MHI: CCD, OR WHY I KEEP TAKING THE PILLS SO MANY OF YOU IDIOTS SAY I WOULDN’T NEED IF I JUST TOUCHED THE GRASS MORE by Anton Cancre

Trigger Warning: This piece addresses mental health

The HWA is pleased to launch its Mental Health Initiative, a coordinated roll-out of events, resources, and activities intended to promote positive mental health, foster the concept of hope, and challenge the stigma of mental illness in the horror genre. The initiative, run by the organization’s Wellness Committee, launches in June, and includes the following blog posts from Of Horror and Hope, a downloadable anthology of poems, flash fiction, and personal reflections on mental health by HWA members.

CCD, OR WHY I KEEP TAKING THE PILLS SO MANY OF YOU IDIOTS SAY I WOULDN’T NEED IF I JUST TOUCHED THE GRASS MORE
Anton Cancre

It starts with the drones, desperate
with need and overcome with desire
to fly the fields, dip their legs
in fluffy petal sperm and slurp the sweet
syrup that brings life to the hive.

But the field is too wide, the budding brightness
of flowers too plentiful, refracted through thousands
of ommatidia, until they overwhelm with their number
and blur together, like Van Gogh smearing his hand across
his Irises before the paint dried. the need to fill themselves
from each remains and wires start to cross. misfire.

A misfiring that turns to an interior buzzing
so loud, so consuming, that they can’t hear anything else.
So they buzz louder, flitting so close to their desired buds
that the scent becomes too much to bear, unable to land
on any one in the encompassing need to sup from them all.
The static of their noise becoming aggressive, a threat
against one and all near. Stingers filling with venom.
Air filled with the secret screaming only bees know.

Until they slow. Overworked
wings giving up. Bodies
falling to the grass
in exhaustion
and disappointment.

And the queen
and her consorts
are left, huddling
in the dark of the hive.
Terrified.
Alone.
listless and uncertain.
With no idea of what
left them in the black,
suffocating and starving,
as a deeper dark creeps
in to take them.