How to be a Queen Hornet

Once upon an ordinary day, you sit comfortably in your living room, feeling the warmth of the mug on your palms. A sensation overall, penetrating into your skin, its intensity growing, rattles your tranquillity. Unclear at first, it initializes a subtle transformation you are yet to realize. You begin to change. The mug slips out of your shrinking hands, you clumsily move to catch it, yet you miss. Your size reduces; everything around you appears to expand. You look down at yourself, apprehension flooding your psyche. Your skin feels different. It's stiffening, the texture roughening. You look at your arms, terror-stricken as it hardens, splitting into segments, turning into a shiny black exoskeleton. You can feel a peculiar pressure at your back, itching at first, then intensifying into a painful jab. You twist to look back, wincing as new appendages sprout. Delicate, membranous wings with intricate veins flutter open, catching the slanted rays of sunlight peeking from the window. You instinctively stand up, barely reaching the surface of your coffee table now. A creeping sensation develops in your head, forming a persistent buzz just on the periphery of your consciousness. Your eyes widen, but not like they used to. They round off, turning into a glossy black, beginning to encirculate your face. The lower part of your face extends out, morphing into mandibles. The sensation is eerie but oddly not painful. Your fingers have restructured into delicate, thin, claw-like appendages, capable of finely detailed work. The changes continue, your body altering drastically. Your abdomen swells, elongating and thickening to form the distinctive shape of a hornet. It twinkles in the sunlight, becoming an amber, then to a dark crimson, before finally settling into a black so dark it's nearly blue. The physical changes subside, but your mind begins to shift gears. Your human memories—school, friendships, family, work—they all start to blur, fading into insignificance. Your human personality dissolves into an animalistic survival instinct, the drive to proliferate and protect your own kind. The concerns of your human life are being replaced by instincts that you didn’t know you had. You become the queen, a figure of authority and the epicenter of your soon-to-be colony. The buzzing shifts, its rhythm syncing with the drumming heartbeat, the thumping slow but assured, echoing the poise and determination of a queen. A gentle flutter of your wings, a shudder runs up your spine—or rather, your exoskeleton—it is time. You are the Hornet Queen. Let your reign begin.