Lars checks into the Red Roof Inn expecting a quiet stay, but finds himself facing an unexpected and surreal challenge. With bizarre encounters escalating, he realizes this is no ordinary motel.
Lars had always thought the Red Roof Inn was a perfectly serviceable place to stay. Clean rooms, decent coffee, and it was close to his work site. But that was before the bees came.
At first, it was just a few. They'd buzz around the parking lot, hovering near the trash cans. Lars would swat at them, but they didn't seem aggressive. It was only when he noticed the bandanas that he started to feel a prickling at the back of his neck.
The bees were wearing bandanas. Tiny, red and blue bandanas, knotted around their middle. And they were watching him.
The first time one attacked, Lars was walking back from the vending machines. It came out of nowhere, a blur of yellow and black and that absurd scrap of cloth. It didn't sting, though. Instead, it swung a tiny club, shouting in a high-pitched voice, "Vae, vae, infidelis!"
Lars stumbled back, spilling his soda. What the hell kind of bee carried a club and spoke Latin?
They kept coming after that. More and more of them, until Lars' room was under siege. He'd sit inside, listening to the thud of clubs against the door and the angry chanting. "Vae, vae, infidelis! Vae, vae, infidelis!"
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He called the front desk, but they just thought he was nuts. He called himself, but what was he supposed to say? "I'm being attacked by bees in bandanas; send help?"
So he huddled in his room, waiting for...he didn't know what. For them to break in? For someone to believe him?
It was on the third night that everything changed. Lars was dozing on the bed, still in his jeans, when he heard a different kind of buzzing. Deeper, rumbling. Not a bee sound at all.
He looked up to see a massive, bandana-clad bumblebee hovering in the window. But this one wasn't holding a club. It held a tiny megaphone.
"Salve, salve, fidelis!" it boomed, voice like a chainsaw. "Salve, salve, fidelis!"
And with that, the siege ended. The chanting stopped, and the clubs ceased thudding. Lars cautiously emerged to find the parking lot empty; the bees vanished as if they'd never been.
It wasn't until the following day, when the maid knocked that Lars realized the truth. The maid...was a bee. A bee in a bandana, pushing a cart and smiling at him.
"Housekeeping," she said, voice buzzy but cheerful. And Lars realized, with a jolt of shock, that he wasn't the intruder here at all. The Red Roof Inn wasn't a motel. It was a hive.
And Lars was the only human guest.
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