The endless night.

The night was dark and snowy, and the forest had no end, so was my desolated state of loneliness. This evening, life had hatched into existence, quite early for me than the rest of the ant army. I was born with a whisper, buzzing all the way long throughout the colony. The whisper had a rumour that was going to steadfast the very first dusk of mine, that I belonged to the hybrid kind, the ones humans fabricated and conditioned in labs. Was I supposed to be an ant marshal, who would rule the pesky ant hill? Or colonise the hill, raise my personal fleet of hybrid ants? Or was I just a part of human simulation that would keep me in servitude?

Even before wild instincts could be instated in me, the order of the queen was final, she was adamant, and she promulgated this to the council of ants. It was the order of exile. She didn’t want to spoil their heritage of ant genome by the dirt of a hybrid specie. The council of ants, curious yet obliged, pushed me into their infamous traditional rover made of tiny hay sticks which were fetched from a nearby barn. A great deal of euphemism was spurred out of the carrier which had banished unwanted ants from the hill.

While the darkness was swaying all around me, within minutes the destiny took the toll of freezing night. Accruing to my humility, I was gravitated upon a plethora of green leaves that were either struck down or had feeble roots connected to the earth below which would be sooner or later inviting me to its green graveyard. Hallucinations of afterlife were lurking me to believe that there is warmth and peace beyond this treacherous place. I wanted to liberate myself.

Amidst the chaos I heard something from behind the haunted green hood. A yelling apparition has emerged. I could sense that my hopelessness had embattled him.

“Aye mate couldn’t you see it’s just a matter of hours down here” – said the ghost ant. I regret that I stayed quiet and witnessed the gloominess sprouting and digesting ants like you every evening in this green yard. You are certainly not the first one fumbling in to the travesty of fate. Many of them came here like you just did, bluffed by the dark ambience thinking that life ends as the dusk falls rapidly.

Mate I’ll tell you what, it gets really boring here when none of your kind makes effort to at least witness the first dew of their life. I am pretty sure a trial of survival would be worth watching for a ghost who was also once a part of the “ant trial” by humans followed by the exact same tragedy.

The words of the ghost astonished me, filled me with valour, for the first time I had the zeal to live, to witness the first morning of my life. I could no longer locate the ghost, but I had cut the tender leaf besides me, dug it into a tiny soil bunker and was thus able to create my shelter, my key to the warmth of life. The darkness was soon pierced down by the sunshine of day.

This is how I got myself pulled out of the vicious loop.

But wait…

Did I really meet an apparition last night?

Or was it just me and my hallucination?

Perhaps, it isn’t relevant anymore!