31 Jul Buzz, Buzz, Buzz
“Buzz, Buzz, Buzz”
Written by Dale Thompson Edited by Craig Groshek Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek Narrated by N/ACopyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on CreepypastaStories.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed, adapted to film, television or audio mediums, republished in a print or electronic book, reposted on any other website, blog, or online platform, or otherwise monetized without the express written consent of its author(s).
🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available
⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 15 minutes
A man named Harmonious True stood at his upstairs apartment window, staring out at the city confronting him. He wiped the grime from around the frame of the window, flipped the handkerchief over to the clean white side and wiped the glass in a circular motion removing the caked-on dust and condensation.
“That is better,” he reassured himself. Harmonious was a middle-aged man, born into a hippie family, thus the name “Harmonious.” But not all was tranquil in his life. The name was a contradiction, an antithesis of the actuality and conditions in which he was living. Consequently, there were chasms of discrepancy all through his life of disquiet wanderings. He had somehow, and he did not know when things changed for him, become incompatible with the world.
When the virus came for all of humanity, he wrote it off as just another new flu in sequence with the flu seasons before it. Initially he refused to get the vaccine; certainly he was as healthy as anyone and believed his immune system could fight off any contagion thrown at him, he went against protocol. He listened to the breaking news on the TV along with reading his morning paper with headlines proclaiming a pandemic. As a city bus driver, Harmonious knew what was coming next. There would be a mandatory vaccine campaign. This launch would inundate his every waking hour with commercials and ads forcing everyone to comply with the mandate, especially targeting those working in hospitals, healthcare, and city workers, such as bus drivers.
When the mandate came out, the report was exactly as Harmonious had figured. He was faced with a dilemma. He could refuse the vaccine and be stood down from his job, or he could reluctantly take “the jab” and keep his job.
This bothered him immensely. He was feverishly torn between losing his job or putting an untested remedy into his bloodstream tormented him. He would lay in bed at night, knowing the deadline for “the jab” was approaching. He intensely researched the vaccine on the Internet, and almost everything he found was “pro-jab.” He eventually stumbled onto a site called “Before You Take the Jab, There are Some Things You Should Know.”
The site appeared to have been set up by health officials from varying practices who were warning people not to take the vaccine. There were personal testimonies on the site where individuals explained the side effects and complications they had suffered after receiving the first dose. Yes, that was correct. The first dose was a prelude to the second dose, and there were rumors these would be followed up by boosters. This was the most horrific thing he had ever read. The site also claimed there had been sudden and unpredictable deaths in perfectly healthy people attributed to “the vaccine.”
Harmonious gazed over the troubled world from his apartment window. Life had not been good for Harmonious up until this point. His wife of three years, whom he had hoped would have been by his side for the rest of his life, had packed her bags and had gone, leaving only a note on his pillow. He took full responsibility for the split-up. He was hardly ever at home. He failed to give his wife the attention she deserved. She was his first and only marriage, and they never had children.
This was a lot for Harmonious to process. He was at the point in his 40-something years where he could not imagine things getting any better. His dreams had been quashed, and now he was alone. Null and void, that is how he was feeling. The disparity was real and hung over him like a suffocating dormant beast just waiting to emerge hungry from hibernation. His thoughts were becoming sporadic. He prayed to defer such imagining, yet in a relentless barrage, they would not yield. Day and night this opposing force assaulted him, whispering, telling him he was no good, things would never get better, and he had to decide.
Not wanting to confront his demons at present, Harmonious pulled himself away from the window. He went into the bathroom. He believed a long hot bath would help him relax. It was right then when something in his head snapped. The tub had not been cleaned in ages, and a verdigris ring of filth was encrusted all the way around it where the water line had been. He would have normally not been bothered by this. There was a simple solution; just clean the tub and pour a fresh bath. Harmonious couldn’t do this because his thoughts were slipping and he was going haywire in his head.
This was when he made up his mind. Through the confusing complexities of rambling thoughts, he left the apartment and joined the queue for ‘the jab.’ In his mind, his irrational mind, he believed he should do the opposite of what he would have normally done, and this would be like a reset. He had become an exponent of the system. He felt dirty, like someone who had been buried alive. Being broadsided by the pandemic, Harmonious sensed a binding, nothing any less than graveclothes, entombed in utter darkness. He succumbed to the overload of pressure from announcements about the virus and the vaccine. The media’s push to get everyone vaccinated and boosted had worked its incantations on him. Like a man tranced and bewitched, he made his way to the health center, stood in line with an appalling facemask on and waited his turn. “Like cattle to the slaughter,” he thought to himself.
He was now becoming part of that mnemonic coalesce, who simply do as they are instructed. The jab was no more than a pinprick; he hardly felt it at all. He was rewarded for his obedience and was given a fountain pen and a t-shirt. His drive home was when he first noticed the site of the jab was extremely sore. He supposed this was normal and was merely a consequence of his submission.
When he returned to his apartment, he had himself a glass of cold milk. In normal unrest, he found the creamy consistency of whole milk a comfort. As he drank the last drop, he caught the sound of a buzzing noise. It was a high-pitched, endless whirring sound vibrating profanely somewhere in his apartment. Harmonious hated annoying flies, swarming gnats, bombinating mosquitos, and anything else which buzzed, swooped, dove, or bit. It was bad enough that he had capitulated and made a rash decision to get the vaccine; now he had to deal with the persistent insect annoyance.
He dug around in the cabinet under the kitchen sink until he located his fly spray. It was practically empty, but he would do what he could to combat and ground the unrelenting uninvited interlopers and intermittently reestablish a no-fly zone. He just had to find the pestering offender. It was not after his scent, or he would have already have encountered the intruder. What did this buzzing menace desire?
Without any attempt of concealment or evasion, Harmonious strode into the kitchen with can raised, his eyes scanning the room as his ears became attentive to every little sound and nuance in the room. Dutifully he made his way around the kitchen table. He heard nothing yet. This was just the way it was. Once a person retrieves the can of fly spray, somehow the fly senses the danger and lands outside the scope of the conscientious pursuer.
Harmonious stood dead quiet, submissive, considering any and all vibrations. He heard nothing. He became oblivious to time, and it wasn’t until a neighbor cranked up music from the apartment above him that he snapped out of his intense concentration, having failed in the hunt for the flying creature. Suddenly he was reminded that earlier he had been jabbed with the vaccine and his shoulder deeply ached.
It was unfortunate, inauspicious, the pesky flying black fly could not be immediately located. Harmonious was not feeling well. He coughed a couple of times from deep within his chest, and he was beginning to ache all over, especially his back. It occurred to him he also had a headache. It was one of those lingering kinds, ever-present and only growing in intensity when one thought about it. He would try not to think about the pressure in his head. Earlier he had been quite hungry, but now the thought of food made him ill. He did not want to add nausea to his other symptoms. He thought it best to move into the bedroom. He had every intention of having a shower, but now he could not be bothered. His only concern was to find his pillow.
No sooner than he lay down did the buzzing vibrations of something small and troubling enter his room. He leaped up from the bed like a man electrified. “I got you now!” Still holding the can of fly spray, he sprayed a long mist as he turned in a circle hoping to pollute the air with such poisonous saturation it would be impossible for anything flying, crawling, or squirming to live through the toxic fog. The airborne particles filtered throughout the room, which gave cause for Harmonious to break into a coughing fit. It was during this uncontrollable attack, as he sucked in air, something zoomed into his mouth, lodging itself on the back of his throat. He forced himself to cough with more thrust from his lungs, but he was unable to dislodge what he certainly believed to be the wretched gnat. Struggling and gasping wildly, he began to panic. He attempted to flush the vindictive insect loose by gargling violently from the water from the en-suite. He coughed, gargled, spat and gagged until the insect was projected from his throat. He could not believe his eyes. It flew away across the bedroom and out through the door into the hallway. Harmonious went in pursuit of the foul thing holding the can of fly spray out in front of himself, prepared to fire it again. Once he lost sight of it due to the rays of light filtering in through the half-closed blinds, he stood frozen in place once more. Ever so determined, he was going to end this insect’s inscrutable existence.
His eyes went from left to right, desperately trying to pick up the sound. Then and there, as if it had a cloaking device the gnat landed on Harmonious’s cheek. He stumbled backward as if he had been pushed by an invisible force. Slapping at his face in hopes of smashing the life out of it, he checked his hands for dark smear marks and proof he had killed it, but his hands were clean. Bizarrely he could not deny what happened next, but he felt it crawling, tickling inside his nose.
Suffice it to say, this caused immense worry.
“No, no, no!” he repeated as he shuffled off to the bathroom in the hallways to grab some tissue. He blew his nose so loud it could have awakened the dead, but the tingling persisted. “You’ve got to be joking!” He was talking out loud to himself in a fevered pitch. He twisted a tissue the right size to go in and up his nose. He inserted it on the side he suspected the insect of having gone. He pushed the tissue as far as it would go, and he began to twist it. When he removed it, he had hoped to have found the remains of the bug, but there was nothing. He blew his nose again, and again and again, but the little beast went further back into his nasal cavity until he got the previous sensation in his throat. He was in great despair when he came up with an outrageous plan. He would spray his throat with the fly spray, killing the tormentor, then simply spit it out and rinse his mouth without swallowing any of the hazardous substances. Hacking and coughing, he went to the bathroom, spitting and clearing his throat aggressively. While looking at his alarmed face in the mirror, with tears streaming down his cheeks, he turned the can of spray toward his face, opened his mouth and pushed down on the spray cap which activated a burst of spray to the back of his throat. His mouth and throat were filled with pyrethrins. This was much worse than the tickling from the antennae and legs of the gnat. Coughing severely, he went for more water. His throat began to close on him. Still with a presence of mind, he rinsed and gargled with deliberate rebuke. Once he was sure the dangerous substance had been washed out of his mouth and throat, he hurried to the kitchen, where he poured himself a cold glass of milk. While guzzling it down as if his life was dependent on it, his hopes of salvation from what he now considered a predator was dashed when the disgusting eternal pursuer swarmed by his head.
“No more spray. Time to use old fashion ingenuity,” he said to himself as he went to the top of the refrigerator and surreptitiously retrieved his electric fly swatter. This was a handy device that ran off of batteries. Once an insect was swatted or landed on the metal mesh of the fly-zapping racquet, it would be fried like Ted Bundy. Harmonious struggled to breathe but he maintained an airway and assumed his respirations would return to normal shortly.
Again, like a needle on a scratched piece of vinyl and the same note keeps repeating with static and reverse reverb, Harmonious went on the hunt. More determined than ever, he had ill intentions. “Kill, kill, kill, kept pulsating through his already sore head. He searched high and low but had no luck finding his intended victim. The sickness, along with his own self-imposed foolhardy spray to the back of the throat, had worn him down. He poured himself the last of the milk. As he savored the creaminess and cold, the flying devil finally reappeared. “There it is!”
“Buzz, buzz, buzz!” The sound was not direct; it was as if it were coming from every direction. As he spun around, with the fly racquet in hand, his right ear tingled with a vibrating quiver. Pulsating madness ensued. This microscopic insect hummed and then whirred as if it were making its way through his ear canal, climbing and whirring, climbing, and buzzing. Afraid he might push it in further, he resisted the temptation to stick his finger into his ear. Harmonious went to the kitchen, where he concocted a recipe of warm salt water. His hope was he could drown it.
Once he had the temperature just right, he used a marinade injector, which is used to impregnate meat to create a moister piece of meat. The devilish insect was about to meet the wrath of Harmonious! As the gnat maneuvered through his external acoustic meatus, Harmonious shook his head crazily. The feeling inside his ear was becoming torturous, and the sound was intensifying dramatically. Carefully inserting the syringe into his ear canal, he slowly pressed the plunger gently, and his ear became warm. He tilted his head to one side to allow the salt water to penetrate the entire canal. Once he was satisfied he had fully drowned anything in the ear which should not be there, he tilted his head back awkwardly the other way to allow the salt water to trickle out. He looked in the sink, hoping to see a drowned black speck, but to his disappointment, he had failed to kill it. Strenuously he jabbed his index finger into his ear and carelessly probed his ear. He became more vehemently enraged as no gnat was extracted. He swore he heard it humming in his brain, stinging every thought, taking up a fortification where it could not be touched.
Harmonious was torn with emotion. He shouted, “What is to become of me?” He tore at his own hair and rocked back and forth nervously. He moaned as if someone in the clutches of anguish. “What will be my fate?
Get out of my head!” He groaned peremptorily.
To his chagrin, the little monster, in contemptuous fashion, exited his left ear and buzzed off into the other room unscathed. His deliberate alacrity for survival was surmounted by the fear of the unknown, believing the gnat was following his every move. Harmonious gathered his senses well enough to give chase, spouting raw expletives and shrieking his cruel maledictions. He was fluent in his railings with poetic cursing and added vile contempt for all the insects of the world.
He stumbled over an ottoman, tumbling to the floor. The fall was excruciating, for when he landed, the hand he was wielding the fly racquet in gave way at the wrist, and he heard a loud pop. He added more never-heard-before vernacular to his spitting rant. Taking a moment to examine his wrist, he was not sure if it was broken. He still had flexibility in it however, the pain was comparatively extreme. Regardless if fractured or not, he had the gnat on the move and could not be bothered with first aid. He still had his left hand. His right hand, superfluous at best, was now out of the fight.
With fuming intolerance, he stormed into the room of the last known location of his arch-enemy. He focused, took control of his breathing, and listened earnestly to every noise, sound, and vibration. His shoulder, where the vaccine injection had been given earlier, was now at fever pitch with pain. His entire body, not just his wrist, was aching as if someone had an inner tube connected to his joints and was filling them up with air.
“Where are you, you filthy, flying, obscene horror?” He looked behind him, expecting another sneak attack. He was consumed with killing the gnat, to capture it alive and to pull its wings off slowly from its body. He relished the thought of putting it through ungodly agony by breaking each of its six legs, leaving it immobile so he could laugh in its face as it was dying. He wanted to make it suffer. He would leave it there, in its final moments, refusing to put it out of its misery. What incredible satisfaction he would feel, to have this victory over this demon larvae. He wouldn’t stop there. He would hunt down the rest of the swarm wherever they were hiding, dirty drain lines, decomposing matter in potting soil, find their slimy nest haven and eradicate them all! He now longed to stop their infestation before it manifested, but first, he had to smash this single one who had called him to battle. He was not amused, but maybe the insect was, and this really fueled his fury and caused him to seethe with rage.
For a long period, there was no sign nor sound of his enemy. Harmonious took a seat after surveying the room and closed his eyes. He was sick, tired, in pain and uncomfortable in his own house. He needed a few minutes to gather his thoughts, reconsider, regroup, devise a more effective battle plan. He thought to himself if he had not gone today and gotten the stupid vaccine, he probably would be having dinner about now instead of chasing a flying insect around his apartment. It was good to just sit and chill for a moment. He was becoming relaxed and thought about giving up his pursuit but as the comfort of the chair began to take him away, something landed on his cheek. He slapped haphazardly at it with his good hand. His eyes were open again. Looking at his hand, he saw he had missed it again. He still sensed it crawling on his face. With both hands, he clawed recklessly at his cheeks and temples. It had slipped into his eye. The fright was unimaginable. The gnat was crawling behind his eyelid. He pushed his knuckle into his closed eye and gave it several twists, but he found no relief. Terribly worried, he went directly to the kitchen sink and began to liberally splash hand full of water into his eyes. He was unable to wash the gnat away. He soon discovered his worst nightmare realized; the nasty thing had managed to crawl behind his eye. He was not in pain because the back of the human eye has no pain receptors, yet the irritation was vexing. He rolled his eyes around, seeking relief. He wiped his eyes repeatedly, but the gnat was firmly glued to the back of his eyeball. Several times he struck his temples and his forehead with the palm of his good hand, yet he could not dislodge it.
His sanity was rocked. Normalcy was not even a question at this schizophrenic moment. He returned to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. This was his first glance at himself since he and the gnat were at war. He let out a shrill feminine sound much higher than his actual voice. Mingled within the unmanly scream, he crowed and extended, “Noooo!”
His eyes must be playing tricks on him. This was not to be believed. Harmonious’s face was insect in appearance, not totally transformed but a distortion of who he was. His eyes had become fiery red and bulbous like the no-see-ums. He leaned into the mirror and gazed upon the uniquely grotesque face he was wearing. “What in the hell?”
His throat collapsed, but he still had an airway just large enough to breathe. With his swollen tongue taking on a new shape, he attempted to swallow but he was unable to produce any saliva.
“Great heavens,” he thought to himself. Caught up in nervous reflection, he had been immersed into a miserable state. His condition could have only been described as unmistakable agitation brought on but restive prostration making him insoluble. Unable to reconcile what was taking place, he allowed his faculties to scramble into a mess. The sheer irritation gave way to lonely frustration haunting him like an unwanted spook. He had never felt more helpless and inadequate than in this disastrous moment. He remonstrated, but what use was there to argue with himself or anyone for that matter?
Frozen in inaction due to confusion and consternation, he was made sick by his appearance. It did not get any better. Peering deeper into the reflection in the mirror, he saw waves in his eyes like rivers of lava in an enclosed world. Then dismay bent itself into the mirror, suspect of all he was seeing. In his eyes, there was a transparency, and through this thin transparent veil, he saw the world of gnats behind his new eyes. Clutching his face, the hair on top of his head began to drop into the sink. Within seconds he had unthreaded every last fiber until he was completely bald. He had never seen himself hairless before, and the image in the mirror of something ghastly with compound eyes rolling weirdly in his head, constantly swishing with fire…this could not be him. The marrow of his bones liquified. His blood ran blazing hot, then cooled to an icy freeze. His lungs expanded at such a terrific rate he heard his ribs snap and break. He noticed the change of his arms, and his legs were cracking and morphing beneath him. Immediately he tore off his clothing and, now naked, viewing himself in full. He was growing another set of legs, wings covered in fine hair were now protruding from his back. He tried to yell out, but instead of sound coming from his mouth, his newly formed wings rattled and then buzzed. His internal organs, along with exterior features were restructuring, and the emergence of insect-like earmarks defiled his human form leaving what little humanity was remaining mortified. He wanted to be outraged yet he could not find those emotions nor characteristics which would cause him to protest. The shameful discomfiture and the defiance were no longer there for him to identify with. No longer was resistance an option. The decrepitude and advanced disrepair became obsolete, in effect, he no longer counted his misfortunes.
His eyes were being enlightened to his new identity. No longer was a human form recognizable. He had no empathy, compassion, or altruism. His apathy, if he ever had such a thing, was no longer a moral compass to follow. His countenance appeared undernourished yet he did not have an opinion, nor did he judge himself as beautiful or ugly. This fresh nematoceran body was his now. He touched his antennas. “Marvellous feelers,” he tried to say, yet his ever-growing wings whirred like spectacular musical vibration. The insect he had become recognized its ears were down from the head on the thorax, and he could hear with this tympanal organ very well. He had cognition but not consciousness as humans know it.
The last of Harmonious dissolved. Unable to stand upright, he steadied himself on six legs. His balance had shifted, the equilibrium dissipated and his head became dizzy as if he were spinning on a merciless perpetual carnival ride. Every care of man tormented with the threat of unknown viruses, worldwide pandemics, untested vaccines, the possibility of losing his job, and the world, in general, made no difference any longer. He left the bathroom and continued to test the durability of his wings. They were loud and instinctually he had the drive to fly.
He made his way to the window which overlooked the city. He was on the 5th floor. Opening the window, a brilliant clean breeze blew in and surrounded him like an old friend willing to take him higher. Stepping out of the window, he stood on a narrow ornamental ledge that ran the circumference of the building. His wings were buzzing like a motorboat engine when he dropped from the ledge.
Harmonious was not seen jumping from his apartment window, but someone heard the splat when his body hit the pavement below. In minutes the street was in chaos as people gathered around the dead man’s body. The police, fire and ambulance soon arrived followed by the coroner. It was ruled a suicide. The investigators found nothing suspicious nor a final letter from the deceased. There was evidence of rotten fruit on the kitchen bench and an unusual number of gnats swarming inside the apartment.
🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available
Written by Dale Thompson Edited by Craig Groshek Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek Narrated by N/A🔔 More stories from author: Dale Thompson
Publisher's Notes: N/A Author's Notes: N/AMore Stories from Author Dale Thompson:
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