I stood and drank underneath the stuttering fluorescent lights and beside my husband Wes, who’d invited me to his office’s Christmas party. I was already halfway to being loaded when his boss caught us by the tree.

"So, Wes told me you grew up on a farm," I said to her.

"In Wisconsin. I had to slaughter cows." At that point I realized she was loaded too.

"My god," I said. "I love cows."

"All they do is graze," she said. "They eat grass and stand there. That’s it. I don’t know how anything can live like that." The three of us stared at each other for a moment until she asked me where I work.

"I do a lot of things," I said. The room seemed to be getting louder. "But right now I’m babysitting."

"You know," she said. "We’re hiring. If you ever want something more solid, you have a place."

"I appreciate it." We had to yell now.

"Maddy," Wes said to me. "Come see my view."

We said bye and then waded through the thinning crowd, until the door to his office closed behind me and I stumbled toward the window, pressing my face up against the glass. A switch flipped, and the room went dark.

"Everything looks so small," I said. We were high up enough that the drop would’ve killed us.

"Isn't it beautiful?" The cityscape flared in my eye, blackened buildings and brake lights piled over the ground as suited figures chugged through the street in little steps; beside them, I imagined, a million ants marched ahead, melting into the darkness and, at times, fading back to life again.

"Does this office have ants?" I asked.

"What?"

"I don't know. I've just been thinking about ants a lot lately." I felt a dull pounding in the back of my head. My chest throbbed. I turned back to him. "Do you think ants are happy?"

"Probably. I don't know. Isn't that beside the point?"

"What's the point?"

"Of ants? I'm not sure. But I feel like happiness is beside it." Then the crying started, and he said, "Oh, sweetie," and sat beside me with his back to the window. Then the crying stopped and I opened my eyes with my head on the floor to see the carpet holding the whole of my vision, to feel the tired smell of a coffee stain intruding into my head.

I composed myself and the night staggered onward. Soon we dissolved back into the crowd, and I stood and carried on drunken and decaying conversation until shortly enough, the time came for us to leave.

When we got home I lurched to the bathroom and vomited in the toilet. My headache struck me like a pendulum towering over my body, looking down on me and the sensation bleeding out from my pores while I pooled onto the floor. In my delirium I tried to look toward the sky but only saw drywall and white paint. My neck gave out and as my head curled over, my gaze passed over this painting I’d done almost a decade ago. It had these children and teenagers from some far away place gathering wheat from fields into bales, scything and dancing and staring into the trees and the grass and each other's eyes like I'd stare into a sunset. Everything in the world felt so far from my reach. I pulled myself up and held my face over the bowl until my head began to clear and I heard a knock on the door.

"Can I help?" he said.

"Hold on." I flushed the toilet and washed my hands. Then I turned the knob and came back to life once again.

A screech sounded from the kettle as I walked toward the living room. I dropped down on the couch while Wes poured a cup of boiling water. Our dog came over and rested her muzzle on my lap. I couldn't tell if that expression on her face meant boredom, sorrow, or contentment.

Wes dropped a teabag and sugar into the cup and stirred. He brought the cup over to me, and when I tasted it, the sugar sat bitter on my tongue.

He sat down beside me and grabbed the remote off the table, and in some time I faded out again.

March 12, 2024

About the writer

Amber O'Hanley is a writer from Alaska currently studying as an undergraduate at Bard College.