The Nature of Things

Thick, warm, sticky. Wings batter the air heavy with moisture as the mosquito barrels ahead, slowly searching for its next victim. The aroma of fresh blood permeates the area around the insect; he rotates his axis in response just enough to catch a glimpse of a woman with luminous green eyes and a devastatingly alluring body massaging a hairline scrape presumably a direct result of the nail protruding from the bus stop on University that the city never got around to repairing. For just a moment, his mind is flooded with visions unbeknownst terrifyingly foreign to him; intimacy. Warmth. Trust. Sheets. A gentle breeze grazing the window pane. But, that's only for a moment, one that the pesky creature knows will only come back in spurts and fragments. For now, his throat rises with thirst, his stomach with hunger, his eyes with red. She is texting right now, probably her friend or boyfriend or mother or mother's friend. He doesn't care. With a gasp and a plunge, the deed is done.

 

 A swarm of Bees pass en route to the hive, dangling seemingly by a thread from the bulky side of the softly swaying areca palm tree in the faint Florida breeze. A baby bee no longer than two centimeters in length falls behind, struggles to catch up. It pauses for no longer than a few clicks before it begins to circle the sky in a frantic frenzy, producing a shrilling sound that penetrates the ear canals of humans as little more than a tea kettle in the kitchen down the hall left on the stove just a bit too long. Soon enough, however, the Queen floats back to her kin, ushering into the fortress of honeycomb several feet above the thirsty summer grass, alternating turns of the head to check for threats and danger. The hive trembles in the sun.

 

At around the same time, a Gartersnake about two feet long traverses the shrubbery, feeling out the wet land along the river for its next home. Its yellow stripes bounce to the rhythm along the sleek jet black of its frame as the reptile slithers past a decapitated frog, flies huddled at the jugular and maggots to the limbs, vying for any scraps left from those before. The smell is wrenching and powerful, the sight barbaric and grisly.

A gentle breeze breaking the 98 degree furnace that is the open of South Florida brings a scent to my nostrils that burns and leaves me scrambling to find the source. I hop off the bench and toe the path leading away from my family and friends, from all my fears and troubles. I thought I was finally out of the shadows, free from the chains that had held me down for so much of my life. A good looking girl with a nice rack brushes past as I feel a burning sensation and impossible urge to itch infiltrate my senses. I consider squashing the winged creature perched on my wrist with a filter jabbed deep in my skin, stealing my blood to help circulate its own. The red traveling vertically in my peripheral vision reminds me of a demonstration I had seen a few days before in extracting honey from a beehive, golden thickness oozing out into our industrial jars for consumption. Taking their livelihood for ours. A snake passes over my left ankle, the texture taught and glassy not unlike plastic. I follow down to the embankment, past a decaying carcass of some kind of animal, to the river’s edge. It’s hotter than before in this particular spot.