The December Wasp

A bit of a dark short story, this one. Not a cheery one.

She’d kept a wasp in a jar for three whole days now.

It had never quite seemed the right moment to set it free.

Much of the time, someone had been around and it would have seemed odd, having to explain the situation. After all, who the hell cared about extending the life of a wasp?

No-one liked wasps, did they?

It had all started on Wednesday when she’d noticed it in the corner of a window pane, struggling to escape. The sound had carried from another room, a faint buzzing, reminiscent of summer. A weakening sizzle, like something ending.

Had the usual household ‘wall of noise’ been blaring, she was sure she wouldn’t have been able to pick out its low hum, but as she’d been alone, enjoying some rare silence, she had managed to. She’d followed the sound to the landing upstairs, and then spotted the striking bands of canary colour before her. How unusual to see such vivid yellow in wintertime!

What was it even doing flying around in December? In this weather? It was snowing outside! From past experience, (they’d lived in the house for seventeen years) she was aware they sometimes made nests in the roof space and found their way out in ceilings via gaps for light fittings. This could be the only explanation.

She’d caught the lone wasp, as she always did, using a drinking glass and card. She’d been ready to gently escort it outside, but something stopped her. She’d been jolted by the real prospect that it would likely die as soon as frost hit wings and it found itself confronted by the reality of the unyielding cruelty of winter.

“It’s a wasp, get it out!”

She could almost hear the man she lived with yell. He’d never liked wasps, always squealed in a high pitched way that betrayed his sex whenever he saw them.

No-one liked wasps, did they?

But even wasps had a right to life too, didn’t they?

Even if no-one liked them.

And so, after a brief deliberation, she’d brought into the kitchen from outside, a small piece of wilting bramble. She’d placed wasp and berries together in a clean jam jar, piercing tiny holes into the metal lid to accommodate breathing.

There, it had remained, on the windowsill, ever since.

She’d been waiting for the right time.

On the occasions she’d been alone, it had simply seemed too cold. Besides, the longer it stayed siphoning liquid from the fermenting blackberry, the more strength it was gathering, building itself up, she told herself. An extra day wouldn’t hurt. The wasp probably enjoyed the sugary, drunken refuge of it.

No-one else in the household had noticed its presence. Her son came home from school every afternoon, never looking over to the window ledge. It was too far away from his computer games for him to become aware of the wasp’s existence, yet alone consider its plight.

His father, on the other hand, had come physically very close to it.

Each evening he’d washed dishes just inches away as it languished in the jar. The small glass prison had been obscured by cutlery, weighing scales and piled plates, and as the music was turned up loud, its faint protest had gone ignored.

She knew it was there, though.

She’d been waiting for the right time.

Was it grateful for the extra time she had secured it, she wondered, as it leeched on the plentiful blackberry ‘wine’? Maybe it was resentful of the jar or simply oblivious to its fate?

Sometimes, its eyes seemed to penetrate her.

No, it was just an insect.

Did wasps even have emotions?

Then again, if they didn’t, why was she bothering to keep it alive?

She was sure bees felt stuff.

She let bees crawl upon her hands and arms, admiring their shapely hairy dark thighs that tapered off to skinny, gripping feet. She took pleasure in the depth of their colour, the way they wore their bright stripes as cosy fuzzy jumpers. People said “busy as a bee” but actually, bees took their time, appreciated flowers, chose well and lingered…..

Wasps, on the other hand were always spared the sentimentality of anthropomorphism. They were associated with anger, malice, frustration. They were nuisances, pests.

No-one liked wasps, did they?

She’d never been stung.

Always thought that lucky.

*

Saturday.

“Happy anniversary”

The phrase slid from her lips mechanically like waiting coins dropping into a slot machine, as they lay together. The words fell leisurely onto his cracking abyss, circling his head, a puff of confused dyed pink ravens, before he breathed out in exchange, the usual marinated cherry fumes she’d come to expect.

She’d said it now, and once she’d handed over the card later that day, that would be it, job done for another year.

She held him for what she deemed a polite amount of time to have elapsed before it was acceptable to let go. Her arms positioned themselves the way novices held babies - awkward, waiting for it to be over. Why did people always plonk infants in your care as though you were supposed to be grateful? For their clinginess, helplessness, utter dependence……

He drifted back to sleep.

When he arose from his drink fuelled coma later, he would no doubt produce a card littered with some candy floss flounce that hinted at them being together for eternity. Once upon a time, she had treasured such pledges. These days the sentences crawled, curled and crowded the card as inky, threatening centipedes.

Oh, how she loathed their so-called life together.

Wasn’t it just so conveniently sewn up….she mused as she surveyed his smug yet vulnerable body in its drunken stupor. Everyone seemingly happy with the living arrangement……except her.

She no longer loved him, yet personal and financial circumstances meant she could not leave him either.

She’d been waiting for the right time.

Lord knows, she’d tried.

Twice, her attempts had fallen apart quicker than those of a child who tries to run away, gets half way down the street before returning for his coat and sandwich.

She needed a plan, a real plan next time, not some pallid, half-baked Alaska that melted before she got to really taste it…..Freedom.

*

The hangover buzzed in his head like a wasp in his ear.  He’d dutifully handed over the card he’d written and as expected, she had done the same. Cordial pleasantries were exchanged. Smiles. A peck. A cursory:

“How many years has it been now….!”

They’d never gone in for fancy presents and were at a time in their lives when just remembering was enough, they needed no fuss.

There had been a time not too long ago that he had feared she may leave him, but not anymore. Didn’t all women of a certain age go through some sort of ‘mid life crisis’ phase?

Thank goodness things had settled down and she seemed to have abandoned such silly ideas.  Just surviving the daily grind of his job was more than enough to contend with, without added pressures of family life.

Sighing with relief, he placed both cards upon the kitchen windowsill. After all, the living room was already strewn with Christmas cards. If he put the anniversary cards by the kitchen window, at least they’d be able to see them as they washed the dishes. Proudly, he smiled as he stood them up….

“Woah! What the fuck was that?”

He said in astonishment, knocking over a jar he didn’t even know was there.

“Oh shit, love…..”

Was she even in?

“…..there’s a bloody wasp in here! How the hell did that thing get in here? In winter?”

Seizing an unexpected opportunity to escape, the wasp raced around the room, zigging and zagging manically seeking an exit. When it could find none, it flew at him in incandescent rage, plunging its sting fiercely and deeply into his chest, sending him into anaphylactic shock.

He’d never been stung.

Always thought that lucky.

Since no-one else seemed to be around - and his cries would have almost certainly have been inaudible against the back drop of his own loud music, he knew instantly that he would die.

A withered blackberry seemed to appear from nowhere upon the cold stone floor, a smear of dark liquid teasing him as last blood as he writhed around on the ground.

She opened the door.

Released.

She’d been waiting for the right time.

And for one very brief moment before frost hit wings and they found themselves confronted by the reality of the unyielding cruelty of winter, it almost, almost felt like summer.