It was the wife who advocated moving here. My wife has always longed for apartment living, but after more than a month of nervous warfare with the woman upstairs over the noise issue, she finally raised the white flag. One day, as I was getting ready to go to work, my wife suddenly grabbed my clothes and cried and begged me to move to a separate house. It took a long time from paying the down payment to sharing the apartment and moving into the apartment. However, giving up the apartment life and moving to this single country house, everything seemed to happen in an instant.
In fact, rural housing was not the initial goal. At first, the wife advocated moving back to the village where she lived before, saying that there was no better place than that village. However, by the time I got home from get off work, my wife's mind had already flown to the country house. Before I even had time to take off my shoes, my wife dragged me to the computer. My wife showed me the photos she had taken during the day of the rural house and the surrounding scenery. I looked at those photos with wide eyes, and my wife asked me proudly: "How was it?"
I looked at my wife in surprise and asked, "When did you major in photography?"
My wife didn’t even pay attention to my question, and started to explain to me the reasons why we wanted to move to a rural house with spittle. After a whole hour of tirade, I said that I also knew that the place had fresh air and good water, but the commuting time would be longer and it was not suitable. My wife actually used the tactics commonly used by real estate sales ladies to convince me that the tram will be extended there in two years and there is no need to worry about getting to work.
I knew very well that I could not convince my wife, and I felt that leaving here was not a bad thing, so I happily promised my wife to think about it again. My wife clapped her hands happily, took out a few pieces of paper from her handbag, and stretched them out in front of me. Oh my God! That's a home purchase contract. During the day, my wife actually signed the house purchase contract without telling me. I opened my mouth in astonishment and looked at my wife and the contract in turn. My wife smiled at me sheepishly, as if to say, "I'm sorry, I swiped my credit card without permission."
Fortunately, the apartment was rented out as soon as it became available. Then, within a week, we moved into the house. However, less than ten days after moving into the country house, the expression on my wife's face once again appeared when she was having a nervous war with the woman above the apartment. That day, I dragged my exhausted body home from get off work. As soon as I crossed the threshold, my wife dragged me to the back room.
"It's not like we're moving again!" I followed my wife into the back room with a panic expression. To be honest, my wife's "Let's move" was scarier than a ghost.
I straightened up and secretly made up my mind: "I won't listen to anything you say this time!"
The wife stretched her arms and pointed at the wall. I looked at my wife with a surprised expression, and she shook her arm again and pointed at the wall. At first I saw nothing but white walls, but soon I noticed a long dotted line on the wall. The dotted line is moving upward little by little, and each black dot is moving individually. It's an ant! A line of ants is moving quickly along the wall to the ceiling.
"It's Ant Road. There are three in this room, two in Zanxing and Zanzhu's room, and more in the kitchen…"
I blinked and looked at my wife, who let out a groan-like sigh: "How disgusting!"
"…"
"Look at the way they crawl, the way they search desperately for food…don't you think they are greedy?" Then, the wife said with a cold expression, "Let's go to the convenience store to buy pesticides."
After returning from the convenience store, we sprayed ant insecticide everywhere that night like sweeping landmines. Like an ant expert who knows in advance where to spray to kill ants, my wife pointed to the wall and floor while saying "here" and "there". I hurriedly sprayed the ant insecticide where my wife pointed. While I was spraying the insecticide, my wife found other ant paths and shouted to me, "Here, here." That day we used up two full boxes of ant pesticides bought from the convenience store, and my wife's expression returned to her usual calm state.
"It should disappear now, right?" the wife whispered. However, this is just the wife's wish.
I drove for a full hour and a half that day, and dragged my tired body into the house. As soon as he took off his wet shoes, the second son ran out of the room. I thought my son was going to ask me if I bought a toy, but unexpected words came out of the child's mouth – "Mom has become very weird."
To be honest, there has been something wrong with my wife in recent days. Seeing that the insecticide had no effect, the wife began to kill the ants with her hands. As long as you see ants, crush them to death with your fingers. That doesn't help. You can simply spray insecticides that kill flies and mosquitoes into places where ants often pass. I repeated the instructions on the instructions like a parrot, and persuaded my wife that spraying pesticides would not help. We could only wait until the ants took back the poisonous food, shared it with their colleagues, and died slowly. But my wife simply ignored my words. As long as the wife sees an ant, she will not let it go. She will chase after it with gritted teeth and squeeze it to death. Sometimes I would smile and look at the ants that were sprayed with pesticides and struggled desperately, bending their bodies like cutworms and dying in pain. The look on my wife reminded me of a six-year-old naughty boy immersed in a cruel game of murder.
In the end, I raised my hands and feet and declared my surrender. The children also felt that their mother was acting abnormally, but as soon as they found an ant, they shouted "Mom, ant"!
I imagined my wife, who was keen on catching ants, following the children into the back room with a nonchalant expression. However, what I saw was beyond my imagination. The house was in a mess, as if it had been visited by multiple thieves at the same time. With disheveled hair and a red face, the wife crawled around on the floor looking for something, flipping through cosmetics and books repeatedly.
"What are you doing……"
I asked my wife with an expression of astonishment and surprise, but I was not expecting her to answer anything. Because I can probably guess why. You don’t need to look to know that it’s because my wife watched a video about ants. But I was only half right. What she was looking for was not an ordinary ant, but a queen ant.
"You have to catch the queen ant, so that the ants can disappear."
For a moment, I laughed helplessly. The queen ant spends her whole life hiding in the ant hole to lay eggs and will not come out. This is common sense that even a three-year-old child knows. But my wife said it so seriously. I was worried that my wife had suffered a mental disorder because of the great impact on the ants. The wife stretched out her arms to the tailor and asked, "Do you know what this is?"
It was a winged insect. I was about to answer that it was a bee, but my wife said directly as if she didn't wait for my answer at all: "This is a male ant. Look, it has wings. Do you know why it came here?"
I kept my mouth shut, not because I knew my wife was not expecting my answer, but because I had no idea why the male ants came out. Even if you tell me the reason, I don't want to know, because my mind has been thinking about how to explain and accept the strange behavior of my wife in front of me, and I don't want to know about male ants and the like.
"Are they getting ready to mate?"
My wife said something that I couldn’t even think of. This sentence was enough to explain everything before me and eliminate all my doubts about my wife's strange behavior.
"Three have been found in this room."
I looked at my wife with an expression of disbelief.
"Male ants come out to mate?"
My wife rummaged through the bookshelf, found a book, and put it in front of me. It was a book about ants.
"Read page 174."
I followed my wife's words and opened the book.
"As soon as the mating season comes, the male ants crawl to the ground in order to mate with the queen. Both the queen and the male ants have wings, which are used during mating. They mate while flying. The male ants that have completed mating will die immediately , even male ants that fail to participate in mating will inevitably die, because when the male ants want to return to the hole, ordinary ants will kill the male ants."
I looked at my wife and the book with surprised eyes. I've heard of people becoming experts at something because they liked it, but I've never heard of people becoming experts at something because they hated it.
"But you see, they are still alive, which means they haven't started mating yet. Which means there is a queen somewhere in the house."
After saying that, the wife started looking for the queen ant again. However, the queen never appeared. That night, my wife was like a fisherman who has thrown away a big fish that has been hooked. She was so angry that she could not sleep.
On the third day after failing to capture the queen ant, my wife even forgot to make breakfast. I was busy tying my tie, and when I walked to the kitchen, I saw that the dining table was empty. I thought to myself that this woman had gone too far, so I looked around angrily, and found my wife lying on the kitchen floor with an apron on. For a moment, I felt a surge of anger in my head.
"What on earth are you doing? Now you don't even care about your husband's breakfast?"
However, my wife didn't care about my anger and motioned for me to go to her place. I barely suppressed the anger that was about to burst out and walked to my wife's side.
"What are you doing? What are you doing? What tricks are you doing? Did you catch the queen ant?"
My tone was thorny, but my wife didn't care and just pointed at the floor with her finger. My wife was watching the ants walking in a single file. I calmed down my anger and continued: "This is not the first time I have seen this. Do you want to use ants as food?"
However, the wife had no intention of standing up.
"Ha! Are you really not going to give me food?"
The wife looked at the ants blankly as if she had not heard the pain . I looked down at my wife with a surprised expression, and she looked up at me, as if to say, "What are you looking at?" My wife pointed her finger at the floor more stubbornly than before. This behavior of my wife seemed to imply that she had not forgotten the fact that I was standing next to her, but it moved me to the point of tears. As if I wanted to repay my wife for her trust in me, I turned my gaze to the floor. At that moment, something attracted me. I thought I had seen it wrong, so I rubbed my eyes and looked carefully at the floor. That thing was indeed there.
"Strange? Isn't it?"
My wife stared at the ant formation and asked me in a soliloquy tone. I looked again at the line of red ants. Sandwiched between the red ants was a large figure that was different in size and color from the other ants. It was a large black ant.
"Why is it here?"
I blinked and looked at my wife. The wife made an expression like "That's true, how did you know that?" and turned her head away. My pride was hurt and I unconsciously uttered: "Could it be food?"
My wife looked at me with doubtful eyes, and I added with a surge of arrogance again: "How else could another ant with a completely different size and color be sandwiched among the red ants? Look, such a big one is actually Follow the red ants honestly. Ants that get food must be caught alive!"
After I expressed the thoughts that were swirling in my head in confusion, I felt like that. My wife frowned and looked at me with a questioning look, and then turned her head away with an expression of loss of interest. I think of the embarrassment when I finally found the courage to express my opinion in class, but the teacher looked at other students and asked, "Does anyone know?"
"No, I have to look for it."
The wife suddenly stood up and went to the back room as if she was in pain . Then I looked up at my watch, shouted "Oops, I'm going to be late", and ran out of the house.
Since then, although my wife and I have not mentioned black ants, I have occasionally become curious about black ants. But my curiosity didn’t reach the point where I took the initiative to mention black ants to my wife. I just felt like I had no clue that black ant existed. Black ants seem to be getting hazier in our memories. However, events suddenly broke out in a direction we did not expect.
I don’t know whether it’s because of the ant pesticide or because of my wife’s fuss, but there are far fewer ants in the house. In the past, if you sprayed pesticides on ant paths, the ants would soon create new routes. But now, no marching procession of ants can be found on either the floor or the walls. Only occasionally can you see one or two lost ants frantically exploring the way. I feel that I am very lucky to have this result.
That day, I drank with my client. In order to celebrate the successful business negotiation, the president specially prepared a sumptuous banquet. When the wine was in full swing, my wife called. Because the surroundings were too noisy, I couldn't hear clearly what my wife was saying.
"What did you say?"
I pulled on my shoes and walked outside. My wife's voice, as cold as a machine's, irritated my eardrums.
"The children are gone."
My body froze as if cold water had been poured on it. Although my wife's voice came through the mobile phone, I felt that my wife was whispering in my ear, and I could even feel a cold breath. A large number of goosebumps suddenly appeared on my back, and a thin layer of ice seemed to be frozen on the back of my ears. I looked at my watch and saw that it was past midnight.
"What are you talking about? It's so late and the children aren't back yet?"
The wife replied in a trembling tone of extreme uneasiness: "I don't know…I don't know either. I have searched the whole village, but there is still no trace of the children."
I seemed to hear the sound of thin ice cracking on the back of my ears. Similar things have happened in the past: One time, the children didn't come home very late, so my wife called the company. I ran home in one breath and searched the entire community with my wife, but we still couldn't find the children. My wife came home exhausted and asked me in tears if the children had been abducted. As I comforted my wife, I considered calling the police.
Just then, the police station called. I hurriedly put on my shoes and ran to the police station. I saw children sitting in the corner with the smell of sewer all over their bodies. It turned out that a patrolman found the children trapped in the sewer of the construction site and took them to the police station. After the brief moment of joy after finding the children passed, the wife began to beat the children and scold them for being so disobedient. As soon as I stopped my wife, she immediately started crying. Although the children were severely beaten by their mother, they still grabbed their mother's clothes and persuaded her not to cry. The wife and children hugged each other and cried so loudly that the whole police station was shaken. Our family was almost ejected when we walked out of the police station and had to go to the bathhouse on the way home.
"This time will be the same as that time, no fuss."
I comforted myself and drove home. It started to rain outside, and thinking about the children shivering in the rain in a strange place made me feel sober from the wine I had drunk. Since it was Friday, there was a possibility of being investigated for drunk driving, but there wasn’t much we could do about it. If I really encounter the police, I will drag the police to my home and look for the child together. To be honest, at this time, my mental state was no longer that of a normal person. But I can guarantee that I was in the right mind when I was eagerly hoping that this incident would become the same amusing topic in the future as the last time.
After returning home, I couldn't see my wife's shadow. I called my wife's cell phone, but the ringtone came from the back room. I felt extremely uneasy, picked up my umbrella and ran out of the door. The rain is getting heavier, accompanied by wind and thunder. The hand holding the umbrella became stiff, and my whole body was soaked by the wind and rain. The umbrella didn't work at all, so I simply threw it away, called my wife and children's names, and searched everywhere. He knocked on the scattered villagers' houses from house to house, even searched the wilderness and wild mountains, but still could not find his wife and children.
Looks like I need to call the police. I ran home in a hurry. I ran to the front door and saw that the entrance door was open. Could it be that the children have returned? I ran into the entrance door excitedly, but there were no children anywhere. All he saw was his wife, who was soaked by the rain and squatting on the threshold, trembling. My wife looked up at me with her face deformed by cold and fear. The wife spoke, but it was not clear what she was saying.
"What did you say?"
The wife said it again, but still didn't understand.
"what are you saying?"
When I shouted, my wife stood up like a puppet and walked towards the refrigerator as if she was being dragged away by something. My wife, who opened the refrigerator door, rummaged around inside the refrigerator, took out a black plastic bag, and threw it in front of me. A black plastic bag weighing about three kilograms of flesh landed in front of me with a plastic sound. I picked up the plastic bag and opened it. At first I thought it was small fish for making soup, but it was not. ah! I threw away the black plastic bag with a swish. The plastic bag made a sound and fell to the floor. The contents inside jumped out halfway and fell to the floor. Those are the corpses of countless insects! The dried insect carcasses rolled around on the floor with their bellies facing up in the cold air.
"What are these?" I asked my wife looking at me in astonishment.
The wife collapsed on the floor: "It's all my fault…it's all my fault!"
"Why is it your fault!"
I felt confused and shouted loudly. The wife licked her drier lips with her dry tongue and began to tell the story. However, the more the wife talked, the more outrageous and confusing the content became. It's like the darkness has just disappeared and is met with thick fog again. Whether it's black darkness or white darkness, you can't see ahead. After finishing the story, my wife leaned against the wall exhausted and closed her eyes. I stared at my wife blankly.
"In other words…in order to make the ants starve to death…"
Although I couldn't tolerate myself saying this, I would go crazy if I didn't confirm the authenticity of my wife's words, so I continued to ask my wife.
"…You said that all the insect corpses around the house were caught?"
The wife nodded again with tears in her eyes. I closed my eyes hard and then asked, "So, the ants… took the children away as food?"
Although the wife didn't want to admit it, she still nodded with difficulty. I thought it was too ridiculous to ask any more. If the wife hadn't gone crazy, how could she have said such outrageous things? wrong! It would be easier for me to accept that my wife was really crazy. But the wife did not go crazy. The wife's eyes were so clear-headed and intense, completely different from the ethereal eyes of a madman. The wife's eyes were full of strong conviction – the children were taken away by the ants as food.
I reported the incident to the police. I thought about calling an ambulance for my wife, but finding the children was more important. Starting the next day, the police carefully searched the entire village. But on the third and fourth days, the police couldn't even find the children's shoelaces. The wife said that the children must have been abducted this time, clutching the mobile phone in her hand. My wife and I have been living through hell on earth.
Incredibly, I applied for sick leave from the company and on the seventh day when my wife and I were looking for the children, the children suddenly came back.
At first, I thought I was dreaming because I hadn't slept for several days. I stood up from the sofa and walked over to the children standing in front of the entrance door. The children had an unbearable stench, and I realized that this was not a dream, but reality. Regardless of whether it stinks or not, the couple hugged the children hard and started crying.
The children don't want to take a bath. The wife pushed the children into the bathtub and sprayed water with the nozzle. The children ran into the living room in panic. I reached out to grab the children, who easily pushed me to the wall and hid in their own room. I really don’t know how the children who have been hungry for several days can get so much strength.
It happened in a split second. To be honest, no matter where I go, I am very confident in my physical strength. When I was a student, I had always been the only one to win the wrestling championship in sports conferences. Whenever my classmates got together, the topic of my glorious wrestling history would come up. Incredibly, I was pushed away so easily by teenagers. I was stunned at first, but after thinking about it carefully, it was possible. Because I haven't eaten or slept well for a week in a row, my body must be very weak and I can't even hold on even a little bit.
We started to attract the children with food, and the children opened the door crack and looked outside. At first, the children looked at us with wary eyes, but as soon as they saw the pizza and chicken drumsticks, they couldn't resist the temptation and ran out to eat greedily. The wife asked the children where they were during this time, what they were doing, etc., but received no answer. My wife's eyes turned red. I stroked my wife's back and comforted her, saying, "I'm so lucky that the children can come back safely."
My wife seemed to think of the mental torture she had experienced during this period and began to choke. I also hugged my wife vigorously. I feel like hell on earth has just ended and the door to heaven has finally opened to us. However, this was just my illusion. That night, something happened.
Perhaps it was because the tension disappeared after the children returned home, and as soon as dinner was finished, a strong sense of sleep swept over the body. I hurriedly asked the children to return to their rooms, then ran into the back room and tucked myself into bed. As he was slowly falling asleep, his wife brought up the topic of black ants.
"I mean, that black ant that day…"
I said "hmm" in a half-asleep state.
"That day I looked through books and the Internet and finally found out what it was!"
I said "Hmm" again, but whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me anymore. The wife continued her conversation. I sometimes pretended to be perfunctory and gradually fell into sleep, and my wife's voice became as quiet as an ant's voice. I don’t know how long I slept. While I was sleeping soundly, I heard a fast-moving "rustling" sound coming from nowhere. Because the sound was heard while sleeping, there was no sense of reality at first. However, the "rustling" sound coming from one direction became louder and louder, and soon it came from all directions, and all the nerves in my body stood up. "Rust… rustle…" It was a creepy sound that was reminiscent of scraping a blackboard with an iron plate.
I wanted to open my eyes, but my eyelids seemed to be pressed down by stones and I couldn't open them. The rustling sound got closer and closer to me, and an ominous premonition struck along my neck. The sound sounded like something was being ground, or like the sound of multiple feet moving quickly. At this time, the voice reached my ears again. For a moment, there were sparks in my eyes, and my ears hurt as if they were burned by fire. What went into my ears? I screamed and stood up and looked, and there was someone standing in front of me. He raised something high and hit me hard on the head. Countless stars appeared in front of my eyes. I lost consciousness and collapsed on the bed.
When I woke up, there was no pain in my whole body, especially my head. It felt like there were pebbles shaking inside my head, which was extremely painful. I wanted to move my body, but my whole body seemed to be tied up with hemp rope and I couldn't move. strangeness! There is no feeling in the body, and there is no feeling of moving the body at all. But the pain was extremely vivid, like grains of rough sand hitting the body and then popping out.
What on earth is this place? I wanted to open my eyes, but my eyelids were stuck with something and I couldn't open them. I felt the irony taste in my mouth and touched my lips with my tongue. Fortunately, my tongue moved according to my will. is blood! It was the blood flowing from the head into the mouth. So, the blood coagulated on the eyelids must also be blood.
Gotta open your eyes! With this belief in mind, he exerted force on his eyelids and pulled them open. I felt a pain like being cut with a knife around my eyes. "As long as you can open your eyes, you can get rid of the fear of not knowing where you are." Thinking about this, I pulled my eyelids hard. With the sound of something being torn apart, my eyes opened. The upper eyelids were sore and painful.
It was still dark all around. As the pain around my eyes faded and I became familiar with the darkness, I saw a wooden board. board? Dusty old furniture and various household items were piled around. It seems like I have been here once. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be the basement of our house. When the original owner moved out, he left behind old furniture and some things. He originally planned to tidy it up after the weather warmed up, but he only took a look at it on the day of the move and never went down to the basement again after the move.
I looked up and looked ahead. I saw two men grabbing my left and right legs and dragging my body around various household items. The two men were very small and did not look like adults. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be Zanzhu and Zanxing. Why did the children treat me… My mind was in chaos, as if there was no blood, and it felt distant and vague. I can't understand the current situation. I moved my lips to call the children's names, but the children suddenly stopped. The children gave me a cold look and then disappeared from my sight.
I was left alone in a dark place, and a strong sense of uneasiness and fear struck my body. And the fact that I couldn't move my body made the fear double. Thinking that he could not wait to die like this, he raised his head and started to look around Zong. I had to know why the kids locked me in the basement in the first place. Suddenly, I remembered what my wife said to me before going to bed. right! At that time, my wife mentioned the topic of black ants. The words my wife had said came to my mind one after another indistinctly like the mist on the lake.
"Why are there black ants in red ant colonies… It is said that once red ants are short of food, they invade neighboring countries… in order to seize food. They not only grab food… but also steal eggs… Do you know why ants steal eggs? That's because……"
At this time, there was a "rustling" sound coming from the wall, the kind of sound I heard in the room! My back felt cold, and all the nerves in my body stood up. My wife's voice disappeared from my mind in an instant, and all the nerves in my body were shouting, "You have to leave this star, or you will die." Rustling… rustling… sounds came from the ceiling, floor, and walls.
As I struggled with my body, I felt those things crawling up my body. From the legs to the abdomen, from the abdomen to the chest, and from the chest to the face. I stared at those things. It's an ant. Hundreds and thousands of ants started covering my body. Then I saw something, which was an ant hole made of soil that protruded about 50 centimeters from the ground. Thousands of red ants crawled out from inside, they collided with each other, and the sound of crawling on the floor filled the entire basement…
ah! I yelled at the top of my lungs. Just then, something exploded next to me. When I looked back, I saw a corpse with blood on its head. No, that's the wife. The wife seemed to have fainted and closed her eyes tightly. For a moment, a wailing sound stuck in his throat, and what he shouted was a dry cough.
"After the snatched ant eggs hatch…the red ants apply the hormones of their own species to the newly hatched alien ants…do you know why?"
Seeing his wife's face, the words he had said appeared one after another in his vague consciousness. I don't know either… I shook my head, and the ants began to cover my face. I screamed and looked ahead, and saw figures among the ants crawling towards me. Those were Zanzhu and Zanxing!But unlike before, the children who had no expression at all had greedy eyes, like ants.
The ants squirmed their noses like they were looking for food and approached my wife and me. In an instant, a chill penetrated the whole body, and the decisive words spoken by his wife flashed through his mind like a meteor.
"That black ant turned out to be a slave ant!"
For a moment, his head became blurry as if he had been hit with a blunt instrument. The rest of what my wife had said flashed through my mind like a film reel. It is said that once the red ant colony runs out of food, it will attack neighboring countries. Slave ants also went out together. They didn't even know their own kind, biting them to death and snatching food. I had goosebumps all over my body, and an unprecedented sense of fear enveloped my body.
Children become slave ants!
Only then did I understand why the children had changed and why they had dragged my wife and me here. When I learned that the stench on the children was the hormonal smell of ants, the ants began to eat my eyes. Ants can easily move food weighing two or three times their own body weight. I finally understood why the children pushed me away easily.
The eardrums felt each foot of the ant. Ants swarmed into my ears, and I moaned miserably amid the pain that stirred my brain. Fortunately, the ants have crawled into my mouth and started to eat my tongue, even my moans. My consciousness gradually became hazy, and I seemed to hear my wife's wailing…
evaluate:
This story uses ants, a common insect, to show humans' fear and ignorance of the natural world. The wife's extreme behavior and misunderstanding of the ants led to the family tragedy. The suspense and horror elements in the story gradually build up and finally reach a climax. Overall, this is a thought-provoking story about family, nature, and the consequences of human behavior.