At the edge of town, there sat a rusting playground. There was one slide, some monkey bars, but most importantly, there was a swing set.
The swing set had been her favourite. Every day after school she would run to the field, to the playground, and swing until her parents might start to worry about her. When she had been really young, her peers would join her. But the older they got, the less people joined her; their parents had told them they weren’t allowed, they said. She never quite understood why.
On really hot days, the bugs played with her. Especially the bees. The playground was alive with noise, not just the creak of the swing’s chains, but a buzzing sound you could feel in your chest. The park was partially unfinished; there were many holes in the metal beams holding the swings up. From those holes, bees would fly.
They would fly around her as she swung into the air and would ride her shoulder while she slid down the slide. She couldn’t touch them right away, however, or else they’d return to the beams.
Over time, she learned that if she saved part of her lunch and placed it on the opposite swing for them, the bees would let her pet them. And if she saved them her whole lunch, they’d let her taste their honey. After all, if she continued to go home hungry, her parents would start to ask questions.
She returned to the playground now. Her parents had since passed; her peers had moved on. It seemed no one had played here since she had moved and grown up. The monkey bars were shorter than her now and the slide seemed far less scary. She remembered the first time she had been stung by the bees, how she had fallen from the monkey bars with a throbbing spot on her arm. How a welt grew and took days to go away. How every time after that: she got stung. No matter how good of a lunch she offered.
She sat on a swing, now too small for her to sit comfortably. It took her a few minutes, but she got it in motion again, lazily drifting back and forth, the chains groaning with the effort of each movement.
Just like she had hoped, once she got it moving the buzzing blanketed the playground again, a comforting sound. It was as if she could hear the buzzing vibrating directly in her brain, as if she could taste the sweet honey on her tongue once again. How she had longed for these feelings.
Her skin started to squirm, an itch wrapping all around her spine and up her neck and down her arms. Her arm looked like it had been stung again, welts covering the length of it. She scratched and scratched at them, her nails desperately digging into skin until a welt tore open.
Thousands of bees flew out of her arm, some crawling on her skin first. No blood spilled, only a thick amber honey.
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