With the hotel’s last last century windows peering from amidst the jungle to look down the waterfall’s terrible throat, I should have been satisfied on the last bit of morcilla riding my caipirinha down my gullet. How could I be with Cybulski on the deep drum pin – a mosquito whining constantly “Room service bug barely lost me,” and Valenciano is nowhere to be seen.

                Two highrollers hover past, whirring lightly. My server bringing coffee, nods. She’s older, her English isn’t great and I feel like a drag. I realize, despite the coffee and dulce de leche flan living now in their proper places before me, she stands still, watching the outside sink into shadow. “Estan talar la selva.”

                By the time I turned to understand her, she’d vanished.

Cave older than bone

Monster unstone, limber

Slider, mouth wider

Crusher of homes

The wyrm intones

‘move and live or

Die on thy relic

Tell made of lies’

Soldiers tongue nun’s

Rungs and lap cum

Surface dung and fill

Grunts gunning wall

The major sucks barrel’s

Swill the silver glints,

Bell still, knife bites

Quick to hell, spiral’s

Swirl eating all

Wyrm considers the fall

The world undone before

the crawl, piteous

creatures all, left to

pick gristle and maul

                “I have never much cared for your poetry, friend. Too many elves.”

                “None in this one, I assure you.”

                “Perhaps we should retire to my quarters? I am afraid the restaurant is a place full of feelers.” As if on cue, a ball pair passes the window, floating toward the sunset and the great throat of the falls.

                “It has been what, a decade since the war?”

                “I remember popping nests like we were teenagers cruising.”

                Furrowed brow and hand of warning as the elevator dings. We let an old man in graphic tee pass, his much younger escort clung to him, unused to ant territory.

                We leave the quiet alone until the door closes. “This is not a safe place. LCE would not like an unreformed fighter here.”

                “Buddy, they ain’t gonna know I was here until I’ve done what I’ve done.”

                His eyes bug a little as he puts his hand over his mouth. “It is good that you contacted me.” He remains posed like this and silent until we are sat in his room, amber whiskey poured and sipped.

                “This is a terrible thing you consider. Why aren’t you starting a family, quieting the war?”

                “Paying your employees more,” whispers Cybulski.

                “The ants that were made this way, they’re manmade, no reason we can’t finish the war and make the planet what it was.”

                He sighs, he searches for words, but let me help him, “We could relive the old days, become better than we ever were.”

                “The ants run agriculture on the continent. It’s the thing they insisted on, in the Panama Treaty. These governments, they need the ants. You try to farm like they do, you cannot. Cannot manage pests without runoff, cannot imbue the plants with their proper nutrition without also feeding the algae that kill fish and therefore destroy the ecosystem. Face it, you love competition? You are out competed. The ants win even when you sip that whiskey. Argentine.”

                I see now what I took for a grape vine on the bottle is a stylized depiction of ants marching in line. I stand to leave, upsetting some of the ant colored liquid, circling the glass. Valenciano reaches to grab me. Side step, draw the mask and homemade sprayer, sorry friend. The hiss chokes him out of speaking, poison convulsing down his taught, paling wrists, shaking feet, left to be forgotten behind me.

                Leave the canister behind the door. The dice are rolling with me, trying hard to have hand on sprayer and mask. Neither conceal and stay in reach optimally.

                Cybulski answers the door quick enough, but stumbles before sitting heavily on the bed with a too casual smile. “So we’re good to go?”

                “Valenciano was a pest.”

                “Oh my god.” Her face becomes a beacon of caring, “Come on sit here, we’ll get up to it again, but you can rest a second.”

                Her hand presses the hard tendons in my neck. Her breath falls on the crown of my head, on the balance of my left cheek as I raise my mouth to hers. In the circle of her socket. Look, almost imperceptible under her eyeshadow. Her eyes, when she pulls away and smiles, are just the slightest bit out of sync.

                I try to leap from her clutches, but her hand catches the mask as I fall back spraying, her clutching her throat, I can’t breath, I can’t breath, croaking from what was her. I am all coughing and glottal stops myself, the body unable to sustain antpoison. Vision of the truth, of the golden purpose. They’re all suspect, can’t run their bodies without hymenoptric legs whirling their selves, can’t stymie the flood, carpet bomb it all, give me the button, the briefcase, stay off you fuckers, wide-eyed servers, hands up and back into walk-in, latenight orders sizzling, and cooking me too, hand first then mouth, the sweetbreads pure hot grease alive on me.

                Night inundates me, heat clinging despite the sweat wetted shirt. Childhood had made this cliff rim so jungled and impassible, but no, then there was a path through the wilderness. Now the press of vines and anaconda felt the same in night, all hunting. Hoverers whir passes, can’t even see where mom and dad stepped, their shapes leading me without error, through this bramble path. I slap a mosquito from my cheek.

                The edge, the drop. Water so loud the world dies below it. Mumbling in several languages. The balls pass to my front, trying to block me from the fall. My right, my right. I aim the sprayer and charge, foam and bubbles clinging to the bodies that catch me, until I smash them, crack them, pop two more queens with my own falling body.