hive minded

I once knew a junkie called the Queen Bee, and it was true to the extent that they all swarmed around her, fussing and caressing and feeding and feeding off her. She made them cut and stab and kill for her, and in return she cut and stabbed and killed each of them a little more every day. After they stopped wearing t-shirts with short sleeves whatever the weather and cast off the skins of their now destroyed lives, she swaddled her stillborns in her ever tightening embrace and set them to work in the hive. Payment was prompt but sometimes haphazard, she’d take what you had and a little bit more, and her house was crowded with testaments of the abruptly stalled dreams of those who’d fallen from grace. Galleried ranks of taxidermied animals, ice skates and chef’s knives, bonsai, golf clubs and sewing machines over populated the hallways of this neo-colonialist’s hut, her empire expanding, ever more.