The Hive

Hillview Private Middle School had been there long as anyone could remember. It was unlike most schools, in the aspect that all the kids knew and liked each other. The reason for this was that everyone in one large neighborhood close to the school went there, and no one else. So, in addition to the fact that they were schoolmates, they were all neighbors. Even the teachers lived in the neighborhood, and everyone loved it.
Whenever anyone new moved in, everyone would welcome him or her to their neighborhood and school, simultaneously. With Jared, there was no exception. His family had moved in at the beginning of the school year. Everyone planned a welcoming party, and invited him and his parents to come. Everyone expected the family to accept gladly, as families usually did, but for the first time in living memory, Jared's family turned away the invite without even showing their faces or giving a good reason. People were stunned.
Obviously, everyone at the school tried to find out what was going on. Jared didn't turn up until the fifth week of school, and by that time, people still hardly knew anything about him, even his last name. He was tall, very pale, and wore glasses. He had finely carved features, and might be considered handsome, but there was something about him vaguely unsettling. He had pale gray eyes, with only the slightest suggestion of pupils. When asked his last name by the principal, he simply looked up, took off his glasses, and stared at him, and for the first time in anyone's memory, the principal immediately backed down. Jared just walked to his next class.
Everyone left him alone, except for a boy named Bobby Gameston. Bobby followed Jared around, always watching him, and always collecting information on him. When asked why, he would reply, "I don't trust him. I think it's the eyes..." then break off into muttering. Most Bobby was taking this too seriously. The rest thought him obsessed. A few were in favor of shipping him off to a mental asylum, and their number grew after he came up with a startling piece of information.
"Jared moved here... without a family!" he shouted one day before school started. A large crowd started to form around him.
"Without a family?"
"What do you mean?"
"Don't be an idiot, a kid can't move all by himself... can he?"
"Excuse me." It was Jared. "How did you find out about this?" he asked Bobby.
"I... well... came across it," he replied, "Why?"
"Because I prefer to know if someone is stalking me."
Bobby went bright red. Everyone laughed. With that joke, Jared patted Bobby on the back, and, laughing, walked away with a reputation of someone who you wouldn't necessarily want to be friends with, but not the weirdest person in middle school. He still had a good sense of humor. Everyone had forgotten he had moved there without parents, and Bobby was still standing in the hall, forgotten by everyone. Well, almost everyone. Jared had looked back at Bobby, and taken off his glasses for only a second. The eyes suddenly flashed a glowing yellow-black, and Bobby was filled with a sudden chill that somehow told him Jared wasn't done with him yet. That Bobby would pay for exploiting that information. Bobby now knew exactly why the principal had backed down.



Bobby Gameston was riding his bike home the next week, feeling thoroughly depressed. All his friends had left him for Jared, who's reputation had been growing steadily throughout the week, to the point where he was one of the most popular people in the school. Suddenly, Bobby Gameston went from weird to downright mean, as he was still trying to collect information on Jared.
"Mom, I'm home!" he shouted. He got no response. Probably went to Vegas again, he thought. Sharon Gameston had always been a gambler. She had divorced her husband, and he had died in a car crash a year later. Sharon would often make unannounced trips to Las Vegas, Nevada, even though it was about a 4-5 hour drive. She would make it home the next day, or even the next week. So, Bobby was forced to learn how to take care of himself, and well. He was now a superb cook.
He started cooking himself dinner, shrimp with pasta, basil, and a delicious sauce. He sometimes liked being by himself rather that being with his mom, as when she was there, he usually had something like macaroni and cheese every night. She had the ingredients to make fine food, but lacked the knowledge to cook it. Bobby, however, had gained that from numerous cooking classes.
"URG!" Bobby had just stepped on a beetle. There was a rustling and hissing sound, and a huge mass of beetles that he hadn't even noticed around his feet retreated into the darkness of the underside of the cabinet. Bobby hated bugs. They had had a very odd infestation lately, Starting about when I showed that Jared had no parents, he thought. He laughed at himself. It had become something of a habit; whenever something bad happened, he related it in some way to Jared. The infestation, however, was not something to laugh about. They had just about every kind of insect you could imagine. Beetles, cockroaches, cicadas, ants, lice, tics, grasshoppers; you name it, they had it. One other funny thing was that all of them had wings. Even the bugs that weren't supposed to have wings had them. The exterminator had come, but they had just popped right back up. It was getting to be a serious problem.
Bobby thought of Jared. Earlier that day, Bobby, having been driven to the breaking point, had insulted Jared by calling him a bastard. Immediately, everyone turned on Bobby, even the few friends he had left. Jared looked cooly at him, and took off his glasses again. This time, when those eyes turned yellow-black, Bobby felt a horror rise up inside him. This was the last straw.
Bobby was so occupied in his memories, that he didn't even notice the swarm of insects slowly gathering behind him. He heard a clacking noise, and turned around. He dropped his stirring spoon as every bug in the house gathered together to form the most horrifying thing Bobby had ever seen. He was looking at a certain someone with no glasses. Jared smiled. Bobby screamed.



Sharon Gameston came home from Las Vegas the following morning. "Bobby! Wake up! Breakfast!" Her voice was horse and screechy. "Bobby! BOBBY! BOBBY!!!!" She walked upstairs, still calling him. She got to his bedroom. He wasn't there. "That's it, I'm calling the police. Good riddance to him if the police come and find he was hiding somewhere." she muttered to herself as she dialed 911.
"Hello, what emergency may you be having this fine morning?" answered a chipper female voice.
"Yeah, my son's disappeared," Sharon rasped, "and what are you so happy about?"
"Nothing, ma'am," the voice replied, instantly turning resentful. "So, what is your address?"
"I'm not going to give you my f****** address, you b****! Go rot in h***, you a******! I hope you-"
"MA'AM! PLEASE! We need your address to find your house, so we may commence the search for your son!"
"Oh, right," Sharon replied, her face going red not with embarrassment, but with anger. This was the kind of woman she was. "It's 202, Justice Drive, Hillview."
"Thank you, ma'am," the woman on the other end said angrily, and Sharon heard a click.
"Amazing how rude people these days can be," she muttered angrily, and waited for the police to arrive.
After hours of searching, the police came back to Sharon with the report. They had not found the boy, even though they had searched the entire city. They had, however, found, "A very fine white dust. It was lucky you had your doors closed, or it would have blown away. We'll take it back to the lab for analysis, it may be informative."
"All right," Sharon said, "and before you go, I must demand that you improve your service! The girl I talked to was extremely rude."
The two officers to whom she was talking to looked at eachother and rolled their eyes. They now knew how that new answering girl had felt when confronted by this lady.

1 week later, the police returned, perplexed. "Ma'am, we think we have an idea of what this is," the officer announced.
"Well? What?" Sharon asked.
"Well, ma'am, it seems to be…It seems to be human bone, ma'am."
Sharon looked stunned. "Human bone? But, it would be extremely difficult to shred human bone, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, ma'am," the officer replied, "that's one of the things that disturbs us about this case. However, there's one more thing about it…"
"What?" Sharon snapped.
"Well, we investigated the area where we found the dust, the whole house, in fact, but we only found your son's footprints, no one else's. In that case, it follows that the bone, well, belonged to…your son."
Sharon fell back into her chair. "Bobby? Is... dead? But... how? Who killed him?"
The officer looked deeply troubled. "Well, as I've already said, there weren't any more human footprints, but we did find the marks of insects. Insects of all kinds. We asked an exterminator to come, but he didn't find any. It looks like they cleared out at right about the time when Bobby died."
Sharon suddenly laughed. "Are you insinuating that bugs killed my son? Bugs?"
"Yes, ma'am, that's the only evidence we have. It's extremely unlikely, but..."
"I'll tell you what!" Sharon screamed angrily, "You, sir, are a FAILURE! You have NO COMMON JUDGEMENT! I WANT TO FIND WHO KILLED MY SON, AND YOU ARE TELLING ME THAT IT WAS LOWLY INSECTS? GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
"But ma'am, we still have information to analyze-"
"I DON'T CARE! I DON'T CARE! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, NOW!"
The officers turned around and quickly ran out of the house, leaving the woman to sob in anger and despair.



The weeks went by, and summer approached. The school was happily buzzing with summer plans, and everyone was excited. That is, everyone that was left was excited. The disappearances had been mounting, and for the first time ever, the people of Hillview neighborhood began to worry about their security. The panic had really started two months after Bobby had vanished, and everyone was questioned. However, no one asked seemed to know anything about what had happened. The police began to see connections between the disappearances, but no matter how hard they tried, they could not find any evidence that would help them in their investigations.
One warm summer's day, the children could all be seen being picked up by their parents in cars, rather than walking home as usual. Everyone, that is, except Jared. He walked back to his house as usual, opened the door, and walked inside. It was a beautiful house, spacious enough for a family of three or four. Of course, that was why Jared had been assigned this house: to give the impression that a family lived there. He looked around, smiling, then collapsed onto the couch in front of the TV. He reached over for the remote and turned on the news.
An anchorman with very, very jelled hair was smiling artificially at the camera, and he picked up in mid-sentence. "…and no, ladies and gentlemen, I do not think that the world will end in 2012." The crowd laughed; the man must have been finishing up a story on some lunatics that had predicted the apocalypse…again. Jared sighed, and continued listening. The anchorman's face had turned serious. "But now we must move on to a more serious topic. In the small neighborhood of Hillview, everyone knows everyone else. In that case, when neighbors begin disappearing, they notice very quickly. Bob Goldstien with the story."
The screen cut to a shot of a stout man standing in front of the school. "Well, Joel, here in Hillview, there have been a series of disappearances that the police have agreed are linked. It started with a boy named Bobby Gameston, and the most recent being another boy named Jason Hardy."
Jared smiled contentedly, his eyes briefly flashing black-yellow. (He had recently gained the power to control his power even more than before, so he now no longer wore his glasses.) Jason had been a real pain in the neck. He'd had fun with that murder.
The reporter continued, "The police still have no evidence to work with. Their report of Jason's disappearance stated, 'It was as if he vanished off the face of the planet.' Interesting obviously enough to upset the neighbors. Back to you, Joel."
Jared smiled. His enemies were dead, and life was good. He switched off the TV and was beginning to stand up when he froze. His enhanced hearing allowed him to hear a small scuttling sound. He slowly stood up and turned around. A scarab beetle clung to the opposite wall, staring at him. Its eyes briefly glowed a pure black. Jared jumped higher than any human could possibly jump as a short beam of black energy radiating from the scarab beetle sliced through the air with a sort of electronic humming. The beam slid into the TV. For a second, everything was silent, then the TV exploded, shards of glass and plastic flying everywhere. Jared, who had used his fingers and toes to stick onto the roof, jumped down and ran upstairs to his room, barricading the door behind him.
He immediately rushed across the room, opened the window, and jumped out. He landed on the roof of the next house over, and ran across the ceramic tiles. Though the tiles were fragile, he made no impact on them as he dashed away. One could have compared him to J.R.R. Tolkien's Legolas the elf, as he sprinted over the vast snowdrift. From his room he could hear the door smashing, and knew the beetles could not be far behind. He took a deep intake of breath and turned around. The scarab beetles were a swarm now, surging through the window. However, when Jared turned and stopped, the beetles stopped as well. They began forming a column, then the features of a tall woman began to emerge. Eventually, Jared was looking at a woman with long, black hair, skin so white it was nearly translucent. She had black lips, and black fingernails, and black antennae, but what was really disturbing were the eyes. The eyes had absolutely no whites, like Jared's turned when he called upon his powers, but instead of being a merging of yellow and black like Jared's, they were all black except for a ring of startling yellow where irises should have been. Jared stepped back. He was looking at the Hive Queen.
No one knew her name, she probably didn't even have one. She was the queen of Jared's hive, Jared's ruler. Jared's kind usually only saw her twice in their lives: When they were born, and when they died. She was usually the cause of those two things.
"You are generation 17, number 592?" she asked in a voice that sounded like a million insects rustling.
"I-I am," he gulped.
"You have become a rouge agent. Therefore, due to the attention you have brought to yourself and the hive in general, I have decided that you must be terminated."
Jared pretended to look terrified, while slowly edging his way backwards to the ledge of the roof. "No! Please! I'll control myself!"
The cool face was unsympathetic. "I am sorry, 592, but the decree has been made."
Then three things happened at the same time. The beetle image of the queen collapsed and burst towards him, he jettisoned himself off the edge of the roof and rocketed off in flight, and three men in black trench coats and tinted sunglasses rushed forwards through the cloud of insects.
Damn, he thought, it's her extermination agents. He began flying faster. Glancing back, he saw the three agents swooping in behind him, sending insects flying after him. Very large, sharp-tooth, nasty-looking insects. Jared gulped and flew faster.
Eventually, he thought he had lost them, so he flew down to rest in a nearby parking lot behind a warehouse. Catching his breath, he began walking away down the street, when a black trench coat caught his eye. He immediately turned the other way and ran, aware of people's indignant noises as the three men behind him shoved them aside. Fine. They could follow him, he had a few tricks up his sleeve. He was infinitely more powerful then them, even with their sonic wave guns, one of the only that could kill their kind. Young whippersnappers.
The three men saw him duck into an alleyway. Idiot, they thought, I don't know why the queen said he was one of the most dangerous of them all. He had just run into a dead end. Running into the alleyway, they all shouted, "Stop there-" but stopped there. He wasn't anywhere in sight. Looking around in confusion, they lowered their guns. That was a mistake. Before he knew what had hit him, the man on the right disappeared with a muffled yelp. The other two turned, and the one on the left disappeared, too. The middle man started backing up, gun raised, trembling with fear, when he stepped on something squishy. It was the obviously dead body of the man on the right, already starting to decay. He was about to scream when he disappeared as well.
Minutes later, Jared emerged from the alley wearing a new pair of sunglasses, and walked away down the street, smiling. This was the beginning of his independence.


Thunder boomed, and the rain began to fall. All over the small village, people were pulling out their umbrellas or taking shelter in their houses. All except one man dressed all in black, who was quickly being drenched to the bone, but didn't seem to care. After observing his surroundings, he began walking slowly towards the bar across the street. The bartender, whose name tag spelled "Charlie," had just put up the closed sign, and was cleaning up. The man didn't seem to care, because he pushed open the door and stepped inside.
"Hey, we're closed. Get out, I've gotta get home," Charlie barked.
The man stared at him for about two seconds, then turned around and flipped the sign on the door to "Yes, we are open!" The man's gaze returned to Charlie.
"Not anymore. Get me something, anything." Charlie hesitated, then turned away to fix the man's drink. As he turned away, he thought he saw a flicker of yellow black, somewhere around the man's face. He turned around abruptly. He looked perfectly normal. Charlie looked closer at the man's eyes, but aside from the fact that they were pale gray with only the faintest trace of pupils, they seemed normal.
"Something wrong?" the man asked.
"No, nothing," Charlie mumbled and turned away again.
Jared smiled, and leaned back on his stool, hands behind his head. He was currently in his favorite form, a thin but well built man of about twenty-four. His features where the same as his younger form, but more mature.
He had been on the run for about five years now, moving from small town to small town by motorcycle. Never big towns, too many agents of the queen there. By routine he made sure he was gone when about half the town knew him at least by sight. He had recently moved from a town in Massachusetts when someone invited him to their house for dinner. They ended up setting the table and waiting for an hour as their dinner grew stone cold for a guest that never came. Jared didn't care, this wasn't out of the ordinary. He had arrived here about an hour before, and booked a room in a motel.
As Jared was planning on what to do when he was done with his drink, when the door opened, and a college-age boy walked in. He had fairly short black hair, glasses, and green eyes. He was wearing a raincoat that was hanging off him slightly, and cargo pants. As he entered he took off his jacket, revealing a blue striped cotton shirt.
"Hi, Charlie! Open late tonight, then?" He had a very slightly nasal voice, and seemed continuously excited.
Charlie rolled his eyes. "Apparently," he muttered, slammed the drink down in front of Jared. "Four bucks," Charlie demanded, and Jared pulled out his wallet.
"Wait, put it on my tab," offered the young man. Charlie shrugged, and started cleaning mugs.
"The name's Eric, by the way, Eric Jones," Eric said, reaching over and shaking Jared's hand. Jared took a sip, then muttered, "Jared."
Eric began talking about the town, verbally walking him through. Jared nodded and drank. When he was done, he put the mug down on the counter and got up to leave. "Nice to meet you, Eric," he said, and walked out the door.
The rain had stopped, and the moon was out. Jared breathed deeply, and began walking back to his motel room. As he reached the door, he ran into something sticky. "Stupid spiderwebs," he grumbled, and pulled it off his face. He took a few more steps, and ran into another one. This one seemed thicker. Jared froze. Slowly, very slowly, he looked up. At first glance, the walls had seemed black, but he remembered that the walls had been covered by a sickly pink wallpaper. He kept staring, and realized that the walls seemed to be swaying and twitching. Jared began to back away, slowly, and stepped on something squishy. He turned, and realized that he was staring into the face of a huge spider.
Until now, it had been very quiet, sneaking up on him, but now it clicked its pincers, and lunged towards him. He moved out of the way just in time, realizing that the huge rustling sound he heard meant that the spiders from his room were streaming out, following him. He didn't bother running, his cover was already blown, so he jumped up and began to fly. Or, at least he would have, if the giant spider hadn't stuck its pincers into his leg. He called up a swarm of insects, and sent them at the spider. With luck, they would slow them down, but not neutralize them, as they ate insects.
He began limping quite fast to the bar. He couldn't fly because his leg was so injured, but he moved quickly all the same. Soon he reached the bar, just as Eric was being shoved out of the bar by a quite irritated Charlie.
"And stay out!" he shouted, and slammed the door in Eric's face, turning the sign on the door to, "Sorry, we're closed."
Eric slouched around, looked up, and saw Jared running towards him. "Oh, hi, Jared! Back again? Sorry, Charlie just closed the ba… the ba… the bar…"
Eric had now looked past Jared and seen the massive group of spiders, with the huge one leading. Eric went very pale, and started to fall down.
Idiot, Jared thought, and on his way past, grabbed Eric around the waist and carried him under one arm, never breaking pace. He ran around houses and up walls, but the spiders could do all of that, too.
Jared was starting to get tired. The spiders would soon overtake him, and he was so worried that he didn't pay attention to where he was going. He abruptly found himself in an alleyway, and realized that he was completely cut off. He was scared for a moment, then remembered that alleyways where his speciality. He reached out, calling all of the insects he could find to cluster around him. His gut wrenched, and the bugs came pouring in. As spiders are arachnids, not insects, he could not control them.
As the bugs coated Jared, Eric looked on in horror, wondering what the heck he had gotten himself in to. When the spiders had surrounded Eric and Jared, Jared simultaneously caused a fair amount of insects to form a platform and lift Eric into the air, and the other insects to flatten into a disc, and with the sound of a sonic wave, slice all of the spiders in half. It wasn't even messy, as the insects worked so fast and with such precision. Jared released the bugs, forgetting about Eric, hovering in the air. Eric fell five feet, and groaned.
"I think I sprained my ankle," he moaned. Jared rolled his eyes and sighed.
"Well, I guess I have to take you with me," he muttered. "The queen has seen you, and now she won't stop until both of us are dead. A sprained ankle is only going to slow us down."
Jared grabbed Eric's wrist, and dragged him off. "But what was that?" gasped Eric, who had been muttering incoherently ever since he'd been dropped.
Jared just looked at him, and kept dragging. "Better walk with me, Eric, or even more spiders will come for you…or worse."
Eric sped up substantially, and Jared heard no more from him. After a while, they reached the motel, hopped on to Jared's motorcycle, and headed off, not realizing that one spider had followed them all the way there. It looked on, clicking its pincers, and following them with its many eyes. The queen would not be happy about this.

Buh buh buhmm!!! I've read part of that, but I like the new additions.

Thanks!

I've read it before, but it's still good, and I want more! Post! Well, write first!

I shall!

Good!

I am back, and ready to post some more story! Yay!

... *Waits avidly*

Hey, I gave you another chapter! And I'm almost done with the next!

Oh... Ahem... *Awkwardly realizes there's a new post, and scrolls up to read* Nice! And, somewhat creepy...

Indeed. Actually, I'm going to begin working on a new story soon. Doesn't mean that I'm abandoning this one, though. My new one I think you will like…It's kind of a realistic fiction until the point where it turns into a horror story. The idea just kind of came to me, and I'm pretty excited!

Yay! I shall be waiting... And watching... In the night. O.o

O.o

Alright, maybe not... I'm not that much of a stalker. xD

No, that's Alex, right?

*Shudders* IN THE NIGHT! WITH A DINOSAUR!

xDD Amazing. It is. *Watches from a safe distance*

Although... Drew, last night: "Ooh! I'm looking through your window... I can't see anything, though." "Our garage door is open, and you can see my dad..." xDD

xD

Yeah, Lauren told me about that. xD

An excellent story, as is your grammar! You had better post more soon, or the bug people will kill you.

Yay, although, wouldn't that be counter productive? Wouldn't they want noone to share their secrets?

Ah, well, I shall write more, indeed. Thank you, Maddie!

Huzzah! Sorry, that's jsut a fun word to say. xD Good, write more.