Michael T. Hare

Stickle was afraid of shadows, especially big shadows, the haunting, massive silhouettes that crept along walls. His mother and father told him that shadows meant nothing, but being the small, frightened fox he was, Stickle couldn’t even bear to see them.

As Stickle was walking through the forest one day, he encountered a very large, very terrifying shadow. With his orange fur standing on end, Stickle gaped at the enormous beast. It had six legs, fangs on its mouth, and a plump, swollen body made of ovals. It looked horrid.

Stickle could do nothing but freeze and stare. If it took his eyes off it, it might chase him. If he kept staring… well… at least he’d be ready for when it attacked. “Who are you?” Stickle asked. “What do you want and why are you here?”

Stickle snarled in hopes of scaring it away. Maybe the shadow was just as scared of foxes as Stickle was of shadows. But no, the shadow did not move. It only continued to stand there, its shape outlined by a full, gleaming moon.

“Who are you talking to?” asked a tiny voice.

Stickle’s ear twitched. It came from behind. “Who said that?”

“I did.”

“What is an I?”

“I am not an I. I am an ant, and my name is Twitch.”

Surely enough, standing on a nearby rock in front of the sun, was a little ant.

“What are you doing here?” Stickle asked. “Do you not see the shadow?”

“Of course I see the shadow,” Twitch replied. “It’s mine.”

Stickle frowned. “But the shadow is so big, and you are so small.”

“Sometimes, small things can appear… bigger than they really are,” Twitch replied, then chuckled. “I was an overthinker as well, little fox, and I was often frightened by big shadows.”

“You’re talking as though you’re not scared of them anymore.”

“Well, that’s because I am not.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s simple,” said Twitch. “I stopped focusing on the shadows because small things can sometimes appear bigger than they really are. I was wasting my time.”

The little ant clipped his pincers together and crawled away on his six legs. Stickle never saw the ant again, but the opposite happened with shadows. He saw them everywhere, and he was tempted to stare at them, wait for them to strike, shiver at their size.

But he no longer did. Not since Twitch.

Sometimes, monsters with six legs are really just ants.