It started on Wednesday, when I popped open a bottle of champagne—ridiculously overpriced— in my office. Construction had started on my absolutely gorgeous new skyscraper. A special occasion. I had an awful time with the paperwork, talking to contractors, and dealing with errant weirdos who stood on the field holding ridiculous signs. Finally, everything had come to fruition. That poorly managed patch of land had been transformed into the start of something wonderful. My building would eclipse its neighbours and blind onlookers with its glare, making them gasp and faint in wondrous admiration.
However, I must have gotten tipsy, for when I looked out my window (which faced the construction site) to admire my hard work, I saw something quite astonishing. Some fuzzy spots were swirling around outside. I blinked, hoping it would wipe away the alcohol. The spots remained, but I noticed what seemed to be a lump of clay at the corner of the window frame. Squinting, I realised that the clay had hexagonal holes all over it—bees!
I had never really thought about whether or not I liked bees. I suppose they weren’t as disgusting as cockroaches, although they did have the same six creepy legs and moved about too quickly. Yet, their hive was rather appealing. It had a pleasing order to it, each cell identical to the next, arranged in neat rows over and over again. Yes, at that brief moment, I liked their meticulousness. Not one bee thought to stray from their singular purpose. They were perfectly uncreative workers, unlike some tiresome people I could name…
On Thursday, I went back to the office convinced that I had hallucinated the whole thing. Why would there have been a hive outside my window on the 13th floor? So I drew open the blinds confidently. And there they were again—bees! Bees outside my window! Please do not laugh. I was quite troubled. Very troubled, actually.
It was hard to explain, the entire hive was … twisting itself. Some areas bulged out, some had large pits like an old knotty tree. Its arms grew upwards then outwards then back to strangle itself. The cells were no longer neat hexagons, but terrible, uneven mouths, some larger than others as if they were mid-scream. And the tiny, little buzzing bees groped around with their antennae, crawling in and out of every orifice of that grotesque hive.
I tried to return to work, but the little mouths on the hive (perhaps those were hollow, gouged-out eyes?) seemed to be silently shrieking at me. Were they trying to say something to me? I had lost all my admiration for the bees by that point. I knew the hive needed to be taken down.
The problem was this woman called Amy who managed the building maintenance. I’ve never met a woman who did not gossip, but Amy simply could not keep her lips shut! She and her group of friends were constantly babbling away about other people; I knew because I had previously been a victim of their inane chatter. Once, I had reported a cockroach in my office to Amy, and the very next day a colleague (another horrible woman) brazenly approached me to share that she was scared of roaches too. I was not deceived by her reassuring smile. I could expertly tell what she was trying to insinuate. “Can’t even handle a roach by himself…had to call building maintenance!” No, if I had called Amy about the hive, they all would have thought that I was being paranoid. And the most frightening part was that they might have been right! After all, they were just bees. There must have been some scientific explanation for why the hive…
Yes! A scientific explanation! I quickly scrolled through my contacts list for a few minutes before I found who I was looking for.
“Sorry for calling you up so suddenly,” I said, “But you’re the only person I know who has any interest in insects.”
“Ah, an insect in your room?” he boomed through the phone. I had forgotten how loud he was for a man who spent his time catching silent creepy-crawlies.
“Sort of, there’s a beehive outside my office window that looks a bit… funny. I’ll send you a picture,” I said as I fumbled to take a clear shot of the hive.
A great, loud gasp came from the other end.
“That’s incredible. Where’s your office? I’ll come right over. It might be some new disease or some strange parasite controlling the bees. Or could it be your window? Send me another picture of your surroundings.”
“That’s alright! No need to come over,” I hastily replied. “A disease you say? That would make sense. Erm, you don’t think that the bees could be… doing it on purpose?”
“They could be reacting to some sort of external stimuli, if that’s what you mean.”
“Are you sure they’re not… It looks like some kind of artwork, or sculpture,” I suggested nervously.
“Art? That’s a fun suggestion,” he laughed. I didn’t like his laugh.
“It would be ironic if you were the one to discover a new bee phenomenon though,” he said. “After all you’ve done to them.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve become pretty notorious in the entomology community recently. You’re not the first to bulldoze over wildflower patches, but the way you dealt with the activists was pretty violent, you must admit.”
“I did no such thing,” I said. Please believe me, I was telling the truth.
“Sure, those two men did say they were acting independently.”
I ended the call immediately. The screen was covered with a damp layer of sweat from my cheek. I did not have to convince some amateur entomologist! As long as he kept his mouth shut, no one would hear of my unfortunate reputation. Or the ‘bee’ problem. And of course, I was neither brutal nor paranoid! I’m a very respectable and normal person, as you know.
I looked at the hive again. Right, this was just a weird disease. I would not let some natural phenomenon frighten me. People always praised me for keeping calm under pressure. I would let the hive be and that would be a victory in itself.
On Friday, I returned to find that the hive had grown to an enormous size. It blocked out half the window, oozing with honey, like a disgusting, leaking tumour. The buzzing was now audible through the glass. I could hear it. Thousands of tiny voices.
I closed the blinds. I was a man. I refused to be driven insane by some insects. Breathe, I told myself, keep calm and just carry on. Soon, the buzzing seemed to fade away. My fingers flew across the keyboard as I planned my next great work of art. Yes, art, for those were what my buildings were. Wildflowers were beautiful, but so were my buildings. And men needed my buildings to live.
All of a sudden, the buzzing started getting louder. It was both resonant and deep, but also unbearably shrill. I felt it ringing through my head, getting louder and louder and—
The bee was staring at me, I tell you, staring right at me! It didn’t seem hostile…yet. It had landed on top of my computer and was looking at me through its compound eyes, eyes that spanned half its head. A vision came, of a person standing before me with two gigantic eyes that were all black with no white. They were kneeling, as if begging for mercy. Then, the little bee started to buzz louder, and six bony arms reached for my throat.
Buzz buzz! Said the little bee on my computer. How funny! I started to panic.
I swiped a book off my table and swung it down. My computer screen fell backwards and crashed onto the table. I searched for the body. There it was! Still squirming. I brought my book down again. And then the buzzing stopped.
My friend was wrong. This wasn’t some disease. The bee had violated my office. It had watched me. Disturbed me. Threatened me. Now that I knew what had been truly going on, I could not brush it off any longer.
This time, I rang for building maintenance without any hesitation, wincing as I heard Amy’s shrill voice answer.
She insisted they would take the bee hive down soon, but I doubted it. As I peeked through the blinds, I noticed the bees moving more slowly. Work on the hive was quieting down. Or were they preparing something else? Past the writhing arms of the beehive, far into the distance, a dark cloud was gathering. I watched it intently. It seemed to be coming closer. Soon, it would reach the building. Would they burst through my window? I instantly started packing. I had to leave, but I would not stop working. The bees wanted their land back? I would pave over every damn wildflower patch in the country.