He was drunk with total destruction, drunk with savoring the enigma of a spider escaped from the cinders of its web. Incited by a dearth of spiders, he brought fire to the cockroaches and ants. Columns of ants frequented syrupy remains on the bottles. Beneath the flame they lost their invisible pasture and were unable to converge for an et-cetera of minutes. Their hills went mad, oozed in every direction, and especially into the darkness of a newfound individuality.
Nothing is more frenzied than ants ejected from their collective conditioning.
Fire alone has this capacity to strike at their instinct and project them into themselves, onto themselves. As for the cockroaches, they either lost their wings in the crackling or rediscovered a frenetic usage of them. The child had to flee many times from beneath the stairs when his flame, having penetrated an inhabited chink in the wall, provoked first an emotional reaction from the larvae, then the flight of taciturn klaclac and of the venerable red roaches. They flew to attack his face, disgust him with their thorny legs, and inflict on him the indelible offence of their frightened musk. Who can say how many matches were consumed for the spiders to become rare, for the cockroaches to emigrate to the kitchens, and for the ants to bury themselves in oblivion.