CH 02 : The world was on fire.

Sadie awoke to a sense of disorientation, gradually regaining consciousness as sharp pains invaded her body piecemeal. The deafening roar of a disposal's motor filled her ears, causing enough of a disturbance to force her to lift her head slightly.

She tilted her head, trying to define what weighed on her, a tide of white larvae rose and fell all over Sadie's body, their translucent flesh writhing like goose bumps. Their toothless mouths fastened on her dark clothing with leech-like persistence, sucking on her legs through her thick stockings.

Her clothes were turned into a wet and heavy burial shroud as they tried to chew through her livid chrysalis, disintegrating her wear one molecule at a time. They certainly had their work cut out for them.

"Not the worse morning I had." Thought Sadie as she laid her head back in the heap of trash. She felt detached from the nuisance, the stench of rotted waste coiled around her delicate nostrils. But the reason for her frown was incongruent with her current state, she tried to remember what happened to her.

Memory returned slowly - the giant fluttering wings of a flouncing insect, pubescent hands violating her space privacy. She remembered stumbling to escape, climbing into a mad body of students reaching for her life, cold cracking phalanges digging in her veiny neck, a sudden wave of dizziness, then oblivion.

She felt her spirit hovering above her body, attached solely by a thick astral line. But her soul was too weary to break free. "They must have presumed I'm dead, but I guess dying requires too much effort."

She brooded over her situation as she positioned her arm at the back of her head. The grubs took the opportunity to further surround her exposed side. With a jolt of her shoulder, she rid herself of some of the viscous larvae guzzling around her arm. Then she looked around her.

The grinding blades of the infernal machines surrounding her worked in monotony. Within its steaming steel belly, plastics and debris deformed and twisted, releasing noxious fumes. A multitude of unhatched eggs were plastered all over the moving cranes, some fell in the juncture with each lift and drop yet the disposal churned on, indifferent to these ant sacs, grinding them down into pink pulp to nurture the born larvae.

"A garbage disposal? That's her colony? If that's not ominous enough of things to come under her rule." She stood up unhurriedly and found that the blobs were unhappy with her decision to move about, they crawled towards her with a purposeless hunger, instincts driving them to try consuming whatever living organism they could find, much like the ravenous need to get laid found in the treacherous spawn she used to consider as her classmates.

She kicked one of the blobs, sending it squirming in the air. Sadie observed it as it smashed on a pole and quivered, Its squishy organs pulsating with profound obscenity. "I'd be damned if I serve as food for her hideous children, let them return to the hole they had crawled out of."

She was always slow to react, her emotional growth was stunted by a turbulent childhood, but she was secretly angered of their violation, she had never felt that helpless in her life. A terrible fancy possessed her that they might spread from their hellhole in a ravenous hunt for flesh, that the entire neighourhood could become infected by their loathsome presence, that she won't feel safe even in her own house. They had two arms and two legs, and even the weakest among them seemed able to overpower her, and they already form half of society.

She picked up a half empty beer bottle from among the junk, filled it with filthy tissues, then using the incinerator to light it up. She flung it in the midst of the gruesome horde, witnessing the faces of her attackers in the flames.

"No one will protect me, no one can, I must protect myself."

She encanted. "My willingness to firebomb the offending party is my weapon, I will never let them touch me again." Her hand was trembling with a vengeance, for the image of those hideous pupils was not easily banished from her mind.

Once calmed down, Sadie took hold of her sling backpack and wore it crossbody, she found the missing pair of her flats and slid her moistened foot into its opening. Then she started walking home in a daze of evergrowing weariness, her saliva drenched shirt weighing on her back as if a laughing buddha was perched atop her pronounced shoulder blades.

Yet as she rounded the corner, Cynthia suddenly materialized - vigorous, heavenly drawn Cynthia who thinks the world revolves around her.

"Sadie, you're alive?" she asked, her voice low but intent. In her hand were clusters of differently colored perfume bottles.

"Even in the most perilous of times, vanity prevails with you, or were you planning to embalm me with oils and perfumes?" Cynthia was confused of her inquiry and eyed her warily. Sadie had always seemed so colorless, a girl who lived only in the margins. Yet now there was a strange light in her eyes.

Cynthia finally realised she was referring to the bottles in her hand. "Don't be silly, Sadie. This is how we will defeat the Ant Queen!"

Sadie felt tickled of her response. "Will you now?"

"Yes!" Insisted Cynthia "In the time that followed your kidnapping, Miss Antonella held court over the city, sending out pheromonal signals that attracted males from miles around, even I'm not able of such a feat."

Sadie raised an eyebrow but Cynthia continued before being interrupted.

"A chosen few were accepted into her hive, emerging later as transformed beings. Their relatives looked on in horror, powerless to stop the strangegoings-on. Attempts to reason with or dissuade the enraptured boys failed - they seem to exist in a state beyond reason now."

"As if they've ever had the capability of reasoning to begin with."

"I think often of the boys from our school, they're still under miss Antonella's spell. Do you think they are aware in their strange new existence? Or slaves to instincts beyond their control?"

"It doesn't matter." Sadie responded as she looked away.

"Have some empathy! Miss Antonella and Chris, they've... They engaged in a nuptial flight."

"And?"

"I thought you were one of the smart ones...Don't you know what Ant Queens do after mating?"

Sadie half-closed her eyes slowly when the realisation dawned on her. Her dry lips curled, creeping into an unsettling smile that seemed to slowly stretch across her face, revealing an unusual satisfaction at the idea.

She remembered their science class experiment. After consummation, the elegance of the Queen dissolved, revealing a primal hunger hidden within her charm. A haunting fierceness that belied the pheromonal attraction.

With a sudden, swift movement of her snapping jaws, the queen ensnared her unsuspecting mate. The once-daring male ant trembled, overpowered by the queen's relentless grip. Struggling against his imminent demise, his resistance faltered, weakened with each passing moment— the price exacted for transient pleasure was death.

With the final morsel consumed, the queen's ravenous hunger subsided, replaced by a profound emptiness in the glass tank, an emptiness she wished to fill with her brood. She laid her sacs, her gaze now distant and detached, as if she was fully committed to an unavoidable statement. Sadie also remembers distinctly that Chris did not attend that period.

"Sadie, your silence is freaking me out, will you join us in the restaurant's basement or not?"

Sadie was not listening to Cynthia's frantic urging, but she assumed It was the location where they hoped to plan their operations to stop Miss Antonella from beheading then devouring her beloved Chris.

"Lead the way." She finally said.

The antique brown leather booths in the back of Lipetri's Italian restaurant seemed suspended in time, witnesses to mafia deals and intense negotiations-the booths had seen it all since the place first opened in the 1920s.

It was hardly a secretive location, but the evening's lack of light and the silent atmosphere gave it a sterling quality for important conversations.

It was in one of these illustrious underground booths that Cynthia and Sadie met their three classmates. Two of them were already crowded together over a plate of spaghetti carbonara dotted with bits of bacon and cheese. The third girl, however, was seemingly irritated at Cynthia for keeping them waiting.

Sadie started wondering what strangeness she had blundered into now, Cynthia arranged the bottles on the counter with careful attention. The perfume bottles cast multi-colored shadows across the grimy tile, illuminated by the faint glow of tawdry brass lamps.