I clutched the beehive, its honey dripping inches from my lips. The little bastards swarmed me. Their wings fluttered like cocaine hearts. As their stingers ripped into me, permanently detaching, leaving behind their abdomens and digestive tracts, I lamented—but only for a half second, only for a god damn blink—for their kamikaze attacks, which were more instinct than suicide. The ache caused by their death strikes knocked me to the ground. But their sacrifice was futile. I still clang to the hive, my tongue lapping up the sweet, sweet honey as the insufferable creatures stabbed my face. Through the flurry of black and yellow, my ex-wife appeared to me. She leered at our credit card bills. I’d spent our savings on gambling and whiskey. “Was it worth it?” she asked me. “Was the pain it caused worth it?” she demanded to know before leaving for the last time. I stretched my mouth wide to lick the hive from top to bottom—responding to her: yes.
Brett Pribble’s work has appeared in Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, decomP, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Saw Palm, The Molotov Cocktail, Crack the Spine, The Airgonaut, and several other places. He is the editor-in-chief of Ghost Parachute. Follow him on Twitter @brettpribble.