Death to Bumble Bees

6: bee vs shadows

Listen to BOOM by NCT DREAM

Chapter Six: Bee VS. Shadow Figures

Bee awoke with a gasp, her heart pounding violently within her chest as she sat up, choking down a gulp of air.

She had had a nightmare; another one that she couldn't remember as the blurry images slipped just out of her reach. A common occurrence since Rath.

Her chest ached from the abrupt loss of something.

Wiping the remainder of the dream out of her eyes, Bee tried to breathe calmly. Automatically, she felt around the small unfamiliar bed, trying to find the warm familiar body she had fallen to sleep with.

Nothing.

Jason must have gone back to his dorm, Bee assumed with an uncomfortable squeeze of her insides. Whispers of insecurities threatening to fill her head as she shook the hair out of her face. Exhaling, she glanced up as her eyes finally adjusted to the dim light filtering the small dorm room blue. Considering how... busy she had been, she hadn't yet given the room a glance over.

It wasn't terribly tiny like what she imagined; the room holding enough space for a twin bed, desk, closet, and even a kitchen counter for any portable appliances. And of course, it was still as rundown and gray on the inside as it had been on the outside--devoid of whatever it was that lit up the living.

Like she had moved into a ghost town, everything felt as empty as she did since Rath disrupted her life and changed everything.

Fighting the urge to walk up to her boyfriend's shared room (the first door on the eighth floor he had told her earlier) and crawl into the tiny bed with him, she busied herself with unpacking; placing what little she had into organized piles within specific spots of the room until she felt satisfied. Remaking her bed, she started a laundry basket, trying to drag out the time as long as she could as she got ready for the day; dressing in ripped boyfriend jeans and an old cherry patterned sleeveless shirt that showed all the freckles scattered down her shoulders and arms. And then as soon as the blue darkness turned into a budding light, Bee grabbed her camera and ran out the door without another look back.

The sunset painted the dreary still-wet campus in orange and pinks; her breath coming out in little puffs as she put the camera to her eye and clicked away. Capturing the pink alien planet that shimmered in the dewdrops around her, she felt herself drawn towards the glittering world of the abandoned amusement park just beyond the trees. She knew she wouldn't make it in time before the sun rose, however her feet kept pulling her closer. Once within the bleak and dying trees, she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand. Each step closer to the destination creating tingles of electricity inside of her skin. It was almost unbearable by the time she had immersed herself into the forest; mere moments away from the amusement park's border.

She felt it before she saw it--the eerie and unmissable change of atmosphere. It was like the temperature dropped in only a few steps; the chilled air around her nearly stifling in its stillness. The noise of what little life could be observed a moment earlier, was now completely silenced. The silence was louder than the noise as it dragged on within the few seconds it took for Bee to look up from the eyepiece.

At first all Bee saw was thick rolling fog--the mist like a cloud as it moved all around her and the trees.

And then the figures began to move.

She couldn't see them; not really. Instead it was like her body was attuned to them. Her body sensing them and pointing them out to her like seeing through reality itself as the bulking figures slinked forwards--their shapes varying in size as she stopped breathing. When she tried to look at them, they weren't there, as if non-existent in the first place. But no matter what her eyes saw (or didn't see), her body knew better. Her knees shook beneath her as she stepped back to where the path she'd been following had once been; the ground seeming to disappear under her as the fog completely encircled her now.

Her heart beating erratically was the only noise in the thin atmosphere. The pounding like an odd rhythmic drum in her ears that became faster and more unstable.

ba-dum
ba-dum
ba-ba-dum

Each beat that passed, the towering unnatural silhouettes moved closer, gravely limping forwards as they reached out towards her with whipping winds suddenly stealing the oxygen. Bee, trapped in her stiffened skeleton from the shocking terror freezing her muscles, felt the familiar pull in the back of her brain.

"Survive as long as you can."

The memory of Rath's voice flooded her with oxygen to her empty lungs as she inhaled shakily. Without another look into the terrifying swirling blackness around her, she felt her legs do what they remembered they did best--run from threats. She could feel the dead tree branches slice into her skin as she did; biting into her flesh as she ran through the dying forest. She didn't know where she was going, each step feeling as if she were running closer to the danger rather than further from it.

Swooping and jumping over large obstacles in her way, she found herself out of breath and down by the vacated mansion on the hill--the same house she had taken a picture of the night before. Trying to catch her breath, she ran up to the door; the old grayed wood splintered and barely hanging on to the door frame. Pushing what remained of the planks, the entire door fell off its hinges in a plume of dust. Not pausing for long, she hopped into the dark and dusty room, the windows boarded up and leaving only thin strips of light streaming in to reveal her surroundings. Covered in a thick layer of debris and dust, the room was even colder and stiller than the woods were--as if it lacked in life itself. All heat, oxygen, and light all but vanished.

Bee's entire body was buzzing now; every hair on her standing up on end as she bristled in the strange, scary ambiance. She somehow innately knew that the creatures--whatever they were--were coming for her and had purposely led her to this place. Something oddly familiar about the situation made her tremble as she looked around the room--trying to find something to defend herself with. Could she defend herself? What even were they? There was a grand fireplace to her left in a connecting room to the foyer with dangerously disintegrating flooring, straight in front of her were blocked stairs--also crumbling from the passed time--and to her left, a boarded up door that made her heart race just from looking at it.

She was confined from every angle she looked at.

As if the world blurred at the edges and swirled with black, nothing felt real as she backed up until her back hit the ripped, floral wallpapered wall next to the entrance doorway. Her brain felt like sludge--unable to hold a single idea for long. All she wanted to do was run away but her legs weren't working and her body was shaking so badly, she was afraid the floor would break underneath her.

And then they were outside, closing in on her. Their presence was so stifling she felt suffocated in something thick and liquid-like in the air. She froze, her heart painfully thrashing against her ribs as she held her breath; trying her hardest to remain small and hidden. She could physically feel the shifting in the air as they crept closer, moving towards the opened entrance like it was an invitation.

"Open your eyes, Bumble Bee."

Bee heard that familiar eerie voice say as if whispering in her ear--the inhuman note in the sound almost relieving to hear. She whipped her head around, searching fanatically for the glowing blue irises that haunted her.

'They are open!' She wanted to scream in frustration, her face white with fear.

The creatures, as if hearing her stir, stepped through the door then. Bee stumbled away just as one of them tried to grab her with claws as long as the snapped branches in the woods. A sting of pain ran up her arm as she felt a dribble of blood roll down her arm where one of the claws had slashed her. She could see, now that she was in the darkness of the house as she backed towards the room with the fireplace, the black eyes that seemed to do the opposite of glow--like they were black holes, sucking all the life around them into an abyss of blackness. Like they would swallow her whole and never spit her out again.

They appeared to be creatures of shadows--stretching across the room towards her in inhuman ways. Somehow both in a separate reality from Bee, and as tangible as the solid walls around her that were holding her prisoner. She couldn't make sense of them. Invisible when she tried, and fuzzy and weirdly shaped when she looked away.

As another one swiped out, trying to tear into her flesh like the first, Bee jumped back only to feel the rotting floor beneath her give-way; her left foot freefalling into the darkness below before the rest of her unbalanced body fell back with a shriek of surprised terror. Then, just like that, a pair of strange--yet somehow all too familiar--arms were around her, holding her up before she could tumble into the hole.

She could feel her grip on consciousness begin to waver, her eyes clouded in spots of colours as she blinked up trying to see who had her; her knees almost buckling under her as she struggled to stand on her own. A pair of iridescent blue eyes stared back at her.

"Wake up, Bumble Bee." Rath murmured urgently.

Bee struggled to do as he said, trying to clear her head as heaviness washed over her--her feet tripping over themselves as his long fingers curled around the inside of her elbows helping her stand. "I..." She breathed out in a tired voice, "I--" she tried again, failing as her head rolled back with her eyes, her tiny body collapsing into his arms.

Rath's hold tightening around her was the last thing Bee remembered as she lost all sense of reality.

End of Chapter Six

Thank you for reading! Hope you're still enjoying the story :) It's been fun writing so far.