The Wasp

The wasp buzzed innocently along, just minding its own business, although it was more than happy to sting anything that dared to get in its way, as most wasps are. As it happens, it made its way accidentally into the window of a bedroom above the garden it had been happily buzzing over. If you’ve ever watched a wasp, you will have noticed that they move with very erratic and random jerks. This is because they don’t really think about where they are going most of the time, but instead rely on these sporadic movements to take them where they will. On this occasion, these random movements jerked the wasp around and straight into a wall of what seemed to the poor wasp to be absolutely solid air.1

This phenomenon was very puzzling to the wasp, because although it had happened countless times to it before now, wasps have very small memories and this particular wasp didn’t remember what had happened to it two minutes ago, let alone a few hours, and so was completely discombobulated by the whole affair. You see, as you can doubtlessly sympathise with, the wasp did not comprehend the concept of glass. Indeed, it hardly understood anything at all, and was happy to simply go around stinging things and mating with other wasps. All this wasp wanted to do at that moment in time was to get back to the place with the nice-smelling breeze that ruffled its fur and the sweet-smelling stuff that came from the elegant, long-necked colourful things in the garden.2

Among the many things that the ignorant wasp did not know was that at that very moment in time, while it was bobbing along the window pane in confusion and frustration, a huge human (huge through the wasps eyes, anyway) was watching it from the other side of his desk, wondering if he should kill this bothersome wasp whose only purpose in life seemed to be to go around stinging things and causing general discomfort. And so when he’d made his mind up, the young human picked up a nearby pen lid, as it was the nearest thing available, and stabbed the wasp savagely. The stab crushed the left side of the wasp below the right wing, causing great agony to the wasp, but not killing it or making it utterly defenceless either.3

The wasp had been blissfully unaware of the pain and damage heading its way until the moment of impact, upon which a white-hot and paralyzing burst of pain struck it like a bolt of lightning in the right side of its back, and everything became a fuzzy blur. It flapped its wings feebly and sank in misery to the windowsill where it struggled for a moment before curling up into a ball of pain and ceasing to move altogether. The reason the human did not finish the job there and then (something he would regret later), was because he was infected with an annoying bout of sympathy for this poor feeble thing which had done him no harm and was now writhing in misery and pain because of his hasty action. Instead of killing it right off, he decided to leave it to die or to get better by itself; saying to himself that he would be better off not getting involved any more as he had done enough damage already.4

And so the human had mercy and went back to whatever it was he was occupying himself with before the wasp came along.5

But as I have said before, the wasp was not dead, and was merely conserving its strength, as it had realised that moving only caused intense pain. Pain is one thing most easily understood by members of the animal kingdom, who experience life entirely through a spectrum of emotions and lack the tools of reason to suppress urges and desires. The reason the wasp made the connection between moving and pain was because of the intense hatred towards its attacker which it was now experiencing. It remembered seeing a thousand strange faces in its many eyes, all exactly the same, staring at it from a great height, and as soon as it has saw that terrible huge face, it knew that it was the cause of its intense misery, and a burning hot desire for vengeance swelled in its tiny yellow breast. And so keeping this in mind (it was a great effort to remember this much for more than two minutes, but somehow it managed), it lay quite still and waited for the pain to subside.6

It was a while - a very long while in wasp-time - before the pain became tolerable enough for the wasp to move, but eventually, move it could. It began crawling sluggishly in the direction it had marked the huge face as it lay momentarily stuck to the window by its own insides in that terrible moment. As it crawled, yellow gooey stuff oozed from its side, but it was so consumed by hatred and anger that it failed to notice, and it barely hindered its progress. Inch by gigantic inch, the wasp crawled painstakingly toward its quarry, and with the greatest effort managed to use its wings to fly up on to the surface of the desk. Here, across the brown and rough surface of the desk, the wasp saw the human for the second time, and its resolution was strengthened all the more by the thousand-fold sight of its hated enemy.7

At this time, the human was deeply engrossed in a book he was reading, and did not notice the yellow blob that was the wasp, trailing yellow insides across the desk, coming towards him. His arm lay on the desk, supporting the book, and his sleeve was rolled up because it was a hot and sticky day. This was a perfect target for the wasp, and it focused all of its determination on reaching that spot and sinking its sharp and venomous sting into the soft, exposed flesh.8

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the wasp reached the exposed flesh of the arm and paused to gather its strength. When it was ready, it leaped with fierce abandon onto the skin and in the same swift movement pivoted its rear quarters so that all of its weight descended upon the sharp point of the sting, which drove straight and true into the arm, piercing the flesh with a faint pop and rough sliding sound which only the wasp could hear. With a rush of fierce joy, it released its venom into the blood, emptying all of its ducts with one vehement squirt.9

In this moment of revenge, with its task done and its last reserves of energy spent, the wasp died balanced upon its sting in an upright position like some grotesque, furry needle. The human had jumped mildly when the sting had pierced his skin, as he had been so engrossed in his book that pretty much any disturbance would have caused him to jump. He looked down at his arm in annoyance and was greeted by the strange and unsettling sight of the grotesque wasp sitting in an upright position balanced upon its sting which was embedded in his flesh. What was even more unsettling was that if wasps could grin, then that was what this particular wasp seemed to be doing in its caricature of death. The human shuddered, found some tweezers to pluck the wasp out of his arm, as he was loathe to touch it, and flicked it out of the open window. The sting was red and sore, and it hurt a bit, which was annoying, but it wasn’t exactly fatal.10

The human shrugged off the whole affair and sat down to get back to his book, and had soon forgotten about the wasp altogether.