wake up- 4pm again. the ground level windows in the basement apartment make it 4pm all day, dusty light kicked off the ground and refracted on the shabby landlord-white walls of that place. smell the influenza and the dust mites and the apples rotting on the counter, if you want. nobody’s making you. there are little red ants crawling through the crack i left in the window when i threw that can of soup at henry and didn’t realize the window was closed. it’s a gash more than a crack, like a shank wound, all muddled at the edges, and little red ants dodge little falling shards of glass like boulders. i can see it up close and in technicolor in my fever dreams. i float in and out at 4pm all day and all night. the green glass shade on the desk lamp casts a victorian glow on the poster above the bookshelf— mae west — come up and see me sometime.

upstairs neighbors vibrating the ceiling percussively with a speaker straight to the ground, professor finger and professor thumb, the phalange twins. one is a typologist and the other doesn’t do much of anything. i went up when we moved in to introduce myself and the thumb said something or other about the arrangement of my facial features and made a joke alluding to my lack of trustworthiness and i used all my might not to stare at him blankly before getting distracted by the tv in their living room, mostly in view, that was playing a pay-per-view dirty movie and in front of which the finger was perched lopsided on a chair with ripped up upholstery, his legs flung over one arm, gnawing on his thumb nail. i made a joke to the effect of do you always let your brother chew you up like that and he asked huh and i excused myself. they are in a two man band with only drum and bass. professor finger is the only one who practices, and for that i thank the lord.

pounding subwoofer ceiling doesn’t agree with pounding influenza knocking at the walls of your skull. i have been eating tylenol like mike and ikes. the worn rayon blanket henry brought home is soaked thoroughly in sweat. in some places it is encrusted with the desiccated bodies of departed red ants. i recall crows have funerals for their dead. these red ants have far less heart. on the wall under the window more red ants are seeming to invade, travelling in long streams, one by one and two by two and so on until you get bored of singing. i crush one with my finger to make sure that it’s real and i am disappointed in my own soundness of mind when its little body pops and makes a rusty stain. i can do nothing about the red ants. in order to summon the might to go to the bathroom i must gather strength consciously for several minutes. i feel as though i am an ant lifting fifty times my weight. swallowing water is a chore. these ants are far stronger than i am, and i accept them into my heart. i am trying to be merciful like jesus. the rosary that hangs from my bedside lamp is unmoving. i have not turned the light on or off in the four days that it has been 4pm. the jesus on the cross has fucked up yellow eyes. i bought him a year ago at a flea market because of how fucked up his eyes are. he kind of looks like the finger, from an angle. you’d think jesus must’ve been greasy-haired.

there is knocking at the door. my bedroom door is open and if i crane my neck i can see through the doorway down the crooked hallway and through the dirty window in our front door; it is professor thumb. i speak my first words in four days: “speak of the devil and he doth appear.” it is hard work to become upright and walk to the front door. my head pounds more when i stand up as if it is warning me that this is an act for which i will be sorry. mae west looks at me from the wall, her eyebrow cocked as if to tell me that i am fucked. in my head i say “ms. west, please.”

opening the door the thumb says hello and i say hello and then there’s a small beat of silence before the thumb asks: “have you been getting the red ants too?:

i have, yeah. they’re crawling in my window.

THUMB

at ours they’re coming up through the drain in the kitchen sink. i called the landlord about it and he said he’d send someone over but i think he’s full of shit.

i wouldn’t be surprised, yeah.

THUMB

you know those red ants can bite.

huh.

THUMB

once you get ‘em there’s really not much of a way to get rid of ‘em. they’re like termites.

hmm.

THUMB

the only way to really do it is fumigation.

That’s tough.

professor thumb sort of looks the other way and scratches the side of his head. he asks if i’ve read any carl j jung, and i say a little, and he asks me if i’ve read his stuff on psychic animal spirits. i say i don’t know that i have. then he looks at me very darkly and and tells me this: red ants are a very sinister omen. he had thought that professor finger had been hallucinating them before he saw them in the sink one morning. he was glad it wasn’t a hallucination, because hallucinating red ants means that you are not far from the dark mist clouding your eyes.* he fears that the infiltration of red ants is a mark of a very ominous psychic energy that has taken over our residence. he asks me if i’ve been having dark thoughts. upon learning that i’ve had the flu and have not left my bed for several days he shakes his head and rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. he tells me to just keep an eye out for myself, ok? and that he and/or the finger are home most of the time so i can just knock. then he walks back up the concrete stairs, and says, quietly, to himself, “jesus”.

and then the thumb was gone. so long. the thumb and the finger have been on edge recently. professor finger is on probation. professor thumb is worried that he will default on payments on his dodge dart and that it will get repossessed. this is funny because the thumb has a part time job as a skip tracer for a debt collection agency downtown with dirty windows. do unto others. a typologist and skip tracer. that thumb is an interesting cat. they talk loud at night and their living room is, i think, above my bed. i have been absently mashing the side of my fist into the door jamb for several minutes now thinking about the thumb, that odd cat. i have to go to bed. i’ve got to go to bed. i go to bed. and fall asleep and have a dream: intro exterior day. THUMB is driving a red dodge dart. FINGER is in the passenger seat. they are driving very quickly. zoom. we see that both FINGER and THUMB are crawling with red ants, but they don’t seem to notice. the radio is on and is playing some loud staticky indecipherable AM station. there are no other cars on the road. i realize, dreaming, that they are on the autobahn. in the background are grassy hills, cows. there are no other cars on the highway. the sun is beating down, and things in the distance are wavy in the heat. zoom. THUMB’s eyes are completely blank. red ants crawl in and out of his eye sockets around the eyeball, into the tear duct, out of the inner corner. a stream of red ants, marching thousand by thousand, is continuously rushing in from the back seat. cut. looking into the back seat. camera pans down to the floor. there is no floor, but a gaping chasm, out of which more and more red ants emerge. i realize, dreaming, that the chasm is hell. i am sitting in the back seat, my feet hovering above the bottomless floor. little red ants crawl up FINGER’s back and into his shirt and around his neck and into his ears. the sound of ants crawling is audible, though so quiet i have to strain my ears to hear it, the barely perceptible squelching of soft insectflesh on soft insectflesh. we are speeding down the autobahn. the ants do not stop coming.

*upon being asked he clarifies that he is referring to death, the big sleep, pushing daisies, what have you