I am a fool. That's what the hornets tell me. I am certainly a fool for listening to them.
My initiation into fooldom, I now realize in the brilliant light of hindsight, should have been my guiding torch. The first grade teacher was playing a tape of common sounds. The entire class agreed the first one was a bee. The teacher wanted to continue on to the next sound, but I refused to lower my raised hand. She tried to ignore me, so I stood up and told the class it was not a bee, but a mosquito. The teacher said it was clearly a bee. Everyone laughed at me, even my friends, so I stood up again and explained that it didn't matter, because if I heard either one, I would run away. Everyone laughed at me again, including the teacher.
At recess, a group of boys led by my best friend held a mosquito by the wing in front of my nose. I ran away, not physically, but hid in a corner of my skull and haven't returned since. No insects could trespass there, at least until recently.
I ruminate on that memory often now, my earliest memory. In hindsight the teacher was obviously wrong. It was undeniably a hornet. The hornets say so.
But the hornets said nothing then. We hadn't met yet. It wasn't until after graduation from university that the hornets were able to invade my private corner. Though they even now deny it, I am still convinced they are her hornets.
The other memory that has followed me like a shadow into this hellhole is that of the day I first met her. I was invited to a party by one of my new friends at the store. Colleague is perhaps a more accurate description of our relationship; I had few friends there. My colleagues, most of whom had barely survived high school, seemed intimidated by this philosophy major and kept their distance.
It was at this party, while simultaneous engaged in polite conversation and surreptitiously observing the lifestyles of typical people so occupied by their quest for wealth and the ultimate orgasm that they fail to comprehend their destiny that I first beheld her.
She was perfect. Not by conventional standards, of course, but nevertheless perfect. Her frizzy, brown hair was heroically rolled into a bun that more resembled a bee's motel than the movie star she strove to copy. Her skin was the cardboard color of those who espouse the uncosmeticized organic lifestyle, but don't exercise enough, and her mouth, though containing gleaming white teeth carefully and expensively straightened by orthodontia, still somehow remained lopsided. But her brown eyes were gleaming magnets that drew in all the knowledge of the world. Perfection.
From across the room our eyes met and instantly we knew more about each other than a thousand pictures could convey. Her eyes peered deep inside me, past the midwestern ruse, past the overpriced education and into my soul. She could see every mistake I had ever made and still did not relent in her gaze. I could see inside her too, especially her boredom with the inconsequential men that surrounded her. In that flash we saw our destiny, the entirety of our life together from the first nights of wild sex to the lover's spats, the honeymoon in Africa, her meaningless middle-aged affairs and finally the comfortable, tranquil years together at the end. We saw and accepted. It was our destiny.
I believed in destiny then as I do now. I believe in destiny because I know it can, if not be understood, at least be counted on, unlike people, who use me for their own purposes, love that is always one-sided, money that disappears when needed, and certainly not a god that would leave a fool like me to fend for myself. Destiny is my guiding light, but unfortunately it only lights the back of the tunnel.
My destiny was to be with her, so I approached her circle, a crowd that seemed to consist mostly of artists. She was discoursing on the influence of Renaissance art on modern Impressionism. "Hi," I said. She continued talking. I watched every wiggle of her finger, every flicker of her tongue, every bob of the head of my wife-to-be, waiting for the chance to introduce myself.
A tap on my shoulder interrupted my gaze. "We gotta cruise," my colleague said. "I gotta get home."
I followed him towards the door, all the while glancing back over my shoulder. Our eyes never touched again but it didn't matter. Our fate was sealed.
Throughout each day, every eye that met mine I expected to be hers, though after nearly a year, I began doubting my divination of my destiny, but then it happened - in a 24-hour Superthrift supermarket not far from my cluttered apartment, at 3 am on a sleepless weeknight. From the corner of the junk food aisle I spied her trademark, the apiary, examining the beers in the refrigerator.
My cart and I sauntered over to the expansive collection of Anheuser-Busch products and began examining the infamous labels. She opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a six-pack of Bud Light. I was disappointed in her taste, but such minor flaws could be corrected easily.
With a clang, the cans dropped into the cart and she began rolling it away from me. I jumped in front. "Hi," I said.
I was waiting for the smile of recognition, the stark question asking where I had been for the past year while she waited for me, but noticed only incomprehension in her eyes. A fly buzzed about her head. "Hi," she said politely, and tried to maneuver the cart around me. I jumped back in front of it again.
"Don't you remember me?"
She didn't answer and tried again to bypass me. "We met at a party last year."
"Oh, yes," she said. "How are you. Sorry, I've seemed to forgotten your name."
"We never did get around to introductions, but it wasn't necessary. I'm K__."
Like most people, she seemed puzzled by my name, but held out her hand and said, "I'm Sandra."
I touched her hand, feeling the warmth inside, the kindness that bubbled up from the source at her heart. From her eyes, her eyes again, it was obvious that she knew I could sense it. There was no longing in her touch, only self-contentedness.
"Look, I'm in a bit of a hurry now," she said, "but I'm sure we'll bump into each other again sometime." She smiled at me and rolled her cart away.
During the sleepless nights that followed, I was roaming the deserted streets, staring at the labels on the packages that lined the supermarket aisles, and wondering if I should change my name again. In high school, the debutantes and dilettantes called me "Kafka" behind my back. It seemed appropriate in a Kafkaesque manner but when I began using it, my outstretched hand was always met with loud stares. "K__" was better. It always brought the whispering stares that I found comfortable. If anyone should have understood, it was Sandra, but her puzzled expression made me wonder if something simpler like Herman, or William, or even Bard would be better.
But she knew me as K__, and K__ I would be, and knew that instead of reminiscing on the days of horror, I should instead be wondering why I was wandering the supermarket aisles searching for her when it was obvious that Fate would allow us to meet again naturally as it had twice already.
When we did meet again, the Fates played one of their little practical jokes. In spite of all the time I had spent in front of that beer refrigerator, this time we met in broad daylight in the most sacred of institutions, The Bank.
I was in line to cash my paycheck on a Friday evening, a line that snaked through the office. I was thinking that I should learn to trust the machines that sat outside waiting for our command when deep inside my head I heard the buzzing of bees. I wondered what inside my head could be making such an irritating sound, and if they were bees, how they came to be there, and more importantly, how to coax them out. I soon realized that the sound was coming not from the center, but a place a bit closer to the back of my skull. I turned around, and there she was, standing at the back of the line, piercing eyes staring forward at the windows. Though I stared directly at her, she didn't notice me until the line took one of its random turns and we were separated by only a thin, red velveteen rope.
"Hi," I said. I knew I should say something more interesting, maybe something witty, but fools aren't good at originality. Besides, "Hi" had become sort of a trademark for me. Friendly and unforced.
She stared at me with a puzzled look, then turned back to the window. I realized she might not have recognized me with my newly cultivated mustache. "What do you think of the mustache?" I asked, hoping this would prove a better icebreaker. It didn't. She ignored me. "Picture me without the mustache and you'll probably recognize me. We met at the supermarket September ninth."
Maybe she had just found the inspiration for a new painting, because she didn't seem to hear me. Unfortunately, grazing space had opened in front of me, and the cattle behind were growing restless. It was obvious that I had to move from her side if I was to avoid the slaughterhouse. I stepped up to Window 5 and exchanged my cheque for legal tender.
Outside, my old beater wouldn't start up no matter how many times I pumped the petal and turned the key. I sat in the car, wondering what to do while listening to the radio. The reception seemed poor with a buzzing sound that obscured the music. I thought this might be part of the problem, possibly a malfunction in the electrical system until I realized the noise wasn't emanating from the radio but from the bees in my head and they were growing louder. In the rear view window I spied her exiting through the imposing glass doors of the bank and approaching my car. I turned off the radio and listened to the humming grow louder as she neared. When she was beside my door, I rolled down the window and said, "Hi." She fumbled through her pocketbook until she found a key and stepped into the Toyota next to mine and drove off.
I tried the ignition again and the car's engine bubbled into life. At least Fate's plans were easy to follow. I drove off after the yellow Corolla.
Though Fate willed me to follow Sandra to her home, I was beginning to doubt if Sandra understood this. I thought it best to follow at a distance. I considered using the volume of the bees' buzzing as a homing device to follow her from a greater distance, but wasn't sure of their range, so I stayed a few car lengths back. She eventually drove down a side street and parked. I passed by at normal speed, drove a few more miles, then found my way back to the yellow car and made a note of the address. The house was simple - one story with a red roof, blue shutters, and trashcans by the curb. I drove home and flopped down on the sofa.
The bees swarmed about the inside of my head. "What should I do?" I asked them.
The bees just buzzed.
"Stupid bees!" I yelled out of frustration.
"We're not bees!" they howled. "We're hornets, you fool! Can't you hear the difference?"
"You can talk!" I said in triumph, but they didn't answer this time. "Okay, hornets, what would you do if you were in my shoes instead of in my head?"
"Send a letter."
"What do I say?"
They had no more answer than I.
I sat at my desk and composed the letter. Two months later, it still read only, "Hi." Nothing else sounded appropriate, so I mailed it with my return address and waited.
And waited.
I considered the possibility that either my letter or her response had become lost in the mail, so I tried again. When no response came to the second letter, I asked the hornets what they thought. "You're a fool," they told me. The fool that I am, I mailed a third letter.
"Hi. I've sent you two letters already, but I'm not sure if you've received then since there has been no response from you. Maybe you don't remember me. We met at that party a while back and then again at the supermarket and the bank. I realize you don't know me well and since I'm normally a very shy person, I wouldn't be so bold as to wrote you this letter if I didn't know that something passed between us when our eyes met at the party. I think we both knew then we were meant for each other and the fact that we keep meeting seems only to reinforce that feeling. I hope you'll write back."
That week, during my eager check of the mailbox, I wasn't disappointed. A plain white legal-sized envelope without return address sat lonely in my letter box. From the calligraphic handwriting in blue felt tip pen, obviously the work of an artist, I knew it was from her. I rushed into my apartment and ripped open the envelope. The letter was written on a single sheet of standard looseleaf paper. "Dear K__: While I'm naturally flattered by your letters, you're mistaken in making me the object of your affection. I hope you will turn your feeling towards a more available woman. Above all, please stop sending these letters to me."
I dumped the library books that covered the old, green sofa onto the floor and flopped down. Her letter did not completely surprise me, but my plans, which consisted of rehabilitating my relationship with my parents by introducing Sandra to them, selecting a reasonable band for the wedding, and searching for a qualified obstetrician, had made no provisions for contingencies.
"What should I do now?" I asked myself. I stared at the books on the floor, the books scattered about the room, and the overflowing bookshelves. Nietzsche, Plato, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard. Millions of answers; all to the wrong questions.
It was impossible to concentrate over the din. "What should I do now?" I asked the swarming horde.
"You have to win her," they explained. But how? The straightforward approach wasn't effective. "ART," the hornets advised.
It made sense in insectual logic. She respected artists. I would impress her with my artwork, the raw emotion dripping from the canvas. Through art she couldn't fail to understand and love me. But first I had to improve my drawing skills.
I began roaming the art galleries to learn from the masters. One afternoon, out of the corner of my eye I saw her standing around the corner staring at me, but when I shifted my gaze, I found that it was only a Matisse painting. The woman in the sketch did not even look like Sandra but the pale green eyes of the woman in the painting were the same as Sandra's, so I came back the next afternoon with a charcoal pencil and sketch pad and copied the portrait. It was a good likeness, so I sent it to her.
No matter the museum, my favorite paintings were inevitably the van Gogh's. The lucidity of his focus within the surrounding chaos mimicked my own confusion, so I copied one his still lives, adding a few hornets to drink the flowers' sweet nectar. I knew she would understand that. The hornets buzzed with glee, leaving me to sleep peacefully for the first night in months.
When the hornets were content, the headaches subsided and I was able to relax. And when dealing with hornets, what succeeds once often works again. I decided to do a whole series of hornet lives: Hornets building their hive; hornets inside their hive; hornets enjoying the green grass; the contentedness of worker hornets; angry hornets stinging the President while the Secret Service agents stood powerless to stop them; and finally, Sandra, the queen hornet watching over her kingdom. It took me nearly a year to complete the series. When they were finished I sent them to her.
The hornets buzzed in anticipation of her reply, anxiously awaiting their reception into the art world. I despaired of any reply, but the hornets, as usual, were correct. A huge manila envelope arrived late in the week addressed in her trademark blue felt tip pen handwriting. I ripped open the package. My shredded drawings fluttered to the floor. The hornets shrieked, attacking my brain without mercy no matter what soothing image I tried to create.
Weeks later, the hornets' anger had still not subsided. Neither pleas for mercy, nor doctors or painkillers could alleviate the debilitating headaches I suffered. Work was impossible. I called in sick until I was fired. Even the ten paces from my bed to the bathroom brought such excruciating pain that many times I passed out before I could reach the toilet. No matter how much I beseeched them to desist, the continuous attack of sharp stingers on my sensitive grey matter would not cease.
Finally, one afternoon, after regaining consciousness face down against the cold bathroom tiles, my pants wet and stinking, unable to stand up to clean myself, I knew the torture had to end or I would die. I closed my eyes again and watched the ever present horde swarming about in anger. "What do you want?"
"KILL HER!" they commanded. "Paint red hornets with her blood!"
It seemed so simple. Her life or mine. A dead woman and a jail sentence or forty years in hell. Parcae held up her wavering torch, illuminating my destiny. I was to kill her.
But it wasn't so simple. In my condition, incapable of even walking ten paces in an emergency, I was more likely to fall on my own knife than be able to slice into living, fighting flesh. The hornets were reasonable when being placated. They promised to desist while I readied.
While the hornets purred, I prepared. Though constantly nauseous, I ate prodigious quantities of food to garner my strength, all the while planning. At K-Mart, I purchased a long hunting knife, or maybe it was a fish gutting knife. The hornets thought a stiletto would be more appropriate, but even they understood it was impractical.
After sharpening the knife each evening, I practiced using it to prepare my dinner, gaining the feel for its blade, waiting for the day when it would become an extension of my own body as the stinger was to them. I sliced through the flesh and watched in horror as the juice squeezed out of the rare beef.
"It's time," the hornets said one morning.
"I'm not ready yet," I pleaded. The onslaught of their stingings threw me to the ground. I relented. "Next week."
"Today!" they demanded. Today.
I searched through my wardrobe for the most appropriate clothing for a murder. What do murderers wear? Jeans? T-shirts that say "Hug me - I'm the bad guy?" That didn't suit me. This was a special occasion, similar to a wedding, or perhaps more appropriately, a funeral, so I donned my best Sunday wear, a starched white shirt, a grey pinstripe suit that I had bought for job interviewing, and a subdued flower print tie. I slipped the knife into the jacket's breast pocket.
I prayed that something insurmountable would go wrong, but the car started up on the first turn of the key, and with the hornets leading the way, I found her house without difficulty.
The back door was deadbolted, but the hornets swarmed about the windows. I crawled over the bushes that lined the back of the house and used the knife to pry open a window, then climbed inside.
I called out her name. No response. The room was a typical kitchen, complete with microwave, toaster-oven, an overflowing trashcan, and four sets of dishes in the sink. The room smelled of fried bacon grease. A doorless archway led into the living room. The dining table with its white, stained tablecloth had been cleaned of breakfast's crumbs. A family picture sat atop the television. In the snapshot, her father stood between her and her two young brothers.
I searched the house, the master bedroom, two smaller bedrooms and the bathroom. No one was home. I would wait. I sat down on the reclining lounge chair and began browsing the magazine whose seat I had usurped. And I waited.
Tired of sitting, knife in hand I roamed the house again in search of her artwork, wanting to examine her technique, follow the minute movements of her fingers. There was no original artwork to be found, only a few copies of famous originals. The knife began reworking one of Van Gogh's poorer drawings. I carved a few hornets into the painting. I think he would have approved.
A few specks of paper clung to the knife. The blade and its ebony-like handle shined in the sunlight that flooded through the window. It is said that steel blades look cold. It didn't. It looked sharp. It looked dangerous. I didn't want to kill her.
I was crying when the rumble of the Corolla grew louder as the engine idled in front of the house, then finally coughed to a stop. The radiator fan and the hornets droned in unison. The car door opened, then slammed shut. I dove behind the sofa and waited for the door to open.
She whistled as she searched her purse for the keys while the hornets hummed along. When I spied her face again, I was surprised that she looked older than I remembered, her skin grayer than before. She wore her hair straight.
She sat down on the sofa in front of me, grabbed the remote control, switched on the television and began scanning the stations. She settled on a game show and picked up the magazine.
While lost in an article in the magazine, she must have heard my breath, or maybe heard the hornets screaming, "NOW! NOW!" because she jerked her head around as I rose up from behind the sofa. "Hi," I said.
She was stunned for a moment, like a deer in the headlights of my eyes. I wanted to lead her to the side of the road and hug her, but she quickly recovered. "Get out! Right now! I'm calling the cops." She jumped up and rushed for the phone.
I hurtled the sofa and sliced the telephone cable. She threw her arms against me, pushing me to the floor, then dashed for the door. Before she could escape, I slammed into the door. Bolts of pain shot through my shoulder.
She ran to the kitchen, trying to flee through the back door, pounding her fists against the deadbolted door in frustration. Trapped. "NOW!" the hornets howled.
She turned to face me. The tip of the knife pointed at her heart. "What do you want?" she squeaked out, desperately trying to act composed, but I could see the terror in her sweet eyes. A tear rolled down one cheek. I hated to see her cry. I petted her frizzy hair, attempting to calm her.
While I was trying to roll her hair back into its bees' nest style, she grabbed hold of my wrist, seeking to rip the knife from my hand. I grabbed her hair with my other hand, snapping her neck back and threw her to the floor. My legs straddled her while the hornets screamed for vengeance.
"We were destined for each other," I explained. "I knew it the moment we met. The hornets said so, too, but you ripped up their drawings and now they want revenge."
"What hornets?"
"Your hornets."
"Look, my husband will be home any minute. Just leave now and it will be all right. I promise."
"Husband? I'm your husband."
She pointed towards the living room. "Look at the picture." As I turned my head, she grabbed my legs and I fell to the floor. She started to crawl away but I tackled her from behind and fell on top of her.
"KILL HER!" they cried, "or you'll never be free of us!" A single, sharp sting served as their warning.
I raised the knife and slammed it down into the linoleum at her side. The hornets began swarming. A hundred stings ripped into my brain. While I screamed, she tried to wriggle away, but I was strong enough to hold her until the pain subsided enough to pull the stuck knife out of the floor.
I lifted the knife again. She didn't flinch, her eyes staring at the knife. She was mine. She needed only to understand that, understand her destiny, understand how happy we would be together. I raised the knife high over my head, then brought it down, slicing deep into the flesh of my ear. Weakened by the furious stingings, my head aflame, it took three slashes before the ear dropped to the floor. I grabbed the ear and set it in her hands before collapsing. A cloud of hornets, hundreds of them, millions of them flew out though the bleeding orifice and obscured the light. They attacked my head, my face and my eyes. Especially my eyes. The blood streamed over my suit. I had ruined my best suit.
* * * * *
I've had time to think lately. Nothing but time. The hornets fly in and out through the hole, but we have little to say to each other. The medicine numbs the pain when they decide to sting. Foolish bees. They didn't even know she wasn't an artist. Just an elementary school arts and crafts teacher.
I still send her letters occasionally, but I'm not sure if they reach her or not. She has never come to visit.
My destiny seem clear now. I am to remain here, a simple fool among the lunatics, sociopaths, and general crazies. Maybe I can do some good. I'm teaching them how to draw. One of my students drew a flawless hornet, stinging with glee everything in sight. The hornets were pleased.
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