I have never professed to being a warrior. I do not enjoy taking life, and I do not delight in attempting to wipe out entire societies. I do not enjoy seeing other beings suffer, and I most certainly do not use violence as my primary course of action unless the situation absolutely calls for it. I have never professed to being a warrior, and yet, I have engaged in intermittent warfare with a ruthless enemy for the last seven years.

It all began with a jar of cookies.

My grandmother is one of those people who has always seemed old. Maybe this is because she has claimed to be at Death's doorstep for the last twenty years, or maybe, it's the fact that she never seems to change out of her nightgown whenever I come to visit. It doesn't matter. My grandmother is old, and her vision has been terrible for as long as I can remember it. She has also delighted in feeding me terrifying amounts of food for as long as I can remember.

Seven years ago, I was a more innocent being. I trusted my grandmother's judgment about things, and would eat a little bit of whatever she offered, because, well, that was probably the only thing keeping her alive (according to her, anyway). I was watching TV when she offered me the jar of cookies. Distracted by something that was wonderfully mind-numbing, I grabbed a cookie, took a couple of bites, and...

...tasted blood.

Before I knew it, my mouth was on fire. Confused, I ran to a nearby basin and spat the remnants of the cookie out, and was shocked to find it swarming with ants. When I looked in the mirror to take a closer look at my mouth, I was horrified with what I saw. My mouth was swarming with angry ants, and the bits of my tongue that weren't being attacked by those horrible creatures were covered with pools of blood.

I don't think I've seen my grandmother laugh so hard in her life. That part however, is immaterial. The ants are the important bit here, and there's little else to be said about them, except that they were everywhere that summer - in the shower, in my bed, in my food, and most unhappily, in my pants. The last of these incidents was the final straw. I declared war on these horrid creatures, and vowed to wipe them out, if it was the last thing I ever did.

And so the war began, and it was ruthless. The ants had previously shown me no mercy, and I had quickly realized that the only way to best these creatures was to beat them at their own game. I squashed what must have been thousands of them, and shortly before I left, saw to it that an exterminator was hired. The war seemed to end there. There was some sporadic fighting over the next few years, but the ants never seemed to fully recover from that first year. I was beginning to think that I had won.

My victory however, as I quickly found out this year, was short lived. The ants were back. While they never managed to get their numbers back into the thousands, they had gotten bigger, stronger, and more ruthless. They also never forgot me. Almost every night since I've been here, they've sent a champion or two to engage me in mortal combat. These champions are not regular ants - they're about two to three inches long, have jaws that can easily draw blood, and have exoskeletons that are extremely resilient against traditional forms of extermination that I'd employed in the past (READ: Various forms of blunt trauma). These champions never travel alone. They command small armies of mosquitoes, and less often, moths. I've formed alliances with the local lizard and spider populations, but my allies are often overwhelmed by the sheer numbers our enemies possess.

Despite these setbacks however, my victories have been as brutal as they have been absolute. The champions have gotten craftier and and tougher with each assault, so I write this entry as something of a possible final goodbye. I have never professed to being a warrior, and I don't find the idea of an honorable death on the battlefield even remotely appealing. These things happen though, so don't mourn my passing if I should fall. Because really, the last thing I'm going to want to haunt as a ghost is a bunch of crybabies.