- May 18, 2001
- 7,856
- 344
- 126
In our last episode:
Last Autumn NuclearNed was in his yard moving a small stack of firewood, generally doing nothing but happily minding his own business. Unfortunately, a cowardly squad of suicide bees had been plotting to conclude the ongoing war once and for all with a surgical strike that would hopefully lead to Ned?s ultimate destruction. Armed with an experimental anti-Ned venom, the agents of evil attacked him unawares and left him struggling for life. After a high-speed getaway to the local hospital, Ned survived by the slimmest of margins, but found himself wondering if his bee-killing days weren?t at their end?
Present Day Tennessee
The bees have become smug and complacent; they seem to have assumed that they now have free reign over my property to do as they please. They build their nests anywhere they like without fear of me retaliating. They know they have me beaten; every now and again a sortie will perform a close proximity flyby just to remind me of where my place is in the new order. I cower in fear and vainly swat at them while running for cover inside the house. Their haunting jeers keep me from sleeping at night. An atmosphere of terror has descended on all the land, because there is nothing I can do to stop them without risking my very life?
?or so they have been lead to believe.
For their benefit, I?ve kept up the pretense that I live in mortal fear. I have not engaged them in any way since that fateful day last fall, which has fostered overconfidence in their stupid little bee brains. They believe that I am defeated. They believe that I am a broken shell of a man. They believe that they rule in my stead. But they are wrong.
In actuality, I?ve secretly been seeing an allergist, who has been injecting me with powerful serums on a regular basis. A few years from now, these treatments will eventually make me totally immune to any poisons that a lowly insect can concoct. In the meanwhile, my system is gradually coming back online, but is already better than it ever was before. I?m growing more immune to their insidious venoms on a daily basis. I?ve spent the last year biding my time, regrouping my strength, and allowing my vengeance to smolder. Where once I was merely a frail man, now I have been reshaped by science into something far deadlier and more powerful than I could have ever imagined. I am Ned 2.0. I am The Bee Scourge. Bees will soon quake at the mere mention of my name.
The beginning of the end for them was one day last week. My wife was watering flowers at the side of our house, when one of their egomaniacal captains decided to push her around. She?s a strong-willed woman and is loathe to subject herself to the will of a mere insect, so she gave it a contemptuous swat. That didn?t sit well with the little hellion, so he painfully blasted her on the hand. Had he stung me or my dog, I might have contented myself with terminating the lone offender. Instead, by his poorly chosen actions he enraged the woman, who in turn began chewing on my ear. It was made perfectly clear to me that around our house, there would be no lovin? as long as there was any buzzin?.
I awoke the next day at dawn. I went to my bookshelf and reviewed my leather-bound copy of the Bush Doctrine. The plan was perfectly clear: I would perform a series of lightning strike attacks on their various nests and destroy them all before any of their denizens even knew what was happening. There would be no call to neighboring hives for reinforcements. There would be no survivors. There would be no mercy.
And so the attacks began in earnest. I sprayed poison like no man has ever sprayed poison before. Glistening droplets of death covered each nest and everything nearby. As I doused them, wave after wave of enraged bees attacked, only to fall sickened and twitching at my feet. Soldier bees with really bad headaches flew around in confusion as their strength slowly ebbed. Mother bees clutched little baby bees to themselves in vain. They never saw it coming. Their worst nightmare had returned to life. I hovered over the twitching piles of bodies on the ground, just to ensure that their last sight in this life was of me taunting them as they slipped into unconsciousness.
I?m back, and I?m ready to party.
***UPDATE 6/24/2008***
This time it was me who enjoyed the bitter fruits of overconfidence.
Just two days after the events above happened, I was again happily enjoying a quick mow of my lower yard, secure in the knowledge that my mortal enemies had been dealt a decisive blow. With all the pretty pictures of burning nests gleefully dancing around in my head, I wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing. I walked right through an advance monitoring outpost they had quickly set up at the edge of my realm. One painful bee suicide later, and I found myself hauling my butt up the steep hill to my house as quickly as possible. I kept wondering if I should slow down a little so my pounding heartrate wouldn't surge the poison throughout my system quite as quickly.
Remember, for me bee venom is potentially fatal if I have a bad reaction.
Now the true test began as I sat in my kitchen intently staring at my pulsating ankle: would my windpipe swell up and close? Would my wife come downstairs to find my lifeless purple body in some contorted shape on the floor? I yelled at her to come down to witness whatever was to come. Minutes passed. Sweat rolled down my forehead. The wife got her license and keys just in case we had to fly down the highway to the hospital. The important number is 20: if that many minutes pass without a reaction, then I'm ok and the allergy shots I've been taking will have worked their magic. The minutes ticked off the clock.
And then with a huge wave of relief it finally happened: it became apparent to both of us that my defenses held. The bees and their evil plans were once again thwarted. I said a few prayers of thanks, hugged and kissed the wife, and renewed my vows to live a good life. Then the temporary feeling of euphoria subsided, and I turned my mind to more important things, like the total, smoking, and hopefully agonizingly painful annihilation of some of Hell's not-so-innocent spawn.
For a special problem like this, I determined that a special solution was needed. I procured a gallon or so of a specially formulated Middle-Eastern poison from my local supplier (with a special purchasing card, he lets me save $0.03 on the gallon). While this particular formula is becoming ever more difficult and expensive to purchase, its sheer bee-destroying power is unparalleled, and it has the particularly nice side benefits of being not only flammable, but also explosive.
I stole into their base under the cover of darkness. Either the fools hadn't left even a single sentry on guard, or else he was somewhere in the background knocking up that sweet little honey from the neighboring hive. Whatever the case, I slipped up on the entrance of their base completely undetected, and slowly poured a small quantity of the lethal toxin directly into the heart of their nest. The effects were nearly instantaneous. I never even heard a single buzz of protest as they all first slipped into a deep slumber, and then joined eternity forever.
Now I just have to make sure that they were the only ones...
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Last Autumn NuclearNed was in his yard moving a small stack of firewood, generally doing nothing but happily minding his own business. Unfortunately, a cowardly squad of suicide bees had been plotting to conclude the ongoing war once and for all with a surgical strike that would hopefully lead to Ned?s ultimate destruction. Armed with an experimental anti-Ned venom, the agents of evil attacked him unawares and left him struggling for life. After a high-speed getaway to the local hospital, Ned survived by the slimmest of margins, but found himself wondering if his bee-killing days weren?t at their end?
Present Day Tennessee
The bees have become smug and complacent; they seem to have assumed that they now have free reign over my property to do as they please. They build their nests anywhere they like without fear of me retaliating. They know they have me beaten; every now and again a sortie will perform a close proximity flyby just to remind me of where my place is in the new order. I cower in fear and vainly swat at them while running for cover inside the house. Their haunting jeers keep me from sleeping at night. An atmosphere of terror has descended on all the land, because there is nothing I can do to stop them without risking my very life?
?or so they have been lead to believe.
For their benefit, I?ve kept up the pretense that I live in mortal fear. I have not engaged them in any way since that fateful day last fall, which has fostered overconfidence in their stupid little bee brains. They believe that I am defeated. They believe that I am a broken shell of a man. They believe that they rule in my stead. But they are wrong.
In actuality, I?ve secretly been seeing an allergist, who has been injecting me with powerful serums on a regular basis. A few years from now, these treatments will eventually make me totally immune to any poisons that a lowly insect can concoct. In the meanwhile, my system is gradually coming back online, but is already better than it ever was before. I?m growing more immune to their insidious venoms on a daily basis. I?ve spent the last year biding my time, regrouping my strength, and allowing my vengeance to smolder. Where once I was merely a frail man, now I have been reshaped by science into something far deadlier and more powerful than I could have ever imagined. I am Ned 2.0. I am The Bee Scourge. Bees will soon quake at the mere mention of my name.
The beginning of the end for them was one day last week. My wife was watering flowers at the side of our house, when one of their egomaniacal captains decided to push her around. She?s a strong-willed woman and is loathe to subject herself to the will of a mere insect, so she gave it a contemptuous swat. That didn?t sit well with the little hellion, so he painfully blasted her on the hand. Had he stung me or my dog, I might have contented myself with terminating the lone offender. Instead, by his poorly chosen actions he enraged the woman, who in turn began chewing on my ear. It was made perfectly clear to me that around our house, there would be no lovin? as long as there was any buzzin?.
I awoke the next day at dawn. I went to my bookshelf and reviewed my leather-bound copy of the Bush Doctrine. The plan was perfectly clear: I would perform a series of lightning strike attacks on their various nests and destroy them all before any of their denizens even knew what was happening. There would be no call to neighboring hives for reinforcements. There would be no survivors. There would be no mercy.
And so the attacks began in earnest. I sprayed poison like no man has ever sprayed poison before. Glistening droplets of death covered each nest and everything nearby. As I doused them, wave after wave of enraged bees attacked, only to fall sickened and twitching at my feet. Soldier bees with really bad headaches flew around in confusion as their strength slowly ebbed. Mother bees clutched little baby bees to themselves in vain. They never saw it coming. Their worst nightmare had returned to life. I hovered over the twitching piles of bodies on the ground, just to ensure that their last sight in this life was of me taunting them as they slipped into unconsciousness.
I?m back, and I?m ready to party.
***UPDATE 6/24/2008***
This time it was me who enjoyed the bitter fruits of overconfidence.
Just two days after the events above happened, I was again happily enjoying a quick mow of my lower yard, secure in the knowledge that my mortal enemies had been dealt a decisive blow. With all the pretty pictures of burning nests gleefully dancing around in my head, I wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing. I walked right through an advance monitoring outpost they had quickly set up at the edge of my realm. One painful bee suicide later, and I found myself hauling my butt up the steep hill to my house as quickly as possible. I kept wondering if I should slow down a little so my pounding heartrate wouldn't surge the poison throughout my system quite as quickly.
Remember, for me bee venom is potentially fatal if I have a bad reaction.
Now the true test began as I sat in my kitchen intently staring at my pulsating ankle: would my windpipe swell up and close? Would my wife come downstairs to find my lifeless purple body in some contorted shape on the floor? I yelled at her to come down to witness whatever was to come. Minutes passed. Sweat rolled down my forehead. The wife got her license and keys just in case we had to fly down the highway to the hospital. The important number is 20: if that many minutes pass without a reaction, then I'm ok and the allergy shots I've been taking will have worked their magic. The minutes ticked off the clock.
And then with a huge wave of relief it finally happened: it became apparent to both of us that my defenses held. The bees and their evil plans were once again thwarted. I said a few prayers of thanks, hugged and kissed the wife, and renewed my vows to live a good life. Then the temporary feeling of euphoria subsided, and I turned my mind to more important things, like the total, smoking, and hopefully agonizingly painful annihilation of some of Hell's not-so-innocent spawn.
For a special problem like this, I determined that a special solution was needed. I procured a gallon or so of a specially formulated Middle-Eastern poison from my local supplier (with a special purchasing card, he lets me save $0.03 on the gallon). While this particular formula is becoming ever more difficult and expensive to purchase, its sheer bee-destroying power is unparalleled, and it has the particularly nice side benefits of being not only flammable, but also explosive.
I stole into their base under the cover of darkness. Either the fools hadn't left even a single sentry on guard, or else he was somewhere in the background knocking up that sweet little honey from the neighboring hive. Whatever the case, I slipped up on the entrance of their base completely undetected, and slowly poured a small quantity of the lethal toxin directly into the heart of their nest. The effects were nearly instantaneous. I never even heard a single buzz of protest as they all first slipped into a deep slumber, and then joined eternity forever.
Now I just have to make sure that they were the only ones...
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3