The Job of the Wasp by Colin Winnette

Author:Colin Winnette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Published: 2017-01-09T05:00:00+00:00

revolt

“

Boys,” I said. “Brothers. Please listen to me.”

A few of them turned away from their games. I realized I didn’t know a single face of those in the hall. I made a vow to myself to be more attentive. To ask more questions. To try to listen. To write down names if I had to. Imagine the kind of man you could be, I thought. Imagine all you could accomplish.

“I have a confession to make,” I said.

“You finished off the butter?” said one of the two boys playing cards.

I shook my head.

“You can’t stop masturbating?” said the other.

Anders stepped out of my room then, and into the hallway. His face was pale. His lips were moving.

“I haven’t allowed myself to become one of you,” I said. “I haven’t opened myself up to the use in our numbers, to the sheer force of a group of determined individuals, regardless of their names or history. I have carried myself as a loner, and you have all treated me as such.”

“Who are you again?” said one of the other boys.

“I am your brother,” I said. “We are brothers.”

“My brother lives in an orphanage in the village,” said the same boy. “You’re just a fat kid I’ve never met.”

“Listen,” I commanded.

Anders was trying to say something, but the words were not traveling the length of the hall. I tried to hurry.

“We are in danger,” I told them.

“Tell me something we don’t know,” said a boy who’d set up a pallet on the floor of the hall and was not getting up.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Nick, emerging from his room. The stings on his face and arms were still bleeding. “His stomach is full of our food and his mouth is full of his own lies.” He dabbed his face with the rag he had in his hand.

“Hours ago,” I said, “the Headmaster instructed me to tell you all that we were headed into a lockdown.”

A collective groan.

“He was to remain in his office,” I said. “But now he isn’t answering the door, and my fear is that something has happened to him, or is about to happen to us.”

I held up my hands to show I meant them no harm, but they did not stop eyeing me with suspicion. I had to accept the fact that they might never fully trust me, which did not mean we couldn’t work together. As soon as I accepted their suspicion as one of the terms of our arrangement, it might become possible for them to actually hear what I was saying and act according to my suggestion. Whereas if I battled their suspicion, I would never reach them. I would only reinforce the necessity of their lesser instincts.

I knelt before them. “Something terrible is happening,” I said.

“He doesn’t have any stings at all,” said the boy whose glasses would not stay on his face, stepping into the hall from Nick’s room.

“I was lucky,” I said.

Nick went as pale as Anders, who was still making his slow way down the hall, mumbling.

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