contorted giants [story]

You are an adventure-seeker.

You have always been one to venture far on trips longer than the daylight stretches, coming back home with stories and treasures each time. Some outings, you see great creatures towering with heads high up a hundred times as you are tall, and on others, you find some even smaller in stature than you are wide.

You are now miles away from your home, seeking the next big thing to reap great rewards from. You only ever turn back on your journey once you have won something, and without that prize, you will only travel farther. It does not matter to you how small the prize is—it can be anything, as long as it is new to you. This way, the wonder of adventure never ceases.

You look forward to the glowing awe that fills your head and infects your friends, though others disapprove of your far ventures.

“What if you get lost after going so far out?” they ask. “What if something bad happens to you, and you never come back?”

But you know you will make your way back. You always do.

You travel by your normal stops, occasionally spotting someone you recognize—usually a friend here, a friend there; nearly everyone you know comes out on days like these, when the sun is bright, the sky is clear, and the world is aglow in the blue-and-purple sunset hues of the flowers lining the fields that just extend and extend toward the horizon. Though some flowers smell of honey and syrup and sweet dew, you have always preferred the more subtly-scented ones. They just have a sort of odd charm to them.

You drift between the tall grass, your favorite field to wander through as you prepare to explore farther out. Creatures skitter about low and close to the ground, familiar footsteps and chirps rustling through the densely populated field. At times, you dip closer to the roots of the plants you walk through, taking a good look at all of the life that blooms in the shadows of the thin strands of grass maybe a meter tall or so. The dusty green blades wave in the breeze like ribbons and lace slicing the curls of wind into pieces as it rustles its way through.

Though you are easily charmed by the scenery that unfolds around you like a vividly painted sheet of silk, you especially pay close attention to the distance you are traveling, as you have been thinking of mapping out the terrain properly for a while now. Though you have crossed over the area many times in the past years, you are still not well acquainted with the measurements of the nearby regions any better than “a few minutes in that tree’s direction.”

But you know you will make your way back. You always do.

But then—oh, a sister! An unexpected yet pleasant surprise this far from home. You did not know she would be here today. You begin to greet her when you realize something is off.

The first thing you notice is that she smells odd. Though you can normally recognize any of your sisters by their shared scent, this one has a completely unknown odor that hangs unpleasantly in the air like the cold hand of a stranger on your face. It sends shivers over the hairs on your body.

The next thing you see is that her torso is large and uncannily long, like her silhouette has been stretched out against its will. Her limbs are thin and long in a similar fashion, making her unnaturally tall, much like a cellar spider.

Though her head remains familiar, her body is smooth and hairless. Her features are too sharp, crawling over her face and limbs like pieces of a mismatched jigsaw puzzle.

That is not your sister.

She—the thing, it?—launches toward you, and you feel a sudden shock to your chest, straight to your core, and send waves of intense pain like lashing whips of electricity from the ends of your legs to the top of your head. You cannot move. You cannot move. You cannot move.

This warped image of your sister—she, the thing, it is beginning to look even more like you—carries you to a patch of land where nobody can see. Your body shuffles under its arm, joints locked, as you reach a clearing of dirt and sand. You are hidden in the thick of the grass. It adjusts its grip on you.

It begins to dig.

Your body sinks deep into the earth alongside what might be some other limbs, half-rotted and uncomfortable against your back. The grains of sand stick to your eyes and fill every gap in your anatomy. Frozen, you can only endure.

All you can hear now is the whispering brush of the ground swallowing you up accompanied by the occasional rustling of grass. The light continues to retreat more and more. As the entryway slowly seals, you try your best to hold onto the tiniest shred of hope threatening to be torn away from you. Soon enough, there is no more light, and all sound cedes to nothing.

You are completely buried now, embraced by darkness and unknown bodies on the pile below you. You already know that when the eggs in the hole with you hatch, they will consume you and the other bodies around you. They will grow to be just like the horrible vision that captured you.

Only then do you remember the beewolf wasp—a twisted mirage of a honeybee that hunts them and buries them with its eggs.

It comes to you that you are a honeybee.

You thought you would always come back. You always do.

This time, you do not.

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Background:

I began this piece sitting at the dining table and pondering which subject would be best to write about. I looked around, perhaps looking for an idea to suddenly pop up and grip my brain—a sign that something was just right. When I looked to my right, I saw my brother’s wax print hanging on the nail on the wall. Contrasting against the pale off-white wall, the deep blue-green hues of the background and bright yellow of the wax wasp pattern stood out to me.

Then, inspiration struck—a bee and wasp look similar enough, right? After this thought came to me, I began to do some basic research and discovered the beewolf wasp, also known as the “bee-killer” wasp. Perfect for a short, mysterious story that disguises itself as the fantasy-adventure genre.

And so, this story came to be.

I felt storytelling through words was the best way to represent myself. As words are more than just letters on a page to me (due to my synesthesia, they can trigger feelings of textures, colors, and/or shapes) and I tend to think mostly in text, I felt this was a good path to tread. In this case specifically, I think writing was the best way to convey this story because they prompt the reader to use their imagination as the mystery progresses. The plot relies on the reader’s interpretation, then predicts and defies that mental picture through prose. That kind of surprise writing can create is very important to me as a storyteller, and it’s effective in writing in a way no other medium can recreate.