The Dream with the Bees

I was dressed in a nice silk shirt, sitting at a big table in an almost-empty conference room, lit only by the setting sun coming in through half-open blinds. With me were Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney of The Kids in the Hall, although that's not where I knew them from in the dream. They were dressed like stockbrokers or extras from American Psycho.

We were talking about a discovery the three of us had made, working on company time, and how to keep it to ourselves and turn it into three modest fortunes. The problem, though, was that we weren't totally sure that it worked, and that we didn't want to see if it worked before we had the funding to do it under very safe conditions.

Bruce and Mark were really worried about that, but I wasn't so worried. I was the research person, and I felt sure that I knew how it was going to work. Finally, I convinced them to set it up right there, in the conference room.

Bruce had a leather attaché case next to him on the table. He picked it up and carried it with him as he went around locking the doors and checking that nobody was outside watching.

Finally, he sat down. Mark was tapping his pen rhythmically on the table, but he stopped when Bruce glared at him. Bruce put the case in front of him and worked the combination lock.

It snapped open to reveal grey high-density foam, with three cutouts that each held a cylinder about the size of a can of frozen concentrated juice. The cylinders had a brushed-metal sheen and looked heavy.

One by one, Bruce took them out, inspected them and handed them to Mark. Mark, not in charge of fabrication or activation, gave them a cursory glance and passed them to me. I hefted them - surprisingly light - then opened them up and looked inside. Bruce looked worried, as though he thought he might have made them wrong.

Inside of each cylinder was a piece of clip art, torn raggedly from the newspaper. One was a pirate, one was a clown, and one was a man with his hand to his chin and question marks around his head. Under that was what looked like a large, loose wad of steel wool, on top of several small blue stones and something pink and twisted that looked like a large, fleshy spider or a many-limbed shrimp. The pink thing twitched a little, faintly. Beneath the stones and the creature was more steel wool.

Bruce and Mark looked at me intently as I dug out my own briefcase and pulled out a battered manila folder, full of worn sheets of lined yellow legal paper. I picked out the ones I needed and started the incantation.

It was long and boring, like reading aloud from a book you don't care about but the listener does. I wasn't speaking any language I recognize now, just saying the syllables very carefully for the right sonic key to form. I walked around the room while I read, letting my steps focus my mind. Bruce and Mark stood, nervously quiet.

The atmosphere grew humid, sticky, and the light turned yellow, but nothing obviously happened. The words came to an end, and I found myself in front of the cylinders again. Touching one, it was very warm. I popped the lid off again, and held it in front of me. It almost seemed to guide me across the room, back over to where the guys were standing. As though possessed, I walked behind Bruce, put him in a left-handed headlock, and in one motion jammed the open end of the cylinder into his abdomen.

He stopped struggling and sank into my arms, as I felt a quickening in the cylinder. Mark looked with horror into my eyes, as I released Bruce's corpse to slump to the floor. The cylinder was now full of pulsating flesh, and I re-capped it and set it on the table. It somehow looked more alive than the other ones.

Mark reached over and closed the cylinder with a pirate in it. I was shocked and angry with him--they couldn't be closed until they'd been fed! The open cylinder sat there, the full one hummed pleasantly, but the closed one started to vibrate and jump on the table. It was angry too.

From the window came a wet, solid flapping noise, like someone slapping together two raw slices of bacon. This multiplied to a clattering noise, then sort of a buzzing and flapping. The sky outside the window was opaque with an advancing wall of bees.

I put the open cylinder and the happy cylinder back in their holes, but I didn't want to touch the angry cylinder at all. I ran out of the boardroom, Mark following right behind me. I could hear the tiny squeakings of the bees jamming themselves en masse through the window.

We ran and ran and ran. After a while we were out of the corporate world and running through an area of trailer homes, convenience stores and muffler shops. Through a thin glade of pines and metal trash cans, we stumbled into a school's playground and stopped our flight.

That was when I clocked Mark McKinney right in the chin with the attaché case and left him on a painted asphalt foursquare court.

I walked briskly into the one-story elementary school and down the halls until I came to an open storeroom. It had three windows in the outer wall, through which I could see the distant cloud of bees. The kids outside were seeing it too.

Many different colors of butcher paper were stored in rolls on one wall, above drawers and shelves. On the other side were larger shelves with bags of clay in blocks and gallons of paint and glue. Under the windows were more drawers set into working counter space, with a stained double sink at the end. Trying not to become frantic, I dug into the drawers under the butcher paper, looking for tape.

A young boy wandered into the room, carrying a wooden box full of scissors. They were the useless metal kind with red and green Plasti-Dip coated handles.

"Hey, help me tape up the windows," I told him, "You and I can be safe in here when the bees come." He saw the bees and looked scared, but seemed to know where the tape was. He threw me some masking tape, but I explained to him as my father had explained to me that masking tape is not the strongest tape in the world.

We had just found some packing when a few more children came into the room. The boy and I told them about the bees, and we all worked together to reinforce the windows with tape. There were literally pounds of Plasticine, which we used to liberally recaulk the edges. Then I remembered the door.

Crap, the door. I left two of the kids guarding the room from any humans who wanted to take our shelter, and had the rest lead me to the cafeteria. We took a few carts of food in enormous cans and boxes and rushed them back towards the storeroom.

There was a woman who looked like an elementary school teacher standing outside, talking to the children we'd left there. I tried to ignore her as we pushed the food inside, but she was irritated at us and said that I had no business being there. Luckily, I was able to push the children and carts inside and get in myself before she realized what I was doing.

Once in, I blocked the door and the children started to seal it off, too. We were none too soon, as the bees were at the edge of the playground. Mark McKinney had started to get up again, but was knocked down by the solid wall of advancing bees. Their shape was barely changed by the playground equipment, and once they hit the windows all we saw was bees. Their constant thrumming was muted, but came through even the thickened windows.

I saw people, all adults, running in the halls, then scattered, thickening swarms of bees. The children with me were scared, even though we were safe from the bees' advances. I was worried, too, that we might have our air supply cut off by the bees.

I opened my attaché case again, and took out the can of Bruce McCulloch core sample. I said, "We need to fix this bee thing," and started shaking it like I was shaking up a spray can. The children started waving their arms around with me, and repeated in chorus, "We need to fix this bee thing.

"We need to fix this bee thing."