Queen of Room Four

Wasps are kinda cute when they sleep.

A couple of months ago? I didn’t even know wasps slept. I guess I still don’t know if they were actually sleeping. I mean, they didn’t snore or nothing. But they all kinda cuddled up together at night, so it seems like they might have been sleeping or at least resting, you know?

First time I saw one of ‘em, I was in the tub, and my eyes were getting real heavy, like I’d been on a bender for four days. I shut them, but then I knew that if I did that they wouldn’t open again, you know? So I got one eye open a little. And a real big wasp, like big as my thumb, landed on my chest. She had a yellow stripe on her head that looked like a crown, so I figured she was the queen. All I’d ever heard about wasps was that they were like, bullies. Like, they’d just sting over and over until you died or whatever. But she just sat there, looking back at me, real clam and peaceful, until I passed out.

After that more and more wasps came. There was a crack in the window above the tub, and each day there’d be a couple more. They didn’t pay me any attention at all. They just sorta would come and go and come and go. After a while I saw these little tubes sticking out of where they were spending so much time. Honestly, it made me feel sick. But day after day after day after day… well, I guess you can get used to anything.

I used to spend a lot of time trying to get out. I didn’t realize when I met that guy here  - damn, how long has it been? I’m losing track. Like I say, at least a couple months. Anyway, I obviously didn’t know that I’d be trapped here. I figured I’d turn a quick trick, get my cash, and be out within like thirty minutes, tops. I mean, sometimes I could even do it in fifteen minutes - depending on the guy. But so anyway, when I got here and saw that it was an old Red Roof that no one had left a light on in for probably years, well, I didn’t think too hard about it. I mean, I’ve done it in skeezier places. I remember thinking that after the guy left I’d check out all the rooms and see if there was anything good in ‘em, or even maybe one that I could crash in for a while. Ha, guess I found one, huh?

So I had tried everything to get out, but I couldn’t break the window and no matter how much I hit the walls it didn’t make a difference. I couldn’t get the bathroom door open. There was a hole ‘bout the size of my head in the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom. I could look through and see everything - the dirty window, the smashed TV on the floor, the mice running around on the carpet. One bed was totally flipped over. The other bed is still standing - I thought that was why the guy picked this room. The wallpaper had disappeared under all the graffiti. The shower curtain… well. The place wasn’t exactly in great shape, is my point. But I was stuck.

So anyways. The wasps kept coming and going doing whatever the hell it is wasps do. They never bothered me. Maybe I’m like a permanent guard for their nest. All I knew was I was sure jealous of their freedom. Sometimes at night when it got really quiet and all the wasps were spooning on their nest, I’d close my eyes and imagine my shoulder blades getting longer and longer until they poked through my skin. They’d grow and grow and then huge iridescent wings would pop up from them and I could fly away like an angel.

One day I was sitting there on the floor, with my arms folded on the toilet seat, watchin’ this one wasp cover up one of their little tunnels like he’s putting a door on it. And then I heard this weird sound that got closer and closer. Pretty soon I could tell it was voices, screaming and cussing and yelling. Sounded like a pack of pissed off guys. I felt torn, because like I wanted to yell for help, but I also didn’t wanna summon some new kinda crazy down on me, you know? So I decided to take a look through the wall just in time to see a skinny kid burst through the door, running hell for leather. He skidded to a stop, fumbled to grab the doorknob.

He was skinny and sweating so bad he looked like he’d been caught in a rainstorm. I’d seen kids running from Freddy Krueger that looked less scared than this kid. He finally got the door closed and ran over to squat down behind the overturned bed. I could hear him crying, and the whole mattress was vibrating - he must’ve been shaking something awful. I opened my mouth to tell him I’d help him with whatever was after him if he’d come let me out, but then the door swung open again so hard it knocked a chunk out of the wall behind it.

Another kid strolled in like he was making a red carpet entrance. Looked about fifteen, maybe sixteen. Definitely trouble. He had that rough look. You know, kinda dirty no matter what, smell of jerky and cigs, likes to hit people. I’d spent plenty of time on the job with guys like that. Half of ‘em cried after we were done, then threatened to beat the shit out of me if I told anybody. Like who would I tell? I think the threat was just another way they got off.

A couple more kids walked in behind him. I wasn’t surprised. I mean, every asshole I’d met had an entourage, you know?

“I know you’re in here, you fucking coward,” he said.

“It smells nasty in here, Jason.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna puke. Let’s get out of here.”

“No fucking way. Not until I beat that fucker past next Tuesday,” said the kid. He walked into the room and around to the side of the bed where the little kid was hiding.

“Please, please Jason, I didn’t do it on purpose, plea…” Jason grabbed him by the shirt and picked him up, and the kid froze mid-beg.

“We had a real easy bargain, didn’t we? I didn’t think it was too hard for your big smart brain to manage. You do my term paper, get me an A, and you get to live. And what did I get on the paper, guys?”

One of the goons opened his mouth. I thought he was gonna answer, but instead he just turned and blew chunks all over the floor. A couple of mice ran away from the puke.

Another kid with his shirt pulled up over his mouth and nose said something muffled.

“I asked what fucking grade I got!”

The kid said louder, “You got a C plus, J.”

“That’s right. A fucking C fucking plus. And is a C plus gonna get me out of summer school?”

“I’m so sorry Jason, I really am, you didn’t give me the extra page of the assignment so I didn’t see…”

“I don’t care about your shitty excuses, turdfucker,” Jason’s voice was low and even. I shouted for Jason to put the kid down, but got no response. Jason’s eyes just got big and bright, and the smile that spread across his face made me shiver. I’d seen that smile the night that guy met me here.

He pulled the kid closer. “Now, you die.”

The kid started crying real hard, begging for mercy and trying to wiggle out of Jason’s hands. I yelled out again. I wished I could do something to help. Anything to help this kid. It was the first time I’d forgotten about escaping since I got here.

I saw a wasp float through the air and land on Jason’s head. Then Jason suddenly dropped the kid and cussed a blue streak at the top of his lungs.

“What’s wrong, J?”

“Something fucking bit me!” Jason twirled around in place with his hand on his head, looking for the offender. But the wasp had taken off when Jason started yellin’. A couple more wasps flew over. One landed on Jason’s arm and stung him. This time, Jason saw it, and slapped his arm hard. When he moved his hand, I could see the crushed wasp twitching, its stinger stuck in the jerk’s skin.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

“Fuck! Fucking wasps!” Jason was now batting wildly around his head as more and more wasps swarmed around him.

“I’m out of here,” said a the barfing kid, wiping off his lower lip and turning to run.

Jason stopped trying to hit the wasps long enough to point at the guy. “If you fucking move I’m going to stack your body on top of this asshole’s.”

The guy stayed put, but his eyes were locked on the growing cloud of stingers and wings surrounding Jason.

Jason went back to throwing his hands around his head trying to keep the wasps off. I could see tons of red welts popping up all over his neck and face.

Good, I thought.

“Hey J, go in the bathroom and get in the shower. I think they don’t like water,” one of his buddies yelled.

“Fuck you! Come get them off me!”

“No way, Jason. I’m allergic.”

Jason took several more swings, and then screamed like a banshee.

“Fuck! Fine! Make sure he doesn’t leave!” He pointed at the kid he was after, who’d backed up against the wall to get away from the wasps.

Jason headed my way. The bathroom doorknob started to jiggle. I ran to the door and waited - part of me was thinking I should try to hide from this psycho kid, but there really wasn’t anywhere to hide. And all I could think about was how much I wanted to get out.

The knob shook and shook but didn’t turn.

“Did the wasps lock the door?” one of the kids joked.

“Let’s get out of here, Jason. It’s fucking foul as hell in here, and I bet if we split the wasps will just leave you alone.”

“I’m not leaving until that fucker is dead and I have killed all these goddamn wasps!” Things went still for a moment and then it was raining dust and debris on me. I could hear the thud of Jason slamming into the door echoing off the tiles. He must have been getting a running start and hitting the door full force. I backed up a few steps. Another hit. Another silence. Then there was a huge crash the door flew open.

That much light hadn’t been in the bathroom in months. My eyes burned and everything went blurry. I put my arms up in front of my face for protection - I didn’t know what he’d do when he came in.

“You motherf…. Holy shit.”

Then nothing.

I got my eyes working again and looked at where Jason was standing next to the broken door. He still had his hands balled into fists, but he didn’t look angry anymore. For a second he just stood there with his mouth hangin open, and then he turned toward me and threw up on the tile.

I looked down at the barf sliding across the floor, and I asked myself if I wanted to look, or if I should just try to run and not look back. But I turned to look at me in the tub, too.

Like I said, I’ve been here a couple months. Definitely not winning any beauty pageants, that I knew. But seeing myself in bright light for the first time… well it wasn’t the sight I was used to. Like I say, you can get used to anything.

The edge of the knife that guy had slid between my ribs sparkled in the sun. The shadow it cast on my face sorta covered up the way my skin was sliding off the back of my skull. My hair was full of blood and dust, and the weight of it had pulled my scalp down the back of my head so it was bunched up against the edge of the tub. My body looked papery like a mummy I’d seen on a field trip to the science museum before I dropped out of school. The tub was full of this dark brown liquid that had started to dry up in places. The shower curtain had mostly come down with me when I fell backward and had ended up half under my body. A brown stain now covered the faded pattern of little yellow flowers. I’d kept a tight figure when I was alive - I had to for business, you know? But the flies and everything had mad me super bloated. I was rotted so bad I didn’t look human anymore.

My face though? Never seen anything more alive. The wasps were patrolling their kingdom. Thousands of ‘em crawled all over - probably protecting all the hard work they’d put in building that huge nest in my skull. The nest had grown from just a few tunnels inside my mouth to a sprawling city all over my face. My skin had slipped off a long time ago, and they’d used the space to build. Another big piece of the nest had been anchored in my eye socket. Perfect little tubes sprouted from almost every hole, joined together into a half-mask on my lifeless face. I felt impressed. Almost proud. The wasps had worked really hard.

Jason stopped barfing and stumbled back a couple of steps. His buddies came running in to see what he’d gotten sick over, and one of ‘em screamed. I heard some more puking and then a lot of feet running away. Jason turned to run after them but slipped in his puke and hit the floor.

The wasps were still stinging him as he lay there, and for a second I felt sorry for him. Getting stung by wasps, lying in your own puke, I mean… pretty pitiful. But then his hand bumped into a piece of wood from the broken door. He grabbed it, whipped it across the room, and hit me right in the face.

The wasps all pulled in real close to each other, like a dark cloud hanging over my corpse. I heard a wet crunch from the tub, and looked over to see one of my nostrils wriggling like I smelled something bad. After a second, that big wasp with the crown who’d sat with me while I died came out. She spread her wings, and they caught the light. They were beautiful - iridescent and powerful. Just like the wings I’d imagined growing. She lifted herself up off my face and flew over to Jason, landing on his chest.

“Oh shit!”

Jason pushed up on his hands and tried to crawl backward out of the bathroom. He was pinwheeling so fast I thought his arms were gonna fall off. But the cloud fell on him, covering him head to toe. The hum of the wasps was super loud - the whole colony must have been crawling on every inch of him. I thought he looked pretty, like he was covered in shiny jewels. I saw the queen making her way up Jason’s body until she reached his face. He was screaming like hell, but couldn’t move. She walked directly over his chin and down into his mouth.

I watched for a sec while he kept screaming and twitching. He was swollen and red under the blanket of wasps. The queen didn’t come back out. I stared at his chest for a long time, until I was sure it wasn’t moving. The wasps quieted down, back to their work of doing whatever the hell it is wasps do.

I looked up and saw his ghost standing in the bathroom, looking at his body on the ground. He sniffled, and then looked me in the eye.

“I’m not ready to die,” he said.

“Neither was I,” I replied.

I looked around. All the other kids were gone, including the kid Jason had been after. I was glad he’d live to see another day.

“What happens now?”

I looked back to him. “What happens now is I leave.”

“Well I’m not fucking staying here by myself,” he muttered. He started walking toward me, but when he got to the doorway he bounced back into the bathroom. He looked around, confused. Tried again. No luck - he still couldn’t get out. He started jumping up against the invisible wall keeping him here, over and over, trying to break out.

“No! No! No! Let me out!”

I looked at his body, where I knew the queen was. “Thank you,” I said.

“No, please! Please don’t leave me here alone!”

My eyes slid past him to the nest on my face, where the wasps are resettling. I looked outside again - it was almost dusk. They’d be asleep soon. I turned to leave.

“No, please, please! Don’t leave me!” His tears reflected the light like wasp wings.

“Don’t worry - you can get used to anything.”