Flight of the Summer Hornet
I SAW THE OUTLINE of its yellow and black bulbous head and its long striped body just a split second before I swallowed it. I was rolling downhill on my red Schwinn beach cruiser, and I was not pedaling. The day was hot and dead still and sunny, and a delicious set of waves were appearing out of the crystal blue Pacific Ocean.
Perhaps what most struck me about its faced was the antennas, which looked like the thick and bushy eyebrows of a cranky old man, coupled with intense human-like eyes, forming a crinkled brow at the center. The monster hornet seemed just as disappointed as I was that it was about to become trapped inside me.
I had opened my mouth to yawn because I was tired. I was tired and hot and sweaty, mostly because I have horrific insomnia in the summertime. Way too much sunlight. It confuses my body into thinking that I should stay awake 24 hours a day. That was why I yawned, and that was why my mouth was wide open, and that was why the monster hornet flew into my mouth while I was riding my red Schwinn beach cruiser along a bike trail on Pacific Coast Highway at 10 AM on July 15.
When it first landed in my mouth, I tried to spit it out, but it just kept fluttering its puny little wings, making itself bounce all over the inside of my mouth and off my tongue like a five-year-old child in a birthday party bounce house.
Then I automatically swallowed, against my own will. Once that angry hornet made its way past the little punching bag at the back of my throat, it skidded its way down my esophagus slower than tree sap pouring down the side of a car in the winter. But I just kept swallowing, because my body was taking over for me, whether I liked it or not. And I knew that hornet was still alive, too, because I felt its evil little hornet legs clawing and climbing all the way down, deep into the pit of my stomach. That monster hornet slid down hard and crooked, but there were no stings at first, so I felt grateful.
When I finally got home, there did not seem to be much going on with the monster hornet. I thought that perhaps my stomach acid had killed it, or maybe it just died of shock. I drank a full tumbler of vodka with ice, just to make sure. Surely, 80 proof booze would finish the job.
But about an hour later, a rumbling in my stomach was born. The monster hornet was bouncing around in there, just like it had inside my mouth while I was still riding my beach cruiser.
Then the hellish agony started. The hot, merciless fire of its stinger jabbed itself into my stomach lining over and over, so many times, that I screamed until one of my vocal cords ruptured. I know that this happened, because when I picked up the phone and tried to call 911, my voice sounded like Danny DeVito’s mother in that old movie Throw Mama From the Train. The 911 operator could not decipher a single word I was saying, and she hung up.
I started running down the street, holding my stomach, and grunting like an escaped mental patient. The stinging was going higher into my chest, then through the center of my sternum, up through my esophagus, then into my throat. It was as if the monster hornet were laying the world’s most painful and deadly railroad tracks straight up through my core.
I ran about 50 yards down my street, then collapsed onto my neighbor’s lawn. There was a tickling sensation in my throat. I could feel tiny little insect feet taking tentative steps onto my tongue, over my teeth, then through my lips. Then there it was, standing on Gus Thompson’s front lawn, no more than 2 inches from my eyes. I was too weak to move and too exhausted to scream.
The monster hornet perked up its head and looked me in the eye. It had these baby arms at the front of his body, and it placed its hands on its hips, standing upright on its back legs. The monster hornet started to jump up and down, bending its knees but keeping the top part of its body completely straight, like those Irish dancers from the 1990s. It just kept dancing like that with its feet bouncing, as its arms were tucked neatly at its sides. It kept staring me right in the eye, until I finally had to look away.
The monster hornet then hopped on all fours, composed itself, slowly started flapping its wings, and flew away.
J.S. Lender’s new book They Are Here Now (Short Tales) is available in paperback on Amazon.
