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A Brief Story Interlude (Mr. M and the Ants)

In the faraway land of Z, a once kindly sort of man who went by the name of Mr. M had gone mad, and so doing decided to take it upon himself to kill all the ants.

There was no reason the other citizens of Z could see doing something like this, as the ants of Z tended to keep to themselves — avoiding their yards, not bothering them at picnics, things like that. However, the ants of Z did have one peculiar habit that eventually drove Mr. M to madness and thoughts of ant genocide: they screamed all the night long.

The screams of the ants in Z were piercing, horrid, sorrowful kinds of screams that would make dogs slink under their porches and the air chill ever slightly so that summer nights broke with a frosty dew on the ground. How dewy the grass would often be. How chilly the nights could get.

Why then did the citizens of Z, all but Mr. M of course, not find the screams of the ants too much to take? Why did they not burn and poison and flood the ants out long ago? The answer is: all the citizens of Z, all the men, all the women, all the children, all but Mr. M, were as deaf as granite. Yes, there were noises all around, but no one, no one but Mr. M, ever heard them.

How did they communicate, you may ask? The citizens of Z, including Mr. M, spoke with their hands, and asked questions with their hands, and bargained at the market with their hands, and cooed warmingly to their little babies with their hands.

So when Mr. M lost his mind from the screaming of the ants, he ran through the square of the capital of Z, his hands waving frantically about and with no meaning, except to the citizens of Z. Those who saw Mr. M found it funny and a bit confusing: funny because Mr. M had been complaining about the screaming of the ants for years and years, and confusing because — being unable to hear — they could not fathom why he went on about it.

So the night they found Mr. M pouring gasoline on the ant hills outside the capital, the citizens of Z calmly caught him by his arms, carefully took the gas can away, and as nicely as they could carried Mr. M to the Z Hospital for Mental Betterness.

And for many years until he died that is where Mr. M stayed. The citizens of Z, wanting to protect Mr. M from himself, kept him in a room with soft cushions on the walls and a lock on the door. And they often strapped him down when he went to bed, though they did this as gently as they could, because the nights were the worst for Mr. M; what with the screaming of the ants and all.