Chapter 7 #3
“Hatching, too dry, have to get out, crawl, crawl, pfsht, fly is gone, there’s a dead fox ahead, so much food, all warm, have to lay my eggs, bzz, bzz, prey all over, just have to pick it up, gonk, under the bark, fat and ready to become a pupa, predators in the woods, high in the tree, loud, so loud, death on wings, coming down, I’m so hungry, the flesh is rotting, delicious, can’t, need more, never stop, it will be gone soon, eggs, more, follow me—” Andi veered off the path into the woods and George followed without questioning him.
If Andi had already picked up on something, they might get their wish to leave the lake sooner than later.
Andi marched through the underbrush, almost tripping when his trouser leg got caught on a branch.
The nearby hum of too many flies in one place as well as the awful stink of rotting flesh riding on a breeze coming from the lake told George they were close to the unlucky fox.
He thanked the heavens when Andi changed course, leading them away from the busy scavengers.
The farther they went, the denser the woods became.
People didn’t usually venture this deep, and it showed in the lack of recognizable pathways, small as they might be, and the chaos of branches on the ground that weren’t picked up by children to be played with.
Finally, after a fifteen-minute walk, Andi stopped under a huge red maple, staring up into the branches.
George followed his gaze. It took him a few moments, but then he saw it.
A brownish sphere the size of a soccer ball, about ten feet up, nestled into a hole on the stem of the mighty tree.
Apparently, the hole wasn’t big enough to hide the entire nest as part of it was on the outside, which made George assume this was a successful hive.
The warm summer so far had surely helped with its growth.
Once his brain had confirmed that this was indeed a hornet’s nest, his ears caught the steady buzzing coming from it, and he recognized the tiny dots swarming around it, darting toward it and away. They had found the killers.
“Busy, busy, brood is hungry, the queen is laying her eggs, a good year, not too wet, the larvae are healthy, growing fast and strong, more fodder needed, back to the fox, so much prey there, hungry, always hungry, what—”
Andi suddenly went absolutely still, prompting George to instinctively grab his arm.
Only to release him immediately when the first hornets came down, hovering in front of Andi like miniature helicopters, the buzzing loud and aggressive, making the hair on George’s nape stand on end.
Since he’d met Andi, he learned that arthropods weren’t inherently bad or out to hurt humans—it was always the fault of the blobs when they got stung or bitten—though that didn’t change his initial reaction to seeing small yellow and black projectiles in the air.
The fear of anything with warning colors was ingrained in his lizard brain, not something he had control over.
The hornets came closer, more of them flying down from the nest, hovering in front of Andi, the first one landing on his shoulder, more following, until his partner had at least a hundred of them sitting on his body.
It was a fearsome sight. George had to make a conscious effort not to panic.
If that many hornets decided to attack, Andi’s life would be in danger.
But nothing happened.
The hornets sat on Andi.
Andi stood absolutely still.
His eyes were closed. George knew he didn’t need the input anyway.
What he got from the arthropods surrounding them gave Andi a much more detailed and wider picture than human eyes could ever provide.
It also forced Andi’s brain to work overtime to interpret and translate what was coming in, which was the root of all of Andi’s problems. The connection to the arthropods wouldn’t have been so bad—though not good—since nothing coming from outside that you couldn’t consciously stop was ever good if the human brain was not equipped to understand what it was receiving.
Since that wasn’t the case, figuring out how to interpret vibes that came to you through the eight legs you didn’t have or through the antennae you never grew, Andi was always close to overdrive.
His rigid stance and the fact that he didn’t move a single muscle were alarming signs.
His man was checking out right before George’s eyes.
He had a flashback to that moment in the woods close to Charleston, where a madman had taken Tyler Norris to kill him.
Andi had gone so very still then, calling the bees and all the other crawlers in the vicinity to save Tyler.
George knew he had almost lost his partner then, even if Andi had tried to downplay the severity of the situation ever since.
George never wanted to experience that kind of fear and helplessness again.
Wrestling down his survival instincts, which were screaming at him to get away from the hornets, to heed the warning of their coloring, he reached out and touched Andi’s forearm where only a few hornets were sitting, careful not to touch any of them.
Neither Andi nor the insects stirred. Then one of them seemed to wake up, slowly coming closer to him.
George felt cold sweat running down his back, pooling in the dip where his ass started, beads dripping down his temples.
He felt tiny legs making contact with his thumb, first one, followed by the other five at a sedate pace.
The hornet was huge and had a weight George thought seemed to be heavier because of his fear.
Slowly, as if dreaming, the insect crawled up his thumb, stopped at the back of his hand, turned a little to the right, then settled in, not moving anymore.
George wrangled his fear down to a place deep inside where he could take it out later, or preferably never, and focused back on Andi.
“Andi, please, wake up. Come back to me.” Don’t leave me for them!
It was a fear George knew was all too real.
One day, Andi might decide that it was all too much—that staying in the world of humans, of blobs, was just too much hassle.
Then his partner, his lover, would lose himself in the depthless stream of images and sensory input he was swamped with all the time, not bothering to stay afloat, just letting himself go under.
And the worst about this scenario? George knew it would be a conscious decision on Andi’s part.
Nothing he could influence or stop. All he could do was watch. And George knew it would break him.
“Andi. Come back. Tell me what you see.” George gripped Andi’s arm harder, while at the same time syncing his breath with his lover, but it wasn’t easy.
When Andi was this deep down, his breathing was flat, barely perceptible.
Matching his own to it was hard because his lungs screamed for more air than he was giving them.
The trick was to match Andi’s rhythm and then drag him up into something deeper, more sustaining.
When his partner took the first visible breath, George felt relief flooding him. “That’s it. Now talk to me. Please.”
He kept his breathing even, deep, taking Andi with him. After another minute or so, Andi started talking.
“Evil, the men are evil, need to die, have no place in the world, where, where are they, danger to the nest, they stink of maliciousness, need to die, kill, kill, kill, splash, splash, sting them, protect the queen, don’t stop, they must be dead, take the throats, sting, again and again, intruders must die, splash, no mercy, they have no place, no place. ”
Andi’s eyes opened abruptly, and at the same moment, the hornets took flight as if somebody had flipped a switch. They returned to the nest, not sparing the two blobs on the ground another glance. Andi swayed.
George grabbed his arm, holding him close until he felt Andi was stable again. “Let’s get you back to the hotel.”
“Yes, please. Do you have Tylenol?”
George reached into the back pocket of his jeans without a word, pulling out one of the vials with Tylenol he always carried. Deftly, he unscrewed the lid and held it to Andi’s lips. His lover grabbed the vial awkwardly and downed the liquid medicine in one go.
They managed a few steps, then Andi started heaving.
Knowing what was coming because he had seen it way too often.
George held his partner as Andi doubled over and started retching.
His body convulsed so violently that George almost lost his grip around Andi’s midsection.
He made a conscious effort not to dwell on how thin Andi still was despite the sinewy muscles he could feel.
No wonder, when he keeps losing his food like this, he thought bitterly.
It took a while for Andi’s stomach to calm down. Then George handed him another vial with Tylenol—he always carried at least four with him—and led him back to the car.