The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

To Bee or Not to Bee
by Linda Lee Rice

I had noticed the yellow jackets before swarming around the secluded path in the woods. The path is one of my favorite places to walk to get away from whatever the day’s drudgery had brought forth. Usually, the hornets were just going about their business, but today they seemed to have an agenda.

I first noticed it after I drank half of my beer and was lounging against a tree. The hornets seemed to have intense interest in my beverage. I swatted them away as I took another chug. Stupid insects. 

When I put my beer back on the ground, I knocked one of the hornets right into the opening and it landed inside the bottle. Flaying around, it started spitting the beer it inhaled back out. Feeling sorry for it, (and not wanting a good beer to go to waste) I found a stick and pulled it back out.

As it lay on the grass, damp wings drying out, it eyed me up in not a so nice way. Then it flew off to the other yellow jackets as they all settled on a branch. Picking up my beer, I wiped off the rim and gave it another chug. But, it felt a little…fizzy.

As I looked up in horror, the trees shrinking in size, as my shoulder blades itched where wings sprouted. My body shrunk and tiny legs shot out where my arms and legs had been. 

My reflection on the bottle showed my changed appearance in gruesome detail. I crawled up the bottle as the yellow jacket I had dunked landed beside me. It turned its back to me and jabbed me twice with its stinger. 

Falling over the side, I landed in the bottom of the beer, as I started to drown, the last thing I saw was the hornet staring at me with its big round eye.

Fiction © Copyright Linda Lee Rice.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More about Linda Lee Rice:

Linda Lee Rice aka Ruzicka has poetry published in Twilight Times, Dark Krypt, Fables, Descending Darkness, Writing Village, Spine, and Page, Muses Gallery, Bloodbond, Lycan Valley Press Publishers, Alban Lake, Highland Park Poetry, Rosette Maleficarum, The Siren’s Call, Edify Fiction and the June Cotner anthology, “House Blessings” and “Garden Blessings

She has short stories published in The Grit, and Reminisce, Haunted Encounters: Friends and Family, FrostFire Worlds. Plus, a personal essay at Mamalode. She also has various articles and blogs published online as a freelance writer.