Rain is Coming

"It's dengue, I know it, it has to be dengue!
Get away from there, bro! It's dengue! It's their eggs!"

And they splashed away, before returning barely a minute later to look at the "eggs" they'd found, and also leaving me sputtering from the water they'd displaced. They were terrified, and fascinated by some strange phenomenon only they could see, and any child-despising adult could not probably care less.

A while later, at the other end of the pool, I noticed that the surface was dotted with little flecks, as if it were raining, only I wasn't being concurrently distracted by falling raindrops, as I would have been, if it were really raining. And then I noticed X coming nearer, as he finished his lap. And then I noticed two ant carcasses near him.

I waved my hands, striving to catch his attention. You see, I thought it would be funny to ambush X with ant carcasses. The last time I'd seen debris in a pool was when I sneaked into an old condo half a decade ago to use their pool. X ignored me, like he always did when doing his exercise, and I kicked back, resuming my admiration of the little flecks across the water. Very much like the magic orbs of light in Eternal Sonata, my left brain thought. Very much like those orbs, my right brain agreed. And then my eyes noted that at the heart of the flecks nearer to me lay the body of an ant, recently dead. And then my brains put two and two together, and it hit me that at the heart of every fleck lay an ant carcass.

Away in the distance, X continued forth, every stroke propelling him forth in the water. And around him, children continued their swimming lessons, and old men continued their weekly routine. There we all were, with our own separate agendas, but all bathing in a rather macabre soup of chlorine and dead ants. It was all I could do to not run out screaming. And then I did myself one better, and kicked off from the side, my flabby arms parting the water. Continuing on with my Sunday evening like the rest of them.

Well I made it as far as the mid-length of the pool, before I lost my determination, and then splashed frantically towards the end. How sick is that. Rain ants in the pool. X later shared that this wasn't abnormal. "It will rain tonight; I'm sure it will." Dead rain ants in the pool are a sign that rain is near. If that doesn't carry a sense of foreboding, I'm not sure what does.

But I'm sure a rain-flecked pool will never look as guileless to me again.