The Bees
A Short Fiction by Cameron Brtnik
Inspired by a trip to the Honey Museum in Yunlin county, Taiwan July 31, 2016
The bees….the bees were everywhere…and the Venus flytraps…
The trip started out innocently enough.
We went to the Honey Museum for our grade 5 class trip, led by Mrs. Shea. I brought my favorite Jose Canseco bat (at least it was signed by Canseco. I didn’t care either way; I could hit consistent homers with it over the schoolyard fence). I would randomly swing it in the air, pretending to hit balls out of the park, and sometimes – I always felt bad about this later – I hit butterflies as they lazily flew by me, unaware of their impending, disorientating death. We knew that an “educational field trip” really meant “another boring museum”, but it was always a welcome opportunity to miss school. As soon as the “bee keeper” (pfft yeah right, more like an overzealous honey saleswoman) led us on the sure-to-be-a-snore tour of the beehives, Jason snuck off down the hallway, and like loyal servants we followed: me and Robby, all the troublemakers in class, no doubt. Even though Mrs Shea had a watchful eye on us, she couldn’t possibly watch every kid in the whole class, 32 students in total.
We darted down another hallway. The first thing Jason did was open the fire exit – you know the kind that say ALARM WILL SOUND: Only open in case of emergency. Of course, Jason pushed it open with little affair. It led into another shorter hallway, and to another door that read WARNING: Employees only. “Jason, are you sure we should go in there?” “What are you, a pussy?” That always worked. We headed in after him. The first thing that hit us was the overwhelming noise of buzzing: a million tiny wings flapping at once, causing the air to fill up with an almost solid, palpable (even malleable) noise, and if you were to wave your hand in the air you could somehow control it, affect its path. I had to cover my ears for a moment. When my ears adjusted, we moved slowly into the hive – or hives in this case – deafened by the angry buzzing surrounding us from every angle like a perpetual falsetto choir singing with their lips pursed tightly together; A thousand – no a million remote control helicopters buzzing around in the air. I wasn’t afraid– okay I was a bit nervous is all, but you would be too if you heard what I heard at such close range. The bees looked like they were feeding on something (isn’t that what Mrs Shea called pollinating?). I could see these flowers in their glass-enclosed fish tanks – that’s really what they were, the bees a thousand flying minnows – but they certainly didn’t look like any kind of flower I’d ever seen, not in real life. “What are those things?” Robby asked in a curious, but cautious tone of voice. “They’re not flowers, they’re called Venus flytraps,” Jason confidently stated. “I saw’em in a National Geographic once. They eat flies..or anything they can fit in their mouths (is that what they were, mouths?!). “Oh yeah,” I said, pretending to be cool, but suddenly feeling nervous and scared being in this off-limits room for staff only. I’d seen them too in movies, but I always thought they were fictional, like some baddie out of a Super Mario Bros video game. We certainly didn’t learn about them in Mrs. O Brian’s biology class. I just realized something: The bees definitely weren’t eating – they were pollenating. But I thought they only pollenated flowers… Suddenly I heard a loud SMASH! and looked in time to see Jason pulling off the lid (in his guilty pleasure kind of way) to the glass hive, letting it fall to the floor. “What’d you do that for?!” I exclaimed in shock, probably letting on a little too much how scared I really felt. “What are you, a girl??” That usually worked. Not this time. “That was real smart brainiac! Now the bees are gonna get out…–but it already happened. In what seemed to be no more than ten seconds, Jason’s entire right arm was covered with bees. The rest were swarming him…. I suddenly thought of that scene from My Girl where the kid (played by then child superstar McCully Culkin) gets stung by a hundred bees and was allergic to them and died. It was the first time I cried in a movie.
I snapped out of it. We could hear Jason screaming, just barely, above the insane buzzing. “Get Mrs. Shea!!” he screamed. He was crying now, something I had never seen Jason do before. I was mortified..but a part of me, deep down, perhaps not that deep, enjoyed seeing Jason suffer.. It was a fleeting comfort. Robby and I ran to get help. Before we got to the exit, something inexplicable happened: another lid smashed to the floor, shattering into splinters of glass at our feet. How is that possible?? I didn’t knock it over, Robby neither (bees can’t be that strong can they?!). Then we saw it: one of those Venus flytraps had pushed the lid over the ledge, rising up what seemed like three feet into the air! Bees were everywhere now, and it was hard to see… We swiped at them, getting stung a few times, but not feeling any pain because of the adrenalin coursing through our veins… We were able to find the exit, but it wouldn’t open from the inside…It was a PUSH door from the opposite side and it must’ve locked when we entered stupid stupid STUPID!!! We screamed at the top of our lungs OPEN THE DOOR!!! but inside I knew nobody would hear us. The tour was probably in another building by now! And then I felt terror unlike I’d experienced ever before… I looked back to get a glimpse of Jason – Robby was still frantically pounding on the door – and couldn’t locate him, not through the sheet of bees in front of my eyes. Then I spotted him – well it resembled Jason, but only from the shape of his spiky hair – he was completely covered in stings, and his body had swollen to almost double the size… “Help me…” he whimpered, and I felt tears stream down my cheeks, sobbing for him and I think also for myself. Just then the Venus flytrap – it looked like a green taco with teeth – the one that had somehow nudged open the lid darted out of its hive, still rooted to the earth, and struck Jason on top of his head; it started sprouting blood, like the school’s water fountain, and I could see a look in Jason’s eyes, even though they were nearly swollen shut, that communicated one word: HELP. But it was too late. The carnivorous taco was tearing soft flesh – it must have been brain tissue – from the top of his skull and Jason suddenly teetered over, knocking over the glass hive, this time toppling the whole thing to the floor… The Venus flytrap started writhing on the floor – it must’ve been six feet in length! – snapping at the air around it. And all the time, the bees. I jumped back and helped Robby to pound on the door again. We were being stung more often now, and I could see Robby slowly losing his strength.. I was starting to give up.. my body was weak, my mind getting tired…
Like that time I went snorkelling with my bigger brother and the waves started getting choppy, pulling me into the surf, under the water, throwing me ever closer to the coral reef, no air, panicking, starting to lose consciousness, accepting the end, then suddenly….
The door flung open! Mrs. Shea was standing there in sheer shock, or terror, or both and quickly pulled us in. She went to shut the door, but not before a green tentacle-like arm shot through the narrow gap and grabbed her ankle. She screamed, loud. (Louder than she’d ever screamed at us in class.) Robby and I grabbed her arm and held it tight. We tried to break her free from the vice-like grip of the thorny tentacle, but it felt like arm wrestling my older brother – impossible. Her pantyhose started staining red, the result of the thorns digging into her leg. Other kids from our class showed up, but they weren’t any help; they just stood there, immobile, helpless to do anything… “Help us!!” Robby screamed in a voice I didn’t recognize. Suddenly Mrs. Shea was yanked back, breaking our grip on her arm. She was on her hands and knees now, pleading with us to run… She seemed not concerned with her own life but rather in saving our own, a noble gesture that I didn’t get until I myself became a teacher all those years later, understanding the bond you share with your students, almost like they were your own children… We slowly backed up, not sure if we should leave her, then suddenly turned and ran (something I feel guilty about to this day). We ran into the beekeeper in the hallway and she shouted, “This way kids!” We followed her out the corridor, nearly colliding with the security guards running in the opposite direction. The bees followed us, at first a slow trickling, then eventually a “funnel” of them buzzing ahead, faster than us, in the open space above our heads. We made it to the exit, but we all stopped dead in our tracks – the surface outside of the glass door was completely covered by bees, crawling on top of one another, seemingly feeling for a way in, at the same time blocking out the sun. “We’re trapped!” screamed Mike, a kid I was never particularly fond of. “Follow me!!” shouted the fake beekeeper (I didn’t care if she was a real beekeeper or not, just as long as she knew another way out). The alarm was blasting now – one of the security guards must’ve switched it on – and full-out panic set in. There was a sharp tapping sound on the door now (could bees’ legs be that strong?) and a scratching sound, and I didn’t want to wait to find out if the glass would hold. But it didn’t matter; bees were coming in all directions now, from the hallway, and now I could seem them when I looked up coming in through the vent… We ran upstairs to another fire exit. She threw it open with the force of her brawny shoulders and we all scampered through. We were in a glass corridor – like our own human hive – that connected two buildings with a view to the outside. “Where’s Jason?” one of the kids finally noticed. Robby and I stole glances at each other, and both of us guiltily looked down at our feet. “He’s gone,” I said. “Whaddya mean gone?!” Mike piped up sounding accusatory, like a jerk as usual. “He was stung to death by those damn bees! And, and another thing..” “Whaddya mean, other things??” he cut me off sounding like he didn’t believe a word I was saying. “Never mind!” Robby thankfully interjected. “Look!” he pointed. “They’re coming!!!” Now a swarm of what looked like a tornado of locusts was flying toward the corridor… It was all very much like a dream, but knowing I would’ve woken up in a sweat the first time I was stung… We didn’t stay long. We bolted for the opposite end, bursting through the other door just as we heard a loud splat! followed by a splintering sound – the sound of a large glass window being broken by a renegade baseball except this baseball was alive. The glass cubicle connecting the two buildings all but fell away just as Timmy, the slow kid, made it through the door. “Oh my God,” I heard the lady beekeeper mutter too loudly to herself. “How did this happen?” she asked no one in particular. “I think it’s because of those Venus flytrap thingies,” I said. “Impossible! They were supposed to be working together in a symbiotic relationship.. Each benefiting, and benefiting from, the other. The bees, we realized they were pollinating the flytraps, and in return the fly traps provided nourishment for the bees from all the digested plant and animal matter it consumes (so bees ate meat?!). They couldn’t affect the bees’ behavior or flight patterns, impossible! But, ahahah, look at at me, why am I explaining this to a ten year old?? C’mon, let’s go!” I wasn’t sure, but I think she was starting to lose her cool. We followed her down two flights of stairs, then out the door..outside. “Head for the bus in the parking lot!! We sprinted across a small field, but we could hear the buzzing sound in the distance getting closer, louder…
We ran into the closed-off street where the Chinese market was busy and bustling as ever. The bees..I thought. All these people..the bees are..- I turned to look over my shoulder- coming. All of a sudden I could hear screaming, coming from..- over there! A lady was being swarmed and her husband was trying desperately, not succeeding, to swat them away.. This going on while everyone else seemed oblivious – the woman’s screams being drown out by the noise of the usual activity: shop merchants selling honey water and fresh mangoes, tourists bargaining with them, street performers plying their trade in the beating sun, kids running everywhere chasing bubbles, like dogs chasing butterflies, Buddhist monks clanging together symbols and recanting citations to their God(s), enlightened by a fat man with a perpetual, cheeky grin… Over the chaos of bubbles and people now trampling over each other, the sound of that darned annoying bell the oblivious nun kept ringing DING DING DING and the low, guttural sound of the incessant incantations being chanted by the Buddhist monks Whoa ai hey ai eh whoa ai… I could hear, no feel the buzzing sound all around us. The bees had escaped their cages and the last thing on their mind was honey. They were agitated by all the commotion, and one more thing I noticed: they almost seemed hungry. Then the first of the victims was stung, on the leg. Stings aren’t so bad – we’ve all been stung at least once in our lives, usually as a stupid kid playing in the backyard thinking it would be a fun idea to whack a bee hive hanging, defiantly, in a tree and run away, finding out the hard way that it wasn’t so fun after all. I noticed there was a red mark on her leg that was quickly swelling up, much faster, and bigger than it should have. Did it inject her with some kind of poison? Perhaps contracted from those crazy Venus flytraps?? (Where were they indigenous to anyway? South America?? Certainly not from around here.) Is that what was making them so insane? I didn’t wait to find out. I grabbed my Canseco bat (I somehow managed to hold on to it this whole time) and started swinging like a wild man. They were fast buggers (no pun intended) and I couldn’t connect with any; the bat end was too narrow. Then I remembered the shop down the road selling electric rackets, the kind normally used for zapping pesky mosquitos. I ran to the shop, grabbed one, the lady yelling at me in some foreign language, turned it on. “Come and get me motherfuckers,” I heard myself say, thinking I said it out loud, but I can’t be sure now.
I swung like it was my birthday and my parents got me a bee shaped piñata – I must have zapped twenty bees at once. They fell from orbit like miniature meteors with with stinger-shaped trails. They became more agitated – but so did I. The other kids saw me and followed suit, even the beekeeper. By now the old lady selling the rackets joined in and helped zapping those mad bees with the precision of someone who had years of practice swatting pesky intruders. We made our way toward our school bus, swatting and flailing helplessly, the bees seemingly spawning in the air as we fruitlessly tried to diminish their numbers. The bus driver had already seen us panically running from across the parking lot and swung open the door, kids disappearing into its safe, yellow confines, a haven with the torn, green leather seats with stale gum stuck underneath. “Close the doors!!” I could hear someone scream – it was the pretend beekeeper. She was lagging behind, running lethargically, attempting to swat at the bees but barely striking the wind. It looked like she had been stung a few too many times, and suddenly she toppled forward, sending the racket flying out of her hands… She was being stung from every direction now. By now the bus driver had shut the doors and kids’ faces were planted against the windows, looking out in awe and terror. Robby and I stood next to each other, thankful we were inside again, but feeling guilty again as we stood and watched, for the third time that day, as another, poor soul fell victim to the bees….
The bees covered her entire body now…we could see her moving, struggling, to get out from under the tarp of bees, flowing and oozing over her body like black and yellow honey… We felt a jolt as the driver put the school bus into drive and hastily pulled out of the parking lot, bees splatting against the windshield, drawn to the big yellow bus like it was their mother bee… Robby and I looked out the window as the honey museum faded into the distance, like a a half-remembered dream, and as if he were reading my mind exclaimed, “I’m never eating honey again.”
THE END…
Cameron is a fiction writer living in Taiwan, and lover of all things weird and creepy cbrtnik.com
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