Drops Magnified

Summer sun was the purest of all its forms. It rarely was blocked by the clouds so accustomed to the front line in winter and fall. Its warmth snuck through, streaming through branches and beneath hats.

Grant was nine years old and his feet often padded the ground alone, void of friends or family at his side. He was a curious child, though, always following the questions to discover the answers in his head.

“Come here little guy,” Grant said, urging ants to crawl back to their mound between the two slabs of concrete sidewalk.

Between the butting squares of gray emerged a single marigold flower next to a peak of dirt: the ants’ castle. The flower bent and swayed in the gentle breeze, but always the center remained pointed skyward. The flower’s eye stared at the sun, drank in the delicious warmth on its golden lips.

Sometimes Grant’s curiosity looked like gathering flowers and mashing them together to see what colors would emerge; more often, it involved discovering what means were required to cease a living creature's heartbeat.

“Get up there,” Grant had repeated, coaxing them forward with his fingers. The ants scuttled, their little black bodies wriggling against his thumb.

From his pocket, he pulled out a worn wooden handle with a circled glass enclosed at the top. The handle was once black, but continued use had worn away the top layer to reveal slips of light tan of the original wood. The glass at the top flexed and caved, bending the light that shone through it.

Cocking his head, Grant watched the ants move. He was deciding which one would be his subject, the one in the spotlight. It was the one nearest to the flower, the one who crouched beneath the shadow of its petals.

The sun shone like honey on the pavement and Grant used the magnifying glass to point the drops toward the ant in question.

The pinpoint of light smoldered on the squiggling body. Smoke rose and Grant stared, watching as the ant slowly succumbed to the fire of the sun. Soon, only a smudge was left where a living creature had been.

“Hmm,” Grant said, moving to record his findings in the notebook he kept with him at all times. It was a composition notebook, black and white speckles on the front and weeks of records filling the pages in his blocky, staccato handwriting. This record contained his observations:

The ant squirmed a lot. His friends moved away when the light was on him.

The sidewalk is hot on my fingers.

It took longer last time. There are hardly any clouds today.

Like a lightning strike, a new idea singed his skin.

With intentional movement, he aligned the magnifying glass with the sun once more, but the aim was on his own skin, his arm.

At first, it only felt warm, a slight increase of the temperature as it already was. Quickly, though, the pinpoint of light built into a raging fire. He held it there. He held the glass still as tears were springing to his eyes. He held it as his brain urged him to move, escape, wriggle like the ant.

He looked to the sky, glared at it until his eyes were balls of blindness. A challenge.

It was the sun who blinked first, as a cloud rolled over the rays. Grant had won.

His prize was a burn that would later blister and get infected finally morphing into its final form of an arcing, moon-shaped scar of puckered pink flesh.

He plucked the marigold from its place between the cracks, crushing its petals into a thick, yellow paste, and dropped its mangled form to the ground as he strode away.