Hive Mentality

Anton squints at his window, partially from the sun’s glare, but primarily at the hornet nest. They rebuilt it even after he paid what felt like a fortune and then some for those guys to come and spray them. And then to come and spray them again. The lead exterminator told him these things happen sometimes, that it takes a few more doses of the company's specially patented Incinerator: Hornet and Wasp Killer (For Good!) for it to finally take. Anton would argue that the only thing ‘feeling the burn’ is his wallet.

Meera’s voice comes through his phone speaker, small, made even worse by the poor connection on her end. “I’ve never really…you know.”

He hums. “Yeah.”

The company recommended putting a fake hornet’s nest out there to trick them. He couldn’t fathom it then, setting up a ruse like he’s Wile E Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner instead of two dozen or so killer bugs. But, he’s found that desperation makes fools of them all.

Would it be worth it to knock the damn thing down himself? The idea of getting stung a hundred and one times makes him hesitant, but…he loves sitting out on his balcony. It’s the entire reason he even splurged on this apartment in the first place. He likes to kick back in the rickety lawn chair he scored off the side of the road, a lopsided joint in one hand and that same copy of Infinite Jest he’s been attempting to finish for months. And, of course, as soon as he sparked up, the book would be forgotten about in favor of watching the neighbors across the road alternate between fighting and fucking with equal violence—tumbling into a mix of WWE Smackdown and something you’d see on those late-night pay-per-view channels. That is Anton’s idea of Heaven, and his new roommates have recently made that impossible.

“I mean, I guess I’m really lucky? Right?” She mumbles in that way she does when she wants him to agree, but won’t just say that. Can’t hornets remember faces? He pulls his phone from his ear to look it up, only remembering to put Meera on speaker after browsing a few Reddit threads with concerning results. There's evidence to suggest they remember human faces and can send out pheromones to tell their pals who to attack. Very concerning indeed. “Anton?”

“Huh? Lucky?” He blinks. “Wait, why?”

“That this is my first viewing. I’m lucky.”

He stops scrolling. Their current call was preceded by a string of back-to-back texts she sent without even giving him a chance to respond; he hadn’t really looked at them before the ringtone Meera set for herself interrupted the hold the exterminating company had him on. The kind of music you only ever hear in elevators and when you’re at your wits' end with customer service got taken over by an old pop ballad from when they were younger. The one Meera swore was their song.

He reads the texts now.

Chicken, beef, or steak?

???

My aunt wants to know what to put you down for :p

oh, whatev is fine ig

You sure?

i promise idc

I want you to actually like it…

u’ll prob end up eating my plate anyway so just get wut u want

K.

👍🏾

11:49 AM

Hey!

You there?

Are you free to talk? I’m kinda freaking out about it…

It’s his own fault, really. If he’d just responded quicker, he wouldn’t be stuck on this call. As it stands, Meera’s working with the hornets to hold him hostage.

Anton sighs. They’ve had different variations of this talk before. Meera’s weird like that; she likes to rehash things that, truthfully, didn’t need to be hashed in the first place. Reframing whatever’s bothering her over and over again, to whoever will listen, no matter how unwilling an audience they were. She was never actually looking for advice or anything simple like that. She just loves talking—nearly as much as Anton loves his balcony.

It was a quality of hers he had fought hard to convince himself he liked, that her constant need to spill whatever she was thinking onto the nearest person like a sorority girl’s vomit was…cute. Now, with no reason to lie to her or himself, he can acknowledge it for what it really is: noise pollution.

“Um…luckier than most, I guess.” He settles on.

“Yeah. It’s not even like I was that close to her—you honestly knew her better.” She laughs, but he struggles to find the humor in it. Especially since the only reason he knew Fyra so well back when she was Meera’s favorite cousin instead of just her dead one is that they dated before he and Meera did. Briefly in their freshman year of college, and then again their junior year—not counting that one drunken hook-up their senior year when he and Meera were on a break.

It’s been years since then, and the last time Anton had seen Fyra alive had been as a plus one to one of her first two weddings; he can’t remember which. The same way he doesn’t remember the speech he gave after one too many Georgia mules. It’s a tragedy Fyra isn’t planning her own funeral; the girl could really throw a party.

“I’m not really going for her, though.” He makes sure to remind her. His first relationship was always an insecurity of hers, an annoying byproduct that he accepted was to be expected after how he and Fyra ended. It was Meera’s cross to bear after stealing her cousin’s boyfriend—a greater sin than dating your girlfriend’s cousin, surely. The thing no one talks about is how much work it was to take Jesus down after he was crucified. With every “No, I don’t think she looks pretty on her wedding day” and “No, I don’t think she’s better at giving head than you,” he felt a connection to the poor Roman soldiers stuck with prying those nails out of Jesus’s wrists and feet.

“I guess not.” Her voice crackles. “Thank you. For still coming with me even though…”

“Yeah, f’course. I told you, I still wanna be there for you—“

“Yeah.”

“—Just not in the way I was—“

“Yeah. I get it. Thanks.”

“…Right.” With a defeated sigh, Anton draws his curtains closed. No point in torturing himself with something he can’t have anymore. He’s pulling the phone from his ear, Meera’s goodbye a tiny, buzzing thing, when he remembers to ask, “Do you still want me to drive you? I won’t be able to make the repass, but I can drop you off before I go—“

“No, no. I’m… I’m not going to the repass either. I just need to show my face at the funeral, sit through it, and get out.”

“Okay. Sure.”

-

Anton had never been one for funerals. Nobody really is, but he’s not the kind of person funerals are for. It does him no good to say goodbye to someone who can't say it back

They met in the same tour group for the college they’d both ended up going to. It was a quick thing, a brief meeting that wasn’t really a meeting at all. Glances exchanged back and forth as the student guide bragged about the school’s staunch commitment to the environment and leading the charge by ‘going green,’ which ended up just being a clever excuse for why none of the dorms in the quad had air conditioning.

He thought of her for the rest of the summer, beating himself up for not having the balls to even get her name. Her glossy black hair in a braid over her shoulder, big brown eyes that didn’t shy away from staring him down, and full lips that’d quirk up into a smile when he inevitably looked away first. It was a lost cause; with a school as big as theirs, it’d be nearly impossible to find her. Nearly, because as soon as classes started, Anton saw her everywhere. He couldn’t escape her, and she wouldn’t let him even if he wanted to. He misses who he was with her dearly.

People who say that the dead look like they’re sleeping are fucking liars. Anton’s seen Fyra sleeping, dried drool, and snoring like a foghorn. Looking down at her now, he can’t find that beautiful, coy girl anywhere in this waxy replica. Skin pallid with a greyish murky film instead of the rich mocha brown she’d always been. It’s like death had bleached her of everything that made her fiery Fyra. No amount of beauty, charisma, or wit can stop that skeletal hand from snatching you up when it deems it to be your time.

“She looks beautiful. That’s a blessing.”

Anton’s eyes are slow to regain focus, having been caught and snared onto the stick and poke roman numeral for eleven on Fyra’s wrist. It’s his handwriting marring her flesh, the only thing that looks the same from when she was a whirlwind of a woman instead of just a corpse. It matches the one he has on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. Matching just like their November birthdays. The very tattoo that Meera begged him to get covered up, or to at least repurpose it in some way to commemorate their relationship. When he refused to, she cried for what seemed like years.

He’s more than a bit surprised to look to his left and find her eyes swollen and puffy, sure to be even redder if her complexion would allow it.

“...what?”

She sniffs, rubbing at her eyes and smearing the mascara he warned her against wearing. “I said she looks beautiful.”

He blinks at her and doesn’t catch himself in time before he’s giving her what he feels is a blank stare, but Meera claims is patronizing. “She does?”

She nods.

“Still looks like her. That’s a blessing, right?” She asks him, and there’s that voice again, that self-pitying, cloying nothingness that begs Anton to agree with her. He’d had enough of it for a lifetime as her boyfriend, and now, as her friend, they both deserve a more honest approach.

“You genuinely believe that that,” he nods to the body in the box, “looks anything like Fyra? ...really?” His stare must be leaning more patronizing than blank because as soon as she looks at him, she looks away.

Her chin wobbles as her brows furrow, arms coming up to wrap around herself. “I don’t know.”

She mumbles about going to the bathroom and scurries off before he can say anything else. At least no one will look at her twice for that display, considering the circumstances. She’s far from the only person hysterical here, but she is the only one crying for the wrong reasons. That was a prime example of why they work better as friends. Anton’s too abrasive, with no real interest in softening himself for anyone, and Meera’s too soft, with even less incentive to grow thicker skin.

He looks back down at Fyra.

She never needed him to coddle her, would have hit him upside the head for even thinking of it. She took him as he was and knew how to handle him. She was one hell of a woman. Sighing, he places a hesitant hand on her stiff wrist, thumb rubbing soothingly over the tattoo—half hoping it’ll rub away like pen ink so he can prove to himself that this pale imitation wasn’t all that remained of the first woman he ever loved.

-

Thumbs tapping on the wheel, Anton hums along to the song he has blasting through the car speakers. Rain slaps the windshield in sheets, growing steadily. He squints through it, setting the windshield wipers to their top speed. If the wasps on his balcony are stubborn enough to survive this, he might just have to learn to live with them with newfound begrudging respect.

He meant it when he told Meera he wasn’t going for Fyra—she’s dead. But he kept the fact that he wasn’t really going for her either to himself.

He mostly tagged along because it was expected of him. The Sachdevas were a welcoming bunch, taking him in when he started dating Fyra and doing the same, after a short adjustment period, when he got with Meera. He came as moral support, sure, but he didn't think she'd actually need it. And he didn't particularly want to give it. But he did. Soldiering through the ceremony beside her, tucking her into his side to cry all over his rented suit. He even turned his music down after she kept complaining about a headache.

She’s curled up in his passenger seat now, eyes rubbed raw, forehead pressed to the window. It’s a childish position, one that makes her look small in her black dress and sensible flats.

He can hardly see a thing; the sky is a fog of rain so heavy that he can’t make out the taillights of the car ahead of him.

“Gonna stop for a bit, wait it out.” He tells her as he’s pulling over to the side of the road. He turns the car off, and the music cuts out with it. They sit there in silence for a while, and he’s thinking up a joke about almost hydroplaning when she finally speaks.

“Can I come over to yours?”

He should have expected it, should have predicted her finding a way to use the situation, her own cousin’s death, to her advantage.

He sucks his teeth, “Dont think that’s a good idea.”

“Please? I‘m not sure if—I don’t wanna be alone tonight.”

“Call your sisters then.”

“It’s not the same. I just miss her…so bad,” his scoff calls her a liar. She’s shuffling around, unbuckling her seatbelt to face him better. Anton keeps his eyes on his dashboard. “I miss you, Ant. Miss being with you.”

He rubs at his temple, the other hand loosening his tie. She doesn’t try to touch him; he’s thankful for that much. “You said you could handle this. Said you wanted this.” Begged him more like, claimed losing him as a friend would hurt more than losing a boyfriend.

“I do! I do, I swear, it’s just,” the tears are back. It’s impressive that there’s enough water in her body for her to produce more. “I love you so much it hurts. It hurts so bad, and it just feels like you’re not affected at all.”

His head rolls lazily against the headrest to look at her then. A few weeks ago, he’d have held her face in his hands, wiping the tears away. He’d have kissed each of her eyelids and called her beautiful, snot and all, because it’s what a good boyfriend is supposed to do. But he doesn’t have to anymore, and he’s never felt so free. It’s a weightlessness similar to the first time Fyra left him. It makes him smile, even in the face of her pouting desperation.

“I’m not.” He shrugs.

“...oh.”

-

In the end, it’s the storm that does it.

He finds the nest, the cause of his suffering and strife, limp and waterlogged. When he picks it up, it drips with water and unfortunate wasp eggs. He doesn’t even think about it before chucking it over the balcony, watching with glee as it explodes in the road like soggy papier-mache. He steps back, squashing the dead larvae around his sliding glass door like he’s stomping grapes.

He feels electric. There’s no more buzzing to distract him from his slice of Heaven. Nothing left but him and his thoughts. But there, slipping past the dull pulses of triumph like rays of sunlight, are flashes of a waxy, grey wrist. He shakes it off.

Fishing his phone out of his pocket with a grin, he calls the first number that comes to mind. Meera doesn’t even let it get to the third ring before picking up with a snotty, breathless “Anton?”

Any other day, it would have annoyed him as much as it made him uncomfortable to hear such naked hope in her voice. But it wasn’t any other day. Today, Anton stands outside on his balcony as fate’s champion. Today, he watches the rain hit the pavement where the nest died and feels nothing.

Today, Anton asks, “You wanna come over?”