The twelve wasps of Christmas

Hello readers! I present to you this week a haunting tale of home invasion. For the last ten days, an ominous presence has lurked within my house, detectable only through the slightest scuttling movements in the corner of my eye, or by a dull, incessant droning through the darkness. Locking the doors and securing the windows has achieved nothing. I should be the only living creature within these walls, and yet the prickling at the back of my neck warns me to be careful – to constantly question whether I am alone. Let this tale be a warning to you all.

Act One

The initial sighting occurred ten days ago, when the first snows of winter were decaying in gritty heaps beneath hammering rain, and when the wind was starting to howl down the chimney. The grim weather seemed determined to remind me of the worst that winter could bring, but in doing so, it also made me glad of the warmth and tranquillity of my home. Little did I know that this tranquillity was about to be shattered. Wind and rain can be shut out, yes – but other creatures cannot.

It was the crack of dawn when I discovered an unlikely visitor lying on my bathroom floor. To find that I had been sharing my residence, quite unwittingly, with any living creature was a disturbing surprise, and yet I didn’t feel immediately threatened. The small, contorted body appeared to be lifeless – and for a while I merely stared at it, not believing that it was truly there, or understanding how it could be there. Then, in the flat, grey light streaming in from the clouded sunrise, I saw a twitch in its crooked limbs. Before my eyes, its body rose from the bathroom floor, and a deep, dull drone filled the air.

In that instant, dear reader, I acted on instinct alone. All trace of tiredness was banished from my system in a flash of desperate fury. Even while my eyes were locked with the dark, droning creature rising slowly from the floor, my mind was rifling through the resources in my immediate surroundings, searching for anything that could be used as a weapon. My slipper had made it into my hand before I had any semblance of a plan.

Across the room, the creature was already sinking back to the floor, seemingly unaware that it had been discovered. The droning ended as suddenly as it started, and my ears were left ringing in the silence. I watched the creature crawl in hapless circles around the bathroom floor, and although it appeared to be minding its own business, I knew this uneasy peace wouldn’t last. There was no earthly way that this creature and I could coexist – and so there was but one course of action.

The creature met its end under the sole of my slipper. It took more than one blow to bring it down; indeed, after several failed swipes I entered something of a manic, desperate trance, until the body had been bludgeoned beyond recognition into a heap at the edge of the bathmat. Breathing heavily through my teeth, I stood up and stepped back, clenching and unclenching my fists as I stared down at my handiwork. It took several seconds before I could return my foot to the tainted slipper – but the bathroom floor was unbearably cold first thing in the morning, and my revulsion was already fading.

There followed a few minutes of bitter celebration. The violence of the encounter had left me trembling, and yet I couldn’t help but feel some satisfaction as I scraped the oozing remains up from the lino and dropped them into the bathroom bin. A befitting end, I thought. A just price to pay for daring to enter my territory, and threatening my peace.

I soon calmed down and continued the rest of my day, glad that the situation had been resolved so quickly and with relatively little fuss. However, as I left my house for work and headed off down the icy street, I couldn’t help but wonder how such a small, twisted creature had survived this late into the year. The nest from which it came had undoubtedly started to collapse at the end of summer, as the cold set in and the food ran out. I supposed that it must have been some grizzled veteran – one of the last survivors of its clan – and I even reflected that the creature had done well to make it so far. It had survived the first snows and the howling winds, all to meet its end on the sole of a slipper.

Act Two

Little did I know that the haunting was far from over. That evening, having returned home from work in the dark, I entered the bathroom and found a disconcertingly familiar scene. For the briefest moment, I thought that the creature had somehow risen from the bin. In exactly the same patch of floor lay an almost identical outline, with its little antennae twitching and its vivid body swaying up and down. This one didn’t even get a chance to leave the ground, however. Within seconds it had been hit with the full force of a bottle of drain unblocker, powered downwards by an unstoppable combination of fear, confusion, and gravity. And when the tiny body kept crawling, the drain unblocker came back for round two. Then round three.

The battle ended with another black and yellow corpse being peeled from the floor and deposited in the bin. However, this second encounter had sown a seed of niggling doubt in my mind. The first appearance could be chalked up to chance, unlikely as it had been. But the second visitor, showing up in the same place, within twelve hours of the first, appeared to suggest a trend – the cause of which didn’t bear contemplation.

The next morning brought a beautiful pink sunrise, but my heart was heavy as I ascended the stairs to the bathroom. There, on the floor, just as I had expected, another unwelcome visitor awaited me. I felt a joint rush of dread and vindication. I was right to have suspected a bigger picture. But that meant my trials were far from over.

The third critter met its end in a similar way to the second (at the wrong end of the bathroom cleaner) and it also received a burial in the bathroom bin. In this moment, I knew that I had a war ahead of me. Somehow, these creatures were worming their way into my bathroom, and they were probably coordinating their assault. The most likely entrance was the window, which had been left partially open, and so I attempted to close it, only to find the corpses of two striped soldiers who hadn’t made the journey. They joined their fallen comrades in the bin. Then I pulled the window fully closed, hoping – praying – that this would bring the invasion to an end.

Act Three

That evening, I returned from work with an artificially placid demeanour – forcing myself not to hope for success, or to let down my guard. I knew I had to be ready for an ambush, but when I climbed the stairs to the bathroom and paused in the doorway, I saw no sign of a new visitor. All was silent, and when I reached in to turn on the light, no foul, pulsating body presented itself on the floor. From the doorway, I scanned the walls, the window, the towels… And for once, the coast was clear. I let myself dare to hope that closing the window had solved the problem – that the threat was gone.

However, I remained pragmatic despite my apparent success. Through the evening, whenever I had cause to ascend the stairs to the bathroom, I always listened out for the telltale droning, and I always paused in the doorway to survey the walls and floor. On each occasion, I was greeted with nothing but silence and stillness. If I had only known then what I know now, I would not have dared let my hopes rise so high. But what else was I to think? The window was the obvious entry point, and now the room was sealed.

It was almost eleven when tragedy struck. I had retired for the night, and had been reading my book by the flickering light of my bedside lamp (an electrical fault, no doubt, but it gives the place atmosphere) when nature called. In my hubris, I had consumed more camomile tea than was sensible – forcing me to ascend to the bathroom once again. I still wasn’t entirely complacent, dear reader – far from it – but perhaps I did not survey the lino as thoroughly as I ought to have; either that, or the creature was hiding in some dimly lit corner. For there was a creature. And that creature was waiting to strike.

It is, perhaps, typical that the lurking presence would make itself known when I was at my most vulnerable. I sat upon my throne, surveying my kingdom through narrowed eyes, ever alert for the smallest of movements, and yet my paranoia was all for nothing. This creature didn’t make a sound. The first I knew of its existence was a sharp pain in the sole of my left foot as I stood up – and my instant response was furious denial. I had spent so long fearing this moment that, when it arrived, I refused to believe it had come to pass. It could not be.

I looked down as the pain continued to grow, and pulled off my slipper to reveal a creature writhing against my skin, with its body mangled, its legs crushed, and its sting delved deep into my sole. I emitted a shriek of rage, and batted the thing as hard as I could with my slipper, sending it plummeting onto the bathmat in a tangle of scrabbling limbs. Its sting remained embedded in my skin, leaving me to pull the damn thing out myself – a tiny, milk-white needle about four millimetres long, which had been wedged in about as deeply as it could go. Needless to say, dear reader, that some colourful language escaped me at this point. It will not be repeated here. I dropped to my knees and battered the six-legged culprit into oblivion with my shoe, then hefted its mashed corpse into the bin with the rest.

Sleep did not come easily to me that night. There was the pain, for one thing – worse than anything I had been fearing. It had been several years since I was last stung, and never before had I been forced to fish the stinger out myself. I reflected on just how sheltered my life truly is, for a creature so small to cause me such anguish. And through all my cursing and grumbling, I wondered how it came to be there, and whether it was the last. This would be a fitting way for the story to end, I thought. The haunters had won in their efforts to teach me some invaluable life lesson, and now they would leave me in peace – hobbling, bitter and humbled.

Final Act

It wasn’t to be. The next morning, I hauled myself up the stairs on one leg, and peered into the bathroom to see a creature running in circles on the shower glass. At this point I brought in the heavy machinery. A magazine from downstairs, shoved through my letterbox by the council, proved itself a valuable asset. Rolled up into a club, it took only one blow to end the beast’s life – and it landed whole and motionless, with its legs reaching for the heavens.

Another critter materialised before the day was out. This one was throwing itself at the window, seemingly desperate to escape – almost as if it knew I was coming for it with my fist clenched around weaponised junk mail. My wounds were still raw (in fact, I was still hobbling), and at this point, I descended into mania. I returned to the bathroom with a roll of brown tape, and preceded to block up any conceivable entry points: the vents on the window, cracks around the frame, and a suspicious hole to the attic that had been left by an electrician with unacceptably low standards. This, I thought, would prove where the creatures were getting in.

How wrong I was. Over the next few days, wasps kept materialising in my bathroom (yes, wasps – if this hadn’t been explicit enough yet), and each time, they were battered into a gritty, yellow paste on the surfaces of my bathroom. At this point, there have been twelve in total, the last of which even had the audacity to fly into the hallway and follow me back down the stairs. This one I beheaded. Not intentionally, I might add – although I felt a calm satisfaction when I saw what I had done (that magazine from the council is really pulling its weight). In fact, I have left its head in the centre of the bathroom windowsill as a warning to the others, because at this point there is no denying that the house has descended into an all-out war. It’s kill or be stung (again).

In summary…

Thus ends the tale of the twelve wasps of Christmas. I have no idea where they are coming from, but if this is some twisted, Dickensian parable, the only thing I am learning from these apparitions is brutal violence and a fear of the bathroom. The only upside I can see is that this will make a catchy Christmas carol, where every day I am given a steadily increasing number of wasps. Hopefully next week will be better.