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Sport 41: 2013

Jessica Hansell — Ant Colony

page 230

Jessica Hansell

Ant Colony

Spite trickles its jaded way.

Blood enters the tower, my circuitry and neck.

Secretly my mind is a wet sack of seeds but I heave it around happily. I even manage to make friends. But on this day I come to a clearing of revolting dinner-guests all smelling like something I don’t drink.

They’re looking at me with their multiple bung eyes and I notice their costumes are either unhemmed or clingy. Everything is the same colour-palette as the police-car parked nearby. All eyes lift away from me and head upward. They’re faintly smiling despite their obvious chafing.

I already know the men will keep untalented snails chained up in their chinos and all the thick-necked broads (who accidentally spit in my eye) will suck them out of their shell when I’ve left.

They keep telling me about a golden boom that I know for a fact never happened. One guest tells me I remind her of a gum-digger they kept in the basement car park. Sadly they had to let him go because he was stealing.

It’s all a bit spread out like grimy toys. These people remind me of a full net of fish, flipping themselves dry. I roam the thicket.

A courier is walking around the tables. He starts asking for a ‘Douglas’ but everyone’s eyes are away. I feel a mercury desire to kill rising inside. They correct me and tell me such a feeling is called a ‘holistic scone’.

page 231

I can taste the car-seat covers in the back of my throat. My eyeballs fold over. Suddenly I am tuning the radio for some man-child who has spilt chow mein down his front. We hoon through tunnels and we’ll spin out in somewhere. I imagine the charcoal we smoked prior will give us migraines. If our toxic wheelies are over-zealous I might finally kark it.

But we all know I’ll wade it out. At least until someone appears and tells me it’s not my time. Or maybe they’ll say I need to remember the true meaning of Christmas. I suspect it’s to be polite.

My eyes return to the thunder-dome of bad soirées. We all go to the riverbed and the mud swirls like gravy. It twists when I dip in my calves. Some bitch thumps me on the shoulder. She has a Roman nose so I think about the Gods briefly.

Her eyes are dead. She resembles all those photos your camera took by mistake. I see spider-veins threading up her side as she waits for my reply.

She takes a big sack out from behind her back. It is bulging and smells like garden.

She takes out a pair of leather boots and asks me my size. She throws them hard at my face. I think she cut me.

These boots are two sizes too small. But I zip them until my skin is silenced. I sit on the riverside with sharp grasses slicing up my skin. For a few minutes I hallucinate fleas are gnawing into me. I do shots of gin until my tears wrestle the river. I am heading downstream, hopefully towards the next town.