Killer Queen

As the school bell tolled, signaling break from classes, Sadie marched into the playground with an air of indifference.

Her lanky body drifted clumsily in the winds, roaming as a ghost with heavy ropes tied around its ankles. She was hoping that her scraggy limbs and gaunt face would be enough to deter other students from her path, but they offered her no distance.

Sadie walked to her usual spot, a place where she can eat her measly lunch in peace. But Cynthia, one of the more cheerful squads, lost all her cheer and was sobbing uncontrollably in Sadie's usual corner.

Sadie nudged the invader slightly through her sleeve, hoping she'd go cry elsewhere, "time to go." She said, but all it did was trigger an agitated Cynthia to confide in her.

"He's gone!" Cynthia slobbered while hugging Sadie with all her might, face nestled in her flat chest. "That's cool, I mean It'll be cool" Sadie stuttered hesistantly, the unexpected embrace had made her dart her eyes addled, looking for a way out.

The surprising force Cynthia exerted restrained her movement, and Sadie felt as a fly squeezed in the jaws of a Venus trap.

She'd usually respond with a snarky comment to escape such confrontations, but Cynthia looked so utterly devastated that she almost felt pity for her. So she just listened as the other girl broke out with renewed sobs, full of naive adolescent certainties. "Chris left me, he just left me! it was meant to be true love..."

Cynthia paused to swallow tears then added with a rage. "That blonde bitch Jessica just batted her eyelashes and he forgot that I even existed! I turned into a summer fling!"

The closing of her phrase was accompanied by whimpering. Sadie nodded her head, expressing fake sympathy with a gentle bend of her eyebrows.

Yet beneath her attempt to be nice laid a judgemental subtext - that boys were easily led astray, easily manipulated with an interested glance or a sensuous smile, the real war was between the women, men serving only as slaves for the victor.

As the defeated girl sobbed, the other students watched, a mix of pity and schadenfreude in their gazes, and Sadie started becoming uncomfortable at the attention directed at them.

"Maybe I should forgive him," Cynthia said, holding unto Sadie's shoulders while looking directly into her wandering frown. Her words and grab took Sadie by surprise, so much so that she almost slapped the living spirit out of her.

She peeled Cynthia's hands off her shoulder because she hated being touched, then responded:

"Then you'd be worth less than dirt in his eyes,"

"Why even live if I am not seen by the king's side. I'd rather be the dirt beneath his feet and get walked all over on than exist without him."

Sadie cringed, unsure if she was serious or just trying to bother her at this point.

"You're better off without him," she commented whilst trying not to gag, she meant to say you'd do better offing yourself, but she wanted to hold back on her first day of school.

Then Sadie analysed the situation to her with a cold and detached tone, knowing fully that her advice will go to waste. "It is obvious that your high level of interest in Chris is caused by him preferring Jessica over you which degraded your self worth."

Cynthia intensified her crying, but Sadie was oblivious to it, her energy to care dwindling fast, for beneath the performative empathy she still realised that should Cynthia's dilemma one day be her own, the same sympathy would not likely be returned.

But for now, in this moment, her disgust of letting Chris be rewarded for his betrayal of this beautiful girl instead of punished was too much to take.

"This is my proposal, you go out with someone who can't cheat on you, then you'd be treated as the diva you think you are, I can arrange a date for you if you'd like,"

"Excuse me?" Cynthia uttered, seemingly insulted. She stared begrudgingly at the girl standing next to her as her blurry sight cleared up and she finally realised who she was talking with.

"Well, Stuart over there seems to have a crush on you." Sadie pointed at a smiling Stuart with the tip of her stinky sandwich. When Cynthia turned around, she was met with uneven yellow teeth, held together with knotted braces. Excited at his prospects, Stuart started waving a skeletal arm at them.

"Ewww!" Cynthia screamed at the top of her voice, her arms twitching in revulsion as if she just had a panic attack.

That alarm call gathered her vogue group to their site. Soon the entire group of entitled girls congregated at their spot, in a barrage of hugs and reassurance to calm down their friend. Their leader, Emilia, was shooting a vicious glance at Sadie.

Paying her no heed, Sadie rolled her eyes and took the opportunity to slowly sneak out of the mess she has found herself stuck in then beelined for the jungle gym, where she'd hoped she can finally be left in peace.

Climbing high above the petty drama below, Sadie felt the rays of rare sunlight warming her porous skin as she balanced her lank body on top of the steel bars. Laying atop the rusted jungle gym tower, she cast her yellow eyes over the bustling schoolyard and felt a sense of relief that she escaped from the petty drama of gossiping girls below.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

She turned and peered into the large puddle right under, examining her admittedly odd features—her amber eyes, quite far apart, were ringed by dark circles.

The muddied waters, besides blurring her flaws, had also made the dark circles seem as the sockets of the reaper, the iris a light at the end of the tunnel.

High pitched voices almost made Sadie fall from her height, her button nose twitched and her black-painted lips tilted downward as the girls’ shrill gossip were carried in the winds towards her hearing, as if chirping cicadas were performing right inside her hooded ears.

She spotted crows bickering at a distance in their usual fashion over some inconsequential morsel and decided to throw her cold sandwich at them, hoping their cawing would mask the hollow shrieks of demon possessed girls.

The autumn sun marked the passage of time as it traced its path across the sky, casting shadows that stretched ever longer across the schoolyard.

She enjoyed the fleeting stillness of the moment—sunlight falling upon her gaunt face, leaves spiraling to rest upon damp ground, beggar children squabbling in the dirty streets.

As Sadie started drifting asleep, the bell clanged, signaling recess end. She waited for the girls' ceaseless chatter to fade before she began her lazy descent, climbing down rung by rung. Dreading to stand in the claustrophobic line regiment of students.

Sadie hung back, leaning against the iron railing of the cube. She was in no hurry to go inside. As she gazed idly at the street, a shadow fell across her face.

She looked up, squinting her small eyes to make sense of the shape. For a moment she thought it was a cloud passing over the sun, but then she saw it was no cloud. A huge hexapod was blocking out the sky, growing larger by the second.

With mounting intrigue, Sadie realized it was an enormous winged creature descending upon the school district. As it swooped lower, Sadie made out the distinctly insectoid form - an ant the size of the school bus, its furry metasoma wobbling, its mandible necklace clicking as it banged against the sternum.

The other students had now emerged from the building and stood frozen in horror, gaping up at the creature.

The monstrous ant landed in the schoolyard with a ground-shaking thud, and Sadie gathered enough courage to stare in its horrific face. It was... Miss Antonella? What the hell?

A sort of creeping malaise haunted the air as Miss Antonella, the bizarre biology teacher with her unkempt nest of hair and eyes flashing a brownish red, was revealed to be the odd entity hovering over the students.

"Hello dear children," She greeted her pupils with an unusually exuberant tone "Today, class will be held out in the open,"

Miss Antonella had always been a disciplinary force in the school, her methods were effective, a tad cruel even.

And as such, no one dared disagree with the hot tempered teacher, especially not now that she was in a mutated state.

They've spread the chairs and sat down politely, as if hypnotized to submission by the strangeness of the situation. Sadie shifted uneasily in her squeaking plastic chair, trying not to make eye contact with the hybrid woman.

Miss Antonella launched into her lesson with her characteristic combination of austere vocabulary and logical structuring, her voice humming over the murmuring crowd like an irritatingly insistent bug. "A successful colony," she intoned, "requires a vigorous work ethic and unquestioning submission to the queen."

Cynthia rolled her eyes and chuckled, "She thinks herself an ant queen now, I mean look at her, antennaes tangled in a tiara."

The boy next to her joined in "Right! And I wouldn't consider what she did as flight either, she was barely hovering,"

Sadie's unease intensified to equal parts dread and ridiculous disbelief. Their teacher came to school transformed into a bug lady and no one seemed to mind, it was weird. "So no one will address the weirdness of the situation?" She threw the question reluctuntly at the chattering bunch, feeling out of place.

"What's there to address?" Responded Remi, his arms crossed. "Ants aren't that interesting, neither are teachers. Why would the combination of the two merit any attention?"

A curious george pondered further, "Is it an ant posing as Miss Antonella or Miss Antonella masquerading as an ant? Lord knows what sort of concoction she drank to transform into such a state, or do you think it was magic?"

"Regardless, even magic couldn't haul up her butterballs." Retorted Remi, and a wave of giggling spread among the crowd, Sadie wished she could join in the laughter, dismiss Miss Formicae's rhetoric as harmless fantasy. But something about the fanatical edge in the teacher's voice and her immense size disturbed her terribly.

Their mocking became louder and Miss Antonella felt she was losing control of her class. Then a front sitting exchange student from Britain lifted up his dainty leg and squished a circling of ants while saying with a thick accent, "Perish ye insignificant lot."

His comment got on the teacher's nerves. She raised her front arms and let out a piercing squeal. As the sound hit Sadie's ears, something deep within her awoke - some primal fear long dormant. All around her, the boys were breaking into a run, charging across the yard towards the monstrous insect.

Sadie watched in shock as they swarmed around the teacher, calling out in worshipful cries beneath her spread arms, slavering on the ground on which she trod while the Ant Queen laughed to her heart's content.

Suddenly, Sadie understood - The ant queen has released pheromones to turn male students into her personal drones. Sadie backed away slowly, wanting no part of whatever ancient spell this creature had cast.

Emily, unimpressed, stood her ground and argued that the boys had pushed the boundaries of ingratiating themselves to the teacher to an unprecedented level and that she would send an official complaint to the principal himself. And with these words, she has become the first victim of the horde.

For it is then that Miss Antonella cried, "Rise up, my loyal underlings, and gather food for a famished queen!" And the unthinkable occurred: Chris and the entire male student body sprang up as one from their kneeling stance and came swarming towards Emily and the others with horrifying purpose.

They've held Emily's struggling body in place, while Miss Antonella came forward and grabbed her by the chin. "Principal Geoffrey will join you shortly." She announced before decapitating her head, sending her angry face rolling to the first row of the class.

Sadie tried to back away after this, grasping for an escape route - but the swarm of students had her surrounded. She swung a chair at a charging Chris and squashed a less intimidating Stuart underfoot, before getting overwhelmed by hundreds of bodies.

Hands grasped her arms, dragging her towards the stage where Miss Antonella waited, mouth drawn back in a mad grin. Sadie struggled, fighting unconsciousness, as the relentless skeleton fingers of Stuart fastened around her throat, drawing out a last breath from smutted lips.

Her last blurred vision was Cynthia screaming and running around, chased by the racing boys. As darkness overtook Sadie, she wondered what they'd do with her insentient body.