Bugs - A Narrative
An Illustrated Story (to get you through those Election Day worries)
Bugs - A Narrative
K.L. Orion
You awaken to a lively world.
The garden around your home is a habitat. A refuge. A world inhabited by rustling bugs.
Bugs.
Bugs of all different shapes and sizes.
You live in a world covered in bugs.
Big bugs. Small bugs. Round bugs. Slender bugs. Red bugs. Blue bugs. Gray bugs. Brown bugs. Fast and slow bugs. Flying and crawling bugs.
The world is alive with the bustling of bugs.
As you take a stroll through the garden, you can’t help but admire the strange diversity of the little creatures that inhabit this small world. To the bugs, the garden becomes vast prairies and luscious jungles. The garden becomes dense forests and rolling fields. The garden becomes a realm of wonder.
Long bugs. Stubby bugs. Short bugs. Tall bugs. Jumping bugs. Crouching bugs. Bright bugs. Dark bugs. Multi-colored bugs. Spotted bugs. Striped bugs. Blank bugs.
Bugs with long necks. Bugs with strange horns. Bugs with peculiar grabbers on their faces. Bugs with armor. Bugs with wings.
Bugs with long legs. Bugs with short legs. Bugs with big heads. Bugs with small heads. Bugs with every combination of proportions imaginable.
As you venture through the garden, you ponder the curiosity of the bugs around you. You notice tiny colorful ones darting from plant to plant, chirping tiny songs that combine into a beautiful chorus of nature. You watch a few big, round bugs gather together in the grass, touching and pushing and rolling over each other. You see a bug camouflage with the vegetation around it, waiting for another unsuspecting bug to get close enough to strike.
Bugs fly past your feet, past your head. They crawl and jump away from each of your footsteps. Everywhere you look, there are bugs. Their splash of colors dazzle the garden, like a shattered rainbow.
Your curiosity compels you to explore more. To find more bugs.
So you venture beyond the safety of the garden and all the bizarre bugs its vegetation has to offer. You travel away from your home, looking for a new place to adventure with new bugs to discover.
And eventually, you find it.
You come across a colossal hive, a colony of very interesting and odd bugs. These hive bugs also explore far away from their hive. They’ve even ventured into the garden from time to time. But here, they collect in the masses, all busy working away for the sake of the hive.
They bumble around, each member of the hive filling a different role or job. Some are workers, keeping the hive running. Some are guardians, protecting the hive from threats. Even fewer are leaders. The hive serves the leaders, the leaders serve the hive.
You curiously watch the buzzing of hive bug activity below. They are very fascinating. You draw closer. But these bugs don’t ignore your presence. They don’t just scatter and regroup at every one of your footfalls. They panic. They reorganize. They defend themselves.
They launch a counterattack. They hit you with stings and bites and venoms of all sorts, doing everything in their power to repel you. To defeat you.
Their efforts only anger you.
The pain of their stings and bites and venoms drive you to violence. You lash out, defending yourself. You thrash your arms through the air. You stomp down on the ground.
You’re too big for their hive. With every move, you damage the hive, demolishing the colony’s hard work. So they attack more. More stings. More bites. More venom. And with more pain, your frenzied defense gets more hectic.
You thrash. You kick. You stomp.
You thrash. You kick. You stomp.
You thrash. You kick. You stomp.
You thrash. You kick. You stomp.
You thrash. You kick. You stomp–
CRUNCH!
You look down in the footprint of your last stomp. There lies one of the worker bugs, crushed. The life spills out of its squashed body like the floodwaters from a burst dam. A tiny life, perhaps insignificant, but a life nonetheless, taken by your recklessness.
This tiny bug, no matter how insignificant, was alive.
Alive until you ruined it.
The guilt is immeasurable. You’ve demolished much of their hive. You might be in pain, but it is pain you can take. Your life isn’t on the line. That can’t be said about theirs.
So you flee.
You run from their barrage of stings, bites, and venom. You run away from their hive. You run so fast that they cannot keep up with you. You run all the way until you are back in the safety of your garden, with the safety of the defenseless bugs who reside there.
And you lie down in the grass, lying in the presence of that shattered rainbow who crawls, jumps, flutters, and frolics all around you.
Bugs.
Bugs everywhere.
Thank You So Much For Reading
You viewership and dedication of time means a lot to me. I’ve always wanted to tell stories, and it feels so nice to finally put another narrative out.
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But whether you did any of that or not, thank you once again for taking the time out of your busy and (let’s be honest) probably stressful schedule to ponder perspective with me.
The Narrative Collection Thus Far…
Plus a maybe narrative…
Love your writing but, why are most of your illustrations monsters and not the bugs your story is about?