FIFTH PLACE
BY KAREN ZHOU
PHOTO BY PIXABAY
Grey curtains hide the sun. A bee lands on a poppy. If you listen closely, you can hear the marching of an army.
“Keep up the pace. We need to get higher! Who knows when the next attack will be...”
Hundreds of troops march up a hill, carrying the injured wrapped in bandages.
“Colonel, I see one!” The soldier points to an eight-legged monster, quickly nearing them.
But to their surprise, the monster crawls right past.
“That was strange.” The colonel pauses.
Silence.
“Clarisse, most spiders don’t even eat ants.”
“I knew that! I was just playing along.”
“Then why did you actually look surprised?”
A boom of thunder halts his interrogation.
“Are you kids making up stories with the bugs again?” The familiar voice calls out.
“Yeah! The ants are moving everything to prepare for a battle!”
A girl and her brother are enraptured by insects. From across the garden, a mother’s look of endearment is left unseen.
She looks to the sky. “Your ants are preparing for rain”, she says, with the sky rumbling to punctuate her statement. “And you two ought to come in and prepare for dinner.”
The summer air is warm and heavy. Ants carry larvae up the sides of rotting planks outlining raised soil beds. They are overgrown; equal parts flowers and weeds.
Soon, small raindrops start falling, and then big ones—like a hail of bullets. The air is filled with sounds; rain, the sudden scampering of children and their weightless laughter.
Karen Zhou’s, Dinnertime, placed fifth in the BCPW’s Flash Fiction Contest. Zhou attends Richmond Hill High School in Richmond Hill, ON.