Volume 1: Proscenium
Issue 9: Curtain Call
Florian Reyes Honeywell
By Roach
The creature lay splayed out in front of me. Fragments from the moon lamp wreathed its body, while the wooden piece jutted out of its skull. Little bumps from the bee stings protruded under its blue coat.
Thousands of bees swarmed me. Return, I commanded. Slowly but orderly, the bees filed back in through my ears.
Camilo’s voice was barely audible over the buzzing. I squinted at him through the cloud of bees. He walked down the stairs of the catwalk. “Hey. Hey! Florian,” he called out. I had the impression that he had tried speaking to me multiple times. Even when he reached the stage, he maintained a distance from my swarm. “Are you okay?”
I looked down. All my wounds had closed. The only evidence that I had ever been attacked were the gashes in my sweater and the hole through the leg of my jeans. “Somehow.” Although I wasn’t quite yelling, I raised my voice over the buzzing. “What about you?” A few bees snuck into my mouth as I spoke.
He looked from me to the dead creature. Even with the mass of bees distorting my vision, I could see his stunned expression turn into a spontaneous smile. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “We did it.”
I followed his gaze back to the creature. I couldn’t help but smile, too, upon witnessing our feat. But it was a smile derived more from satisfaction than joy—a strange melancholy still lingered with me. “Yeah, we did.” Buzzing edged my voice.
Camilo turned to me. “How are you still standing?”
“Not as fragile as I look.” Without thinking, I echoed the Queen’s words.
“What?”
“Sorry, it’s…” Mesmerized by the creature once again—the blue shimmer of its fur, its blood turning more purple as it dried—I had almost forgotten that I was being talked to. “I meant to say I’m not sure.”
“I didn’t mean to imply anything. Just… Any other person would have died there. Even if you survived the fall, I have no idea how you made it out, still walking.”
“Maybe we should find somewhere to talk.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here before anyone finds this mess.”
As the swarm shrunk in size, I started to see the full scope of the damage. The theater stage was in a state of ruin; there was a hole where I had fallen through the flooring, most of the prop trees were toppled over, scratch marks covered the wood, and spines from the creature’s back pierced various surfaces. Both of us stood still, surveying the area.
“But… What do we do about this?” I said, nodding to the creature. Most of the swarm had retreated into my body at this point. “What even is it?”
“Good question.” Camilo crossed his arms. “We should probably alert the police before anyone else stumbles over it.”
“How?”
“The way I see it, we have two options. We could be upfront about what happened.” He paused.
“Or?” My conversation with the police inspector had been near disastrous, so I wouldn’t mind avoiding a repeat if I could help it. And, more importantly, Inspector Ramirez—or anyone, for that matter—hadn’t exactly endorsed our endeavor. Professional heroes, law enforcement, the school… None of them had asked us to intervene. Without a license, we had no legal grounds to stand on.
“Or, we could leave an anonymous tip,” Camilo said. “I’m returning the stage director’s keys to the teacher’s lounge. There’s a phone there I can use. Like I did after we found Mr. Howells.”
“What were you even doing that day, sneaking around school?”
“That’s not important right now. What’s important is what you would like to do.”
I relented—for the time being. “Two unauthorized high schoolers taking on a monster by themselves might not be seen in the most positive light. We could keep ourselves anonymous for now, and garner reactions from the school and the media in the next few days.” It was hard to predict how the public might receive our actions. We could be viewed as heroes who had rightfully avenged Mr. Howells, or as someone in over their heads, using their powers irresponsibly. Following the news, I had seen powered conflicts go both ways. Sometimes simultaneously.
I added, more humorously this time, “Besides, I’d rather not be dressed as a donkey for my debut.” I hadn’t thought far enough ahead to prepare a costume or anything of the sorts, and needless to say, I wasn’t impressed by the theater’s selection.
“Are you sure? I think you should audition for the play.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Either way, I can make the call when I return the keys. But in the meantime, you should get out of here. Would you mind waiting at… Aesop’s is pretty close. Does that work?”
“Sure.”
“Good. But before we depart, let’s at least leave a little souvenir for the police…”
“What do you mean?”
“Hang on.” Camilo disappeared backstage. After a few moments, he returned with a pen and piece of torn paper. “Do you have a name?” he said.
“Florian?”
“Oh, how nice to meet you. I’m Camilo.” He rolled his eyes. “Obviously you’re Florian. I mean, do you have a hero name?”
“No,” I said, suppressing a feeling of giddiness. I tried not to think too much about a superhero identity—bees weren’t exactly inspiring hero material—but the fact that someone else asked me made it seem more real. It was like what people said about having butterflies in their stomach—except replace the butterflies with bees and make it less figurative. I crossed my arms, trying to conceal my immature glee. “Have you?”
“I’ve been thinking about something like the Amazing Camilo… Maybe alliteration is better, like a real magician. The Magnificent Milo? Or the Riveting Rivera?”
“But those are just your actual name.”
“It’s a work in progress.” Camilo scribbled something down on the piece of paper. “How does this sound?” He handed it over to me.
I identified the paper as torn out from the pages of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On the backside, he had written the following message:
YOU’RE WELCOME.
— HEROES OF CHAPEL HILL
I grinned. The message was mischievous without being malicious. While it let our intentions be known, it kept our identities secret. “Perfect.” I returned the paper to him.
Camilo mirrored my grin. He placed the note by the feline’s paws, weighing it down with a glass shard. Then he turned back to me. “Do you know your way out? You should be able to find some spare clothes in the wardrobes, if you need it.” He glanced over the rips in my sweater.
“Yeah. I’ll work something out.”
He nodded. “I’ll give you some extra minutes to get out before I make the call. Meet you at Aesop’s?”
“See you there,” I replied.
With the snap of his fingers, he turned invisible.
I looked at the creature one last time. Its single dead eye stared back at me. I half expected it to get back on its feet and leap at me. But it kept still.
I headed backstage. By the lockers, I opened a wardrobe at random. Among the assortment of flamboyant shirts, tutus, and tacky ball gowns, I was able to find a black shirt and jeans. The shirt was a bit too big for me, but it was the most neutral outfit among the costumes. Hopefully no one would miss it too much. I folded up my old clothing. Carrying the clothes under my arm, I left the way we had come. As I turned each corner, I expected someone to run into me—a teacher, janitor, another student. I brainstormed possible excuses for being there. But, thankfully, no one was around, saving me from the trouble of having to pretend to be lost or to have forgotten something.
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The sun had started to set outside. I walked as fast as I could without rushing. On my way, I stopped by the dumpsters where I had been hiding just a couple of days ago. I checked the pockets of my old pants. Aside from a few dollar bills, I was surprised to find the gingko leaf. It seemed like days had passed since we were wishing for fortunes under the old tree. The leaf was crinkled under my touch, but still intact. I pocketed it in the new jeans before tossing away my old clothing. There was nothing I could do to save them, and I decided I was too far from the school for it to be connected to the battle. I continued walking until I reached Aesop’s. A bell chimed above the door when I entered.
Although Aesop’s wasn’t large, the café made the most of its space. Booths lined up along the windows, while the boardgames, comic books, and movies were split up into different aisles. The smell of coffee and sweets hugged the room. Various baked goods were displayed by the desk. Among the regular pastries, they also sold specialty cookies shaped like different superheroes. They usually rotated between different teams. Today, they featured members of the OhmTech Titans—one of the biggest teams operating in the Bay, albeit not as big as Starlight.
Normally, I would have found comfort in the cozy atmosphere, or charm in the superhero-cookies. But now, it all seemed too cozy and charming. Too nice. Too normal—like there was a rift between my past and current reality. Only moments ago, my life had been in danger. Now, the world moved onwards, as if there wasn’t a dead monster in the theater of Chapel Hill High School.
I felt keenly aware of everything going on in the café. A couple of customers hung around, in addition to a group of teenagers testing out a board game in one of the booths. Although they seemed vaguely familiar, I couldn’t pinpoint any classes I had with them. I avoided looking at anyone, instead, browsing through the selection of comic books while I waited. I picked up a few issues, but as I flipped through them, the sequences of images didn’t register as coherent to me. The shrill laughter of the friend group occupied my attention. Their dice clattered across the table, while Aesop’s dishes rattled from the kitchen.
Even the ringing of the bell above the door seemed amplified. Camilo entered.
“Hey, how did it go?” I said when he approached me. I put the comic book back into place.
“It’s done. Do you wanna go somewhere?”
If we wanted to talk discreetly, Aesop’s wouldn’t cut it. I thought about inviting him to my place. My parents were still away, so we wouldn’t be disturbed. But I had never invited anyone over before. The idea made me oddly self-conscious. “Maybe the dog park?” I suggested. It was nearby, and although people would still be around, it was spacious enough that we would be able to find somewhere reasonably private to talk.
“Sounds good. Just let me get some coffee first.”
“This late?”
“I have some homework I need to finish tonight… Latin is pure torture.”
It was bizarre hearing him complain about class after we had just defeated a man-eating monster. “Maybe you should do that first?” As soon as I voiced the suggestion, I found myself hoping he would say no.
“No, believe me, it can wait. Ad infinitum, if it were up to me.”
“If you say so.”
Camilo ordered coffee. The couple of dollars I had been carrying with me was enough to cover for a small box of apple juice. Maybe the bees would appreciate it—at the very least, I thought they had earned a treat. Once Camilo’s order was ready, we headed outside. The claustrophobic feeling from the café faded by the time we made it to the dog park.
We headed to a small mound covered in a cluster of palm trees. Camilo slumped down with his back against one of the trunks. I sat down in the grass next to him. From our position, we had an overlook of the agility course and open field below. Chapel High loomed at a distance. Like I predicted, there were a few dog owners around, but it was far from crowded at this hour. A man passed a frisbee to his ecstatic border collie, while a couple of puppies wrestled each other. I allowed a few bees to leave through my ears. They dispersed across the field in search of flowers.
“How are you feeling?” Camilo asked.
Multiple answers came to mind. Exhilarated, bewildered, triumphant, on edge, electrified, in disbelief… All of it blended together into a sort of nervous contentment. For the first time since all of this started, I felt my muscles untense. Even the swarm was more at ease; less twitchy, less restless, more uniform. The monster’s senseless violence seemed further removed from my reality. At the same time, I no longer felt removed. I was right there; the bare earth below, the amber sky above. Maybe I couldn’t always keep at bay the why or the how gnawing at my thoughts, but at least for a moment, I didn’t long to be anywhere else. “I think… I’m good. Better than good, even.” I poked a plastic straw through my juice box. “How about you?”
“Me too.” He sipped from the coffee, then wrinkled his nose. After a pause, he added, “Although… I can’t stop thinking about what that thing was.”
So far, I had mostly seen the creature as something to be solved rather than understood. While it had been at the edge of my mind, I didn’t want to think about why a monster lurked in our school’s theater. Why Mr. Howells had to die so brutally. A buzz rippled through the swarm. My sense of peace wasn’t long-lived. Although we had defeated the monster, Camilo’s question brought me back to reality. We still didn’t know what we were dealing with. “Any theories?” I forced myself to say.
“Some sort of Frankenstein thing would be my guess.”
I nodded. An escaped lab experiment seemed to be the most plausible. The creature looked like it was composed of different traits from different animals, sprinkled in with the ability to teleport, not to mention those spines it shot from its back. Where it came from or how it ended up at the school was anyone’s guess.
“Or it could be someone with shapeshifting powers,” Camilo speculated, quieter this time.
“Maybe, but even then…” I recalled the way it had looked at me. There had been nothing behind its eyes but cold calculation, hunger, and maybe a sadistic thrill. “The way it acted? It seemed more like animal instincts than anything else.” Or maybe I didn’t want to consider the possibility that there could be a person underneath its bloodthirst.
“I hope so.”
Sirens wailed in the distance. I wondered if it was in response to Camilo’s call. I looked for the source, but houses and buildings obscured the roads below the high school.
“Can I ask you something?” Camilo said.
“If I get to ask you something.”
“Deal.”
“You first.”
“When you were hanging from the stage, I thought you were talking to someone, or saying something to me. It all happened pretty fast though, so maybe I just missed it… Do you remember?”
“Right.” I kneaded at a patch of grass. “I don’t think I was thinking very clearly at the time either. The swarm gave me some… conflicting messages, but basically, they told me I would survive the fall.” I left the Queen out of it, although it was her that I had addressed. I sensed her shift inside my liver.
“How did you survive?”
I ran through the sequence of events in my head; from falling down the catwalk, to being attacked by the monster. “The bees… I think the simplest way to put it is that they modified my body to be more like a hive. I guess I have different limits than other people. Where those limits begin and end, I’m not sure. It definitely hurt when I fell, but not as badly as I would have thought. The wood splinter was a bitch to get out, though.” I patted my shin at the memory, as if making sure that the gaping hole really was gone.
“What wood?”
When he asked the question, I realized that he hadn’t been able to see what was happening under the stage. “A plank from the stage went through my leg,” I explained. “After I took it out, the bees were able to repair the injury. They just rebuilt it like they would any normal hive. Same with the scratches. I kinda knew they could do that, but I didn’t realize the extent before now.”
“Regeneration, huh?” Camilo’s fingertips drummed against his paper cup. “What sort of bee does that?”
“Don’t know.” I shifted a little, avoiding his inquisitive look. Instead, I fixated on the emerging stars in the sky.
“Well, I always thought the stage was suspiciously creaky. Hopefully they’ll finally bother renovating it.”
“Fingers crossed.” Before he could pry about my bees any further, I added, “I believe you owe me a question now.”
“Shoot.”
“So, why were you sneaking around school back then?” At first, I hadn’t really put too much thought into why he had been at school when Mr. Howells passed away. But after Camilo dodged the topic earlier, I was intrigued.
He sighed. “Promise not to tell anyone?”
I didn’t tell him that there was no one for me to tell. Instead, I said, “You already showed me your powers. Can anything top that?”
“No, I guess not.” He turned away from me, directing his attention towards a Scottish terrier jumping over hurdles at the agility course. It jumped surprisingly high compared to its small stature. “So… I was looking for my geometry teacher’s notes,” he confessed. “I’m behind in the class, and the classroom happened to be on the same floor.”
“Quite the troublemaker, I see.”
He stuck his tongue out at me. “You’re one to talk, breaking the theater stage. How could you?”
I chuckled. “Sorry, I’ll be more careful next time.”
The terrier which I had been watching disappeared into one of the canvas tunnels. I looked back at Camilo. As I did, he rubbed his shoulder. “You know, I’ll admit I didn’t know bees could sting more than once.” I realized it was the shoulder where I had positioned my scout.
“You know, I didn’t think bees could carve a hive out of someone’s body.” I instinctively lowered my voice. Although he had seen for himself what I was capable of, I had never spoken so bluntly about my powers before.
“Fair enough,” he replied. “They were still pretty badass, going up against that thing.”
“They wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without your illusions.” Regeneration or not, if Camilo hadn’t turned me invisible when he did, I had no doubt the creature would have torn me to shreds. Not to mention that, in the end, it was him who had been able to lure it into position and deliver the final blow.
“When I doubled myself, it was a coin flip. If it hadn’t gone after the doppelgänger, I don’t know what would have happened. Maybe it would have made a better judgment call if your bees weren’t stinging it.” He took another sip from the coffee. When his head tilted back, he stayed still for a moment, studying the stars strewn over the dimming sky.
I couldn’t deny that we should have prepared better before going to the theater. In spite of Camilo’s trap, the creature had outsmarted us. We underestimated its abilities, simply because anything like it shouldn’t exist. Even after seeing what it did to Mr. Howells, I never would have thought that it could teleport or shoot spines off its back. The teleportation part made more sense in hindsight. It would explain how it got out of the classroom without being seen by me or Camilo. It was just unexpected. Maybe I needed to expect the unexpected from now on.
But in spite of all these obstacles, we came out on top in the end. Much of it I attributed to Camilo’s quick thinking, but the swarm had also done more than I had ever hoped. I plucked at the grass, building a small pile of straws. “Maybe we make an okay team, then.” I fidgeted with a handful of loose straws. “Good, even.”
Camilo beamed. Raising his coffee cup, he said, “Cheers to making a good team.” I returned the gesture with my juice box.
A deep orange rimmed the city as the dying sun rays disappeared below the horizon. I heard whistling from the darkness which now shrouded the park. A dog barked in response before running over to its owner, jumping up to lick their face. Sirens faded in the distance. A couple of bees murmured in my ears. We both drank from our respective beverages, and I knew that tomorrow, I would go to school and it would be just like any other day.
Almost like any other day. Only almost.