MicroHorror

Wallace was thirty-five and lived with his mother. He was an entomologist, and it was more than a day job to him. He came home from work and spent hours in his basement lab, studying the mating habits of wasps, the way worker bees communicate, the whole concept of pheromones, and how insects will act different ways based on the pheromones they sense in the air.

His mother Betty didn’t understand it, but she liked that he was still living with her. She ran a perfume shop in town, and she told her customers, “He can’t get married; he has to take care of me when I get old.”

Plus, she didn’t think any girl was good enough. Most girls, if you took away the makeup, the clothes, and the perfume, what were they? Not much, she thought.

When Wallace brought Apis around the first time, his mother hated her. Apis was a scientist too, who worked at Wallace’s company. She had thick black glasses and mousy brown hair and big white horse teeth. She wore clunky shoes and no makeup and dresses that didn’t fit her.

Wallace’s mother was appalled. The girl didn’t even try to fix herself up. Amazingly, though, Wallace was madly in love with her. Betty noticed the look in his eyes when he was around Apis. It was a look she hadn’t seen before. He even started wearing a minty aftershave, and he got his messy hair cut.

Then, he started not coming home at night. He would call and say he was staying at Apis’s.

That’s when his mother started spending time in his basement lab, reading his books and studying his insects.

She learned all about pheromones.

One day, Wallace told her he was taking Apis on a picnic for her birthday. He wanted to give her a present.

“I have just the thing,” Betty said. “A bottle of perfume. I have a lovely scent in the store that would be perfect for her.”

Wallace wasn’t sure if Apis wore perfume, but he finally agreed.

The next day Betty gave him a little red box with a gold bow on it. “Give it to her when you’re at your picnic,” she said. “She’ll love it.”

So a day later Wallace gave Apis the little bottle while they were sitting on a blanket having a picnic lunch. She blushed, and gave him a peck on the cheek, and then opened it and said it was perfect, so sexy. It smelled earthy, honeyed, even a bit peppery. She put a little dab behind each ear, and one down between her surprisingly perky breasts.

Wallace looked at her with adoration.

He was so entranced with her that he did not hear the noise behind him, which was like a hundred cars with engines that were making that noise when you can’t get them to start. That gnashing, grinding noise.

That angry, buzzing noise.

It got louder, but Wallace still didn’t seem to hear it. All he could do was look at Apis with love and lust in his eyes.

Apis was facing the forest behind Wallace, and she saw something like a black cloud coming out of it.

“What’s that coming out of the woods?” she said, squinting through her thick glasses. “It sounds like a lot of very angry wasps, but why would they–”

Her fingers went to her ears, and to her chest. To the places where she’d put the perfume spiked with pheromones by Wallace’s mother.