In Which Our Heroine Waxes Murderous

The sorties must have begun sometime Friday night, they reckoned, though of course there was no way to be sure. Their reference point was early Saturday morning, when he had wandered blearily into the bathroom to find the tiles defiled with little black specks. He fetched his glasses. Ants. Lots of 'em.

In his boxer shorts, he wiped out whole columns, sending them spiraling to a watery doom. Ants in the apartment are naught to be scoffed at, but ants in the shower can hardly be considered a menace. He returned triumphant, albeit to insufficiently jubulant sleepy mumbles.

In truth, she didn't mind ants much either, but she'd always had a private sense of drama when it came to insect-slaying. Thus it was that when a leisurely Monday night bath was interrupted by more of the visitors, she was unfazed, setting down the soap and watching innocently as little antennae emerged twitching from the dark cracks between the tiles. If ants could blink, this one would. She paused a moment to allow it to process the image of her naked self reflected hundreds of times over in its ommatidia, then gently lifted a finger.

This romanticization would continue until she got bored, and went to go email the landlord.