Ada sprints up the stairs. She grabs the guardrail of her steps with one of her new hands to pivot hard towards the door of her room. She almost trips over her new insectoid abdomen behind her. The buzzing closes in behind her. Frantically she shakes the handle until it clicks. She takes two steps in before trying to slam the door. She helps as her wing catches near its closure, forcing her to pull the door back, pivot her body and slam it shut. Not breaking her eyes off the light visible from the gap under the door, she trembles as it gets snuffed out by hundreds of small silhouettes.
Backing up she trips again over her abdomen, falling back. She feels her heart beat in her antennae, a ringing in her earholes. She balls up. When she shut her eyes, she saw flashes of a cold stone-bricked hallway. She sees the blood on the wall, gaps along the flat surfaces that divot into cells with rusted iron bars. She remembers the emblem of the two assassins that were dragging her. Soon, the hallway’s end was visible.
A steel door creaked open in front of Ada. It was pitch black, the candle light only making two buckets visible briefly in the corner; one with water and one that was empty. They tossed her in, stripped down to her bare self. She turns to the door, only seeing a slider on the door’s worth of light. A pair of hands slide through holding out honey combs, throwing them life frisbees. Then, the door opened.
Ada only saw a silhouette of the giant hive that was thrown into the room and smashed onto the wall before the door shut. The room began to hum with a primal rage of a disturbed swarm. Ada ran to the corner, trembling. It only took one to find her, to sting her to embed the moment in her mind. It only took one sting for the rest to follow.
Ada screamed, grabbing her arms as only the sensation of another pair of arms holding each other brought her back to the present. Across the room she saw them, crawling under the door and beginning to spread around the room. Soon a central herd forms and marches towards their new queen.
With a whimper Ada backs away until her body was flattened against the wall. Her legs tremble as the bee collective start crawling up her fuzz-covered legs. Ada sniffles, trying not to cry as they begin enveloping her. In her head, all she can hear is a chorus of buzzes rattling her antennae like morse code, all of it saying ‘Queen. Queen. Queen’
Ada grips her head, trembling as the bees begin crawling up her chest, then neck, and finally her face. “GET OFF OF ME!” Ada shrieked. In a moment, all the voices in Ada’s head ceased until she heard them repeating a new order. ‘Scatter. Scatter. Scatter.’
They spread down from Ada’s bee-like bodice. They covered the bed, the walls, and some were even starting to pollinate the flowers around her room. Ada opened her mandible-bracketed mouth before something caught in her throat. Perhaps it was the shock and fear she is feeling. She gags once, twice, and finally throws up. Though unlike the sandwich luncheon she had before, what she pukes up is not food, but instead liquid that quickly hardens into wax. It hit the floor like a sack of tiny potatoes. Soon, the bees of her unwilling kingdom barked a new order. ‘Build. Build. Build.’
Before the hour’s up, Ada will have two sets of honeycomb protruding from her wall and floor. Ada herself lays on the bed, shivering as bees climb up and down her foreign body. Soon, one climbs up to Ada’s face with a new order. ‘Feed. Feed. Feed.’ The bee tries to slide a cell of something into Ada’s mouth, though only smearing it onto her lips. Ada huffs and blows the bee away, and is forced to smack her lip as a sour taste lingers on her tongue. Yet once the tiny sample left her lips, she seemingly felt a need for more. Like clockwork, two more bees arrive with cells of this sour jelly. This time, Ada hesitantly allows them to drop the cells off at her lip.
Ada smacks her lips. “Oh Gods what's happened to me…”
Ada whines, looking around at the bees who impose no harm for their queen, yet their queen is seemingly terrified, keeping them on-edge. But at least this time, Ada can keep the lights on and be fed by this insectoid regime. Perhaps if she shut her eyes, it’d all go away.
