Laurel
written by: Stefan Sofiski
The fox limped across the school playground—three functioning paws jerking off the radiating asphalt, the fourth hanging from her body like a dead branch of a tree. Her eyes oozed yellow-white pus. The animal was half-bald. She was an old brown doormat where generations of feet had scraped off the pile in shoe shapes.
Hannah’s armpits stung. Trickles of sweat tracked down her neck, under her dress, and absorbed into her bra. Through the school’s wired fence, filtered by her yellow-tinted sunglasses, she watched the lame fox bend down under a bush and drop in the dirt.
“God knows what diseases this thing is carrying,” said a scandalised mum in a white dress with pink dots. “I’ll pop into reception and ask them to remove it.”
Pink Dots broke away from the group of mums and grandparents waiting for school pick-up, and scurried towards the main entrance.
Hannah turned back and gazed at the small brown heap under the bush. She raised her hands and pulled the brim of her floppy hat down on her hot, dry shoulders.
Chatter bubbled behind her. People were excited by the change of routine and the unexpected opportunity for striking conversations. “Did you see where it came from?” “My brother recently had a fox give birth in the back of his garden… can you imagine?”
The caretaker emerged from the school, a broom in his hands. He squinted at the spectators behind the fence.
Shadows of arms criss-crossed on the ground in front of Hannah—people behind her competing to show the caretaker where the intruder lay.
“There, Mister Tompkins! The laurel behind the seesaw,” they instructed.
So the caretaker turned towards the bushes and bent down.
He found the animal, stood up, scratched the back of his neck, and bent down again.
“Shu, shu,” Tompkins hushed. Holding the broom with both hands, he started waving near the bush. Every time the bristles brushed near the laurel, Mr Tompkins trembled. The fox didn’t move.
Silence descended on the school. The pick-up crowd behind the fence grew as more parents arrived, eyes glued to the scene of man versus beast.
Tompkins got down on knees and hands on the hot asphalt and dragged the broom under the laurel.
“Shu, shu!” He poked the fox seven times, crawled closer to it, and recoiled. He backed away, rose, and turned to face the crowd.
His puffy cheeks were red and sweaty. His lips were curled in an S.
“Well, I think it’s dead,” Tompkins said, triggering a wave of gasps.
Hannah saw Pink Dots next to her cover her mouth and spasm like she was about to vomit.
The pick-up party murmured. Mr Tompkins sweated in the sun, broom propped against his overalls. Teachers’ heads peeked through windows surrounding the playground.
A faint buzz behind Hannah mixed with the hubbub. Small wings brushed her arm—a bee flying past her and into the playground. Then, several more. Followed by a dozen. And a hundred.
The playground filled with insects. Hands started swatting, and the murmuring turned into shrieks. But the bees’ buzz drowned the shrieks, and the playground was black and orange and vibrant.
Hannah shrugged and wrapped her hands around her sun-baked arms, tried to make herself small.
Mr Tompkins waved the broom and jiggled around as thousands more bees swarmed in and blackened the yard. He let out a choked wail, threw the broom, and ran back into the school.
The bees formed a black and orange buzzing cloud that funnelled into a twister, and the twister’s tip thrashed beneath the laurel.
The crowd pushed Hannah around, as some rushed away and others panicked and rocked the fence, and screamed.
Millions of bees fed the black and orange tornado that started pulling the dead body of the fox from under the laurel, sucking it into its buzzing funnel.
The swarm clouded over the playground and school.
In the centre of the droning billow lay the ragged corpse with the shoe-shaped bald patches, and the crooked limbs, and eyes of pus.
Hannah gazed at the fox in its bee womb as it soared over the heads of mums and grandparents, their clamour muted by the deafening buzzing.
A shadow descended on them as the cloud blocked the sun and carried the body up, and up, and up, until it became a blemish on the sun and disappeared.
And playground, school, and the pick-up party were left silent and bathed in the scorching light.
