The Wasp

             “I will ask the question plainly. Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Mathews?” A long pause hung in the air between the two men who sat across from each other, like a laundry line pinned with physical manifestations of time. From psychiatrist to the client, that laundry line hung motionless, yet grew heavier as time stretched on. The client, Kyle Mathews, seemed removed from himself at the psychiatrist’s question. The question reached straight into Kyle’s mind and hooked it clean out of his body. Kyle’s eyes stared lifelessly at the table in front of him, his jaw quivering in a desperation to find words again. The psychiatrist prompted Kyle once more, “Mr. Mathews, do you believe in ghosts?”

🝰

            Dust roared into the air around a stampede of children as they ran from their school’s back entrance and out onto the playground. The playground was humble, yet proud. No extravagant details, no wood chips or brightly colored plastic animals like the nicer schools in town. Yet, the simple ironworks of this small playground imposed themselves onto the earth with an air of long-earned respect from their imaginative dwellers. Swings became dragons between castles, while slides morphed into waterfalls to conclude daring treasure hunts. This playground felt like freedom to the children who played there.

            “Tag! You’re it, Kyle!” shouted a girl, her red hair knotted tight into a short ponytail. The girl hurriedly scuttered away as Kyle did his best to reclaim the air that he wasted in a feeble attempt to escape the girl. By the time Kyle could breathe comfortably, the girl and the other participants of the game had scattered to various corners of the playground. Kyle knew he was far from the fastest kid in his class, so his best bet was to aim for the trees nearby. At least the trees would level the playing field by slowing down whoever dared try to escape. 

            The massive oaks welcomed Kyle as he dashed toward them. The wooden behemoths rose to the sky, cutting away a world of their own that was separate from the playground. The trunks parted away as Kyle rushed between them, his vision focused on the phantoms of his classmates who dashed from one tree to another. He could only catch glimpses of their familiar faces as he desperately clambered forward without aim.

Kyle’s plan to turn the trees to his advantage backfired as he lost himself completely in the bramble of wood. Laughter and teasing from Kyle’s classmates echoed around him, decorating the space between the branches and leaves with mockery and humiliation. Kyle was suddenly overwhelmed, the heat of tears stinging the corners of his eyes as he fought for a way out of this embarrassing chaos. 

            The trees began to separate, and Kyle stumbled into a small clearing. He found himself in a space unfamiliar to him; it was as if the woods had sealed away this glade, never permitting entrance before this moment. The laughter and pain slipped away as Kyle hesitantly stepped forward.

            It began at his skin. The hairs on the back of Kyle’s hands stood up and a sudden chill seeped down their roots and into his bones. His gaze locked forward as an unsettling image formed before him, nausea immediately swelling inside his gut. Kyle’s blood froze and the color drained from his flesh as the sight dressed him in a countenance of pure horror. A silent scream spilled from his lips as his mouth fell agape, but fear held any possible sound deep within his throat. Kyle’s eyes, still stained red from tears, now quivered at the burning image before him, flames flickering in the reflection of those terrified pupils. The infernal creature took one step toward Kyle and slowly raised an arm to point at the terrified boy. It seemed human, but the sea of orange flames that swarmed the monstrosity made it difficult to discern exactly what it was – not that Kyle had any interest in finding out. As desperately as he wanted to get away, Kyle found his body motionless and the flames around the creature began to cool just enough for Kyle to make out a shape on its chest, a large wasp peering straight ahead.

            “Kyle!” cried a nearby teacher. “Oh, there you are.” The teacher rushed to Kyle and wrapped him in a small embrace before quickly looking him all over, “My dear boy, what happened — oh, I see. Yes, I would be upset if it stung me too. Here, let’s get you back to the nurse’s office.”

            The teacher began ushering Kyle back in the direction of the school. The boy, still thoroughly shaken, glanced down at the palm of his hand, which contained the fresh corpse of a wasp and a small red mark where he had been stung by the violent creature. “B-but—” Kyle stammered, looking back up toward the clearing for the petrifying scene, but all he could see was the familiar sea of trees he had seen any other day.

Kyle sat on the floor of his family’s living room, emptily staring over the toy cars parked in front of him. Dirtied fingernails pawed at the palm of Kyle’s hand as he obsessively felt the small bandage that had been placed there by his school nurse. Sweat beaded and dripped down the back of his neck, his nerves completely misaligned. His stomach felt as if it had been turned inside out, while his skin felt like it had been peeled from his body and replaced, but in all the wrong places. Kyle’s discomfort could hardly be contained, his fear stained every breath he took. The burning figure in the woods was etched into his mind, tattooed over his eyes where he could see nothing else but that awful, twisted thing.

For a moment, Kyle’s terror-induced trance was broken as his mother called for him, “Kyle, put your toys away baby, it’s time to eat dinner.” Kyle glanced down and slowly performed the assigned task, straining to remember even getting the toys out in the first place. “What about dad?” Kyle asked. “Is he going to eat?”

“Your dad is at work; he’ll have to eat when he gets home buddy. There’s a big fire downtown so they needed all the help they could get.”

“Oh,” Kyle replied, arms filled with plastic cars. Still in a daze, he meandered to his room and back to the family dining room once he had deposited his toys. “Everything okay?” Kyle’s mom inquired. Kyle didn’t say anything but just nodded. Kyle’s mom frowned with concern. Her son looked up at her when he sat at the table, but his gaze was odd. His eyes didn’t stop with her, but continued as if she wasn’t standing there at all. “You want to talk about it? Is it the wasp?” He looked down at his bandaged hand. He had completely forgotten about the creature that stung him.

“Yeah,” he said flatly. “It still hurts.” His mom slowly made her way over to him, looking up at the ceiling in thought. “Hmm, what about ― now?!” She dove at her son and started aggressively tickling his sides. Kyle erupted in laughter, “Ah! Not help- not helping!” He could barely get out his protest in between fits of giggling. 

 🝰

            “And you said that was distinctly the last time you remember her laughing?”

 Kyle nodded, making eye contact with the psychiatrist across from him. “Yeah, I remember that well,” Kyle replied.

            “What happened next, Mr. Mathews?”

            “Everything just got so . . . much . . . worse.”

🝰

            Kyle settled in on the ground with his toys again near the front window of his family’s house. His mother quietly hummed to herself as she finished the last of the dishes from their dinner. The horrors Kyle witnessed at school now seemed like a mere fragment of the past, a simple dream that his memory only bothered to recall as a whisper. Kyle’s mom had a way of doing that, eroding every fear or worry you had in a matter of minutes. 

            One time, Kyle and his dad were playing catch in the backyard. His dad had thrown the ball a little high for Kyle, who took off after the ball, his head craned up in the air to follow the ball as it soared across the yard. Without his eyes on what was in front of him, Kyle plowed right into one of his mom’s planters and both kid and pot spilled over. Immediately, Kyle was overwhelmed at the thought of upsetting his mom, she labored for hours on all her plants. Soon after, Kyle’s mom hurried outside to investigate the commotion and discovered a very-embarrassed father and son outside. She just sighed, then laughed as she scooped up some of the spilled soil and hurled it at both Kyle and his dad. She saw past the mess that was once a prized decoration of hers. All his mom could see was her family and the humor in their sheepish expression as they were caught making a mess of things. Kyle’s mom could always find the light in things; she was the best. 

            Crash! There was an eruption in the kitchen as a dish plummeted to the tile floor and shattered. Kyle’s head snapped up and he looked at his mom, her hands clasped over her mouth in shock as she stared out of a nearby window. He turned his attention forward to the glass pane near him to see what had frightened his mom. Like in the woods near his school, a brilliant orange light danced in the reflection of Kyle’s eyes. Dead ahead, toward downtown, a dark plume of smoke coated the air; a blanket of ash that emanated a faint amber glow as flames dominated everything in the distance. Kyle’s stomach should have tightened at the sight, knowing his father would be caught in the middle of whatever was happening in that hellish scene. Yet, something else commanded his attention, something that somehow terrified Kyle more than the realization of the finiteness of his family. His eyes pulled away from the fire downtown and focused on the glass that divided him from the scene. Slowly crawling across the window, using the orange-gray sky as a backdrop to its menace, was a small red wasp. 

🝰

            Three years had passed since Kyle’s father died. It was a horrific event with national news coverage and questions that bombarded Kyle’s mom as she struggled to even define what life as a single parent would look like. Things very quickly became too much to handle, and Kyle’s mom relocated them to a new town, two states away. She even considered reverting to her maiden name, just to avoid any connection to the fire that might arouse questions, but she felt like it would be unfair to the memory of her husband, like she would bury him even deeper. 

            Three years had passed, and the loss still felt as fresh as the day of the fire. For Kyle’s father to be gouged out of his family – it carved away at the boy and his mom each morning. It was like a fresh wound that needed to be continuously wrapped and bound tight to combat daily bloodletting. The bandage would soak through, dripping and staining the skin with a fresh coat of crimson. Endlessly, they would redress the wound, but the bleeding persisted.

            Three years had passed since the nightmares began to settle in. Every night, Kyle would be bombarded with the same visions: a fire, a wasp, a loss. The nightmares had begun to creep past the curtain that veiled Kyle’s mind from waking reality. He would stand in line at school, only for a bus to suddenly erupt in a rage of flames. Screams would drown out the world and Kyle would crumple to the ground, only for a teacher to bring him to his feet and back into the present moment – no fire, no screaming. To an unnatural degree, Kyle would cower in fear at the mere sight of a wasp, knowing them exclusively as an omen. Kyle was quickly designated as an outcast, an enigma, a haunted boy.

            Teachers pleaded with Kyle’s mom to seek help for her son, but she too had grown haunted by her husband’s death. She was distant, not exactly cold, just not entirely present. Rarely did she and Kyle speak beyond what was necessary for the two of them to coexist. A simple, “Dinner is ready,” and nothing more. Outside of shared meals, Kyle never saw his mom leave her bedroom. When he lost his dad, the grim reaper took his mother’s spirit with it. All that remained was a husk, a shell. His mom waltzed zombified from room to room, alive yet already dead. Kyle worried for her but was too preoccupied with his own demons to try to revive the mom he lost.

            A chill floated about the air as rows of children filed out of buses and up to the school, like ants scurrying about a colony toward their queen. Among the ants, Kyle walked with his head down, alone like usual. The morning had been relatively normal, but he couldn’t shake the strange sensation of coldness as he approached the school. Each step he took seemed to bring the air down another degree. He clenched his fists around the straps of his backpack as his skin began to sting, frost seeping down to his bones. Every movement rattled his body and he felt as if he was seconds away from shattering into a thousand little pieces of frozen flesh. Tears showered down his cheeks, his heart beating faster and faster as fear started to twist its way around his insides. As his face coated itself in tears, his face quickly erupted from frozen stiffness to an intense burning. He wanted to reach up and paw at the painful stain flooding from his eyes, but the rest of his body still felt frozen through.

            Kyle’s arms and legs were locked in place as his face lit ablaze. Fire engulfed him from the neck up and embers showered against his pupils. He felt a scream fight from the depths of his chest, but the sound wouldn’t move, even his breath was frozen still. His panic and fear went into overdrive as he desperately gasped for some mote of sound, eventually collapsing to his knees and an intense sensation swirled in his stomach as he vomited from the stress.

            “Woah!” some kids nearby exclaimed, hurrying past Kyle. His classmates typically steered clear of him as it was, but they kept even more distance now. Kyle sat there, alone in a crowd that spectated the mess that we was, kneeling with his head bowed. His hands continued to clutch at the straps of his backpack as he tried to contain his shaking. The fire around him had subdued and now he desperately just wanted to get himself under control and run inside.

            The school day was halfway over. Students of all ages gathered in the school’s massive cafeteria for lunch. As was the custom, Kyle sat alone in solemn, tortured solitude. He was used to being a spectacle. He was used to the demons he carried. He was used to the strangeness perceived of him. However, despite the regularity of his identity as an outcast, Kyle could never wrestle with his immense loneliness. The day the flames first entered his life and stole his father away, Kyle inversely was frozen in place. Smiles and laughter were exclusive to the days before and it was as if a translucent barrier constantly enveloped Kyle. He could see everyone around him, but always at a distance. Just once, Kyle wanted his mom to smile again or a classmate to simply say hello without any undertones of mockery. Perhaps that day was finally here.

            Kyle couldn’t see his reflection, but he imagined he wore a countenance of something between stunned horror and revolted horror as another student approached Kyle’s small table in the corner. Their introduction confirmed Kyle’s irregular facial expression.

“Um, hi?”

The student cautiously introduced themselves, almost a question more than a statement. They slowly moved closer, like someone who just discovered a scared animal that was lost from home. Kyle shook himself and finally replied after what felt like hours of silence, “sorry, hi. I’m not used to anyone talking to me.” The other student raised an eyebrow, as if the idea of social isolation was not only foreign to them, but outright ridiculous. “Well,” they said, “I’m talking to you now. I’m Brett, by the way.” Brett placed his tray of food on the table and inserted himself across from Kyle.

Again, Kyle couldn’t wipe the shock from his face. Quickly, the disbelief rearranged itself into suspicion. “What are you doing?” Kyle prompted, his eyes narrowing. “What kind of question is that?” Brett replied, clearly offended at Kyle’s insinuation of something sinister. Bitterness coated Kyle’s words, “nobody talks to me this long unless it is an accident, or they are trying to embarrass me.”

“Well,” Brett leaned in over the table, “whoever you are, I’m not trying to embarrass you. I just saw you by yourself, so I came over.” Brett relaxed a little and took his lukewarm school pizza in hand, “today’s my first day here and I don’t have any friends yet. I guess I just thought the person all alone would have no choice but to be my friend.”

A friend. The concept descended into Kyle’s head like a spider threading a web. It was both slow and mesmerizing. The silky construction was beautiful and fragile. It threatened to snap with ease, but glued to its surface were feelings of awe and promise. Quickly, a desperate warmth welled up inside Kyle. For the first time in three years, Kyle wasn’t alone.

“Well – thank you. My name is Kyle, by the way.”

🝰

            “I know that day was significant. I remember it was the first time I felt happy about something since my father had died. I had nobody. With all the nightmares and visions and just – my sickness, I had fallen into such a dark place mentally and emotionally. I don’t think I had any idea how bad things truly were back then,” Kyle paused, catching himself just staring out of the window. He turned his eyes back to the psychiatrist. “I think everything fed off each other. The scarier the things where that I saw, the worse I would feel. The worse I felt, the hauntings grew crueler.”

            The psychiatrist nodded, “so, you attribute some relief to when you met Brett then. Did your visions completely stop?”

            “For a time,” Kyle replied, his face dressed in a thin smile, but his eyes were juxtaposed with a coating of stinging pain. “For a time.”

🝰

            Two minutes. That’s what remained on the clock. Two minutes until the Yellowjackets would either move on to compete for the district title or their basketball season would fizzle out here entirely. Kyle honestly wasn’t moved either way, but he sat in the bleachers all the same. He knew how important this was to Brett and he wanted to be there to show his support, even if he knew nothing of what was going on. Despite his cluelessness, Kyle could tell Brett was a force to be reckoned with out on that court. He had a bit of a reputation around the high school at this point for having real talent, almost single-handedly carrying the team to this point.

            “You’re staring again,” Aubrey muttered. Startled, Kyle looked over at the scarlet-headed girl to his left. He hadn’t even noticed that she sat down with him. Perhaps he really was staring, he realized. Kyle’s face flushed red, and Aubrey smirked, “relax idiot, nobody else saw anything – or did they?” She mockingly looked around quickly at the other students nearby before a punch landed across her arm.

            “Ow!”

            “Knock it off,” Kyle demanded through gritted teeth.

            A couple of years after Kyle and Brett became friends, Aubrey joined the mix as a third wheel. She wasn’t actually a third wheel, but Kyle chose to see her that way. The friends were an odd mix, with Aubrey having a bit of a dark past of her own, like Kyle. Two outcasts and one star athlete. Kyle was glad Brett was kind enough to stay true to their friendship, for whatever reason. Brett was swarmed daily with adoring fans of classmates and more than a few would-be suitors, yet Brett always settled in with Kyle and Aubrey. Loyalty and trust were more important to Brett than anything, which made Kyle admire his friend even more.

            In the end, the Yellowjackets won. That was the only time Kyle could remember screaming in jubilation at a sport. The bleachers roared to life and the crowd stampeded onto the court. Their school wasn’t known for athletics, so this was a big moment for everyone. In fact, this was only the third time in the school’s history that they would get a shot at the district title. The hoard of students and adults piled up into a single, buzzing mass. Brett was on cloud nine, currently riding atop a wave of students chanting his name and Kyle was right there with them, as if he had always been part of the crowd.

            Kyle returned home after the game, two bags of fast food in tow. It was his turn to cook dinner and the celebrations at the school dragged on longer than he realized. He hadn’t heard anything from his mom to protest his mismanagement of time, so he hoped she was busy doing something that would distract her from the waning evening light.  “Shit,” Kyle crunched out through clenched teeth as he fumbled around for his key to the front door. The key slipped through his fingers and clatter down to the front step. As he stooped down to scoop the key back into his hand, a cool breeze wrapped its way around Kyle, seemingly stretching up from the ground itself and dancing its chilling fingers across his ribs and spine. Kyle moved his shoulders, shivering at the sudden coolness. He lifted one bag of food to his mouth and bit down, like a scavenging wild dog, as he carefully slid the key into place with his newly freed hand.

            The door creaked open as Kyle pushed his way inside. The temperature felt even chillier than the sudden gust outside the house and Kyle had to squint his eyes to adjust to the enveloping darkness that stretched across every inch of wall and floor. “Mom?” he called out as he shuffled forward, using his arm and shoulder to feel his way along the wall. He came around the first corner toward the living room and was met with a faint bluish glow, pulsing from their TV. Details finally formed in front of Kyle’s eyes as he was able to make out the silhouette of his mom on the couch with her back to him.

            There are more than thirty thousand identified species         of wasps.

Despite the large volume of species, across all wasps, only the females have stingers.

The stingers, in fact, are a modified organ for laying eggs.

Also, contrary to what one might assume, the more social female wasps are inclined to use their stingers purely to defend themselves.

The more antisocial wasps use the stingers offensively to hunt prey.

            Chuckling nervously, Kyle called out as he cautiously approached his mom, “a little engrossed by all of the nature facts there, mom?” He made his way around the couch and dropped both bags of food in shock as he finally laid eyes on his mom’s face.

            Silence violently grasped at Kyle’s throat as he stumbled backward a couple of paces – eyes locked in horror on his mother. Her head was fixed forward to the wasp documentary on the TV, mouth agape, with tears of crimson plastering her face and oozing from freshly gouged pits where her eyes should have been. Kyle howled, as control slowly returned to his body, suddenly feeling trapped in a dark fantasy that he desperately wanted to slam shut. His heart began to race quicker the longer he looked, and he felt his stomach churn as he noticed his mom’s small microwave dinner before her, a mashed and shredded eyeball skewered by her fork.

            Kyle’s shoulders pressed against a hard surface, his disbelief carrying him backward until his back reached the wall and he could retreat no further. “Mom?” he barely croaked out with a shaky breath. The documentary on the TV cut and was abruptly replaced by deadening static, then the room was suddenly painted with an orange glow as fire spontaneously engulfed Kyle’s mom from the neck up. “No!” he screamed. He rushed forward and grasped his mom’s shoulders and shook her, desperate for something to change. Kyle’s lungs pained at the rapid contractions of his panicked breathing, and he dashed for the kitchen. A cacophony of noise erupted as Kyle threw open the cabinets beneath the sink and ripped out everything underneath before grabbing the small fire extinguisher kept at the back. He hurried back and mentally pleaded to any gods that would listen as he pulled the pin from the extinguisher and took aim at his mother. A plume of white erupted from the small canister and the flames quickly subsided.

            “Mom?” Kyle cried one more time, before an audible smack hit the floor. Shaking, Kyle moved his eyes down to the mass that just landed at his feet – a charred row of teeth – his mom’s jaw. Fighting as hard as he could to get his breathing under control, Kyle looked up and quickly collapsed to the ground as his mom’s burnt head turned to face him with a sudden jerk. Bellowing out a gurgling wail, she sprung back to life and rushed at Kyle, arms outstretched. Frantically, Kyle crawled to his feet and bolted through the house, the unholy creature that was once his mother directly behind him in pursuit. He made it to the back door and slipped out, slamming it shut. There was a loud bang as the creature rammed against the door and Kyle shuffled back, his eyes locked on the back door’s window, where his mom’s head smashed through the glass and ignited with gold flames again. The creature let out a shrill screech and violently rattled against the door, slamming into it over and over. Kyle couldn’t bare it anymore and ran from his house as quickly as he could. His feet dug into the dirt as he kicked his way through the trees that surrounded his home, feeling like he was suddenly transported back to that playground where his visions first began. His feet slid across pavement as he found himself in the middle of the street. He winced at a sudden flash of light and the squealing sound of tires sliding across the road.

            “Dude! What are you doing out in the middle of the street?” a familiar voice called out from the car that was mere inches away. Kyle looked around, bewildered. His mind was dulled into a gray fuzz, but his body carried him forward to the source of the voice. Brett leaned out of the driver’s window to his car and waved Kyle closer.

            “I don’t know what you’re up to, but if you’re done being weird, we’ve got a party to get to. Alec decided to do this big thing at his house because of our win. Don’t think that I’m pulling up without my best friend. Aubrey texted and said she’s already on her way there.” Too dazed to formulate a response, Kyle just slinked over to the passenger side and got in. “Alright!” Brett yelled, slapping his hands on the steering wheel. He reached down to put the car into gear before hesitating, “hey man, you good?” Kyle replied, “y-yeah. All good.” Brett shifted in his seat, eyes narrowed, “you better tell me if something is up. You’re being weirder than normal.” His face relaxed into an expression of immense concern, an awkward uneasiness flooding the interior of the car. “Are you start seeing things again?” he asked. “What?! No,” Kyle shot back defensively.

            “Kyle, if you’re seeing weird shit, you got to be honest with me and let me know what’s up.” “I’m good,” Kyle replied, “honest.” After a couple beats of prolonged silence, he added, “I’ve never been to a party like this. Like, what am I supposed to do?” Brett shook his head and started to drive. “Man, you worry too much. Just go with the flow, you know? Enjoy some music. Be brave and talk to some people. Get drunk, have fun. It’s not a science man. Don’t think about it.”

            “Don’t think about it,” Kyle quietly repeated, staring out the window. A fog was starting to settle in, forming hazy streaks across the glass that blurred the sea of dark trees that Kyle peered into. A phantom of the haunting image of his mom stared back at him. Kyle could feel tears fight their way up through his eyes and he did his best to force them down, continuing to stare into the blur of trees. Don’t think about it.

“Hey! Kyle!” Brett started clapping in Kyle’s face. Kyle leapt back in his seat in surprise and looked up at Brett with wide eyes. “You completely spaced out on me, man. We’re here.” Kyle blinked and allowed his mind to catch up with reality. He pushed the door open and climbed out after his friend, eying the dancing colors in the windows of Alec’s house, teasing the party inside.

            “Starman!” A chorus called out in cheers as Brett and Kyle strolled through the front door. Clearly, the red-carpet treatment wasn’t intended for Kyle, not that he expected it. More than a dozen people swarmed the pair as they made their way deeper into the living room, victorious claps peppering Brett all over as the crowd started chanting his self-appointed nickname, “Starman! Starman! Starman!” In a matter of seconds, the chants metamorphosized into a call that would frame the beginning of a very long night. “Shots! Shots! Shots!”

Kyle must have looked painfully uncomfortable as he was soon whisked away from the hyped mass of basketball champions, an unseen hand gripping him by the wrist. Kyle gladly allowed his savior to yank him to a nearby hallway, the closest excuse for solitude he would probably find in this place.

            “Oh, thank god you’re here,” Kyle said, his eyes tracing from his wrist up to Aubrey’s face, who stared at him. She asked, “how’d you manage to be in the middle of all that?” “How do you think?” he replied. Aubrey glanced over to the group, spotting Brett, then looked back to Kyle with a smirk, “so that’s why you’re here.” “Yeah,” Kyle said, “that’s one reason. Hey is that vodka?” He quickly pivoted the conversation and pointed down to Aubrey’s other hand, clutched around a clear bottle with a royal blue label. “Oh yeah, I swiped this bad boy from the kitchen when —” she was cut off as Kyle snatched the bottle from her. “Help yourself then.”

            Kyle quickly downed a couple of swigs from the bottle, wincing from the burn in his throat. “First drink?” Aubrey prompted. He glanced down at the bottle in his hand, “yep,” then downed another gulp. “Woah, okay, let’s slow down a little,” Aubrey took the bottle back, looking at her friend with concern, “what’s going on? This is more than just a you-and-Brett thing.” Kyle panicked at first, glancing around to make sure nobody overheard her. Satisfied that everyone was too distracted to pay attention to the outcasts at the party, he turned his attention back to Aubrey. “Will you watch it?” he said through clenched teeth. She shrugged, then pressed on, “don’t avoid the question. You’re being weird, Kyle. And like, more than your normal weird.” Kyle’s eyes glassed over, and he finally let out everything he fought so hard to bottle up on the ride over. He recounted everything about his mom, sparing no detail.

When he finished telling Aubrey everything, the weight of his terror-filled reality forced him to the ground, where he sat with his back against the wall. Aubrey joined him on the ground and just stared straight ahead. She took a swig from the bottle before passing it back over to Kyle, who quickly took it from her with relief. They sat there in silence for several minutes, mentally miles away from their classmates partying around them, who paid them no mind. “That’s – a lot,” Aubrey said, finally breaking the silence. “Yeah,” was all Kyle could bring himself to say. He drank some more and passed the bottle back to Aubrey. “You know,” she began, hesitating as she searched for the right words, “I thought I felt something earlier. Something opened to me and this – I don’t know. This darkness or whatever just seemed to claw out into the world. This disgusting, vile, ball of hatred peered right into me like, ‘surprise bitch, found you again!”

“You mean like all that stuff from before you moved here? You think what happened to my mom. . .” Kyle’s words seemed to dwindle into nothing as he trailed off, trying to wrap his head around the strangeness that bound him and Aubrey together.

 At this point, the two had already torn through about half of their bottle and the room started to warp and spin around Kyle. His eyes widened as an unsettling feeling stirred in his stomach. He jumped up and dashed for the kitchen, where he barely made it to the trash can in time to throw up in it. There were a few cheers from the classmates nearby, who patted him on the back for support. When Kyle finally lifted himself away from the bin, he looked up to see another drink extended to him from a random student. Regretfully, he took it.

Aubrey and Kyle spent the next several hours drinking away their creeping fears. Kyle felt partial remorse for dragging Aubrey into this mess, knowing the burdens she carried from her own childhood, but he was glad to have some of the weight finally off him and knew that the person he shared his experience with wouldn’t question his sanity for one second. They continued in this way until around two in the morning, consuming so much alcohol that Kyle even found himself socializing with a lot of other students for the first time since he moved here. “Yo!” someone yelled at Kyle, throwing their arms around his shoulders from behind, the vowel of the word dragged out into a sort of prolonged song. Kyle looked over his shoulder and locked eyes with Brett. “Hey, you,” Kyle said, only half aware of his surroundings at this point. “You ready to get out of here?” Brett asked.

“Can you even drive?”

Brett waved at Kyle, shooing away his question and started for the door, “C’mon! Let’s bolt. Bet your mom’s still up and all worried that you’re not back yet.”

Kyle froze, his mind suddenly clear, as if a magical sobriety befell upon him with his renewed terror. He soon found himself in the passenger seat of Brett’s car again, unaware of how he even got there. Maybe he wasn’t quite sober after all. He immediately sought out the blur of trees for solace as he had on their initial journey to Alec’s, but the fog had settled in even heavier by this time and billowing mist was all he could see, enveloping the car to veil something sinister beyond. Whatever Aubrey had warned about, it waited for him somewhere out there. Occasionally, the car would rattle as Brett slid to one edge of the road or the other. Drunkenness and fog made for an elixir of precarious nature. “I don’t know man,” Kyle finally protested. “I think maybe we go back to Alec’s or something.” His voice jittered as the car rattled off the edge of the road again. “Relax. We’re fine,” Brett said flatly, his eyes intensely ahead, clearly mustering everything within himself to keep the car straight.

“Dude. I really think we —” Kyle continued but was cut off as Brett snapped at him in clear self-doubt, “Kyle! Shut the fuck up! I said we’re fine, so just let me —”

The car lurched as its tires slid from the pavement and completely cleared the road, speeding into a ditch before colliding with something big and heavy that flipped the car on its head and propelled them down a hill. Crash after crash violently knocked the car around as it continuously flipped down the hill before slamming into a sickening, sudden stop. Brett and Kyle flailed their arms up to defend themselves as best as they could from the vortex of shattered glass and shards of metal. Kyle was met with piercing blackness as he felt his body lift from his seat on the final impact, his head striking into something hard.

Slowly, Kyle’s vision returned to him, albeit blurry. He groaned and felt his head, his body searing with pain all over. He pulled his hand down and saw his fingers coated with bright crimson. He wanted to scream but was overcome with an odd sense to fight for survival. He pushed himself up against a tree, which he presumed is the very thing that knocked him unconscious. Shakily, Kyle pulled himself to his feet and looked around for Brett. A familiar grip of fear reached into Kyle as his eyes settled on the mangled and enflamed form that remained of Brett’s car. Kyle took a few steps toward the raging storm of fire, calling out for Brett, though he realistically suspected he wouldn’t get an answer. With his arms raised to shield himself from the heat, he cautiously approached the car and peered into the wreckage for his friend but saw no evidence that he was there at all. Confused, and with his vision still blurry, Kyle blinked a few times and began to look around.

There he was.

At the height of the hill, standing in the gnarled guardrail where the car tore through, was Brett. Like the car, and like Kyle’s mom before, he stood there in a column of fire. Brett’s face quickly fell into deformity, the flames pulling at his flesh like the wax of a candle, remolding him into little more than bone and gore. Kyle vigorously shook his head in disbelief, this couldn’t be Brett. The one person who had stayed at his side this whole time. The only person left who really meant anything to Kyle now loomed over him as a ghastly inferno. As much as it pained Kyle to see Brett like this, something about him held Kyle’s attention. Kyle’s vision came into focus on the Brett’s varsity jacket, on the yellowjacket mascot. In a rush, everything clicked, Kyle had witnessed this scene before. The realization sent Kyle reeling to his knees, and he buried his face in his hands as memory after memory played through his mind in a tormenting loop. This horror is what first greeted Kyle all those years ago on the day his father died and haunted him every year after. That flaming figure and the wasp in the trees, it was Brett. It was always him.

🝰

“I appreciate your willingness to be so open in today’s session,” the psychiatrist said. He finished a note in his journal and folded it shut. “I think this is the most progress we’ve made since we started seeing each other, Mr. Matthews.” He gave Kyle a consoling smile and slowly rose to his feet. “The visions that plagued your youth, they sound tremendously violent, and I feel as if I should apologize to you. However, despite everything you’ve experienced, you display a great strength to have endured so much at that age and it really speaks to the progress you’ve made to be able to reflect on all this so honestly.” He extended his hand toward Kyle in affirmation. “One final question, as we wrap things up today. That ‘omen’ as you put it. The one you saw after the crash. Was that truly the last time you had such a profound episode?”

Each word he said was entirely lost on Kyle. As Kyle's eyes fixated on the back wall, the psychiatrist was blurred away, a figment of a world beyond. His attention narrowed in an unrelenting focus on the small creature that crawled its way across the bricks – a small red wasp.