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Saturday Scares — Double Feature: Honey Bees and the Cats That Aren’t Cats

Close portrait of a black-skinned hive queen with golden honeycomb eyes, gold antennae and long gold hair, honey dripping from her lips, a honeybee resting on her cheek. Dark bee horror art by Coda Languez.

Two themes this week and I couldn’t pick, so you’re getting both. HONEY BEES and FELINES. Nine pieces total.

Five went to the hive. Four went to the cats. The cats were easier and I think we all know why.

Honey Bees

The Queen

Close portrait of a black-skinned hive queen with golden honeycomb eyes, gold antennae and long gold hair, honey dripping from her lips, a honeybee resting on her cheek. Dark bee horror art by Coda Languez.

Honey on her mouth, honeycomb where the pupils should be, and one real bee walking across her cheek like it pays rent there. She’s smiling in this one. I didn’t ask her to.

The Throne Room

A winged hive queen seated waist-deep in a pool of honey inside a domed honeycomb cathedral, giant bee drones wading through the honey toward her. Dark bee horror art by Coda Languez.

She’s sitting in it. Not standing over it, not wading through it, sitting in the honey up to her ribs while the drones come around to check on her. Somebody built her that room.

The Collection

A winged hive queen with an exposed honeycomb ribcage standing in a city street at dusk, people kneeling in honey around her while bees swarm the sky and honey runs down parked cars. Dark bee horror art by Coda Languez.

Downtown, dusk, and the whole street is on its knees getting glazed. Nobody is fighting it. Her ribcage is open honeycomb and it’s filling up, and the bees in the sky are just the delivery.

The Bloom

A colossal winged figure walking down a city street toward a hazy yellow sun, buildings overgrown with giant daisies, one lone man standing in the road below. Dark bee horror art by Coda Languez.

Daisies the size of apartment blocks and exactly one guy standing in the road looking up at her. He’s not running. That was a decision he made recently and I don’t think it was a good one.

The Aftermath

An abandoned overgrown city with giant yellow flowers and enormous hives hanging in a sickly sky, honey pooled across the street among rusted cars, a winged figure perched on a tower. Dark bee horror art by Coda Languez.

No people left in this one. The flowers won, the hives got to be the size of weather, and the honey has been sitting in the street long enough to dry at the edges. Pollination went great, thanks for asking!

Bees do four things: pollinate, build, feed the queen, and decide as a group that you’re a problem. Only one of those scales badly.

Felines

I already wrote a whole short story narrated by a cat, so this half was less research and more airing grievances.

Bakeneko

A smiling woman in a brown floral kimono with a gold obi resting her hand on a shoji screen, her lantern-cast shadow showing a two-tailed cat. Dark cat horror art by Coda Languez.

She’s lovely. Nice kimono, nice smile, hand on the screen like she’s about to invite you in. The shadow has two tails. The shadow is the honest one.

The Shrine

A giant black two-tailed cat standing upright on a stone plinth at a moonlit shrine, working four hooded robed figures on glowing green strings run from its paw and tails. Dark cat horror art by Coda Languez.

Bipedal, on a plinth, at a shrine, working four people on green strings at moonrise. Two strings off the paw and two off the tails, because why use one hand when you have a spare. Note that he isn’t actually doing anything with them. He’s just seeing if they’ll go.

The Retainer

A white cat-eared figure with gold eyes and an X scar, wearing a black suit and kneeling seiza on a cushion on tatami, long white tail curled out beside four untouched bowls of food. Dark cat horror art by Coda Languez.

White ears, X scar, black suit, and four bowls set out in front of him with not one of them touched. He’s waiting. He will out-wait you, and it isn’t personal, it’s just the species.

The Roof

A snarling two-tailed black cat monster with one blind white eye standing on a tiled village rooftop at night, its flank torn open to the ribs. Dark cat horror art by Coda Languez.

And then there’s this. Two tails, one blind eye, half the flank gone to the ribs, up on the tiles over a village that is still asleep. Whatever did that to him is still down there somewhere. Unless he’s just like that.

Honestly none of these needed much inventing. Cats already look at you like they’ve done the math on how much you weigh.

Saturday Scares is hosted over on Threads by @promptadventures and @horra.i. Come see the rest of this week’s entries, some of them are so much worse than mine. Catching up? Before this was The Harvest, and after it came Numbers and Vultures.

All nine pieces live in the Gallery too, alongside the rest of the collection.

New Saturday Scares every week. Follow along on Instagram and Threads, and if you’re new here, Start Here is the map.

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