Chapter Fourteen: Read this! It is truly un-bee-lievable!

Player: Katrina Longingale

Location: Government Hospital

“Bees are a touchy subject, so try not to even think about them when you’re speaking to him, okay?”

That’s what Gracie told me about the boss.

But the only thing I could think about while looking at him was bees.

After reaching the end of the hallway, we came to a door that led to a staircase. Gracie offered to carry me down, but I refused—at least until I almost slipped because the pink blood on my feet was acting more like a greased-up banana peel than anything sticky or solid. That was the moment I realized pride was overrated, so I let her scoop me up.

At the bottom of the stairs was a single door with the words "Beginning of the Middle" written on it. I didn’t remember any songs being referenced here, but feel free to suggest one.

Gracie set me down, and we both started walking toward the door. I let her go first—just in case there really was a dog with a gun waiting on the other side. (Before you judge me for being heartless, I did warn her. She just shrugged and said, “Oh, you say the silliest things,” as if I’d just told her the sky was purple or that squirrels secretly run the government. (Which are all possible things of happening, but currently I have no proof of them to be true.) Then she skipped right out the door with all the confidence of someone who clearly wasn’t expecting to be shot at by a gun-toting canine.

I looked at the ground outside to make sure there weren’t any puddles, and followed her through.

Outside, we stepped onto a cracked sidewalk that bordered a nearly empty parking lot. The afternoon sun cast long shadows, making the faded lines on the asphalt look like tired reminders of better days. In one of the spaces stood a man—alone. No cars, no buzzing engines, just him, standing as if he owned the entire silent lot. His posture was rigid, like a statue placed there to keep watch, but his eyes scanned the horizon with a strange mix of boredom and authority. The stillness around him made the air feel heavier, as if the empty lot was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.

I knew I needed to make a good first impression. So, I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin, and tried to walk with all the confidence in the world. That lasted all of two seconds before my slippery feet betrayed me, and I fell flat on the ground.

Gracie gently helped me up, her smile warm and encouraging. “Don’t worry, you’re doing great!” she said cheerfully as she steadied me. Together, we walked toward the man.

I braced myself to finally comprehend the man—the boss, the mysterious creator of all those weird posters plastered everywhere. Gracie didn’t hate him, which was… well, a small mercy. Maybe he wasn’t a total monster. All I had to do was not think about bees. Bees. Bees. Bees.

Wait! That’s exactly what I’m not supposed to be thinking about. Bees really shouldn’t be this distracting.

Well, maybe I could just focus on his clothing. The man was wearing yellow with black stripes—a walking warning sign if ever there was one. The bold pattern screamed “bee” louder than a hive on a hot summer day. It was impossible to ignore, especially with the way the fabric clung to his frame like he’d dressed in the dark and thought, “Yes, this will do.”

Why on earth would he cosplay as a bee if he hated them? Was it some twisted fashion statement? A bizarre attempt at intimidation? Or maybe he just had a weird sense of humor, using the very thing he feared as a costume to ward off anyone who might ask questions. Either way, it made me wonder what other contradictions this man was hiding beneath those stripes.

I realized I was still thinking about the bugs I wasn’t supposed to be thinking of. Okay, maybe I’d focus on his face instead, I decided.

His face... looked nothing like a puppy.

Gracie thought he was cute? What? Does she also think Freddy Krueger is attractive?

I don’t like to call people ugly, but…

No matter. As long as looking at him didn’t make me think of bees.

Bees.

Wait! I was thinking of bees again!

Maybe it was the way the man positioned himself, arms crossed like a guard, but it made me think of a bee guarding a flower with the best pollen. I half expected The Boss to start buzzing.

Then there was the strange blue smudge on his lips. Ice cream, I hoped. Please, please let it be ice cream and not some alien blood souvenir from a recent encounter. The thought of extraterrestrial lip balm made me shudder.

If he was here to greet people fresh out of intense training, he could’ve at least put on a facial expression that said “Welcome, recruit!” instead of “annoyed scary guy who just found out someone ate the last donut.” He looked like someone who’d just been told the coffee machine was broken indefinitely.

Honestly, the more I looked at him… I think I’d rather be stung by a bee.

“Hidey ho!” the Boss called out, his voice booming down the sidewalk with a surprising mix of cheer and authority. “Katrina, are you the one covered in pink snot?”

I shuffled forward, my cheeks burning as I mumbled, “Yes.” (Though I was pretty sure I was covered in pink blood.) Then, just as an awkward silence threatened to settle, it hit me—I should probably try to seem happy to see him. With a forced smile, I added, “I mean, it’s Katrina here, and it’s just the bees’ knees to meet you!”

The Boss’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Bees?” he said.

Right then, Gracie leaned in, her voice a quiet whisper right by my ear. “Hey, Katrina,” she said, “Remember when I said not to bring up certain things?”

Before I could even blink, she spun around and addressed the Boss with smooth confidence. “She said it’s the cream’s knees to meet you,” Gracie explained casually, “Like the ice cream on your canine teeth.”

The Boss glanced down at his mouth, then back up at us, a small, amused smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

Oh, nice save. ‘Cream’s knees’—yeah, I’m pretty sure I just caught that gem on TV like, two seconds ago.

“Well, nice to meet you, Katrina,” the man said, extending a hand with a firm grip. “You can call me The Boss. With a capital ‘T’ in The.”

I reached out and shook his hand, feeling the clamminess from my nerves. I wondered if he noticed—though, honestly, the streaks of pink blood on my palms were probably stealing the spotlight.

“Nice to meet you too,” I lied, forcing a smile that felt more like a grimace. Inside, my mind was doing everything it could to avoid the one thing I was obsessively thinking about: bees. Bees buzzing, stinging, invading every corner of my thoughts.

What I really needed to say was something way less polite. Something along the lines of: “Can I quit the whole FBI job? And, while you’re at it, could I maybe get a different doctor? Preferably one who doesn’t make me question my sanity every five minutes.”

But instead, I just stood there, teeth clenched, hoping The Boss wouldn’t notice the storm brewing behind my eyes.

“Hey, uh…” I started, trying to sound casual and not like I was on the verge of throwing myself into the nearest shrub. “During this nice meeting, I wanted to talk about the whole FBI Special Agent job that I’m apparently starting today?”

Oh dear. Did I say bees? No, no, I didn’t. I think. I mentally replayed the sentence, word by word, as if my own mouth was a security camera I didn’t trust.

“Oh yes! I’m supposed to give you your first mission!” he said, perking up with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely loved assigning trauma.

“Yeah, but… what if we didn’t do that?” I asked, voice rising at the end in that hopeful, “maybe-you’ll-take-pity-on-me” way.

The Boss tilted his head, confused, as if I’d asked why fire was hot. He didn’t look hostile, but there was a slight twitch in his eye that suggested he wasn’t used to people saying no.

I really wanted to quit—just escape from this man who somehow managed to both wear stripes and radiate judgment. A man who apparently hated the word bees so much, he might have personally filed a restraining order against honey.

I mean, sure, I have an intense fear of bees, but that doesn’t mean I can’t talk about them. That’s half the fear! You have to talk it out. Exposure therapy or something. I’m not a psychologist, just a girl standing in front of a man wearing bee cosplay, asking to not be in the FBI.

“What if I quit?” I asked, trying to sound firm and definitely not like I was about to cry, laugh, or throw up.

“Oh no, you wouldn’t want to do that,” he said, in the same tone someone might use to explain why jumping into a volcano is generally discouraged. “If you want to be a Binnman, quitting would make that really hard.”

No kidding. That was sort of the point.

“But… what if I’m scared of everything?” I asked, hoping that maybe raw honesty would work better than logic.

“She just means,” Gracie cut in smoothly, like she’d rehearsed this situation in the mirror, “that she doesn’t want to be a Binnman.”

The Boss’s eyes bulged, and he threw his arms up in dramatic disbelief. “Ridiculous!” he snapped, as though she’d just suggested turning down free cake. “Why wouldn’t she want to be a Binnman when she was hopping up and down to be one just a few days ago?”

I blinked. Was I hopping? I didn’t feel like I had hopped. I checked my feet, just in case they’d betrayed me when I wasn’t looking. Still. Flat. On. The. Ground.

“Well, that’s another thing,” I said, lifting my hands in a helpless little shrug. “I don’t exactly remember that.”

The Boss reeled back slightly, blinking like I’d just told him I didn’t believe in chairs. “You don’t! Well, I sure do! It was on a hot day, you had just read my newest inspiration poster—”

“Oh, because that makes all the difference,” I muttered under my breath, unable to stop myself. What was it? ‘You can’t spell destiny without desk’? Truly moving.

He either didn’t hear me or chose to ignore it. “And you got in your dress—that one you’re wearing right now—and started training. Why don’t you remember this? Oh, I know! It’s that you’re playing a joke on me. Hahahaha! Hehehehe!”

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The laughter didn’t reach his eyes. It kind of clung to his face the way a plastic smile does to a mannequin—stretched, frozen, and a little bit cursed.

“Now we had a laugh,” he said, clapping his hands once like a game show host, “let’s get started!”

I stared at him, wondering if I was the one in the joke and nobody had handed me the punchline. Gracie, ever the optimist, just gave me a thumbs-up.

I was either about to be recruited… or adopted by a hive mind.

“No,” Gracie said, her voice soft but firm. “She has no memory. She only remembers training and everything after that. Not her past life. Not even why she wants to be here.”

There was a moment of silence, the awkward kind that’s too full of meaning and not enough actual helpful words. I stared at The Boss, narrowing my eyes.

“You said ‘nice to meet you,’ but now you’re acting like we’ve met before.”

“I’ve seen you on tape,” the Boss explained, gesturing vaguely like that would somehow make it better. “I watch all the new recruits on tape.”

Oh good. Definitely not creepy.

“That’s… not comforting,” I muttered. “But it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t remember agreeing to that. Or at least, I hope I agreed, and you didn’t just decide to spy on everyone.” I shook my head, trying to jostle a memory loose. “I don’t even remember my own name.”

“Hmm,” the Boss said, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. “That’s weird. Maybe you should avoid Bubblegum. I hear they put people in casts. I only like the other way around.”

Gracie didn’t react. She just kept smiling politely, as though this was all completely normal. Meanwhile, I was standing there half-covered in dried pink blood and regret, being told to avoid a substance I was pretty sure wasn’t alive.

“I think—or, we think,” I said, gesturing toward Gracie, who gave a tiny supportive nod like a polite stage assistant, “that it may have been the Doctor, Lost. Could you please get me another doctor to cure me? Maybe one from a different hospital?”

The Boss blinked. Then blinked again, slower this time, as if the words were taking the long route to his brain.

“What?” he said, voice climbing in pitch. “Doctor Lost?! He’s the nicest man I know. And I know a lot of people.”

I stared at him, unsure if that was supposed to be a credential or a threat.

“Why would you think he’d do something like that?” he continued. “Making you want to quit being an agent? That’s the work of a supervillain, not Doctor Lost.”

“Well,” I thought to myself “with those posters I’d currently call you A supervillain. “

“I was put in a dark box!” I shouted, unable to keep my voice from cracking. “I screamed and screamed. What kind of training is that?! That’s not the earliest memory I want to have!”

There was a pause. The kind of pause where you expect the other person to be shocked or apologetic or at least check their clipboard to make sure they didn’t accidentally enroll you in the villain academy by mistake.

But The Boss just frowned, vaguely offended by the implication that a dark screaming box might be a bad idea.

Gracie gently placed a hand on my arm. I appreciated the support, especially because part of me half-expected The Boss to respond with “Well, my first memory was being thrown into a volcano, and I turned out just fine.”

“Oh no, there’s no dark box,” the Boss said, waving his hand as though brushing off the existence of trauma like lint on a lapel. “Training is just exercises and quizzes about people not of this earth, and how to react when they act badly. There are no dark rooms. You had a dream—one you’d have gotten over if you hadn’t convinced yourself Dr. Lost is evil.”

I blinked at him, not entirely sure if I was supposed to feel reassured or mildly gaslit. The conviction in his voice was so strong I briefly questioned whether I had invented the dark box just for attention, which seemed unlikely given the amount of screaming and sweat involved.

“Well,” Gracie said gently, with that sweet diplomatic tone she used when defusing fragile egos and explosive monsters, “can we just get a different doctor?”

“No!” the Boss snapped, his tone flipping from corporate cheer to unhinged kindergarten principal. “I’ve had enough of this. This isn’t funny at all—it’s just wasting time I could be spending watching ants!”

Gracie and I exchanged a glance. Neither of us knew what that meant. Was it a hobby? A surveillance method? A deeply worrying metaphor?

“You know you can stop this act of wanting to quit and clean yourself up,” he went on, pointing vaguely at my entire body like it offended him on a spiritual level. “Why are you covered in pink snot blood? Is that even pink snot? I don’t think I like pink snot.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but honestly, where does one even begin with that? The part where he implied I was faking a mental breakdown? The ant-watching? The highly specific disdain for pastel bodily fluids?

Gracie interjected, stepping forward like a well-trained peace ambassador in a cartoon warzone. “I think she may really want a different doctor. She’s… uh, more comfortable with female doctors. Can you get one of those?”

Her smile was sweet, her voice was smooth, and her delivery was the kind that made people feel unreasonable for ever having raised their voices in the first place. I mentally gave her a gold star.

The Boss paused, blinking as if the idea had never once occurred to him in his entire bee-striped life.

“Why didn’t you start with that?” he sighed, sounding deeply inconvenienced by this very simple, very human request. “If you’d just said so from the beginning, I could’ve been more respectable—and not made a fool of myself in front of the new recruit.”

Oh yes. Now we care about dignity.

Then his eyes narrowed, suspicious gears grinding away in his brain.

“Wait,” he muttered. “Unless she isn’t really having an issue…”

My spine tensed.

“No, she’d be smarter than that,” he reassured himself aloud, clearly trying to construct a narrative where he wasn’t being lied to, challenged, or mildly inconvenienced. “She’d lead with ‘I want a female doctor.’ Yes. That makes sense. This is all just a joke better saved for another time. Yes? Yes.”

He gave a little nod, entirely satisfied with the conversation he just had mostly with himself.

“So go on ahead—to the bathroom,” he concluded, pointing dramatically toward a stretch of parking lot that had exactly zero visible restrooms.

That was it, wasn’t it? I thought I’d be stuck here forever—or not stuck in one place, but stuck in an eternity of doing missions until some monster killed me or his assistant—if monsters even have assistants. I had to convince the Boss to change his mind. Otherwise...

“Hey!” I said, my voice squeaking with a little too much panic to be persuasive. “Why don’t you just agree to let me quit? Making me do a job against my will is illegal—or at least, I think it is.” I wasn’t exactly up to date on workplace law, but this whole place already felt three inches away from a lawsuit and a very strange documentary.

“Well, I quit all this alien nonsense,” I continued, steamrolling past my own uncertainty. “I checked, and nothing’s gone through my chest yet, but I’d like to keep it that way.”

The Boss blinked at me, tilting his head, expression unreadable. I prepared for him to start yelling about ants again.

“You really want to quit?” he asked instead, surprisingly calm. It was the kind of calm that made you nervous—like the eye of a storm or a cat sitting very still before it pounces.

“Well, I guess that’s going to be a problem,” he continued, “because you really wanted to be a Binnman.”

I opened my mouth to argue but paused. Did I? Maybe? Probably not. I had no memory of wanting anything besides not dying.

“And I always make sure my agents are the happiest,” he added, folding his arms, which somehow made him look even more like a very intense wasp.

“Here’s what I’ll do: try one mission,” he said, holding up one index finger dramatically, as if I were being offered a sacred trial. “And if you hate it, I won’t stop you from quitting.”

He smiled—proud of his compromise, or just relieved I wasn’t actively throwing things.

“But if you love it…” He leaned in just a bit, eyes gleaming. “Well, then you’ll have found a new home!”

I considered that. I mean, presumably I wouldn’t be going on missions with him. According to Gracie, my first mission wouldn’t even be with a full team—it would just be her and me.

I could trust Gracie to protect me. She had this unshakable optimism and the reflexes of someone who had definitely dodged more than one laser beam in her lifetime. Plus, she didn’t laugh too hard when I fell in the hospital hallway for the third time in one morning. That had to count for something.

Unless a monster killed her first.

Yeah, no. I definitely wasn’t going to take this job.

Probably.

Maybe.

But he did have a point. I used to want to be here. Apparently, I had read one of his motivational posters—probably the one with the raccoon giving a thumbs-up under the caption "Trash Today, Treasure Tomorrow!"—and immediately sprinted into a career filled with monsters and invisible bathtubs.

Maybe there was a reason I joined. Maybe this was my passion in life. Maybe beneath all the screaming, memory loss, and suspiciously pink bodily fluids, I was actually some kind of brave, fearless, alien-fighting hero.

Or maybe I’d hit my head really hard and made a series of terrible decisions.

But what if I tried a mission—nothing dangerous, mind you. Maybe there was a safe one, safer than not being on a mission at all.

“If the mission’s not dangerous, then sure,” I said. “And by not dangerous, I mean I want it to be safer than if I weren’t on a mission at all. As long as you can promise that, I’ll try one.”

The Boss’s eyes lit up like a puppy holding a gun.

“Then it’s a deal!” the Boss said. “I’m very happy you realized this is the best place for you.”

“No,” I said. “It’s just what I have for now. I might hate it and quit—”

“Sure, sure, sure,” the Boss interrupted. “But I’m betting otherwise. I have your first mission right here in my pocket.”

He then put his hand in his pocket and started searching for something.

“Weird, the papers aren’t here. Oh well. I have some more documents in my car. Go wash off until then.”

“Wash off? Where?” I asked. “In the hospital? I’m not going back there. Your car? There are no—”

I stopped. The guy made a motion as if he was opening a car door, but there was no car. Then he took a step—and his foot disappeared.

“Aaaagh!”

“Oh honey,” Gracie said. “It’s just an invisible car. Nothing to be scared of.”

What. What. What.

“Come this way.” Gracie grabbed my hand and led me to a different parking space.

“Here,” she said, pulling a remote from her pocket. She clicked a button, and suddenly a little bathhouse appeared. It was about as long as a car and as tall as a light post, shimmering into existence like some kind of weird sci-fi magic trick.

What if it leads to a black hole? What if there’s an invisible monster waiting inside, ready to gobble me up? It is a monster, isn’t it? I mean, if invisible objects exist, then there could just as easily be an invisible monster shaped like a bee hiding in there somewhere. Ugh—maybe the Boss was onto something with his pathological hatred of bees.

“Hey Gracie,” I said, “before I go in and possibly get eaten by an invisible monster—was what the Boss said about the training true?”

She looked slightly annoyed, like she wanted to be the one to tell me.

“Yeah, there are no dark rooms. But I did have some weird dreams right after training. Mine were about singing nachos that held knives.”

Oh great. Something else to be afraid of.

“But don’t worry,” Gracie assured me. “It’s just the nachos without knives that appear in my dreams nowadays. Of course, they still sing, but it’s nothing more than recurring dreams. The doctor says it’s just due to my fear of nachos—nothing else.”

Oh sure, that’s a totally normal fear to have. Who even gets scared of nachos? Try candy corn, that's a more reasonable fear.

I took a deep breath. I walked into the building, holding my breath just in case an invisible monster landed in my mouth.

The bathroom was refreshing in that it didn’t smell like people pooped here! There was an inspirational poster with a kitten on it, captioned, “If you’re a cat person, you can do this! Otherwise…” I pulled down the poster and put it face down on the floor—I didn’t want a cat (that believed in only half the population) to see me nude.

I needed to find the shower. Of course, that was a bit harder than it should have been because my vision kept fading to black from holding my breath like I was auditioning for a fish. Finally, I gasped for air—right into the horror of stepping on something cold and sticky. Blue ice cream with human-looking teeth buried inside. Chocolate chips usually top ice cream, right? Even if you’re weird and prefer strawberries, human teeth? That’s just downright creepy.

I glanced down again. Yep. Definitely teeth. And not the kind you find in candy. More like the kind you’d expect to find in a horror movie or a dentist’s nightmare.

Swallowing my gag reflex, I shuffled forward, searching for the shower. Of course, I found it tucked away in a corner, because why make things easy? I kept my hands over my face, peeking between my fingers like a scared kid watching a horror flick. No invisible monster was going to memorize my face on my watch. No sirree bob. Unless they already had. In which case, well... at least I’d remain consistent.

With a shaky hand, I reached for the shower handle, hoping the water was just water, and not some alien goo or, heaven forbid, bee venom.

I needed to clean all this stuff off me. I just had to convince myself the water was clean. I mean, Gracie looked pretty clean, and she seemed like she’d used this bathroom before. Hopefully the water didn’t have germs. Then again, Gracie didn’t seem to care about germs when she ruined Dr. Lost’s clothes. You’d think an agent would be more cautious about germs when her life was constantly at risk.

I took off my dress and folded it next to the shower, placing it carefully on the counter. There was no mirror. I wondered if maybe there were invisible monsters who were only visible in reflections—that’s why there wasn’t a mirror. Maybe. You can never be sure.

Now to take off my underwear and bra. I slipped off the bra and heard a clank on the floor. Something had fallen out. I looked down, half-expecting it to be something sinister—maybe a claw from an invisible monster—but it was just a bracelet. I bent down to pick it up and examine it more closely. The bracelet was made out of tiny shoes, all linked together in a strange, almost delicate chain.

My mind drifted back to that dark room—everyone insisted it was just a nightmare, nothing real—but that’s exactly where I remembered getting the bracelet. Maybe it wasn’t a dream after all. Maybe, just maybe, this whole crazy mission wasn’t about aliens or special agents or invisible cars. Maybe it was about figuring out what really happened to me... and why.

I clenched the bracelet in my hand, my heart pounding in the quiet bathroom. Somewhere deep down, I knew this was only the beginning.

And with that thought, I stepped out of the shower, ready or not.