The Honeycomb Crown

I remember my thoughts about this town when I first arrived, it left breathless and confused. I wondered how an American city could feel so foreign. It was desolate and the sun had been bombarding its residence with brutally long 19-hour days. Aside from how difficult it was to maintain a proper sleep cycle, there was one other thing that brought me comfort in this place, the mountains. They were in the foreground like the local elders watching over us, and protecting us.

Meanwhile, the temperamental wispy clouds foreboded something strange.

It foreboded something sad.

Only I knew what that was.

"Ahem! Hey, handsome!" honked a middle-aged woman from her old pickup truck. "Do I...know you from somewhere?"

"Uh, no- I don't think you do."

She showed me her coffee-stained grin and gestured me to come closer.

"C'mon, I don't bite."

I'm standing on the sidewalk trampling through the frozen weeds but I hesitate to get close to her. I had much more important things to do obviously.

"You've got the wrong person!"

"Oh...well, I get that. You're kind of cute though. You're looking to have some fun tonight?"

"No." I said firmly. "And it's 8 a.m."

"Eh, potatoes, tomatoes. You sure? My motel rooms just a few blocks from here." she winked.

"Na, I'm really fine." I insisted.

"Damn. Your lost. I was gonna give you a discount too." She waited another second before leaving and waving me goodbye. She left a trail of fumes behind, disappearing with the rest of the herd of bobtail trucks heading towards the seaports. This was one of many strange encounters with the locals in the city, just a few days shy of landing here. Another man living by the sidewalk demanded I buy a bag of white powder from him. He said he'd take whatever was in my pocket.

Maybe I shouldn't have made this place my choice.

While I struggled to walk upwards from the incline of the grassy hills, headed towards a railway bridge, my phone kept buzzing in my pockets. They were text messages from loved ones pleading for my attention.

"Bro, was that really you on the news!?"

"Jeremy. Grow up! You're 20 now! Take some responsibility!"

"Jeremy, you have your whole family worried sick. You're breaking your father's heart. Please turn yourself in. We'll always love and support you."

"Good morning, sweetheart." Grandma messaged me with a custom bumblebee emoji. It always made me smile seeing her warm messages. She was naive about what was going on with me and my latest predicaments with the law.

It's early in the afternoon back home, I'd imagine she'd be tending to her garden, extracting delicious honey from the bee hives. She'd mix a little on her hot lilac tea with her favorite bumblebee ornamented spoon. I would love to help her beekeeping one last time. They were defining moments of my childhood.

When I left my town, I left all my troubles unanswered. Life seemed so overwhelming back home. So I went to the furthest city I could get away to in short of getting rejected from entering Canada due to my long rap sheet.

I finally made it up to the bridge over the highway. I looked down to find myself overlooking the vehicles beneath me. I jumped over the protective rails and thought about those strangers beneath me. They must have had fulfilling lives, all figured out. I wondered how they kept it all together from falling apart.

Tears streamed down my cheeks and the cold chill solidifies them.

I took another deep breath, and my grip loosened up.

"Sorry, Grandma..."

Then, something pricked me. I grabbed the rail again and kept myself steady. A little bumblebee, with black and yellow teddy-bear fur hovered over my face. It fluttered its wings and I could feel the warmth from it's vibrating muscles, heating the tip of my nose.

It seemed so interested in me.

After buzzing and crawling around in circles, it floated down to my wrist and suddenly and unremorsefully pierced it with its stinger.

"Owch!" I slapped it away.

The stinger is embedded for a moment, then his ruptured abdomen spills its intestines out like bile and it stumbles down onto the highway and disappears. The pain I felt was sharp and burning. Like hot lava traveling through my veins.

Something was irritating my eyes. I rubbed them for a few moments. 

Things felt different after that sting.

Colors were no longer ordinary.

There was an ultraviolet spectrum I had never seen before, new colors displayed for familiar things. The colors constantly changed and the rainbow effect was reminiscent of wet oil spillage on concrete floors.

I was awestruck.

Another bee floated to my ear.

It buzzed frantically. 

"What? Did I really just hear that?"

The sound was high pitched, almost irritating, as it vibrated directly through my ear canal. It continued making its high-pitched buzzing.

Then I realized, it was just their wings fluttering rapidly.

Something was communicating me in other ways. It was a stimulating effect. I knew they wanted me to follow them. Whatever they were trying to say to me, I could somehow understand it, through the pheromones they projected. I understood them fluently.

"The Queen has a message for you. Follow us at once!"

"What the hell?"

I took a deep breath. "Why? Did you just - You just talked to me, right?"

It was at that moment I went legally insane. I was having a dialogue with myself, imagining it was the hyper-intelligent flying insects.

I began to understand them better. The bees hovering around were female worker bees, they were in charge of producing honey and were equipped with modified bayonet-like stingers. They were the blue-collar workers, while the drone honey-bee were the communicative ones, they hovered to my ear with instructions and demands. Their outer bodies to me, were displaying a strange glowing effect, signals for me to follow a specific direction. I trusted them.

Their compound eyes looked anxious to me.

When they moved, they spoke to me and shared stories with me.

I felt emotionally-attached and concerned for their well-being now.

Meanwhile, I kept walking down towards a path through a grass field.

I shivered from the strong winds.

The bumblebees surrounded me and fluttered their wings and landed on my exposed skin, crawling and warming me up.

They eventually lead me to a car parked on the side of the road, an old man was inside with his emergency blinkers on. He looked disoriented. 

His unfocused gaze stared at me, then back to the front of the car. The bees landed on the handle of the car, in a gesture for me to open it.

The old man quickly fell asleep after struggling.

Their buzzing became louder.

"Yes. I understand, of course." I nodded.

The drone bees landed on my nose again.

"Uh-huh. I see it, thank you."

I grabbed the sunglasses from the dashboard.

"This is still surreal to me."

I moved the old man to the passenger seat.

"Will he be okay?" I asked.

They confirmed he would be. The one with the shorter antennae promised it.

"Oh, only a sleep-inducing poison?"

They fluttered their wings excitedly.

"For how long?"

The bee hummed.

"What?! A few days!?"

They buzzed.

"Loud and clear. Now, lets go before you put someone else in a coma."

I got in the car and followed their direction which lead me to a public storage facility. There was a cranky old man with long hair working the front.

"Good morning, Sir."

"Good morning, son - Aye, Hold on a second, bubba. What're you stepping on sum shit? Where are all these flies coming from?"

"Oh, no. They're just bumble bees. It's okay, I'll leave them out in a sec. I was hoping to get access to the storage rooms, I forgot the door combination."

"Na. Na. Get the hell out of here right now, you're dragging too much in here. We don't need any of that in here, now. Get on out of here, and come back in twenty minutes or so."  

The man was quick to get upset.

I pleaded to him. "Please sir. My day has been weird as it is. I really just need access to the units and I'll be out of your hair. I'll get the bees out now."

The short-tempered man lunged at me and pushed me against the wall.

"You outsiders don't listen, do you? Self entitled pieces of -"

The swarm of bees attacked. All at once. More of them came in through the doorway as they aggressively continued their assault.

"Shit!" he cried out. They were at least a dozen painful stings allover his neck, arms and cheeks.

"Easy!" I said. "That's enough!"

His futile attempts to swat them away didn't work. It had been too overwhelming before the old man stumbled against the wall and fainted.

I checked his pulse, he was still breathing. Then I rushed over to the back to find the storage room.

The bees all hovered ahead of me, and clung onto the unit they wanted me to open. They showed me where an emergency fire axe was and I broke the lock. 

What I had seen inside had shocked me.

There was a living, breathing kingdom inside, largest honeycomb hives I had ever seen all attached to the walls, floors and ceilings. I could listen to each of their voices, they were all desperately trying to get a word in, eager to speak.

Then I detected a much more powerful presence among them. A larger bumblebee with a smaller head came out of the crowd.

She fluttered over to my face.

I kneeled. I innately knew she was important. At almost 5-years-old, she held knowledge of the world, I could never fathom. She spilled it all to me, her fears and concerns, her optimism. She spoke about an imbalance, a delicate ecosystem that needed to be protected.

She needed me.

They all needed me.

Another tear came down from my misty eyes, this one was of joy, it slid all the way down and I smiled, "I'll do it, anything you ask of me... my Queen."

She gave me a purpose.

I closed my eyes and I could hear their wings fluttering again. They buzzed excitedly. They Struggled to carry something above my head.

Then I felt it.

A crown bestowed upon me, made of honeycombs.