The Hive

Past is Prologue

Watch closely.

In a moment, this could all be gone.

The laughter, the joy, the friends and the family. It will all come to pass.

One day after a time, you'll find yourself to be all that remains of what once was. It's then in the quiet remaining hours of your solitude that you'll begin to ask yourself how it all began.

Sometimes it hurts, but you learn to become numb, and you'll do what you've always done. You will sit there and watch.

Watching as the end and the beginning blur. As do all things, and rightly so. But it's funny somehow, you always end up right back where you started, and maybe you'll laugh at the absurdity of how one can go so far and yet move so little. It'll make sense in the end, it always does. Just remember though you wont be the same, and shouldn't be and yet in some ways you are. The biggest change though is your heart, its bigger now than it was then but that's the beauty of it. Just don't forget who you were, that lonely heart.

It was just you there at the start sitting in your chair by the window looking down, observing the inevitable mediocrity of it all. Those little bees running about rushing to and fro, they never stopped, always in a rush to go someplace else, or no where at all.

They never stood still, except for those rare moments when they did and then the dread would fill your stomach and you knew something bad was about to happen. That change was gonna come, like wind before the rain, or the calm before the storm.

That's how it all happens, just so you know.

It matters so when you ask yourself, how did I end up here? You'll need to come up with the answer quickly. Don't stand there waiting for the answer to appear, because when you finally figure out you're supposed to be moving and fighting they'll gut you and you'll be dead before you hit the ground. Waiting means you're half dead already.

I wasn't dead, not even halfway, I was moving, kept moving so no one could catch me. The irony was I didn't stand still, but they caught me anyways.

Took me a long time to figure it all out afterwards, didn't understand at first how to play my part. It was all so confusing, the whole thing. Vespa, the hive, what I saw, what I heard and what I'd done.

Who the hell could've thought that I would end up here. Back at square one, kinda. Sitting in a chair by the window and watching those bees.

That's exactly how it started for me. I was just there in my home, everyone out working in the city and me by myself. Just watching.

It's like television, sitting there, at first it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, it is just people making noise and moving. But then things start to to take shape, the scene unfolds. There's a predictability to it all, people have strange habits you know.

Mark Anders from two blocks over takes the 55 bus every Monday to see his mistress, when his wife Marie goes to visit her mistress half an hour before. Neither of them are aware of this of course. But my bet was Marie would figure it out by mid April, a good two months before Mark noticed a thing. He was incredibly sloppy.

Across the way Lila Turner fights with her mother over the phone each Tuesday and Thursday and every Saturday Mr. Henshaw on the first floor would wait for his daughter to visit for the weekend. And finally every day of the week an old man, Mr. Italian Suit and Tie with his slick leather briefcase waits on the corner of the block for a black sedan with blackout windows to pick him up at precisely 3 p.m., tappin his feet all the while, keepin rhythm to a tune nobody new, and everyday from dawn till dusk I had a front row seat.

Sometimes I had to remind myself that I didn't really know these people, I only knew what I saw, what they revealed to me and to themselves when they believed that no one was watching. They were good people, even if they didn't know it yet. When I watched I often found with some surprise that very few of the residents knew themselves, they looked though, actively seeking out pieces of their identity in each other or someplace else other than right here and now.

I knew who I was, I think I've always known. Eccentric, they would say, just different my mother would reply. Unfortunately for me it was the kind of different that you couldn't grow out of or escape. It wasn't like Kalli Hagan down the street, who in her desire to assert her individuality she proudly walked the streets in her pink hair and tattooed adorned arms. This was worse, my freak flag wasn't something you see, there was no neon sign, but you could feel it and somehow that's made all the difference. So I stayed away.

My curse was that I could tell you a thousand different things about Mr. Ueda and his family, I could tell you how old they were, what kind of food they liked and how many grandchildren they had. But, I couldn't actually talk to them, never did.

It was too hard to be normal to keep all that crazy locked up tight. Knowing that you could see how things connected, the secret truths that people hold dear, and couldn't say a word. People don't want to hear you speak their truth back to them, it hits too close. They all act like they're looking for love and connection but you step over that invisible line and people will lose it.

You might not believe me but I prefer it this way, me in my chair and the world out there just beyond my reach. That was my place really, they had there's out there and mine was right here.

That's how it went, everyday like clockwork, the people would change but the roles stayed the same. And that was just fine by me.

Except one day things were different.