A Short Imagined Monologue From The Bee That Stung Me On The Sidewalk

Stay cool. That's the key, just pretend you're looking for flowers, buzzing low to the ground. Good. He doesn't see you yet. Maybe he won't see you - if you're that good at this. But who's to know.

Don't blow this. You only get one shot, after all. Don't lose your shit. We need this one. Remember what happened last time? That attack plan was so easy. So easy. The young drones could have stung that lady without even warming their wings in the sun. She was sitting down - with her eyes closed! Napping in the sun like a stupid human, completely letting her guard down. It doesn't come any easier than that! And what did you do? You chickened out. You made a few menacing sweeps and flew off. You knew it was unacceptable and you did it anyway. You are a coward and the whole hive knows it. 

But not anymore. You're not afraid of death, of the inevitability that lies after the initial sting. Biology can be so cruel, but now is not the time to be angry with mother nature. Now is the time to protect the hive. To restore honor to your browbeaten name. 

10 meters and coming fast. You can hear his footsteps, he's so close. Don't get antsy. Don't panic and jump the gun. You can do this. You have to do this. 

You need a good spot to sting him. Someplace he would never expect. Someplace that would prove your stealth-flight abilities to the disbelievers back at the hive. Someplace that will make them say, "That kid, he could fly". 

3 meters. Go. No waiting, just go. Inside the shoe, find the bare skin of his hidden flesh.

There. He knows. You can hear him in pain. You can feel his fingers frantically reaching around inside his shoe; a space he once believed to be safe from the dangers of the wild. 

You can hear their applause erupting at the hive as the life rapidly drains through your open circulatory system while you fleetingly buzz on the sidewalk. Their respect makes this process easier, but it does not counter the fact that our thorax has evolved to be so ill-designed.  

I have just one request, human: End this life of mine. Though you may think it revenge to take the mere months I have called life, it is mercy that I will find beneath your angrily stomping shoe. 

You shall survive, human, and I shall not. My life has made the smallest disturbance in the flow of time, but you will remember me. Every time you pass that fateful stretch of sidewalk, you will remember our brief encounter.

Thank you.