The sun was blazing. Each photon entered my skin cells and bronzed it, from the inside out, with a caressing burn. It felt good to be outside.

I was sitting on my back porch. I had black aviators over my eyes so that I wouldn’t get cancer one day. I imagined lathering plenty of sunscreen on my body, but thought to do that later. There was always time to do the little things later. Besides, the sun felt good without my body smelling like zinc and feeling so sticky. I’d rather feel smooth. Natural. If our ancestors didn’t need sunscreen, I didn’t need it either. I did need sunglasses though. Too much light hurt my retinas.

The grass was wirly and showing off its long, luscious hair to the world. It was such a tease; it was so deeply and stridently green. I could see spots of movement within the jungle of the lawn, from creepers crawling, from the wind racing about, from the taint of life. I flinched at the sound of a buzz near my ear.

I was trying to read the book in my lap, but kept getting distracted by the sun, the grass, the sky, the clouds speeding by, the mountain surface dancing with the clouds’ shadows, the lack of people, the absence of industrial noise. It was nice. I couldn’t focus on my book. So I sipped my tea.

The earth kept rotating around its axis and the sun sank slowly to setting beyond the horizon. Relativity, man. What a weird concept. I imagined myself as a pinprick on the massive sphere of the earth, watching from space, as I, the pinprick, fell further and further into the darkness of our planet. I sipped my tea.

The sun was still showering its flames on me, down below. It was still gently soothing my skin and warming the ground and creating havoc within the weather. And as it was, a bee was sipping nectar from a nearby flower, a luscious red thing, blooming out of the ground. The bee got messy, what with all the molecules of the flower sticking to the bee’s little hairs, the pollen being blown everywhere, splashing the little insect with a dusting of debris. The bee was happy in this mess.

The bee was done with this flower. The bee wanted to rest before flying all the way home. Home was far away for such a tiny insect to fly, so much muscle needed to move such a distance. The bee flew and flew then rested on a small red cylinder that smelled sweet and safe. The bee hollowed away inside the cylinder, like prey hiding in a cave. It kept going until it felt it could go no more. Then the bee was stuck in the little cave. It didn’t know how to escape, so it stayed. The bee was content despite the situation.

I shook my iced tea around, listening and feeling for how much was left in the cup. It was almost gone. I planned to go inside the house for a refill later, to come out and enjoy the night.

The cylinder starting moving, and the light inside the little cave changed as it did. The bee started feeling fear.

I took a large sip to finish off the remainder of the tea.

Suddenly, the bee felt an enormous pressure, as if the earth stopped rotating and everything went flying in one direction. It felt compelled out of the little cave, and, with distaste, drowned in a tsunami of sugar and leaves, washing away the nice coating from the flower. The bee was quite startled, as the bee was happy only moments before. The liquid continued to press against the bee, and, finally, the bee was swept away along with the tea, out of the cave.

The bee kept trying to fly away from the liquid, but found that the little cave it was so nicely nestled in earlier had opened to a slightly larger, more damp surrounding, but this was confined with rocky walls and absorbed the darkness. This environment was hostile, and the bee found no escape. 

I felt the bee buzzing around in my mouth. Each hair tickled my gums and sent shivers sprinting down my spine as if it were the final few steps of the 100 meter dash.

The bee was suddenly startled by blinding sunlight, and a rumble unlike anything it had heard or felt in its short lifetime. The rumble started low, and eventually became high pitched, accompanied by a ferocious amplitude that made its wings resonate, making it more difficult for the bee to remain in flight. In addition to the rumbling scream, the bee recognized a racing pulse, and the simple panic that came from its new surrounding. This panic was acknowledged and taken upon the bee, for it started to panic as well. Thinking of its only job, to return home alive, the bee gathered its courage and, with strong armour, flew as forcefully as possible towards the bright light, thinking of the blazing sun as its home. It desperately clawed at the walls, and used every push it could to get out. The bee was free. The bee gradually lost confusion as the environment, the open air, the fresh, red flowers and green grass bustled familiarly around it. The bee was free. 

I had felt each miniscule patter of the bee climb out of my mouth, each trace of the bee’s little footprints across my lip, and the tiny pinch of its stinger puncturing the edge of my mouth as it escaped. I silenced my scream when it was gone, but the fear inside my body only grew in intensity as my raw disgust created an overwhelming nausea. The tea, no longer tasting sweet and refreshing, now smelled and tasted revolting as it settled into my throat. I spat out as much remainder of the incident onto the pavement below as I could. I rinsed the terror out of me. Though my mouth felt numb, my mind was scorched with the image of a tiny thing crawling and attacking my body from the inside out.

Exhausted from the trauma of the of situation, the bee’s little engine quit, the drone of flight extinguished, and the bee landed in the lawn, emptied of its life without even a stir in the universe. Its death site left no mark in the ground, no sound was heard, and the corpse laying in the grass, was relieved of its previously profound stress.

I quivered and noticed that the sun was beyond the crest of the distant mountains. The sky’s different hues faded to darkness at my zenith. The haze of the day blocked any peeping stars, yet allowed the sunset to glow. I walked briskly into the house, shut the back, glass door firmly, and in so doing, left the empty cup of tea and the warmth of the outdoors to be consumed by the blackness of the night.