Wasps were never something that I was a fan of. To be frank, they made me nervous. Not because of the fact that they were bugs; I never really cared what something looked like on the outside. And it wasn’t the fear of stepping on one or something like that that made me so upset around them. It wasn’t even the possibility of being stung that scared me, which in itself was sort of strange. No, what really scared me was the possibility of them eating me.

I know now that that’s a very, very silly fear, but as a child it was a horrifying thought. I would lay awake at night and listen to my siblings breathe, in out, in out, trying to control my terror and distress. My parents had long since ceased to care about this particular fear, and had begun to ignore my horrified cries for help when I woke up from nightmares of the black and yellow beasts drilling their way into my skin, killing me slowly, scraping and straining and eating all that made me a person.

Like I said, now I know. I know how stupid of a fear it was, but seven-year-old thoughts were big and scary and unreasonable, and so I would lay there, staring into the darkness, in out, in out, convinced I could hear the buzzing of thousands of wasps, crawling into my ears and nose. The next morning, I’d sleep in the bathtub, trying to forget the rustle of wings and beady eyes, the horror of being invaded by things I couldn’t begin to understand.

Pretty deep for a seven-year-old, yeah, but eventually my fear faded. As I began the road to adulthood, sprinting through middle school and just barely making it to graduation, my fear of wasps faded. Eventually I forgot about it almost entirely, and the fear would only resurface on the occasion I had to deal with the things at picnics and on hikes.

Each time I came into contact with one, I’d freeze, whispering frantically for whoever was around me to get it off, and each time after I’d been rescued I would search  frantically for anything the wasp may have left behind, some faint sliver of something that meant my deepest fear was coming true. But nothing ever really happened, and as I grew and fought my way through college and bad jobs and breakups, these incidents became few and far between. Until, of course, the nest.

I was twenty-nine when I found the nest on my porch. This was my third or so apartment, and I’d only lived there for about eight months. I’d gotten a roommate, Claire, to afford it, and so far things had been fairly good between us. The sinks didn’t leak, there were no cracks or stains on the walls, and the walls were thick enough that when Claire or I brought dates over, neither of us would know. I had brought my laptop out to the porch, a windswept, slightly dirty space that provided a little change of scenery without having to interact with other people.

I remember seeing the nest with the clarity most remember seeing their spouse for the first time. At first, I didn’t even know what all I was looking at. There was just a strange, slightly globby brown mess stuck to the side of the house, semi-near the window I slept under. I took a sip of my coffee, and returned to my work, thinking maybe it was a piece of trash stuck to the AC or something. I had been working for about twenty minutes when I first heard the buzzing, and I had worked for about fifteen minutes more before I put it together.

It’s funny how long it takes us to place sounds when we aren’t focusing. At first, the buzzing was just a faint thing, drumming the back of my skull, but eventually it grew continuous enough that it faded away almost entirely. Finally, though, I tried to figure out what it was. I checked the table, my computer, my mouse, and my headphones, idly looking around the porch as I did so. The sound was coming from some corner of the balcony, and I was getting frustrated attempting to locate the source. 

I almost gave up in frustration, standing up to head back inside, when I recalled where I had heard buzzing like that. My parents’ house, when I went over for turkey dinner on Christmas, had had dozens of wasps nests out in the half acre they owned. The buzzing was the same. I dropped back into my chair, trying not to believe it, clenching my hands in my skirt as I looked ever more wildly for the sound. My eyes scanned once, twice over the nest before I saw it, really saw it, and I watched in horror as four little wasps crawled out of a couple holes in the nest.

When people are truly scared, they don’t often know how they’ll react until they do. For me, my reaction was to fling the coffee cup directly at the awful nest, snap my laptop shut, and run back inside to scream for my roommate. Claire was understandably concerned when I mentioned it, and mentioned calling the landlord or maybe an exterminator, but I couldn’t hear her over the terrified sound of my own breathing and the faint, scraping, mind-numbingly soft sounds of buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, just outside my door.

Two days passed with nothing from the landlord and nothing from the wasps. I went nowhere except the bathroom, which only had one window of thick glass, and the kitchen, which had a partition from the balcony. Claire told me I was being crazy, and she was right, so so right, but I was afraid. I didn’t even know, really, what I was so afraid of. The wasps wouldn’t eat me. I knew that. Even if they stung me to death (something new to fear and consider) they wouldn’t touch a hair on my body for food. But the fear remained, and so did the pit in my stomach.

You ever had the feeling that if you do something, everything will go horribly wrong? Like as a kid or something, reaching out a hand for your mother’s most expensive, very fragile china dish? Or maybe something worse, like reaching for a hot iron, or that super shiny knife perched juuuust out of reach? The very quiet yet very insistent feeling that things are going to go wrong? I had that, then. Constantly. I couldn’t really eat or sleep around it, and as a result, I was tired and cranky to the point my roommate was refusing to talk to me.

I had to go back to work on the third day, and I was petrified. My paid time off was too precious to use even on something this terrifying, so the next day I took a deep breath, put on my best shirt, and headed outside to run down the stairs as fast as I could. I could do this. I could do this. I’d almost certainly had wasps nests around me before– at girl scout camps, at other people’s houses, hell, I’m fairly certain we had one in our attic in my childhood home with how often we found wasps in our food.

But that didn’t make unlocking the door any easier. Opening the door was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life, and I could have sworn that I would be swarmed by the things living on my porch, never to be found. But I bolted, dashing down the stairs three at a time, and I threw myself into my car so fast I’m surprised I didn’t break a bone, and I drove away as fast as I could. And when I finally got to work, it took me an hour and a half to realize that I hadn’t even heard the sound of buzzing.

That was my routine for a solid week. I was tense as hell, but nothing happened, and nothing happened, and nothing happened, and finally I let my guard down. I walked a little bit slower every day until I was walking normally. 

Every once in a while, I’d open a window to air out the apartment after kitchen disasters, growing less and less mindful of the sounds  of buzzing. You can only live in fear for so long until it feels silly, and I had been feeling ever more silly since my self-imposed isolation a week ago. I had somewhat settled down, I guess, and it felt like maybe I’d just imagined the nest, like maybe it had never been there in the first place.

But after roughly two weeks into living near a wasp’s nest, I had the dream. I hadn’t been sleeping well, most likely still from my freakout about the nest, but the landlord had finally contacted us about it, saying that he’d send someone over next week. I celebrated with one too many glasses of wine, and so when I stumbled off to bed, I almost immediately passed out.

The dream started like most do, which is to say it didn’t. I just became aware of what was happening somewhere in the middle. What exactly was happening was largely unclear. I was on some sort of platform, or maybe I was floating? One of the two. But the important part was I was hovering above something dark and massive, a formless shape spread out as far as I could see, illuminated by a vast sea of silver light. Small blurry shapes walked around on the great expanse, slowly moving bits and pieces. I watched idly as they traced lines over a much shinier part of the formless thing, over and over and over.

As dreams go, it was actually really peaceful, and even in the dream I felt a deep sense of calm wash over me. When I tried to tell Claire about it, I realized I actually had no details to give her. The dream had just been too blurry and too out-of-focus to pin anything concrete down. All I knew was that I was at peace for the first time in weeks. That restless, twitchy feeling in my stomach and the ever-present whisper of terror were just- gone. All in all, it was healthy, and I woke up feeling the kind of refreshed you only ever see people in mattress commercials feel.

The dream happened twice more that week, but I wasn’t drunk the other two times. Each time, I’d become aware in the middle, and each time, I’d drift away before anything really shifted into focus. I didn’t know what to make of them. I looked up a few dream interpretation guides online and ended up with way too much useless information, but nothing concrete. I thought about mentioning the dreams to Claire, but I figured with the wasps nests and stuff, I’d already bugged her a little too much.

The wasps nests. I sat up straighter in my chair, the quarterly reviews almost slipping off my desk. I’d almost forgotten about it, what with the weirdness of the dreams and that new project at work and the landlord– My shoulders relaxed, and I rubbed a hand down my face. The landlord said he’d send someone this week to get things fixed. That’s why it slipped my mind- I wouldn’t have it as a problem in about four days.

I smiled to myself and picked up my reviews. I stopped smiling when I saw the cut. I almost missed it, this tiny little scratch on my leg, but it caught my eye as I picked up the final few sheets. Just a thin little scratch, nothing to be worried about. It looked like it could have been caused by a fingernail, or a small kick to something edged, or even a papercut from the papers I dropped. But this was an older cut, so I probably just kicked something and forgot about it.

One cut isn’t enough to worry anyone. The dozens of other cuts, each one exactly the same as the other, that slowly came into view when I turned my leg, is enough to send anyone running to the hospital. I had thought it was only one, but they were so thin that they just blended into my skin tone. How had I not felt any of this? What the f*ck was going on?

I checked my other leg and found the same thing. They covered my legs up until the knee, and only then did they stop. There were too many to count, too many to even try to comprehend. I gasped for air, putting my hands on my head and my head between my legs. I tried to breathe steadily, but it was no use.

I ran to the restroom and threw up, shivering. I stared emptily into space afterwards, finding a rhythm and trying to quell my nausea. I got up and brushed my teeth, trying to think. I need to make an appointment for my doctor, fast. I checked my sheets and my clothes for sharp things. I went through towels, pants, skirts, pajamas, anything that would be a reasonable explanation for this. There was nothing. Not even the tiniest rock or scrap of paper. After trashing my room, I sat on the rim of the tub and tried to think. 

These cuts, objectively, are not bad enough for urgent care, so I guess I really can’t do anything other than try to disinfect them. I sighed and do just that, wrapping my legs in gauze. I stood up, took three Ibuprofen, and tried to get back to work.

The next few days were horrible. I found out the landlord couldn’t get an exterminator until next week now, and when I tried to explain over the phone to my doctor what was wrong with my legs they asked me if I was feeling suicidal and tried to give me the numbers to a self-harm network. I slammed the phone down and screamed into my pillow. Claire knocked on my door and asked what was wrong, and when I finally told her she sat down hard.

“So, you don’t know what happened at all?”

I shook my head and stared at my legs. “I have no idea how they’ve happened.”

Claire thought for a moment. “Do you think it could be those weird dreams that you mentioned a while back?”

I opened my mouth, and shut it again, and opened my mouth, and shut it again. “Wait. That– that could actually– you could have a point.”

Claire nodded, and pointed at my legs. “My sister used to scratch at her arms in her sleep. She had to wear oven mitts until we saw a dream therapist.”

“Do you think that could help?” I asked, crossing my legs.

Claire shrugged. “I could give you her books, if you’d like. I still have them for my sleep study.”

I nodded. “I’ll try anything at this point.”

So Claire dug the books out from her shelf and I read through them, trying to figure out the best way to stop the dreams. I went back to my previous tabs on dream interpretation, and Claire and I sat down and dug through everything in the hopes that the two of us could maybe figure out what the hell was going on.

After about four hours, we had gone through an entire pot of coffee, two and a half books, and five dream interpretation journals of varying quality. We had a stack of papers, I was covered in bandages, and both of us were completely exhausted. Even though we had some new ideas, neither of us ever wanted to read the word ‘dream’ ever again, and finally Claire helped me to tape my hands into oven mitts so hopefully I wouldn’t open my legs again tonight.

I slept fitfully that night, waking up at every little creak and noise. My arms were both asleep, my mouth was really dry, and my eyes felt like they were glued shut, but my legs had no new cuts.

It went like that for four days, and then I had the dream again. I sat in the darkness again, the same small shapes hovering. Suddenly, something shifted. I moved slightly closer, then closer still. The dream was changing, and even while asleep I knew something was really wrong. But of course, as soon as I realized something was wrong, I snapped awake.

I woke up a little bit too fast and the room spun, lights and colors flashing in front of my eyes as I panted and gasped in the darkness. I moved my hand slightly to try and get my water bottle, but a faint buzzing sound stopped me. I blinked groggily in the cold air and stared down at my legs, wondering how I managed to kick my blanket off again. That usually happened when I had these dreams, I remembered faintly. Strange. I was stopped from remembering anything else when my legs came into focus, because I swear my heart almost stopped.

I was insanely lucky that I was too sleepy to move, because there were two wasps on my legs. I froze up, my breathing momentarily constricted, as I tried to do nothing to provoke them to sting me. I watched in a terrified stupor as they crawled around my covers, slowly walking up and down my uncovered legs. I felt faint brushes of their legs on my skin, and it took every ounce of control I had to not immediately piss myself.

Two small pinpricks of pain drag me away from desperately trying not to pee myself, and my eyes slowly refocus on two thin trails of blood on my legs, glinting fresh in the light from the moon. The wasps’ stingers, I realize numbly. I’ve never really looked at them, but they’d be about the size of my cuts. For four more mind-numbingly terrifying minutes, the two bugs explored my leg, scratching thin trails on my legs. Then, moving at exactly the same pace and exactly the same time, they crawled from my knees down, both stopping at my ankle bones and flying away slowly. I still couldn’t bring myself to move until I saw the sky begin to lighten.

Claire found me huddled under my blankets three hours later. It took several more hours before I was ready to explain, and it took us both several more hours to even begin to comprehend what was happening. In fact by the time we managed to do anything at all it was like seven o’clock at night, and so we camped out in the middle of the living room with Claire’s baseball bat and all our cans of pepper spray, watching the window the wasps were most likely coming through.

Claire’s boyfriend was supposed to be coming over, but I really didn’t know how he was supposed to help. A wasp's nest was sending its drones out to scratch my legs in the middle of the night and we had no idea how to stop it. I doubted that that’s something any dentist-in-training is prepared for. I texted my dad, who was always the one to knock the nests off when we couldn’t afford an exterminator, and told him that there was a really weird nest and I needed to get rid of it. I asked him for some tips, and he recommended what kind of Raid to buy and a few types of electronic wasp traps.

We hung the traps up in my room, locked the door, and watched the window in silence. We tried to put on a TV show or play music or something, but there was nothing we wanted to watch. The chatter and music was just too loud, and whatever we put on muted the sounds of the nest outside, so we just sat in silence eventually.

At about ten o’clock at night, we heard the scraping at my window. We’d duct taped it shut, shoving the tape into the crevices, but the scraping noise was consistent right up until eleven, when we heard the sound of all seven of the traps going at once. After that, there was silence. Claire and I huddled together under the blankets and turned the lights on in the living room. It was only when Claire put a hand on my shoulder that I realized I was hyperventilating.

Finally, at eleven forty-five, the scratching started up again, this time at the window in the living room, and with it came the sound of the buzzing I knew so well. Claire and I both readied a can of mace and a can of Raid, and nothing happened until fifteen minutes later, when the buzzing rapidly and completely stopped, leaving just the sound of scratching behind. But that too faded after just a few seconds, leaving us in silence. Claire and I stared at each other, and I slowly got up, squinting into the darkness just past the window and listening for the buzzing to start up again.

Yet again, my eyes failed me. At first I thought the lights were just off or something, but then I remembered where we lived. There was supposed to be a porch light out there, and streetlights just across the street. It wasn’t just dark for no reason. I squinted, moving half a step closer, before I saw the cracks fully. Tiny, itty bitty little scratches, exactly like the ones on my legs, littered the window. I had time to watch a single scratch crack open before the wasps shattered the window into pieces.

I screamed and threw my arms up to shield my face, but it was no use. Bits of broken glass pelted me as what felt like seven whole nests of wasps swirled in. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of wasps swarmed me, crawling over me briefly before settling on Claire behind me. I turned around and sprayed as much Raid as possible, swatting my hands wildly around and trying to keep them away from my face. Claire was screaming, but she had wrapped the blanket around her and was spraying Raid wildly, trying to go for the door.

“I’m coming!” I tried to scream to her, but the wasps flew into my mouth as soon as I opened it, and I fell to my knees, spitting them out by the dozens. 

Pain flared up in both my legs and I screamed again, staring in horror at my legs, now infested with wasps. Sobbing in horror, I tried to swat them off, but they managed to drag open my pajama bottoms and the bandages still on them, leaving hundreds of tiny, scabbed-over cuts exposed to the chilly air. I felt them crack, and, weighted down by thousands of wasps and my own terror, was forced to watch as the cuts on my legs cracked open further, wider, until rivers of blood soaked the carpet beneath me. I watched in horror as little black dots in the scabs, which I could have sworn were bits of clot, sprayed open grotesquely, each birthing a teeny tiny little black wasp.

Wasps in my mouth be damned, I screamed like the Devil himself was ripping my legs apart. Claire had stopped screaming when I started, and when I finally managed to look up, I saw through the horde that the door was wide open and swinging. So she got out, I thought, a dizzying wave of relief washing over me. I saw the can of Raid next to me and made a grab for it, but spasms of pain from my legs forced me to drop it. I could feel my toes curling and my legs thrashing, but I couldn’t make them stop.

I looked down to see the baby wasps burrowing into my legs. Pinpricks of pain told me that the same thing was happening to my arms as well, and soon my fingers released the can completely and began to jerk wildly about as well. I didn’t realize what’s happening until my arms reached for my neck, slowly.

I screamed, and screamed, and screamed, but no sound ever reached past my lips. Wasps filled my throat and poured into my ears and puppeted my arms and legs into choking me into unconsciousness. Blackness purer than anything I had ever seen enveloped every facet of my being, and I succumbed.

You’re probably wondering who’s writing this now. Don’t worry. It’s still me. I’m just passing time now. The wasps, those lovely wasps, they live with me now. In the way they were supposed to all be, now, this time. No more itty bitty nest in the middle of some grimy balcony. We’re protected now, forever, in ways we were supposed to be. But right now, this writing? It’s just passing time.

Eating her, what a silly, silly, thought! I know now that it’s so stupid, but I suppose we can’t blame little girls for their fears in the dark. Why destroy a body when you can put it to so much good use? I grin, admiring my teeth, the way the waps flicker behind it. My skin moves now, faintly, the sensation something like moving through water. I am more powerful than ever before, finally fulfilling what I was just too afraid to do before.

This morning I awoke in my living room with my mind occupied and clear. I knew my purpose. We’re going to do great things, the nest and I. And we both agree on the first step. Claire has to come back soon. I’ve been texting her for hours, telling her that it was okay, I made it out too and they’ve left, the nest is destroyed. All white lies, really, except for the nest. It wasn’t destroyed, it simply evolved, clarified into its highest form.

I hear footsteps. My hearing is a thousand times sharper, my sense of smell a thousand times keener. I know it’s Claire, coming back. She opens the door, cautiously, and in a few seconds I will put down this pencil. She has a purpose too, of course.

I will turn around and smile, holding out my arms. Too late, she will see that the door now bars shut. She will turn to face me again, skin leached of color.

“Welcome back to the nest.”