The Hive

The Hive

AC blaring, cold air suffusing the warmth of summer artificially. The comedown after a day's work. Jeff’s scrawny arm, littered with raised, red bumps trailing up the veins grope for the side table. Slender fingers brush the glass bottle standing on a coaster. Water spots soak into the cork. Brown liquid dripping with condensation. Jeff grabs it by its neck, draining it of its feeble contents before closing the reclining chair. He walks in a stumble toward the backyard, taking a lasting glance at the living room behind him.

         Well-worn boots sit stitched to the floor. Beside them, crumpled bee corpses cover the surface near the chair. “I’m sorry.” He grabs his arm, pressure combating the soreness. Turning back, he continues his stilted saunter.

Buzzing. During work or out, all Jeff hears is the constant buzzing.

His private apiary rages as he tends to it, leaving the space between his ears airy with residual buzzing. Warehouse work never dulls the buzzing. It only blends in with the machinery, altered with a maliced note.

         He thought a hobby would provide the noble benefit of impressing meaning and would fulfill him. But it always finds a way. In its infancy stage, beekeeping was work devoid of labor, flush only a newfound respect. But it became a hobby easily monetized. Exploited. The joy of the craft and care stripped and tortured. 

         One way of escape devolved into another way of entrapment. Obligations holding to the effort, quotas documenting when his efforts became adequate.

         Heat clashing against his spacious beekeeping suit, the ventilation fails to fend off the incessant warmth. Swarming bees launch off the brood frame, the smoker going to work, easing their tensions.

         He always carried a hint of admiration with the intricate complexities of beings so small, powerless to what man-made craft rips from its environments. Hierarchical systems, everyone knowing and relishing in their place. Beings unperturbed by the progressive decline of his world. A simple snapshot. Everything is balanced and harmonizing.

Shame infiltrates his every morsel as he strips them of what that harmony wrought.

         The worker bees are remiss in their confusion, their consoled aggravation, erratic in the air as Jeff inspects. Their combs are caked in viscous honey that dampens the exterior wooden cage. Hexagonal inlets rich in a dark brown hue. Ripe and ready. A brush helps to remove stragglers not intent on giving up their temporary abode. Guilt infusing with the heat, suffocating as it vents through his veil.

         It’ll feel like home yet again, just gotta get through this.

         Out from under the shade and into a disheveled shed at a slow trot, Jeff carries the frame - cognizant of the few stragglers trailing him - and settles it on a cleared, sanded workbench. A room-temperature bottle is propped up, awaiting its fate in the shadows, a spire over the dusted surface.

         He kicks the door to block out the light, unveiling a darkened interior where scarce natural light pours through blotted windows. Propping up a stool, he takes a knife and uncaps the frames, removing the wax layering to extract the honey. With the flip of a switch, he powers on the commercial honey extractor, placing the rich frame inside. It begins work on demystifying an entrancing produce into something unrecognizable. Commercial. Jeff has a filled extractor.

         And no matter how many hand washes, the grime never quite leaves the skin.

         It spins for a few minutes and releases into his constructed strainer, freeing itself of impurities, glistening as the window light casts a punitive ray. While he cleans the strainer, he covers the tub holding the honey. He collapses the veil over his forehead, sweat seeping through to gloved knuckles.

         The few stragglers inside grow attracted to the lingering scent, hovering near Jeff’s head as he sits motionless a moment. This was always his dream, this apiary. A method to enact good for his own psyche. He supposed that reality is why dreams never leave the mind or the induced lucidity of sleep. Reality is never cut from the same tranquil cloth.

         The two stragglers circle him in anger, moving unnaturally in an aggressive ebb and flow. Jeff tracks them with his bagged eyes, fist to forehead as he builds up courage. Life cannot remain this unfair.

         His stragglers offer him what he seeks. He unzips his suit, his muscles tight after a day of work. Lifting a sweat-stained shirt, a wound gapes at the side of his abdomen, flesh partially scabbed over. Jeff swallows deep breaths and zones out.

         How many more times can I try before it’s useless? His chest compressions battle with his rationality as he mutters fuck it and reaches for his bench.

         A wrinkled bag of sugar is starch white against the drab surroundings. Folding it open, Jeff reaches a gloved finger in, collecting some on the tips of his index. He brings it down to the wound and cakes the edges with sugar particles. Now we wait for the take.

         He turns and leans back against the flat of the workbench, jutting his stomach out. The bees test the distance between him and the bucket of honey as they flutter towards his flesh and rebound in an oval flight.

         “Come here.” Jeff pleads as they continue to drone back and forth.

         Moments of stillness fill his aging frame with exhaustion, escalated from the twelve-hour day at the warehouse. The sun is still up as his shoulders cradle his heavy head. Closed eyes give way to closed consciousness as he drifts from reality into that lucid plane of hope.

Convulsions rattle Jeff’s stomach the entire morning as he bends over his work attempting to manufacture focus. Assembly lines filled to brim with outgoing product shoot by in blurs as the dead air rests like a blight in his lungs. Everything was the same upon awakening in his shed.

         Yet he knows something went awry.

         Box after box is folded, taped, and sent down the line in a hostage state of delirium. His vision grows weary, eyes blurring over as every object in the background morphs together. Hours transpire in minutes. Or was it the other way around?

         As his hands dig into each box, he envisions the brood frames. Lifting out the grates of honey, distilling the essence from the substance, leaving the bees aimless, dazed. Perhaps he empathizes with that whiplash pain in some metaphysical sense. His head wanes with a constant buzzing molesting thought.

         Jeff’s arms catch the next box as his body caves in, folding backwards as he plummets to the floor. Dinging his head against a metal assembly rack, his mind is enclosed in a shrinking tunnel. He knows naught if any coworker witnesses the incident - no footsteps approach. He lays atop the stained and dirtied concrete flooring, feeling the specks dig into his exposed skin, tethered to the industrial excrement. His brain flashes in and out of visual sense as his stomach rattles on.

         Looking directly into an overhead light, Jeff grows hazy, remembering all the stragglers who seemed so defeated. So angry. A lasting moment of that anger hangs in him.

         A fading glance over his body and his lifeless eyes catch sight of something that elates him. A bee peaks its head out from the wound, contorting the skin as it burrows free and takes flight. Blood seeps from the wound. Or is that honey?

         And the incessant buzzing fails to cease. He falls unconscious with a smile.

He never expected to come through. The floor manager finally saw a worker comatose and bent to the moral side of leadership, allowing him to leave.

Sweat it out becomes the repeated mantra on his way to his truck. Dizziness blemishes his thinking as he waddles through the populated parking lot. The pain in his abdomen is too much as it seems to spread.

         Nearly fainting in his seat, he ignites the truck and steers, pain-drunk, out of the lot. Roadways on his way back to town are dominated with lines of delivery vehicles and semis with surplus in tow. Open hangars are dotted with dozens of mindless human drones, frisking through mountains of wasteful product. All during peak heat. All mindless.

         People and product as one, sent straight to the assembly line. Commodified.

         Jeff heeds no speed limit, rather relegating his speed lower, victim to passing horns and vengeful gestures. His vision seems filmed with grease, all visual input reduced to a blur, no matter the distance. His fingers never leave his wound. Blood trickles, slow, drying along his stomach.

         Pain pings from overworked nerves across his body, but a smile remains etched on his face. This could finally be it.

Jeff rolls onto his driveway, parking lopsided with tires diagonal as he launches out of his truck, one free hand enacting all actions. The internal buzzing becomes audible language, a calling as he ventures straight to the backyard.

         He walks across the unkempt grass and reaches his apiary, lifting one of the hives and carrying it as if a package at work. Except this payoff is grandiose. Prophetic. The result of endless labor and malformed ideas. As he carries the hive, defenders of the home swarm him, planting stingers where exposed skin dares to loom. He feels no pain, his senses shroud in a murky overcast.

         He kicks open the shed door again to bask in the pale blue interior - which through blurred eyes - appears haunted. The sting marks on his arms flare, the venom courses up his routing veins. He can’t tell the color - they only appear blackened. He pays no attention, wears no protective suit. Brazen, Jeff opens the hive.

         He plunges his bare hand in, fingers hunting for the queen.

         It is not an aggressive hunt. Rather, he respects the defensive posturing. Hopes the working bees can pick up his sorrow, his desire. How hard he had worked for months on truly seeing bees for what they were. Aspiring to exist like they do. Free of bill-induced debts. Free of extenuated working hours and immorally devised working conditions. Free from propaganda and forceful tyrannic practices that enslave one to underpaid jobs.

         The bees abide by systems, but their systems are free from exploitation and instead are systems that sustain and cultivate. More free than I. More fucking free then any of us!

         So, he takes each sting in stride, letting the venom weaken his physical body but never splintering his mental resolve. He combs through the piling workers, the vibrating bodies amassing along his forearm and crawling to his shoulder. His skin roasts as the movements grow more sporadic. And then he sees her.

         The singular unit, entrusted with the persistence of this entire caste. Birthing and commanding such devotion and loyalty. Beings of pure harmony.

         He grabs the queen with a teetering grip, anxious to his close fingers as he raises her out of the horde. The mountain of workers soars around his head like a cloud of striped bodies, spasmodically circling around his body. Stings puncture his legs and face, his chest and back.

         Jeff moans with each injection, the pain searing his nerves ineffective - only leaving a shrill tingling as the venom surges. He walks over to his workbench - mindful of the crowding bees - and sits on the stool.

         Lowering his hand, he brings the queen to the gaping wound and presses her on, enclosing his hands to trap her in the choice. Perhaps none of us ever have a choice.

         Hesitation before the queen succumbs to her trappings and inches toward the wound. Her antennas poke about before she enters the flesh. Jeff recoils as the pressure causes him to constrict. Mouth open as his eyes flash at the ceiling. Buzzing engulfs him as the militant workers hang. He smooths his hand over his spotted belly, following the path of the queen with every bulge in his skin. She’s home.

         Surprise shakes him as he now feels the buzzing as those within vibrate, muffled through the layers between them. Jeff flounders as his body fights against the foreign invasion, attempting any plea for the host to act.

         But Jeff keeps smiling.

         All these years he had tried to express his exhaustion. His anger with what life had amounted to. Devising strategies for change or inspiration. All routes to nothing. All until one night of drunken splendor and squandered luck. Everyone has their breaking point.

         The workers catch the rhythmic sounds of their queen and hunt for the source. They trace down Jeff’s body in tandem until they source the noise to the wound. A hive mind ready to explore the depths of human innards.

         With no slowing, the militant workers flew at the wound, the few winners burrowing into the bleeding flesh. Metallic fumes pollute the room as the wound bleeds, filing under the abs as his stomach, filled to burst. Jeff cocks his back, mouth agape as he releases all breath. Arms and legs are strung in limbo as his insides fill. A heaving sigh escapes his throat.

         All he hears is buzzing. Buzzing. Buzzing.

Jeff awakes. Head pounding furiously as his eyes struggle to come to. The sun is no longer seeping through the frail curtains and the temperature is brisk against his skin.

What fucking time is it?

He tries to dig through his pockets for his cellphone but stops. His eyesight is back, a jovial sensation courses through as he flips his left arm over and over. Punctures dot his arm like goose flesh and the veins are striking black. Human vitality has since been poisoned over. Neighboring flesh red with

irritation, green where the punctures protrude. It isn’t just his arm.

Holes in his shirt - both front and back - and his face and legs are covered; he can’t see them all, but feeling is returning. His body aches as

one giant wave of suffering. His stomach is bloated, extending way farther than

his weight ever allows. He rubs his hand along the round, feeling the

texture of the hundreds of stings. His hand vibrates as it glides over.

Some lived on.

Bringing his hand to the wound, he sticks the tip of a finger inside and feels

around. Something kinetic brushes against it.

He grows elated.

Those that stung had parts of their abdomen ripped away, dying

erroneously in the line of duty. But he knows now his body can be cultivated as a

breeding ground for more. All this work concludes in an alien harmony, enabling the qualities of drones to ascend.

He nudges his phone off with his perspiring hand, clicking on the screen to

reveal that two days have passed. God damn.

His insides feel crucified, victim to ruination. Pollination.

He rises up, walking to the window that reflects an empowering

moon light. The sky is graphed with dim stars. His eyes go white as he passes

out.

Tiny legs crawl across his face. Itching at unblemished skin. His eyes

open, revealing a new yellowing hue to his vision. What the hell?

Curling up to his raised knees, he rubs at his cheeks, pulling with his

grasp young honeybees. Not yet grown into their colors or size, fluttering young

wings march across his surface. Jeff falls into surprise as he raises both

arms, revealing them full of young bees flourishing along his body.

Most of his shirt fabric has been eradicated, leaving in its wake lesions

that throb with seeping liquid. He smells it before he feels the viscous

substance. Honey.

Hopping to his feet, he scans, seeing lesions desecrating all parts of his

skin. His weight has suffered from the unknown passage of time - a time he knows

not, but feels in his dehydration and weakness. Hundreds of bees pour out from

all openings as honey runs down, leaving him sticky with their product. They had

cultivated. Pollinated. And claimed.

Jeff cries in agonizing pain and blissful glee. A merger of passion and

production. His apiary a prison no longer.

His body a corporeal hive, enslaving the original host to bend to the will of

the workers. Dynamics shifting. Buzz no longer relegates to mental tricks. It lines his being, echoing off his bones, sticking in his fleshy organs and tissue. A perfect

harmony.

He waltzes over to the corner of the shed, lumbering with the weight of

thousands of fostered bees. Never to be commercialized or exploited, no matter

what Jeff lost.

A dirt-riddled mirror stands in the corner. An antique from time passed. He

hangs an arm over the worn glass and scrapes away the grime. What meets his

gaze is something grotesque. His skin appears jaundiced with dried honey

dripping down to the concrete. His eyes a deep yellow and excavated with

hexagonal passageways black with bruising. Bee antennas poke out from each

crevice before revealing drones taking flight, darting around his head as he

shuttered at the view.

No longer the drone, Jeff has instead become the artist, the liberator.

Admirer of the complexity of the working mind. Enabling supernatural

degree.

He meditates on the workers at the warehouse, lining inlets, dragged to

the bone for nothing more than exported goods. Robbed of clarity and peace of

mind.

Such an insane fantasy come to fruition fills him with purpose. Never again.

Thousands of bees flood his every sense, flood every morsel of his

body. Psychotic glee robs him of perspective. Buzzing eternal.

Many forms of entrapment cultivate the most dire ways of escape.