It’s a Big World, After All 🐜

Three years ago, I was sitting against a tree, reading my favorite book. Various insects crawled on the tree trunks around me, but I didn’t mind. A large piece of bread lay on the forest floor, one I had left out for the ants. Hundreds of ants marched in a line, each one carrying a small bread crumb, ready to feast. As I blissfully sat reading, I suddenly felt something staring at me. I swiftly looked up, locking eyes with an ant in the line. Its beady, black eyes seemed to stare into my soul, and I immediately felt a connection, as if we had been related in a past life. It was slightly plumper than the other ants, its round, black stomach protruding almost five centimeters. It crawled over to me and perched on my wrist. I smiled.

I’m going to name you Bartholomew, I thought.

I had a feeling we would be friends for a long time.

That first day we spent together was lovely. I moved my hand upwards and let Bartholomew crawl onto my shoulder, making sure to move my hair so he wouldn’t get swept up in it by accident. After quickly explaining the beginning of the book, I began to read out loud from where I had left off.

I’m not sure how long we read, but once my voice began to feel scratchy, I decided to take a short nap. As I shut the book, Bartholomew, who was still resting on my shoulder, moved down my arm until he reached the crook of my elbow. I guess he’s just moving places. I closed my eyes.

When I woke up, the sun had just set and Bartholomew was gone.

The hour of ants and books had long passed, giving way to the hour of shadow and darkness, where blackness settled like a blanket over the forest canopy. Some quake in fear at the thought of such enveloping dark, the embrace of the moonlight whisked away by the interloping branches of the looming foliage. I could never understand that. I only understood the longing for the warmth of such a blanket, where one is safe beneath the trees standing as sentinels over soil only they can see. Now, I remember not the gentle, forlorn cries of the summer breeze or the earthy scent of the woods on that day three years ago. I can only remember the silence, as if even the smallest ants held their breath. Perhaps I should have known then that something was utterly, horrifyingly wrong. The forest is never silent: even the shadows whisper in answer to the rustling of the leaves and the flowing of the streams.

The forest was silent that night.

Until it wasn’t.

Until I heard a vicious roar.

My legs began to move before my mind did. I should have realized that the forest was trying to warn me, the way I kept stumbling over ill-placed branches and the way the nearby deer stared intently, stone still. The leaves were still unmoving, even as I raced past them, breathing hard. Every step I took, I could feel the tension hanging in the air, the sense of wrong.

Another roar echoed through the forest. I knew these woods. There were no wolves here. The forest still refused to move. Squirrels hung still in their branches, as if that would hide and protect them. Even my footsteps grew quieter as the leaves beneath my feet refused to crackle with their normal, chipper volume.

I came upon a clearing and saw the reason for the scream and for the frozen forest.

It was large. A bulky figure that towered over the dark trees. Its shadow was visible—darker than the surroundings—but I couldn’t identify what type of animal it was. Two scarlet orbs pierced through the darkness and were staring right at me, never blinking.

I stopped in my tracks, my feet becoming roots in the forest floor. One more step and I would fall to the ground.

Something chirped above but my eyes were fixated on the monstrosity in front of me. Suddenly, a feathered creature appeared in my vision. I heard one innocent chirp, then silence.

The beast rounded on me next, roaring loudly. Not a tree moved in the forest as blue feathers stained red fell to the ground.

What was that? I squinted my eyes as the flurry of feathers flew before me. Suddenly, what emerged was a being I would have only thought existed in movies—the kind of movies where fantasy mashes with reality and the whole world turns unclear, to be specific.

The scarlet orbs finally emerged with a body, and the smell of wet dog and oak wafted through my nose.

My mind told me to scream, my heart told me to run. But I couldn’t gather the willpower to open my mouth, my thoughts completely overtook my body.

I clamped my hands onto my mouth as an instinct as I willed the logical part of my brain to work.

My feet slowly trudged backwards as I tried to sneak away from the creature. That is, until I stepped on a branch on the forest floor.

The loud sound of the branch snapping echoed through the forest. Then, everything went back to the eerie silence.

***

“—really didn’t mean to. Serious.”

“God, I told you this was an awful idea! And you just had to go against me! You—you really think you can just romp around the forest, transformed? Are you out of your m—”

“Enough, Barth, enough. I’m gonna be sick if you keep rattling my sensitive lil’ eardrums like this. I barely recovered from the full transformation last night.”

“And whose fault is that? What we agreed on was that I would go find you! Now, look at this, look at what you did, look at that.”

My sleep-addled mind had the strangest feeling that I was being mentioned in this increasingly strange conversation.

“Oh, you old fart, at least I found you, and—Oh. It’s awake.”

I had no choice but to open my eyes now, and the sight that met my eyes was even odder than the conversation I had overheard. An extremely short man with an extremely rotund belly sat on a toadstool—a toadstool! Next to him was a gangly man with an overgrowth of whiskers, perched on another oversized mushroom. The forest around us was like no forest I had ever seen before. All the trees were in a circle, side by side, coated in green and turquoise swirls and their trunks all reached inwards. Light filtered through from the center hole and it refracted off a leafy chandelier. The trunks had been stripped of their grafts and branches and besides the three toadstools in the center of the room, it was empty. It seemed as if someone combined a mansion, a forest, and an interrogation room all into one. As my eyes began to focus, two figures blurred into sight, both of which wore standard black suits.

The shorter man stood up, brushed off his suit nervously, and cleared his throat. “Hello, I’m Barth. You might know me as Bartholomew the ant. But most assuredly, as you can see, I am also a man. The thing is, you’ve seen my friend Horatio here in his,” he coughed a little, “animal form. And therein lies our little problem.”

Barth looked at me as if what he just said should have made perfect sense. When it became clear I didn’t understand, he explained, “You now know about the existence of were-animals. We can’t have that, can we? So we need to figure out what to do with you.”

I squinted my eyes at him and shook my head hoping I’d snap out of this lucid dream. No luck. He was still there looking at me for an answer.

“What to do with me? Are—are you gonna kill me?” I said, hesitantly.

“What? No!” Barth looked surprised. “Why would you come to that conclusion?”

“We’re were-animals, not monsters!” Horatio said indignantly, with a look of disgust written on his face. I looked at him, confused.

Feeling more confident now, knowing that I wasn’t going to be killed, I asked, “Are were-animals not monsters?”

They both stared at me then held a whispered conversation.

“This one’s a little dull, I think.”

“Yeah, but we can’t release it.”

“Okay okay okay, can we force it to not talk?”

“No! One little sentence and we’re going to be hunted down!”

Barth started pacing around nervously, “What do we do… oh, this is so hard!”

As Horatio and Barth struggled to find a solution, I tried thinking of a solution to their problem that wouldn’t end with them hurting me in any way.

“Well,” Barth said, “there is always that option.” He slid a stubby finger across his throat. “However, I’m sure our guest would be opposed to it, wouldn’t you?” He looked at me, and I shook my head vigorously. “Then I see no other choice—we must convert her.”

“What?!” My voice had overlapped with Horatio’s and we both shot up from our toadstools.

I was scared. Time was running out and I needed to find a solution. But I didn’t have one. My only solution was to run away from Horatio and Barth. And that’s what I did. I ran out.

At this point, it was pitch dark in the forest. Fog was starting to creep in. It was getting cold. That’s when I heard footsteps. I turned around and it was Horatio and Barth. They were following me. Now I had no way out. They were going to capture me.

“Leave me alone! I want to be as far away from both of you as possible! You guys can’t convert me. Just leave me alone, please,” I said, my voice out of breath from desperation.

“Can we please tell you something very important?”

“What?” I turned around.

“NO, DON’T—” Horatio screamed.

Before I knew it, Barth’s wrinkly hands were pressed against the sides of my head, and he was murmuring what sounded like a magical spell.

There was tingling. There was pain. And then, there was the ground.

The ground was all I could see. I opened my mouth to scream for help, but only a tiny squeak came out.

Then, in the corner of my vision, I caught a glimpse of a shiny, black orb. As I slowly turned in its direction, the figure enlarged into an enormous ant—one that seemed almost the same size as me.

The ant moved its antenna and, somehow, I understood exactly what it was telling me: “Oh, they got you too! Come quick, it’s food time.”

I followed its lead into a line of other enormous ants, each carrying a huge piece of bread on their backs. As I moved with the line, barely traveling a millimeter with each step, I began to realize what had become of me. “I’m—I’m an ant,” I thought.

The ant in front of me stifled a giggle. “Indeed you are,” it signaled with its antenna, before passing me a piece of bread. “Eat up. You’ll need it.”

---

Writers (in order): Surya Saraf, Eman Hussain, Brennan Sandora, Eileen Hung, Marcus Warts, Annabel Chia, Maya Ma, Alyssa Tang, Irene Tsen, Blueberry, Keiss Chan, and Langston Wu.

Editor: Ms. Ja.

In collaboration with The Prose Train, a student-led nonprofit connecting student writers in a larger mission of collaborative storytelling, where authors contribute 2-15 sentences to continue the story to create a unique and final product.

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