so Bella puts on a mask when she goes outside and wears red, a color they can’t see when her mother says she has to play in the yard because bees aren’t the enemy. To prove it, they go to a farm where there are hundreds of the insects crawling over honeycombs, not paying the slightest attention to humans. Bees help the planet by pollinating plants, her mother says, and Bella wants to believe they’re good. But Tim got stung and died. You are not your brother. Bella was there when his lips swelled up and he staggered across the grass like a drunk. You are not allergic, as Bella is pushed out the door. Light bouncing off the trees, sprinklers attacking the lawn, robins tearing earthworms from the dirt, swallowing them in vicious gulps. Bella statues by the birdbath, willing her eyelashes not to move. Invisible in her strawberry red dress. Sweat coating her palms. She scans the air for insects. Gnat. Fly. Nothing. Moth. Mosquito. Nothing. Moth. Nothing. Butterfly. And she thinks she’s safe until she hear the awful bzzzzzz, faint at first then louder – BZZZZ – meaning their wings are beating a thousand times a minute, trading secrets, plotting, and she remembers Tim’s desperate eyes begging her to help him as he flailed on the driveway, his arms making useless circles, the dead bee stuck in his wrist, his tongue a purple doorstop blocking air from leaving his mouth. Flash of yellow and black by her chin. Those ugly stripes, hairy and cruel, stinger barbed like a fishhook. Yowling, Bella flees across the lawn like she and Tim did. Trying to outrun the bees, riding the wind’s back, daring death to catch them.

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Beth Sherman has had more than 150 stories published in literary journals, including Flash Frog, Fictive Dream, Tiny Molecules and Smokelong Quarterly. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and the upcoming Best Small Fictions 2025. She’s also a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. She can be reached on social media @bsherm36.