Volume 3: Meristem

Issue 9: Fray

Florian Reyes Honeywell

By Roach

The swarm whirled like a maelstrom inside of me. Bees prickled through my throat, hundreds of them pushing their way up. At the same time, Max moved further away from me—toward “Spindle” and the football players grouped around her. As he ran, his calf muscles bulged to unnatural proportions, propelling him onwards. He raised the javelin over his head. Then, in one swift motion, he tossed it. It shot forward like a rocket.

Bees consumed my vision, blinding me as they pressed their way out from underneath my eyelids. I heard a chorus of screams. Had Max attacked the group of students? Or did they react to the swarm? Both? My own scream joined theirs—not because I shared their terror, but in response to the swarm’s outpour. The bees quickly muffled my voice as they squeezed past my vocal cords. Their buzzing drowned out the rest of the sounds from the field. I had no way of telling what had become of Max and the javelin.

I reached for my head. The action was involuntary, as if my body wanted to put a stop to what my mind had ordered. When my fingertips made contact with the veil of my beekeeper’s hat, bees quickly engulfed my skin. Thousands of them slipped out from under the veil. Although I only released a part of the swarm, there were enough bees to cloak my form. They hovered around me like a fog—but then, slowly, the world came back into focus.

I surveyed my surroundings. The football players had dispersed across the field. Meanwhile, Spindle remained in roughly the same spot as before, with Max a few paces ahead of her. I couldn’t see the javelin—had anyone gotten hit? Where was Camilo?

He wasn’t where I had seen him fall. I looked around again. A few of the football players held up their phones, some pointing toward me and others toward Max. But there was no sign of Camilo. Invisible or disguised, maybe. At least that meant he was okay enough to use his powers.

“Is that all you got, freak?” Spindle taunted Max. I turned my attention back to the two of them.

Max screeched again. The piercing sound was barely human. From behind, I could see his veins protruding from his neck. A blue light pulsated through them.

He charged toward her again. To my surprise, before he reached her, he tumbled over. This gave Spindle just enough time to get out of the way. As his mutated form somersaulted across the ground, the earth spat out a trail of grass and dirt behind him.

Something had caught his foot. I realized that it was the javelin. Although it appeared to have missed its initial target, the sheer force had buried it almost entirely underground. Only its very tip remained visible above the surface—now, splintered apart by the impact of Max’s foot.

While her opponent stumbled, Spindle picked a baseball bat up from the ground. It had fallen out of the container which Max had punched across the field earlier. Simultaneously, I sent the swarm forward. My bees advanced into the battlefield.

Max launched himself into the air, without even fully standing up before leaping off the ground. His body soared about fifteen feet into the air before he landed in front of Spindle. She quickly spun out of his reach. She moved with the same athletic nimbleness I had seen her use during the volleyball game. But now, the difference was that she wasn’t chasing the ball. She was the one being chased.

At the same time as she maneuvered past him, a duplicate of her appeared. Although I couldn’t tell which Spindle had been the original, I got the feeling it was the one who hesitated. I couldn’t read her expression through the mask, but I clearly saw her staring at her doppelgänger. She mumbled something, too far away for me to hear.

The other Spindle stopped as well, perfectly mirroring her counterpart’s movements. She yelled back, “Just run!”

Max turned around, glaring at both of them. He screamed again. A blue light hollowed out his eyes. There was nothing left in his voice which resembled my classmate. Just a hoarse, heart-wrenching sound. The muscles on his shoulders and arms grew, his shirt beginning to tear as he reached out for the two Spindles.

Both of them took off in opposite directions. I quickly glanced around. My bees had made it into the heart of the fight, and now hovered like a cloud above Max. The football players had clustered into different groups on the edges of the battlefield. While they maintained somewhat of a distance from the fight, they were still filming and cheering, egging on Max. As I surveyed the scene, I finally located my friend. Camilo had materialized at the outskirts of one of the groups. He stared down the two Spindles, following each and every movement as meticulously as a cat watching a fishbowl. I assumed the doppelgänger was his work.

I remembered how Camilo had done the same thing to me to lure away the monster in the theater. In hindsight, my fate had been determined by nothing more than a coin flip. But maybe Amber would surprise me—I didn’t know what she was capable of, or how she would counter any of Max’s moves. But, if nothing else, I could try to increase her chances of success by adding to Max’s disorientation.

Chase him, I commanded the bees. As I focused my attention on the husk of my classmate, they descended upon him. They swarmed his deformed body. While I restrained them from actually stinging him, their mass was enough to slow him down. He flailed his arms wildly around. As he swatted them, the air pressure alone was enough to deflect the bees away from him. But every time he shoved a chunk of the swarm aside, more of them surrounded him, tightening their grasp on his silhouette.

The two Spindles used the opportunity to continue their escape. Both headed toward me. Max roared. Another blue glow pulsated through him, lighting up the network of veins throughout his body. He leaped into the air again. The swarm dispersed in his wake, some dropping dead as his body slammed through them. I summoned the survivors back to me.

Max landed in the middle of the field. He breathed heavily, while his glowing blue eyes darted wildly across the scene. His gaze homed in on the two Spindles. One of them yelled out to him, “Catch me if you can, you big dummy!” I had a suspicion that it was Camilo’s illusion which spoke. At least, Amber—as I knew her—tended to be… meaner.

But the taunt got the job done. Max bellowed again, springing into the air. He shot after the one who had called out to him.

He crashed back into the ground where she stood. A crater formed on impact, close enough to me that I felt the ground shaking. A group of nearby Albatrosses yelled in panic, then scattered in different directions. Max pinned one Spindle down to the ground, while the other Spindle walked toward them. The latter tightened her grip on the baseball bat. As the dust settled, the Spindle in Max’s grasp vanished into thin air. He let out a scream as he punched into the ground. The hole deepened where Camilo’s illusion once lay.

The other Spindle—the real Spindle—now stood behind him. “You think a brute like you can outsmart me?” she said. She swung the baseball bat toward him. As it smacked into the back of his head, the wood shattered into splinters. Max didn’t flinch. Instead, he got up. He turned slowly, with a growl.

Spindle dropped what remained of the handle, immediately backing off. At the same time, my bees made it within reach. I sent them after him. As they descended upon my mutated classmate, he shrieked and started flailing again. Blue light shimmered through the gaps in the swarm.

Then Spindle yelled at him: “Too bad your powers only made your skull thicker, not smarter!” While the bees kept him distracted, she ran another few feet away from him. “How did you do it? Powerchems?”

While Spindle egged him on, neon arrows emerged above the sports field. They pointed from the football players toward Chapel High. “This way!” Camilo shouted. Using illusions of arrows, he started directing the increasingly panicked football players away from the battle. Although some of them still lingered, filming the spectacle, others seemed to have their taste for danger more than satisfied. About half of the team ran off the sports field, following Camilo’s illusions.

Max stumbled through my swarm in pursuit of his opponent. He reached through their mass, toward Spindle. As she turned to run, he snatched the edge of Spindle’s cape. The seams frayed, allowing the fabric to slip out of his grip. But it was enough to jerk Spindle to a halt, pulling her down. Although the fall wasn’t nearly as impactful as a direct hit, she still yelped as her body hit the ground.

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Like moths to a flame, I gathered my bees around the glow from Max’s eyes. He reached uselessly for his face. While he was distracted, Spindle rose to her feet. She unclipped the cape from around her shoulders and flung it at Max. Then—moving away from him, closer to me—she scooped another baseball bat off the ground. As the cape fluttered toward him, it blanketed his head, pushing the bees closer to his face.

He grabbed the loose fabric. The threads made a ripping sound as they unraveled in his hands. He slammed down his fists, puncturing the ground below. The air pressure sent the bees flying in different directions. I stumbled back. He glared at me, producing a deep growl. Only a handful of bees still clung to his face.

It occurred to me to sting him. Although I didn’t like the idea of hurting Max, I didn’t really know how much of him was still aware of what was happening.

Just then, Spindle called out, “Hey dumbass.” She stood slightly to my side. Max turned toward her. “Is this what you’ve been hiding?” she said.

At that, she reached out into thin air. Her fingers plucked at nothing, like a musician tugging at the invisible string of a harp. Then, a beam materialized in her hand. Its dark red light ran toward Max, disappearing into his chest. In the other direction, it stretched all the way off the sports field. She let go of the beam. I traced it with my gaze. It hovered like a tightrope between Max… and the greenhouse.

“What… What is that?” I stuttered.

Before she had a chance to respond, Max charged toward her. She side-stepped out of his trajectory, now standing right next to me. Max skidded to a halt. The earth spluttered under the pressure of his heel. He swung his fist around. Spindle stood dead center of his aim.

I slammed my body into hers, shoving her aside. She fell to the ground. As she did, the beam between Max and the greenhouse wavered, then disappeared. I tried to move out of the way—but it was too late.

Max’s fist barreled toward me. It struck my chest, making a horrible crunching noise on impact. First, I felt a searing sensation. Then, the pain rapidly devolved into an unbearable intensity. Pheromones fizzled in the air around me, but I could barely process the signals through my pain. Then, the sensation dissipated as honeycombs collapsed under the pressure. His fist exited through my back. The world faded to complete silence. Max retracted his hand, pulling away from me. As I looked into his eyes, there was no sign of recognition.

I fell to my knees. Instinctively, I reached for my chest. A gaping hole yawned across it. I looked down. In a strange moment of clarity, I remembered Mr. Howells. Not really as a person, but how I had found him. Dying in the biology classroom. Maybe I had stopped conceiving him as a person in that moment. At least, partially. But if not a person, then what? Maybe just a part of the nightmare. I had the same feeling now when I looked at myself. A broken rib waxed in gold poked out from the hole, while an orange pulp of honeycombs and flesh spilled out.

The world drowned in the swarm’s buzz. Their hum rose to new heights as I tried to cover up the hole with my hands. Honey dripped onto my skin, while bees slipped through the gaps between my fingers. A stream of them continued to pour out of me. They swarmed Max as he lunged toward me again.

I staggered a couple steps back, the cavity in my chest throwing me off balance. But, somehow, it seemed like my focus sharpened. I felt hyperaware of the swarm—half of them enveloped my body like armor, while the rest attacked Max. Only a fragment of the swarm remained inside my body, as a last line of defense.

Max let out another scream and swung his fists wildly. There was nothing in me to hold the bees back from stinging him anymore. Although his punches splattered some of them, they continued to press in on him like a vortex.

“Florian?” My name hovered in the air like a question, but whatever the question may have been was obscured by the fear in the voice. I located the source of the sound—it was Spindle, still lying next to me.

“You…” My voice was barely audible, as the depression in my chest made it harder to speak. I wasn’t sure she could even hear me through the swarm’s buzz or Max’s bellowing. But I forced the words out anyway. “Get. Out.” Bees crept out from my mouth between each word. I should have been relieved that she was okay, but instead, anger rushed through me. If she hadn’t provoked Max over and over again, we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. “You… Only… Make…”

Before I finished heaving through the words, Max drew my attention back to him with another roar. His veins lit up in a bright blue. Spindle scrambled to her feet, and took off. At the same time, Max launched himself off the ground.

The swarm, reinvigorated by my adrenaline, pursued him. They clung to his clothes and skin, attaching themselves with their stingers. He landed a distance away from me, still flailing and screaming against the remaining bees which clung onto him.

“Florian!” Camilo rushed to my side, out of breath. “Florian, holy shit. Are you okay?”

Somehow, I managed to stand up. I looked down. The gap through my chest had grown smaller. It continued to shrink as bees crept up and down the edges of my exposed insides, gradually sealing the hole.

“I think so,” I said. A tender pain rimmed the wound, but the worst of it had disappeared alongside the chunk of my chest.

Camilo didn’t reply, but placed his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it gently. Although it didn’t exactly fix any of our current problems, the small gesture offered me a misplaced sense of comfort. The two of us surveyed the battlefield. Spindle had abandoned the scene, and it looked like Camilo had managed to direct all of the football players off the field. That left me, him, and Max.

Max continued to swing and scream at the bees. With every punch, a blue glow pulsed through his veins. For the time being, the swarm kept him distracted. But I didn’t know how long that would last, or what would happen if he ran off…

“What now?” I said to Camilo.

“I… I don’t know.” He let go of my shoulder. “I already made one of the players call the cops while you were fighting. We’ll just have to…” He trailed off.

Once again, a red beam materialized in the air. Like before, it ran from Max’s chest toward the greenhouse. Max froze. A second passed by. Then, he sprinted toward the greenhouse. As he moved toward it, the beam remained taut between him and the greenhouse—adapting to the distance in the same way as a retractable dog leash.

“What is that thing?” Camilo said.

“Something Amber did. Meaning…” We both looked toward the greenhouse. We exchanged an alarmed glance. Simultaneously, we rushed after Max.

The swarm slowed him down enough that we managed to keep up with him. Every now and then Max would stop to lash out at the bees or swat some off his face. Then, ahead of us, he crashed through the glass wall of the greenhouse. The shattered pieces clattered to the stone floor.

The bees made it inside before us. I sensed their pheromones around me: Anomaly detected. Assessing threat level.

Camilo and I followed inside, entering through the hole Max had left in the wall. It didn’t take long before I realized what the bees were referring to.

Max stood in the center of the greenhouse, surrounded by sunflowers, corn, and tomato plants. I traced the beam which emerged from his chest. Initially, it had strung him to the greenhouse. But now, I could see where it really went—toward a table in the back.

A large, bulbous plant stood on top of it. It was about the size of a toddler. Blue veins ran along the tissue, emitting a faint glow. The air around it shimmered ever-so-faintly, like glitter in a snowglobe. The red beam connected Max directly to the plant. Spindle balanced on top of the table, right next to it.

Threat level unknown. Updating flora catalog, the swarm reported.

After staring at it for a moment, I finally recognized it. It was the same plant Max had brought to the Science Fair. Back then, it hadn’t been larger than a melon. Now, the surrounding sunflowers appeared to wither in its shadow. It wasn’t really taller than them—just bulkier. Its roots had brimmed over its own pot, probing into the neighboring ones. Could it be draining energy or nutrients from the other flowers?

Max halted in front of the plant. Camilo and I positioned ourselves behind him, keeping as much distance as the small greenhouse allowed for. Meanwhile, Spindle held the baseball bat out. She let it hover just behind the plant.

“Try anything and you’ll regret it, tough guy,” she said.

Max growled, then rushed toward Spindle. Without hesitation, she swung the baseball bat toward the plant. The bat brushed over the top of the bulb, sending some of its leaves flying off like pieces of lettuce.

As the bat made contact, the beam between Max and the plant pulsated. It looked like an electric charge ran between them. Max stopped in his tracks, and pressed his hands against his head as he let out a shriek.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Spindle said. She raised the baseball bat over her head, then lashed out at the plant.

Soft bits of plant tissue flew in different directions, as the bulb splattered like a smashed pumpkin. The red beam pulsated again. This time, as the charge ran from the plant to Max, he staggered backwards. The blue glow of his veins flickered, while his rippling muscles began to shrivel. At the same time, the glow of the plant’s veins faded.

Spindle struck the plant again. Its remnants turned into a green-blue pulp, spilling out over its now cracked pot. Now, its blue glow extinguished fully. The red beam crackled as it pulsated once more. Like red lightning, it zapped from the plant and back to my mutated classmate. As it disappeared into him, an invisible force flung him backwards. Camilo and I dodged sideways as Max collapsed to the floor. Bits of glass clattered around him.

Spindle leaned against the baseball bat like a staff. “Piece of cake,” she said, and leaped elegantly down from the table. His muscles withered away entirely, while the blue light from his eyes and veins extinguished. He looked weak, like the sunflowers… Somehow, he looked paler and smaller than I remembered him.

“Is he… Is he breathing?” Camilo said.

“Of course he’s breathing!” Spindle retorted. She swung the baseball bat in a sort of aimless motion, before letting it come to rest on her shoulder.

I looked down at Max. Although he was beaten up, his chest reliably rose and fell. Aside from the traces of bee stings protruding from his skin, he looked like my classmate again.

A chorus of sirens hovered over Chapel Hill. The three of us exchanged looks. Then, Spindle bolted out the front door, taking the bat with her. Camilo and I sprinted through the hole Max had made in the wall. I ordered the swarm to disperse–directing them home. I could rejoin them at the apartment later.

We kept running, the sirens growing evermore insistent.