The school bell tolled, its metallic clang a soothing knell to another morning of silent suffering. Sadie drifted across the playground like a shadow, her oversized sweater swallowing her bony frame. The autumn wind tugged at her unkempt hair, but she barely noticed.

  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. Her amber eyes, ringed by sleepless bruises, scanned the courtyard for escape routes from other students. Today, however, the universe had other plans.

  Cynthia, the human embodiment of a soft teddy bear, was sobbing in Sadie’s usual refuge—the rusted jungle gym’s shadow. Sadie hesitated, her jaw tightening. 'Go away. Cry somewhere else.' She nudged Cynthia’s leg with her shoe. “Time to go. Move.”

  The girl lunged, trapping Sadie in a tear-soaked hug. “He’s gone!” Cynthia wailed, mascara rivers carving through her feverish cheeks as she crushed 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, looking for a way out.

  The surprising force of Cynthia's hug trapped her, making her feel like a fly caught in a Venus flytrap.

  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 for Jessica! It was supposed to be true love!”

  Sadie froze, her muscles coiling. The sentence made her as nauseous as Cynthia's scent did. “Maybe… he’s allergic to your perfume,” she muttered, peeling Cynthia’s hands off her. The girl’s desperation was pathetic, but familiar. 'Love is just a game where everyone loses,' Sadie thought, her gaze drifting to the biology classroom window. Miss Antonella’s silhouette loomed there, unnaturally still.

  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.

  She believed love was a chemical mirage—a theory Miss Antonella had ranted about during a lesson on ant pheromones, one of the rare moments Sadie had actually paid attention. “The queen controls the colony with scent,” the teacher had explained feverishly. “No different from humans.”

  Of this, Sadie was certain.

  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 onto Sadie's hand while looking directly into her wandering frown. Her words took Sadie by surprise, so much so that she almost slapped the living spirit out of her.

  "Then you'd be worth less than dirt in his eyes," came the response.

  "Why even live if I am not seen by his 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 sardine stink-sandwich. When Cynthia turned around, she was met with uneven yellow teeth, held together with knotted braces. Excited at his prospects, Stuart waved a skeletal arm at them.

  "Ewwaaaah!" Cynthia screamed at the top of her voice, her arms twitching in revulsion as if she just had a nervous breakdown.

  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 amber eyes over the bustling schoolyard and felt a sense of relief that she escaped from the petty drama of gossiping girls below.

  She turned and peered into the large puddle right under, examining her admittedly odd features—her amber eyes, quite far apart, were now ringed by even darker circles, exhausted from all the socializing.

  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 people perceive after a near death experience.

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  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 and hitting each other with sticks. She imagined she belonged with them, and that thought brought her peace.

  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 descendint from the science wing roof, its limbs snapping and elongating mid-air. Segmented abdomen. Compound eyes. Six spindled legs punched into the asphalt, cracking concrete. 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 reemerged from the building and stood frozen in horror, gaping up at the creature.

  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, Class is outdoors today,” the ant queen trilled, her voice a lullaby to her students.

  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! It looks more like a costume, 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.

  Chaos erupted. Boys dropped to their knees, pupils dilating as her pheromones hit—strong and cloying, like rotting orchids. Chris, now grinning vacantly, scrabbled at Miss Antonella’s feet. “Yes, my drones,” she crooned. “worship!”

  Sadie watched in shock as they called 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.

  Sadie backed away slowly, wanting no part of whatever ancient spell this creature had cast.

  She sneaked and ran to her safe spot, clinging to the jungle gym, her mind racing. 'Pheromones. Chemical coercion. She’s hijacked their limbic systems.' The queen’s anatomy flickered in her mind—human lips peeling back to reveal mandibles, then reforming. Am I hallucinating?

  Miss Antonella’s entire lesson replayed in Sadie’s usually sluggish mind, now moving at a frantic pace from panic.

  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 prostrating 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.

  Emily’s decapitated head rolled toward Cynthia’s feet, staring up with wide, unblinking eyes. Cynthia’s scream sent the entire school running.

  But all the attention fell on Cynthia, with Chris eyeing her intensely.

  “Get off me!” Cynthia’s cry pierced the chaos and reached Sadie. Sadie spotted her cornered by drone-Chris, his hands groping her chest. Slack-jawed and drooling, Stuart blocked her escape.

  Sadie leaped down, sprinting past twitching student bodies. She shoved the boys aside, yanking Cynthia into a sprint before cornering her against a wall.

  Sadie reached both hands into her pants. Cynthia yelped.

  “Wha—? Get off me, Sadie! What are you doing? This isn’t the time to pickpocket me!”

  "Stay still. Ants use scent. Disrupt the signal." Sadie’s fingers closed around the half-empty perfume vial in Cynthia's pocket—an expensive bottle she used to drown out rivals.

  “Run. *Now.*” She hurled the bottle at the ant queen. It shattered against her glistening carapace, alcohol and synthetic jasmine clashing with Miss Antonella’s pheromones.

  The effect was instant. Drones staggered, disoriented. Miss Antonella screeched, her form flickering between woman and insect. “*You*,” she seethed, looming over Sadie. “Pathetic little wretch. You think you can stand alone against the hive?”

  Sadie stood firm, the queen’s breath hot and sour. “I've stood alone all my life. Screw your drones.”

  The queen’s laugh crackled like snapping twigs. “You’re *nothing*. A failed student. I’ll send you back to your parents.”

  The words stung—harsh and final— Sadie stayed silent, frozen.

  But as she saw the drones recuperating strength. She stumbled back, searching for an exit, but the swarm surrounded her. Swinging a chair, she knocked Chris aside and stomped Stuart’s shuddering body underfoot—until a dozen overwhelmed her.

  Skeletal hands seized her arms, dragging her toward the stage where Miss Antonella waited, lips peeled into a grotesque grin. Sadie thrashed, fighting unconsciousness, as Stuart’s bony fingers tightened around her throat, stealing the last gasp from smutted lips.

  Her fading vision caught Cynthia fleeing, chased by rabid boys. As darkness swallowed Sadie, she wondered what the hive would do with her insentient body.