Ant Art
written by: Kapka Nilan
Where are you on ants, I want to ask but you are absorbed. A pious admiration before a great tableau. A wall of classical paintings with half-eaten faces. The entire household of a nobleman is immortalized in oil paint.
I kill them but I don’t torture them, I confess silently. Watch dead bodies flush down the toilet. Shriveled up when poisoned, they look like fetuses, front legs crossed, holding on for dear life. So human.
You move slowly like people do in museums. I follow you. Black antennas poking out, twitching nervously. A life-size portrait of you.
Kapka Nilan (she, her) was born in Bulgaria and currently lives in England where she writes, takes pictures of out-of-place things, and looks after an old spirit animal. Her short fiction has been published in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Flash Fiction Magazine, Mad Swirl, Bath Flash Fiction Award, New Critique, and elsewhere.
