This is an excerpt from a very short story i just wrote for a contest that was limited to 1,000 words. It’s a bit of a challenge to write a complete story in that amount of ink. Let me know if you’d like the entire story. It’s entitled JANUS.
“In summer, sometimes Dad drove me to the golf course, where I would walk and play until he was done working at the newspaper. A couple times, I played 54 holes in a day. Those were the days when I was not skipping stones on Lake McConaughy, or catching crawdads or fish, or burning red ants with a magnifying glass.
Following one ant-burning ritual, I was walking up the steps of our house. A hostile ant had stowed away in my under pants, and seized my testicles in its poisoned jaws.
I ran up the remaining stairs and into my parents’ bedroom. Mid-afternoon. No one would be there. I yanked off my shorts and white briefs and did to myself what you do to yourself when an ant is biting you. I was swatting at it as hard as I dared until it finally released. I looked up and saw my mother looking at me and holding a basket of laundry.”