26 Dec The Buzzing

Amanda was standing in the darkness, beating her fists against the refrigerator door.

The commotion had wrenched me out of a deep and dreamless sleep. When I’d crept down the hall to investigate, I’d had panicked thoughts of intruders, stealing into the house to gut my family. But when I made it to the kitchen, I found only my wife standing in her nightie, looking somewhat like an apparition, banging in a steady rhythm upon the hapless appliance.

I nudged the dimmer switch up, in the hopes of shedding even just a little light on the situation. It didn’t work; I still didn’t understand what was happening.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You don’t hear that? That buzzzzzzz?”

I listened. To me, it sounded more like a hum than a buzz–and a very gentle one at that. One you wouldn’t notice unless you were paying attention. “That’s how it always sounds.”

“No,” she replied. “It’s broken. I can’t believe you don’t hear it. It’s so loud. I can’t sleep. It’s keeping me up.”

I nudged the switch a little higher, and now I could see that Amanda wasn’t kidding around. She looked positively haggard and, in the light, even more like a ghost than she had in the dark.

“It sounds normal,” I repeated.

“That’s what I was really afraid of.” Amanda closed her eyes and spread a hand out across her face, gripping her temples with her thumb and middle finger. “It’s in my head.”

“You hear a buzzing sound in your head?” I bit my lip. “Do you think…?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I picked something up on my trip. God knows what it could be. I took all of my vaccines.”

“Those don’t work sometimes,” I argued.

“So it would seem.”

I was groggy and wanted to get back to bed. “Well, we’ll figure it out in the morning. We’ll get you right to the doc, first thing. For now, try to get some sleep.”

“I can’t,” she insisted.

“Take an Ambien.”

“I’ve already had three. It sounds like a bee hive in there, Walt. It never stops.”

I looked at the clock. I had to work in less than four hours. “You’ve tried Tylenol?”

“I’ve been awake all night, Walt. Yes, of course, I’ve tried Tylenol. Before you asked, yes, I’ve also tried reading the Bible. I’ve tried everything. Nothing helps.”

“Should we go to the ER? Wake up the kids and go to the ER? Or call an ambulance?”

Amanda shook her head. “Just go back to bed, Walt. I’ll be okay. Just go back to bed, and on your way out, kill that light.”

I did just that.

* * * * * *

A few hours later, with the sun creeping into the sky, I silenced the alarm clock and looked over to see that Amanda hadn’t made it back to bed. I found her soon enough, sitting on the kitchen floor. She had pulled the refrigerator away from the wall and unplugged it. She looked wild and unhealthy, less like a ghost and more like a decomposing corpse.

“Honey?” I asked.

“It won’t stop. It will never stop,” she said, defeated. “I made you coffee.”

“The buzzing still?” I asked, pulling a mug out of the cabinet and pouring myself a cup.

“It’s like a swarm of bees,” she said. “No. Actually, more like thousands of angry wasps.”

“Never went to sleep, huh?”

“Nope.”

“Alright. I’m calling in to work today, and I’m taking you to Dr. Henderson.” I looked down at her. She had a blank expression on her face, and for a moment, I could vividly hear a buzzing in my own head. “We’ll get you all fixed up.”

Jacob Henderson was a friend of mine. We played poker together every Friday night. I called his personal line to find him just on his way to the hospital, and filled him in on my wife’s condition.

“Amanda’s got it bad. This buzzing in her head kept her up all night. We think she may have contracted something while stomping around in Thailand last week, though she was up-to-date on her vaccines.”

“Hmm,” Dr. Henderson replied. “Well, I’ll go ahead and clear a spot for her. Can you bring her in right away?”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you, Jake.” I hung up and turned to Amanda. She was shivering now, her teeth audibly chattering. The sound made me shiver.

“He said he can fit you in first thing,” I told hold. “I’ll drop you off, bring the kids to school, then come right back to check on you.”

My wife gave no indication that she’d heard me. “Amanda?” I said. “Amanda, are you alright?”

Suddenly she leaped to her feet and took off running, out of the kitchen and down the hall. After a moment, I heard a door slam shut.

I followed behind, to the bathroom door, and knocked. “Amanda?” I repeated.

I was answered by a terrible, throaty retch, followed by a splash, as if a large volume of liquid had been poured onto the tile floor.

Aaron came out of his room, dressed in his pajamas, his hair sticking up in a cowlick, and asked, “Was that Mom? Is she okay?”

“Your mother is feeling a bit under the weather today, but she’ll be fine,” I said, wincing at the sound of another retch and splash coming from the bathroom. “I’m going to drop her off with Dr. Henderson, and he’ll have her feeling better in no time. But I need your help this morning, okay, buddy? I need you to go get your sister moving, and then both of you need to get ready for school. Okay?”

Aaron nodded and walked off to his sister’s room. I turned my attention back to the bathroom and tried the knob. It was locked.

“You okay in there, honey?”

Silence. Or was it? I put my ear against the door. Not silence. Buzzing. Very faint buzzing, but definitely present.

“Amanda?” I called again. “Please answer me.”

What if she’d passed out? I couldn’t help but imagine the worst. Maybe she’d fallen and hit her head on the way down.

I decided to pick the lock. It was a privacy lock and would be easy to do with a straightened-out paperclip.

I pulled my head away from the door, and in an instant, there was a click, and Amanda slipped out of an opening that was barely big enough for her body to fit through. She closed the door behind her, and kept her hand on the knob.

“I’m fine, Walt,” she said. “Totally, 100% better. The buzzing’s gone, and I feel much better. Just got a little sick. I think it was something I ate.”

She really did look better. Tired still, but no longer on the verge of death. “Well, let’s have Dr. Henderson look you over anyway. It’s all arranged.”

“No!” she snapped suddenly. An ugly rage flashed across her face for a split second and then was gone, leaving a well-intentioned smile in its wake. “I told you,” she said gently, as if she hadn’t just screamed at me. “I’m feeling quite well now.”

I didn’t want to press the matter too insistently. Taking her to the hospital would mean missing work, and when I missed work, the work didn’t magically disappear, it piled up on my desk. I was just getting over an ulcer and wanted to avoid another if possible.

“You’re sure?” I asked. Amanda nodded. “Okay, if you’re sure.”

“I am,” she said, “but… could you still take the kids in today? I’m going to clean up in the bathroom, then hit the hay. I’m beat.”

“Of course,” I replied and nodded at the door. “Let me just do my business in there, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“No!” she cried. “No, you can’t go in there. It’s embarrassing.”

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, Amanda. Come on now. If I don’t get moving, I’ll be late.”

“Use the kids’ bathroom. This one is a war zone. I can’t let you in there.”

I shrugged and was getting ready to turn around when I heard that buzzing sound again, a little louder now, coming from the other side of the door. “What’s that sound? That buzz?”

Amanda was silent for a beat, then let out a mechanical laugh. It didn’t sound like her at all.

“Now you’re the one hearing a buzz?” she asked. “Maybe you should consult with Dr. Henderson yourself, after you drop off the kids. You probably have a case of what I had. It’s not fun at all. I promise you that.”

Something’s off about her, I thought, and then: Sure, there is. She’s been up all night and just puked her guts out. Ah, it didn’t look fun, no. Relax.

I headed off to the kids’ bathroom. As soon as I was a few steps down the hall, I heard Amanda open the door again. I stopped and turned to see her disappear back inside. With the door open, the buzzing grew temporarily louder. There’s something in there, I thought, and it’s not in my head. But then, I realized that Amanda had spent all night in front of the refrigerator, convinced that the noise was coming from there, even after I had borne witness to the contrary. Maybe I did have a bit of food poisoning.

I put the matter out of my mind and went about my day.

* * * * * *

That afternoon, at the crest of a wave of progress against my towering workload, I got a call from my kids’ school. Amanda hadn’t picked them up. Normally, she would have. The school secretary said that she’d tried the other numbers listed before mine, but she’d been unable to reach anyone. It was an inconvenience, but I figured: Fair enough. Amanda had a rough night and needs the rest. She’s probably off in dreamland right now.

I picked up Aaron and Margaret and, to their delight, took them out for ice cream. I wanted to give my wife a little extra time to sleep before I dropped the kids off with her and returned to work. But I did need to get back to it, so as soon as we got home and the kids went barreling off for their toys, I went to my bedroom, bracing myself for the unpleasant but necessary task of waking my wife.

But she wasn’t in our bedroom.

“Amanda?” I called. I knew that she was home because her car was in the driveway. But if she wasn’t in bed, then where was she? And why wasn’t she answering her phone?

I searched the house, shouting her name and sticking my head into each room. When I reached the hall bathroom, I was greeted by a closed door and an undeniable buzzing sound.

Something was very wrong. A part of me wanted to pretend that it wasn’t, and to just keep walking down the hall, out the door, and to my car. I wanted to head back to the office to make some more progress and some more money–but no. That was my wife in there, and I loved her. We’d made vows and had children together, who were now playing in the living room, oblivious to any kind of danger. I couldn’t abandon them either, though some dark and primal urge, stirred by the buzzing sound, was telling me to run for my life no matter the cost.

Amanda had been right: it really did sound like a swarm of angry wasps. It was menacing, organic, and mechanical, which, I suppose, was typical of wasps. Single-minded drones, like programmed robots, but alive too, looking for any excuse to plunge their venomous stingers into your flesh.

I knocked on the door and called out again. “Amanda?” I suspected that she wouldn’t answer, but I hoped that she would. I wanted to believe that she was in there, perfectly fine, having just woken up from her nap, and that the buzzing was from her use of some sort of device.

I took a breath and tried the knob. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. The buzzing intensified, seemingly reacting to my intrusion.

There was no more procrastinating. I made my way through the living room, where Aaron and Margaret were engaging in a mock superhero battle.

“Super freeze!” cried my daughter.

“It didn’t work!” said my son, laughing dramatically. “I drank some antifreeze before I got here!”

In the study, I rummaged through my desk drawers until I found a paperclip. With trembling hands, I straightened it out and headed straight for the bathroom door. Just get it over with, I thought, sticking the wire into the hole in the knob. I wiggled it around a bit until I heard the telltale click of the lock disengaging.

I was almost grateful for the sound of my pulse thudding in my head as I pushed the door open; it temporarily drowned out the droning buzz coming from within.

My wife, Amanda, was inside the bathroom, lying stark naked beside a writhing ball of insect larvae and human excrement.

Some of the larger specimens were emerging from the centralized mass and crawling all over Amanda, finding suitable locations, and attaching themselves to her flesh, where they proceeded to suck out the final bit of sustenance needed to grow. Above her, a nascent nest hung from the ceiling, surrounded by what did indeed look like wasps. Black and yellow striped, buzzing, and nasty.

Amanda’s body twitched involuntarily. Her eyes were blank, her face slack. She was gone, I realized, her mind and body overtaken by parasitic wasps. One of them had found her, presumably while she was in Thailand, and laid its eggs inside her. Whether it accomplished this via a sting or by crawling into her mouth while she slept, I had no idea. But no matter the method, it had succeeded, and the eggs thrived in my wife’s body, protected from the outside world. She gave them a free ride to America, back to our house, and then, when they were ready to hatch, she vomited them onto the bathroom floor. There, in various stages of development, they fed all day. They matured quickly and now swarmed her head, plucking out her hair in order to build their nest.

I was immediately reminded of toxoplasma gondii, which thrives in cats but will settle for a mouse in a pinch. The parasite’s special talent was to make the rodent unafraid of felines and so easy prey. The cat would then ingest the oblivious mouse while its instincts to flee were subdued, and the parasite would get what it wanted all along: to live on and reproduce in the cat. Life–and nature–can be a nasty business all around.

My own instincts, however, remained fully intact, including my fear response. Even as I took in the scene before me–as the thoughts swirled in my head, contributing to the discordant symphony in there, alongside the simultaneously organic and mechanical buzz and my pounding pulse–I retreated. I slammed the door behind me and braced myself against the wall, dizzy. Good God, I thought. What do I do?

Amanda was beyond help. There was no coming back from her condition. Her mind and body had been hijacked by the parasites in the same way that certain other species of wasps take over the bodies of spiders, forcing them to encase themselves in protective cocoons. Or similar to certain fungi that will take over the minds of ants, turning them into half-dead slaves under their control. Nobody quite knew how it worked, only that it did work–and that it was terrifying.

Those things were in there, building their nest, and all-too-rapidly growing into adults. Amanda’s body would serve them for a while. But once that resource was depleted, they would surely seek out other hosts and seep through every crack looking for fresh meat. Perhaps that would happen sooner rather than later. Who knows–maybe they were already searching for the exit. I turned slowly and looked at the gap beneath the door.

Thinking quickly, I removed my shirt and spread it out on the floor, attempting to blockade the gateway between the bathroom and the rest of the house. Suddenly, I felt something wriggling on my skin. In horror, I looked down at my bare arm to see a wasp crawling across it, inching its way forward.

I slapped at it madly, swiftly mashing it beneath my palm. Had it stung me? I wondered, or was that just the result of my own slaps? In my haste, I could hardly tell anymore.

The kids, I thought, my mind reeling. Get them, and get out of there! Then, call the police, call an exterminator, or burn the house down. Just get out of there!

I darted into the living room and grabbed my children roughly by their arms, dragging them along behind me.

As I ran, I again wondered whether or not the wasp had stung me. Did it inject me with its nightmarish eggs? Are there more on me, or inside me? Is it too late? Did they get the kids? Are they right behind us, giving chase? 

As my mind screamed, my children followed suit.

“Ow! Dad, you’re hurting me!” they screamed in response to the tightness of my grip. “What are you doing?! Where’s Mom? Why are you doing this?! Dad!”

I didn’t dare stop to explain. I kept running, praying that the buzz that now filled my head was only my imagination.

* * * * * *

When the police later arrived at the scene, I was informed by phone, rather unceremoniously, that my wife was dead, and had been for some time. After some pressing on my part, an officer reluctantly disclosed that while there was no evidence of a writhing ball of larvae on the tile floor nor any larvae attached to Amanda’s body, there was indeed a massive nest hanging from the ceiling, with a thick swarm of adult wasps encircling it.

Things were relatively quiet until a few days later, when my family and I met the commanding officer at the police station to ask follow-up questions, and to provide additional statements.

“It happens,” the officer sitting before me said, shuddering, as he recalled the investigation. “I’m afraid wasps will build nests wherever they can. Nasty buggers.”

“Do you really think we wouldn’t notice a colony of wasps building an enormous nest in our bathroom?” I balked. “How long does it normally take for them to build something that massive–days? Weeks? And you think we didn’t notice?”

I was frustrated because noone believed my story about some sort of super-charged species of parasitic wasps. Wasps might take over the body of a ladybug, I was told, but no species exists – at least none that I’m aware of – that can take over the central nervous system of a human being and operate it like a puppet… and yet no other plausible explanation for what had happened was proffered.

“I certainly would have noticed it,” the officer admitted. “But then again, I’m trained to observe my environment, the slightest detail out of place, at all times.”

I tried a different approach. “The nest was made from her hair. You tested that, right?”

“There are a lot of stray hairs in any given bathroom, sir, I can assure you,” the officer replied. “Readily available to anyone or anything looking for such material.”

For a moment, I sat across the desk from this officer in disbelief. I knew that I couldn’t convince him of anything to the contrary; he’d already made up his mind. The truth lay in matters beyond his knowledge and understanding of the world, and rather than expand his understanding, he had chosen to bend the facts to make them fit.

This is how the world will end, I thought. After several days and nights of mourning and erratic sleep punctuated by terrifying nightmares, I was emotionally drained; only a flicker of rage remained.

“Let me get this straight,” I said to the officer. “You believe a massive colony of wasps collected my wife’s stray hairs for weeks on end and constructed a huge nest in our bathroom, completely unbeknownst to us. Then, one day, Amanda undressed to get in the shower, and she finally noticed it. The sight frightened her so much that she defecated and dropped dead of a heart attack. And you believe the unexplained marks all over her body are some sort of unrelated rash. Case closed. Is that right?”

“Sir, I can only imagine how this must feel, and I’m very sorry for your loss,” the officer said, attempting to placate me. “Unfortunately, yes, that’s the long and short of it. I know that it’s hard to hear. It seems such an undignified way to go. If it makes you feel any better, I saw that nest with my own eyes, and I’m not ashamed to say that I pissed myself. There’s no shame in that. We’re only human, and those things are terrifying. In fact, one of them stung me in the neck while I was in there. And let me tell you, the only thing worse than getting stung by one of those is getting shot, and I’ve suffered both.” The officer patted his shoulder. “Right here.”

“You got…” I stammered. “Y–you got stung?” I nearly choked.

“All in the line of duty,” the officer proclaimed proudly. “Nothing to worry about anyway. That’s what Benadryl is for.”

I stood up. “Well, officer, thank you for your time. I needed some closure, I suppose, and now I’ve got it.”

The officer smiled. “I’m very sorry about your wife, sir. Truly,” he said. “The only advice that I can give is to hang in there. Life goes on–you’ll see.”

Suddenly, the officer’s expression shifted.

“See? You’ve already got a call coming in, someone checking in on you,” he said. “Go ahead and answer it–I’m sure it’s important. I swear, it’s been buzzing for five minutes straight.”

I swallowed hard and stared. My phone wasn’t on me at all. It was in the car with the kids, long since excused–and it wasn’t ringing. Not now, and not once since I’d arrived. “It can wait,” I said, looking the officer straight in the eye. “Thank you again, and good luck.”

I meant it. He was going to need it.

I left the station and walked outside. The sky was overcast. The investigation was complete, as was the fumigation, and the kids and I had been cleared to move back into the house. We were, in fact, on our way to do just that. But suddenly, it seemed like a good idea to go somewhere very far away instead.