I have been consumed. Whatever remains of my voice is now hidden beneath the deafening buzz of eighty thousand souls. My body is now a vessel for something much greater than myself, my sense of individuality has been martyred for the greater whole. Yet beneath the cacophony of the many-footed hive that has taken control, there still is a trace of something human.
It always sneaks up on you, doesn’t it? You go through your life thinking that you have gotten used to being single, that all of the feelings for your past flames have gone dormant, but then February 14th rolls around and you get to feel the scorching fire of loneliness. Out of nowhere the whole world decides to sing the praises of their love life and you are reminded of just how lonely you are.
It’s been three years since we split, and I want to believe that I have been getting better, but every year the wounds are reopened. Valentine’s Day always provides me with a sense of dread, seeing all of those happy people write posts about how fulfilled they are in their relationships makes me feel like I failed as a human being. This year, however, there was an extra layer of dread; this year there was a stinging suspicion that Allie would get engaged.
In the morning I couldn’t get out of bed. The initial torrent of romantic social media posts had me paralyzed. The only way that I could get through the day without breaking down was to find a distraction, something to help me block out everyone else’s happiness. As I lay in bed scrolling through the Internet it came to me. A headline to answer all of my woes:
Saint Valentine is also the patron saint of beekeepers! Enjoy your romantic evening, but don’t forget, the bees are going extinct!
The headline gave me the strength to rise out of bed. As I ate breakfast I read half a dozen articles about how important the bees are to the planet’s ecosystem. The scientific evidence was overwhelming; bees were dying at an unprecedented rate. Something had to be done.
By the time I got into the office I had made a conscious decision; this Valentine’s Day wasn’t about love, it was about bees.
I spent the entire morning chucking out bee facts. Did people know that most of the world’s food supply relied on bees? Did they know that 40% of all the bees in the United States had died between 2018 and 2019? Could they believe that no one was doing anything about it?
There was something tranquil about the thought of an impending ecological disaster. If our entire civilization ceased to exist then there wouldn’t be ex-girlfriends to worry about. Allie wouldn’t be falling in love with someone else because she would be dead. Hell, it seemed silly to worry about her even while she was still alive. It didn’t matter if she was spending her evenings with some hunk eating mangos and having amazing sex. There were bigger issues at hand; the bees were dying.
My newfound bee obsession managed to shield me from all notions of small talk throughout the morning but by the time I went into the break room for lunch the Valentine’s Day mood became inescapable. The break room was covered in pink streamers, a stack of heart shaped cookies was on the table for anyone to grab, everyone was chatting away about their happy relationships. These people didn’t care about the world ending; all they wanted to talk about were their plans for the evening. No one wanted to talk about bees. Being in that room made me think about my own evening plans. I grabbed my sandwich and went outside.
The park was calmer. There was the occasional sighting of people holding hands but the faint smell of exhaust fumes helped me focus on the real issue. It didn’t matter that I was single, what really mattered was how our species was destroying the planet.
Everything around me was the product of human ingenuity; the slick cars, the impressive high-rises, even the park I was sitting in, they were all monuments to human inventiveness. In just a couple centuries we had managed to take the planet from a place where nature tried to murder us at every step to a world where people could tweet and jump out of planes for fun. It was a shame that our drive towards innovation was also responsible for the pesticides, for the pollution, for the impending death of the bees.
My thoughts about the terrifying nature of humanity had woven themselves into a like-worthy Facebook status. After I finished my sandwich I shared a couple of bee-related articles and then thumbed my philosophical treatise into existence. I secretly hoped that Allie would stumble upon my thought piece and spend the night thinking about the plight of the modern bee.
I was meant to be back at work, my musings made me lose track of time, yet as I got up to leave the park I noticed something. A lone bee sat beneath my bench, motionless.
Seeing a bumblebee in February would have been bizarre ten years ago, but the concept of a cold winter is something that has slowly thawed from reality into the realm of childhood memory. I crouched down and observed a casualty of the ecological disaster that I had helped perpetuate. I poked it.
The stinger of the little hairy creature sluggishly reached for my finger. Its wings dragged across the concrete as it attempted to defend itself but it was clear that the bee was scarcely conscious. I snapped a picture of it and then rushed over to a nearby corner store. This little guy wasn’t going to die on my watch.
All of the articles suggested that the best way to help a tired bee was to provide it with a mixture of water and sugar. At first the bee was motionless, I was scared that it had died while I was out buying the supplies, but after a while it’s antennae started to move. Within half an hour it was on its feet and ready to fly away. I live-streamed the entire affair.
When I returned to work there were some intrusive questions about how I spent my lunch break, but I managed to side step everything by saying I had a personal emergency. I went through the rest of my workday knowing that whilst everyone else was slaving away for their corporate overlords I had managed to actually make a difference.
I didn’t check any of my notifications until I returned back home. I wasn’t helping the bees for clout; I was helping them because it was the right thing to do. I was helping them because I wanted to live in a world where my grandchildren would be able to feast on honey. I would have been content with doing my part without any attention from the world, but being public about it helped spread awareness of their plight. When I finally checked up on my posts the engagement was off the charts. I was the champion of the bees.
Nearly a hundred people had heard my message. The articles that I shared got re-posted a dozen times, my status update had instigated a lively discussion. I knew that somewhere out there, during those stupid candle lit dinners, people would be talking about how Monsanto is responsible for the plight of our little hairy friends. I scrolled up and down my newsfeed, drinking the sweet nectar of success. Then I saw it.
Her hand. The hand I nervously held on prom night. There was a ring on it. Six hundred likes. Three hundred comments.
I slammed my laptop shut and paced around the room. I tried focusing on climate change, on corporate lobbyists paying politicians to turn a blind eye to harmful pesticides, on the ice caps melting, but I couldn’t.
The thought of Allie getting engaged burrowed into my mind like a brain parasite. A film reel of all of our happy moments played in my head. Our first date, the first time we said our ‘I love you’s, our trip to the mountains, the sex; all of the memories played on and on in my head, but it was as if someone had spliced me out. In my stead there was someone taller, someone cooler, someone who had their shit together, someone who would be a great dad.
I felt sick. My stomach spun between a dizzying emptiness and a sudden urge to vomit. They would get married, they would have kids, they would have grandkids, their grandkids would eat honey. I hugged my toilet bowl and dry heaved. I could feel the world spinning on without me.
After the panic attack had passed I returned to my bedroom and shut off the lights. My mouth tasted of acid, my eyes were burning, there were not enough tissues in the world to clear out my nose. I was exhausted but sleep refused to come. All I could think about was Allie being happy with someone who was not me. For the past three years I had lived in quiet hope of us getting back together, of a random text coming through one morning where she would announce that she missed me and thought about me every single day since the break up. I was now faced with the cold truth. Our feelings weren’t mutual.
Ponk!
The sound was imperceptible at first, I was too busy thinking of the sex Allie was having, but the taps slowly grew louder.
Ponk! Ponk! Ponk!
I sat up and looked around, trying to focus in on the source of the sound. A hint of a swelling orchestra could be heard from upstairs. My neighbors were probably cuddling beneath a blanket watching some romantic period piece.
Ponk! Ponk! Ponk!
The sound wasn’t coming from my neighbors; it was far too loud for that. I held my breath and listened. The sound was coming from my room.
Ponk! Ponk! Ponk!
A lone bumblebee was tapping its little stinger on the glass of my window. I got out of bed and turned on my light.
PonkPonk! PonkPonk!
Before the absurdity of a lone bee traveling to the sixth floor of an apartment complex could dawn on me, three friends joined the bee. They tapped away at the window chaotically, as if they wanted something.
Popoponk! Poponk!
More bees materialized out of the night and drifted towards my window. The world outside was starting to disappear beneath a layer of black and yellow.
Ponk! PONK! Ponk!
Whatever comradeship I had felt for the bees was now gone. Those little stingers were aimed right at me. Memories of wasps and hornet’s nests filled my head with terror. I ran through my apartment making sure that all of my windows were closed. The bees weren’t just knocking on my bedroom; every window in my apartment was covered in a thick layer of bees. As I moved through my apartment their stingers reached a thunderous roar.
POPOPONK!-Don’t-POPOPONK!-be-POPOPONK-scared-PONK!
I stood in the center of my apartment, as far away from my windows as possible. My arms started to itch; memories of previous stings were preparing me for the pain. It felt as if there was a unity in the stinger knocks now, as if there was a voice hiding beneath their cacophony, but my mind refused to accept it.
PONK!-Let-PONK!-us-PONK!-in-PONK!
There was a faint buzzing sound coming from beneath my front door. The knocking of the stingers had reached so high a frequency that I was barely able to comprehend my own thoughts. My apartment door gently shook. Looking through the peephole revealed blackness, a blackness that shifted around with the tenacity of a thousand feet.
Ponkponkponk-We want to-ponkponkponk-help-ponkponkponk
I could hear the voice clearly now, beneath the hive lured something sentient. Something sweet. As soon as I focused on it the noise of the stingers died down. A wave of syrupy calm spread through my veins.
We know you are troubled. We know you feel pain.
The same skin which itched out of fear of being stung was now draped in a warm blanket of cosmic harmony. It felt like I was a part of something much bigger, something much better. I drifted towards my bedroom window. The knocking of the stingers had stopped, only a faint buzz remained.
You have helped us, now let us help you. Let us ease your mind. Let us aid you on your journey.
I opened the window.
There is much work to be done.
They covered me. Before I could comprehend what was happening my body was coated in an army of tiny feet. My apartment disappeared beneath a carpet of fine yellow hair.
Let us in. Let us help you. Let us ease your burden.
My knees buckled beneath the wave of sweet ecstasy, my skin could no longer perceive a difference between me and the bees. My jaw relaxed, my mouth filled with movement.
We can save it all. If we work together we can save everyone. You have done good work, but together we can do so much more. Let us in.
A faint memory emerged. In some other life I sat in a cinema, Allie was leaning on me, a bit of popcorn was stuck in the back of my throat, the audience laughed at something on the screen, I washed down the popcorn with her soda. Yet the memory drifted away as gently as it emerged. This didn’t happen to me. This didn’t happen to us.
They made their way down our throat, each arrival sending another ripple of pleasure through our body. We could feel them in our veins. We felt whole.
And then the room was empty, but we didn’t feel alone. A sense of wholeness radiated throughout our entire universe.
Do you want to say goodbye?
Somewhere within us there is still the hint of a person, but he is irrelevant. If we let the bees die the food chain of this planet will collapse. We will work together to keep us all alive.
Our grandchildren will taste honey.