SWARMS by Sean Thomas McDonnell

ENDLESS STATIC feed: 02:06:17 - 02:13:74

Mar 02, 2026

A swarm of earthquakes jostled us throughout the month of July. Jenny said it was God, mad at me for jerking off. Dolly said it was the Devil, mad at me for not jerking off enough. But I didn’t think in those terms. I tended to side with science on things around nature—I jacked off the right amount.

I drummed on the desk with my pencil eraser. “How can an earthquake be a swarm?”

The principal, who’d come to our classroom to speak with us about the shaking, looked down at me, the jittery young man with the Buddy Holly glasses in the front row, and chuckled. “That’s an excellent question. I’m not sure the etymology of the term or why it’s used in this context, but it’s a great question for your science teacher. I can tell you this, it’s all very normal stuff—earthquakes happen here in California. Any other questions?”

I wanted to ask the real question—the one that had been poking at my brain since the shaking had started—but I wasn’t sure how to phrase it. The real question was why the earthquakes only happened when I went to the bathroom.

That night, I stood in the hall and looked through the doorway at the toilet. I thought about going downstairs to the kitchen and pissing in the sink. Everyone in the house was asleep—I’d probably get away with it. But it was all coincidence, so I stepped through the doorway and onto the cold linoleum floor.

I watched my phone, and with one hand scrolled and scrolled while the piss left my body.

A jolt—short—fast.

And the shower door thudded in its channel, and my pee jumped back up into my bladder, and in the toilet a bee floated to the top of the lemon-yellow water, and it rumbled like the hand-buzzer I got from Merlin’s Magic Shop when I was eight.

When the shaking and buzzing stopped, I continued with my business, moving the bee around like a little boat with my stream. Then I flushed and watched the resigned insect go round and round until it was sucked down the Navajo White shit-eating maw.

I went to bed, and dreamed a strange dream:

Catherine O’Hara and I were sitting on lush, velvety cushions in the back row of an opulent theater. The walls were decadent and creamy, as if made from butterscotch pudding, and they looked as if they’d been sculpted, whipped, and swirled by a fat, yet graceful finger. Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard was on the screen. I asked Catherine if she thought Norma Desmond was happy before her chimp died. “Maybe that’s what really broke her.” Catherine said the chimp was a metaphor. “A metaphor for what?” I asked. “It lived without words,” she said, and kissed my cheek. “The chimp was the death of silence, bebe. Nobody knows how to be quiet anymore.”

I woke at 3 AM with stomach cramps. I ran to the bathroom, making it just in time. It came fast and loud. I scrolled.

A wave, two of them, swarms.

The glass shower door knocked against its metal gutter. The hand-buzzer was back—I jumped up. Five bees climbed across glistening brown coils.

I wiped and threw the paper on top of them. The smeared sheet twitched and danced as the bees searched for an escape. I flushed the toilet and it all went away.

But the buzzing, though muffled, was still there this time. I pulled up my pants and leaned over the toilet. No bees.

Another jolt—fast—swarms.

I followed the sound of the buzzing to the toilet’s tank. I licked my lips, and lifted the lid.

A swarm of bees exploded from within the basin, ramming their wet, fuzzy bee heads into the mirror, the shower door, and walls.

I swatted at them and ran from the bathroom, down the hallway, and out onto the street. Bees zig-zagged from vents and unseen holes. Inside, thousands of them churned against the windows.

The walls bloated until the house looked like something from a cartoon—I half expected the building to pull up its skirt and run down the road screaming.

But it wasn’t just my house. Every house on the block bulged and rumbled, until finally, with a snap and a buzzing gassspp, they all popped. Every house.

The bees swarmed—but I wasn’t afraid! In 2018 we had swarms that lasted weeks, just like this. They also happened in 1976, 1990, 2002, 2003, and 2015. Like the principal said, this was all normal stuff.