His comment lingered, not because she was offended by it but because she liked it. Maniac. Good word, she thought. Maybe I am a maniac.

Blue liked it small and strong and for a light wave of caffeine to carry her into her day without having to make a fuss. She didn’t want to put it in a teapot or a huge mug. She didn’t want to wait for it to steep or sip on it for half an hour. She liked that cup, her little china cup reminded her of the one her grandmother had. Whatever happened to that teacup?

The ants. There was a whole string of them coming down from the windowsill across the tile behind the sink and following each other across the white stone countertop. Then they disappeared behind that stupid espresso maker.

Why Jim didn’t take the damn thing, she didn’t know. She didn’t drink espresso, didn’t even know how to make the thing work. She hadn’t wanted it in the first place. It was too big for the kitchen, and she’d had to move all her nice hardcover cookbooks into a cupboard for the hulking thing to fit there. It had been, and still was, very annoying. She should ship it to him. 

She should sell it. Ugh, she’d just keep ignoring it. She looked at the ants. What were they doing? Maybe they would carry it away. The blasted thing.

Blue slurped the last of her tea and put the mug on the counter by the sink. She washed her hands and went into her office. Her little office was the best part of the house. She often thought the whole rest of the place could go, but as long as she had her little office, she’d be happy. Her desk faced the sea with a tall, narrow bookshelf to the right and a little built-in corner seat next to that. Below the built-in seat were more bookshelves, and behind her, even more. Her desk chair was ergonomically correct and new; she replaced her chair every twenty-four months since her masseuse told her that it was imperative for her sixty-three-year-old body to keep posture top of mind.

She didn’t often do what she was told, hence the tea made in the teacup and the man who had always been annoyed by her. But posture seemed a reasonable concession.

She opened her laptop. Checked her email. Nothing urgent. Nothing much at all, actually. She went back to the kitchen. The line of ants was longer; they were wandering all over the counter.

She bent over to watch them more closely.

Ants were interesting; she’d seen all the videos from years ago of the worlds they built under ours. The hubs and highways and all that. Yes, they were fascinating in their ways, but what were they doing on her clean countertop in her very clean kitchen? Surely there wasn’t food left around for them. She studied their interactions, bumping into each other, what were they doing, were they communicating? She could go look it up, she thought, but instead, she decided to ask them.

“What is so interesting on my clean countertop, you ants?” She furrowed her brow. They weren’t listening.

“Hello down there, what are you doing on my counter?”

She waited. She leaned back. Stared at them. She considered getting a spray cleaner and wiping them all out. She shuddered. That seemed mean, violent. Those little guys were doing no harm.

She went back into her office, sitting straight in her chair. She stared at the sea. The sky was grey, and so the sea was greyer. She could see her reflection in the window. She was grey too. But she’d just had her hair coloured. Me and the sea we are the same, but I am faking it, she thought.

She went back to the kitchen and hovered over the ants.

“Guys, hello, what the hell are you doing here?” She asked. “I just want to know what is so interesting about nothing.”

“Oh, it’s not nothing, it’s totally kind of a big deal,” a teeny tiny voice replied.

Blue put her nose to the counter. “Who said that!?” She noticed that all the ants stopped. It was unnerving, she noticed. The ants streaming in a steady line were interesting. Ants all stopped and staring at you is frightful in a small, unsettling way.

“We’re going over there from over there!” One of the ants offered.

“It’s not nothing. It’s a thing we’re doing.” Sassed another.

“Huh,” Blue said.

“Do you want to come with us?” One of the ants asked. It gestured to the other ants, “She can come with us, can’t she?” The other ants agreed.

“Oh, don’t be preposterous”. Blue said. And she went back to her office.

The sea was still grey, the emails were still uninteresting. She thought about the ants. She thought about being a maniac.

Back in the kitchen, her teacup was floating across the counter.

“Hey! Where are you taking my teacup?” Blue demanded of the ants.

“Oh, we are just borrowing it.” An ant replied.

“Why don’t you come with us and see?” another suggested.

“Okay, I will.” Blue had decided. She was going to see what the ants were doing behind the stupid espresso maker.

“Am I not too large to go with you?” Blue asked the ants.

“No,” they all replied in unison.

“No.” They all said in unison again.

Blue began to feel weird. Her vision began to shift.

“No.” The ants said in unison again.

“Oh my gosh, what in the world…” Blue felt herself lose her balance. She grabbed the countertop to stop from falling.

“No.” The ants said again.

Blue felt the floor go away beneath her feet. She was half on the counter now, her body smaller than the faucet.

“I’m shrinking!” She said, delighted.

“Yes.” The ants chimed in unison. “Yes.”

Blue felt her entire body lying on the counter now. As the teacup the ants were borrowing passed in front of her, she realized she was smaller than it. She could fit inside it. She stood up and looked around, smaller yet again. She was eye-to-eye with the tiny ants.

She felt her body in her diminutive size. She could feel how small she was. Neat, she thought.

She looked around. The counter was like a vast dessert laid out before her, a dessert full of ant traffic.

The ants began to come up to her, the way she had observed them do to each other. They nearly bowled her over. She understood they were saying hello. She understood where they were going.

Oh, how wonderful this is, she thought.

“Let’s show her what our nothing is!” One of the ants cried, and she began to fall in line, following along the countertop, behind the bulbous butt of an ant. They walked along the counter, toward the espresso machine, which from this angle looked like an enormous gleaming steel spaceship.

The ants chattered excitedly all around her.

The line flowed into the counter space under the espresso machine. It was dark in there with only a sliver of light coming in from the sides.

“This way!”

She looked around. How had the cup gotten in here, she wondered? And were they really going to give it back?!

The ants continued on their procession into the inner workings of the machine. They’d taken over, taken control, and the inside of the machine was no longer what it should be. Blue wondered if it could possibly even function any longer. The thought of it not working anymore gave her a twisted sense of satisfaction. Maniac. She ran the word through her mind. Ha ha maniac.

The deeper inside the espresso maker they went, the more the transformation became clear. It had been morphed into a theatre. Rows of balconies above, and ants lined up in orderly rows below. A stage was set with items familiar and somehow made smaller to fit inside the machine, yet also now towering over her. There, hanging in front of the curtain, was her wedding band, the row of diamonds glinting at her as it turned slowly like a spinning chandelier. Beneath the ring, a set had been created. Blue realized as she drew closer that what at first looked like heaps of junk was actually a portrait. Of her. Now she could see that the ring was making a halo.

She stopped to take it in. “Wow,” she said aloud. “Wow.”

The teacup was being maneuvered onto the stage by a group of ants. It teetered above them. One climbed on top to stabilize it. The entire place was abuzz, the interior components of the espresso maker distorted into theatre seating.

Finally, the tea cup was placed on the stage, on its side, resting on its delicate handle. The cup was open and facing the audience. It made the shape of her open mouth. The shape her mouth would make if she were in the middle of saying “wow”.

“Let’s get her up there! Come on! Hoist her above!” The ants grabbed blue and began to shuffle her toward the stage, as if she were a lone crowd surfer in a mosh pit.

As she passed the groups of ants lined up in orderly rows, she could hear them murmuring, It's her, it's really her, well, who’d have thought she’d ever make it in here to see this? Now this is amazing. She wondered what they were talking about.

When she reached the stage, she was directed to sit in the open teacup. She perched on the edge and crossed her legs. The room fell silent.

An ant took centre stage and addressed the crowd.

“Everyone. What a super great day, what a wonderful moment, how lucky are we to have our guest of honour here with us today?”

The ants made a sound similar to clapping. Applause came from the ants lined up in the front row, all the way up inside the machine to the balconies above.

“Now let us start the show!” The ant bellowed to thunderous applause.

The lights went down. A lone ant moved to the front of the stage and turned to face blue. 

The ant began to sing. A soft and slow song, the words floating over her and into her teacup. 

At first, she recognized them as lyrics, lyrics to a song she’d heard before. But the words were too specific, the words felt personal. She realized, as a chorus of ants joined the other on stage, that the words were words that had been spoken to her. As if over the years the ants had been eavesdropping on conversations and arguments she’d had with friends, and the latter mostly with her ex-husband.

“You are a wild one, uncontrollable, you never do what you should, you only do what you want,” they sang in harmony.

“Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?” They sang as a refrain.

Yikes, thought Blue.

But then the bridge came in, and a trio of ants sang, “Of course she does, of course! Blue thinks of you and you and you!” As they sang, they gestured to the audience in unison. They’d rehearsed this, she realized. 

How weird, how wild, how wonderful. The song continued. The second half with retorts she half recalled, from a final heated argument before he’d packed his bags and left.

“I might be wild, but I’ll never be mean,” they sang. “She’ll never be mean to you, not on purpose, she won’t,” they crooned.

Blue was feeling strange. Half elated, half guilty. Had she known her words would be sung aloud to a crowd of thousands, tens of thousands of ants, would she have still said them? 

Had she been mean, too wild, too concerned with herself?

The song slowed, the single ant from the beginning dragging out the last note. The song ended, and the theatre erupted once again in applause. The ants on stage took a bow and exited.

A spotlight brightened. Two ants shuffled into the bright light.

Another song began. This one, the words weren’t Blues, but she recognized them as the words of a dear friend of hers. A friend who had sat in her kitchen months before. They’d had wine, and the friend had given Blue what amounted to a pep talk. She’d said so many nice things to Blue, things Blue had told herself she would remember, but like most things, the conversation had faded, and she couldn’t recall the exact phrases she’d promised herself she’d remember. But the ants had them all word for word.

“You are my most trusted friend, a spontaneous soul, a believer in things. You are fun and vibrant and perhaps a little strange, but Blue, you are you, and you are the only one of you there is.”

As the words cascaded over her and bounced into her teacup, she felt their truth, felt the sincerity of them, felt that the things they were singing were really who she was, her essence. That was how she felt at the time as well.

After that, more songs were sung to her. More words of encouragement, words she had said to others on the phone, sitting at the counter. Each song was more and more of a testament that she was, in fact, a good person. That she could relax in the knowledge that she meant well. That she was okay.

The final number brought all the ants that had performed on stage. They sang “Blue you are you and that is all you need to be. We find you in your kitchen, we see you with your tea. You like what you like, you say what you will, you are you, Blue, and we think you are just fine.”

The audience all joined in. And every ant in the stupid espresso maker theatre sang to Blue that she was fine the way she was. What a comfort, she thought. Who knew I needed this so badly?

When they were done, the first ant turned to Blue and said, “A sincere thank you from all of us for joining us today.”

“How did you know I would come?” Blue asked.

“We didn’t,” an ant replied.

“We did it anyway,” another spoke up.

“It’s for you, so it doesn’t matter if you see it.” said another.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Blue said.

“Of course it does,” replied a serious-looking ant.

“We made it for you, we put our hearts and tiny souls into it, the purpose of which is to honour you,” explained one.

“It is giving. That matters. That makes sense,” the serious one said.

“Okay,” Blue said, and she understood. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for coming to see it,” the ant blinked slowly at her. She blinked slowly back at them. This was a sign of respect.

A moment later, a thought occurred to her. “How do I go back?”

“Oh, don’t go back. You can stay here. We’ll love you here and take care of you.” One of the ants responded.

“But I have to go back. I have to work to pay my bills so that the house isn’t sold and so the machine isn’t moved. If I stay, this will all go away.”

“Life is impermanence!” an ant shouted.

“Okay.” Blue accepted.

“To go back, you have to want to go back,” an ant chimed in from somewhere.

“Okay.” It was all very clear to Blue.

She considered staying. She felt important and loved. She felt one with all of them, one with life, one with the stupid espresso machine. But she couldn’t stay. She might get an email, she liked getting emails.

As the theatre began to empty, Blue made her way out along the way, passing ants that dipped their heads to her, a repeated sign of respect.

She walked out from under the espresso machine towards the sink, to a wide open ant-free counter top space.

As she approached, she noticed her teacup was back on the counter where she’d placed it earlier. Interesting, she thought.

Blue walked up to the teacup and began to walk slowly around it. It was like being in an art gallery next to a painting she’d had in her house for years but never really looked at. She noticed the details of the roses on the cup, the way the brushstrokes made the daisies along the border look as if they were moving in a breeze. She’d looked at this cup for years, but never really seen it, she thought.

The thought made her sleepy. So she sat down and leaned against the base of the cup under the delicate handle. She fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning, blue awoke. She looked around, her view stretching across the horizon of the desert counter. The ants were gone. The counter, the house, quiet.


It was time to go. Surely there would be an email by now. Blue stood up and stretched. A spot of sunlight fell on her. Maybe just another minute. She lay back down in the indulging in the heat of the sun and kicked her legs out and flattened her back.

Posture is very important, she said to herself.

She straightened her back.