managed to find you. Just imagine for a second if that other girl found you? The demon child? You wouldn’t be here right now”

Choking back a few tears she sobbed “You would be a mangled pile of goo…”

Squirt was completely speechless now and was now really ashamed. “So, the only reason I am alive is because of sheer dumb luck?” he asked.

“Yes” nodded Squirt’s mother.

“I guess I never thought about it like that before…” stated Squirt. “I am sorry mum”

Squirt’s mother suddenly noticed a creature on top of Princess Penelope’s back with only two arms and two legs and was white. Most shockingly of all she noticed he had long ginger hair on top of his head and was wearing shoes.

Ants didn’t have hair let alone ever wore shoes for that matter. He almost looked like a…….

“AAAAHH” she screamed. “What’s on your back, your majesty?!”

“HUMAN!” snarled all the search party ants in Max’s direction like he was a foreign pathogen or some kind of a virus.

“What’s up bros?” Max smiled weakly from Princess Penelope’s back and waved shyly at them.

“FILTHY FUCKING THING!!” screeched Squirt’s mother picking up a cricket ball-sized grain of dirt and piffing it at his head, hitting him right in the face.

“Ouch, what the fuck!” snarled Max, rubbing his sore face. “That actually hurt!”

“Wow!” gasped the search party ants. “So, the rumours are true! Dr. Thorax really did manage to shrink a human to our size!”

“But that is not the little monster...” frowned one of the search party members. “I specifically remember the little monster being female. Who is this boy?”

General Sting sighed and faced palmed. “It’s a long story lads…I will explain everything when we get back to the colony”

“Wow!” exclaimed Squirt. “An actual human I can easily communicate with now! I have so much to ask you!” he said stepping forward. He was however stopped by his mother who grabbed him by his antenna.

“You are not going anywhere, young man!” screeched Squirt’s mother. “You are going home right now to be punished!”

“Aw man, I said I was sorry!” moaned Squirt as he was dragged away.

“Disgusting creature!” spat Squirt’s mother at Max, spitting a glob of saliva at Max, hitting him right in the face before heading off.

“Ugh, what a fucking bitch!” angrily retorted Max, wiping saliva off his face.

“Ha, ha, ha” snickered General Sting. “I can’t wait for your trial!”

“Oh yeah” sighed Princess Penelope. “I almost forgot about that”

“Trial?!” gasped Max. “What trial?”

“Well, you will have to be assessed by my mother and the government officials for suitable punishment inside our high court” explained Princess Penelope.

“Punishment!” gasped Max with horror. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you!”

“I am sorry Max that’s just the way our society works” explained Princess Penelope.

“It will give me great pleasure to tie him up and restrain him your majesty!” sneered General Sting, pulling out a weed rope.

“YOU LYING BITCH!” screamed Max with furious tears in his eyes. “YOU NEVER CARED FOR MY WELL-BEING! YOU WERE JUST RAISING ME LIKE A FUCKING PIG FOR SLAUGHTER!”

“Max please calm down!” said Princess Penelope, shocked by the sudden levels of aggression. “I promise they are not going to kill you!”

“No…” sobbed Max as he felt the weed rope wrap around him like a python, securely attaching his body to Princess Penelope’s back to ensure that he couldn’t escape. He kicked and squirmed but General Sting had tied it tight enough so he couldn’t escape. His back was touching Princess Penelope’s back in a way that made him face backwards.  

“This is certainly going to be a very interesting trial,” remarked all the soldiers and search party members that had gathered all around him, rubbing their feelers with glee. “This is going to be the trial of the decade!”

“Ok people let’s not dawdle around here on the surface any longer” stated General Sting. “Let’s get back to the colony”

Max felt like a prisoner being carried against his will, as his surroundings began to move backwards away from him. He realised that he couldn’t see in front of him at all and saw that all the ants around him were moving parallel along the concrete barrier of the backyard concrete pergola through the undergrowth of the Amazonian grass jungle.

“MUM, DAD HELP!!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “I HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY A BUNCH OF FUCKING FREAKS AND LUNATICS!!”

But no one was going to come to save him now. And no one was going to hear his cries for help. Especially when he stood only a few millimetres tall, his voice barely echoed through the canopy.

The reality sunk in for Max. No one was coming to save him now, no matter how loud he squealed.

At least for a while……………….