Heart of Darkness

When I was a boy I would lay in the long grass and watch the bees. After long mornings and even longer afternoons I became one. My hair fused together and became two feelers, my arms and legs shrank and splayed and became six stick like limbs, my torso truncated and sectioned off, and two clear wings stabbed out of my shoulder blades.

The world was odd, stretched and shallow. I felt a tugging on my head, the tickle of a beckoning finger drawing me towards a flower bed. To my bee-eyes what I knew to be a bunch of purple flowers looked fluorescent green and orange and at the center of each one there was powder particles. I could see individual motes of pollen scattered on the flower like salt on a table. I flew down and started collected little pollen dust bunnies and storing them inside one of abdomen sacks which was evidently made for just this purpose.

When my sacks were all stuffed I followed the twitching of my antenna back to the hive. I deposited the pollen I collected and gleefully joined in with my brother and sister bees mixing the pollen with water. We made a delightfully smelly sticky paste which I took in my mouth and fed to my little brother and sister bees secreted in their little combs. Then I decided to start all over again.

I flew out and made my way to the flower bed but on my way I saw a little boy lying in the grass. I could feel my stinger sharp and deadly in my bum. I wonder what it would feel like to sting someone. I flew close to the little boy but didn't land, I didn't want to wake him yet. I built up steam with my beating wings and dived bum-stinger first into his arm.

"OUCH" I cried. I sat up and a bee tumbled off my arm and into my hand. I poked at it, it lay curled and unmoving, dead. "I don't think I'd like to be a bee."