Hello again, Steemit. Today I will be sharing a personal, TRUE story that happened to me eight years ago, when I was a Junior in high school. Sadly I don’t have any pictures left from it, but I will do my best to immerse you all as much as possible.
Back in 2009 I was seventeen years old, living with my mom in a three bedroom house. The neighborhood was quiet and peaceful, save some loud arguments from time to time, and the neighbors themselves were kind. My story begins one hot summer day in July. I had awoken early in the morning to the sounds of semi-rhythmic clicking and occasional drips from above me. I woke with a start, as though I had just had a nightmare. I don't remember what I dreamed of but I do remember waking at an absurdly early hour, it was right around five in the morning. The rest of that day went by like normal, I practiced on the piano, and I read the last few chapters of Velocity by Dean Koontz.
It's important to know that my bedroom was on the end of an upstairs hallway, right next to the stairs, which come up directly in front of the door, so there is a square of flooring that hinges up and down, like a drawbridge over them to let me into the bedroom. This design was so cool to me in the beginning, I didn't just claim the room, I demanded it.
The next night I had the greatest dream I've ever had. I owned an off-the-lot-new Corvette, My life was in full swing, with a career in some form of genetics or chemistry, and the woman of my dreams was wrapped in my arms and brandishing a bright white gold wedding ring with a glittering diamond set in it. I was in heaven.
"I love you." I said to my perfect wife. Words I find myself having almost forgotten now over the last three years years.
She looked at me, with those deep, forest green eyes and a smile even more captivating than anything else. When she opened her mouth to respond however, The greatest moment of my life became a horrendous nightmare. The surging drone that projected from her mouth was like a cellphone vibration set to earthquake volume. My eyes snapped open wide, and I saw a black cloud of buzzing terror over my head, not more than three and a half feet away. The hornets above me numbered at least thirty. My instinct kicked in almost immediately, I rolled out of bed onto my floor and did a crouching run, stark naked, to my bedroom door and opened it and stepped through, spinning around quickly and slamming it shut, only to realize that I was now standing on the ledge only three or four inches in length over my staircase. I had forgotten to put my "drawbridge" back down before bed.
Narrowly avoiding death by hornets and serious injury by method of staircase, I hopped the ledge and called an exterminator, escaping without a single bite or sting. When the man arrived to get rid of my the little buggers he was in full gear. He asked us where we had our infestation and once told, went straight to work. I admire his bravery now that I am thinking about it, because he had to stand on a ladder and gas a nest of aggressive European hornets the size of a football. They had nested in the ventilation shafts of my bedroom and chewed through the soft foam ceiling tiles.
After our exterminator left, we had to clean up what I like to call "wall to wall hornet carpet." Every step crunched, almost like snow underfoot, but much...chunkier...nastier. We (my mother, one of my best friends and myself) went to work cleaning it all up by broom and Shop-Vac. The cleaning took about 2 hours, after which... I went to the windows.
The first one felt stuck like there was something holding it in place, it took quite a bit of strength to pull it open, and when I did, I was met with an echoing pop! as a cascade of hornet corpses flooded out of the windowsill. It appears as though they had jammed themselves into the windows to escape the gas. Before anything else, I opened the other window to be greeted by the exact same pop and cascade of carcasses, prolonging the cleaning another hour.
Well I've got shivers thinking about that, I hope your skin isn't crawling right now, but I do hope you enjoyed the story.
upvotes and follows are appreciated greatly, and as always, let me know what you think! What was your most horrifying experience? I check back on my writing all the time and will certainly respond to your comments.