Hornets

Twelve hornets stung me.  Me and my friend were in the garage inventing a new kind of computer.  We heard a buzzing noise and thought it was the computer -- we thought it was finally turning on.  I went to check the plug because we hadn't even plugged it in yet.  There were hornets flying all around the power strip.  I tried to scare them off with my arm and they swarmed my exposed skin.

The computer was stupid, it didn't even work.  We weren't using enough of my ideas.  I secretly hoped the hornets were nesting in the computer so we would have to throw it away and start from scratch and I could exert more control over the project.

My friend thought he had some hornet traps in the shed, so he went to look for them.  I told him I'd stay outside the garage and guard the computer.  I sat on a big rock next to the driveway to wait.  My friend's older brother was looking out at me from his bedroom over the garage.  He yelled something about me tasting his brother's nuts.  I pretended I couldn't hear him because the window was closed.  He was always down in the garage calling us names and telling us we weren't smart enough to invent a new computer, which made us feel bad about ourselves and made it difficult to work at maximum speed and confidence.  One time he put several of our most important computer chips in the microwave and ruined them.  Overall he had been one of the most severe impediments to our inventing a computer.

My friend came back from the shed.  He hadn't found the hornet traps in there.  He said he now wasn't sure his family had ever had hornet traps because the box that he thought had hornet traps in it was really for a yellow hose.  He'd mistaken the hose on the box for a hornet.  I suggested we start a new computer but my friend said that was "unworkable," which is what he said about most of my computer ideas.  Instead he told me I had to go in the garage to get it.  He said we could set up a table out on the driveway and work on the computer under the hot sun.  He assured me the hornets wouldn't sting me because I was covered in negative pheromones now.  It was difficult for me to argue because he knows more about insects than I do.

I was rubbing dirt on my exposed skin to protect it from more stings when we heard my friend's older brother walk out of the house into the garage.  We generally tried to not leave the computer unmonitored when he was around because he often performed mischief on it.  We heard him walk over to the computer, then cackle, then we heard hornets, then my friend's brother shouting that he had been stung, and it sounded like he fell on something.

My friend ran inside to check on his brother.  I ran inside the house and called the police and reported two hornet sting victims at my friend's address with a third person putting himself in sting's way.  I got dirt all over the floor and walls.  I heard sirens coming up the street, but they'd incorrectly sent a fire truck.  The firefighters burst into the garage and started blasting everything with water.  The computer was sitting on the table and it got hit with a big blast.  It wobbled and fell onto the ground and cracked open.  Something thick and green and corrosive leaked out, fast and heavy, like the computer had been filled to the top with it.  My friend's brother was on the ground right next to where the computer landed and the sludge seemed to pour itself onto his skin, like something with agency, or like a falling cake.  His skin blistered in a slow flash all the way up his arm to his shoulder and he passed out.  The firefighters tried to spray the green ooze with their hoses, but it wouldn't dilute -- the force of the water just broke it up and flecks of green landed on the exposed skin of my friend's brother and my friend and the firefighters, and penny-sized blisters ripped themselves open like hungry buds, so I ran outside.

They were all in the hospital for a while.  When my friend got out I convinced him to glue the computer back together and we tried to sell it to Best Buy, but they weren't interested, so we left it in the corner of my friend's driveway.  My friend's brother's hands had melted off mostly, but one day he kicked the computer down to the curb and they took it away with the trash.  We didn't care by that point, though.  The computer was a failure but I feel the process of inventing the computer taught us valuable critical thinking skills that will help us in the future.  No one can go in that garage anymore because there are simply too many hornets, and my friend says it's hard to fall asleep in his house now, because the whole house shakes with the buzzing.