7/1/17
Stingers
Yesterday August summoned a swarm of very real and very angry wasps to the police investigation next door. Women and men came charging out of the house screaming, covered in wrathful stingers. I raced downstairs and grabbed the hose in the front yard. The investigators saw me and came running. Before long I had a gaggle of six officers huddled together under the stream of water, picking stubborn wasps off their skin. We stayed that way until backup arrived. As I put down the hose I realized I was covered in wasps, too. They clung to my arms and legs and neck. For a second I watched one, numbed with adrenaline to the pain, driving its stinger over and over into my arm. An EMT plucked it off of me like it was no more than a rose thorn. He took thirteen others off after that.
Today I can feel it. Today my entire body aches with the poison. I drew The Star for August, then told him he could stuff his peace of mind in his rotting pie hole, if he can find it, under all that ocean.
Ouch! I can feel that pain; when I was a kid working trail crew someone digging in the bank put a mattock right into a yellowjacket nest underground. Everyone was suddenly covered with angry insects, as you put it, stabbing their stingers in and out. I had at least a dozen get under my hard hat tangled in my hair and i gave up trying to pull them out, i just started crushing them against my skull with my hand...nice story, well told! Sure brought that memory back for me!
Intense.