Honeycomb

 

The first time the honey dripped from his walls, Liam thought he was dreaming.

He’d been asleep, he was sure of that.  Sprawled across his bare mattress in a haze of boxed dinners and stress sweat, his laptop’s whirring fan blurring into the sounds of the cityscape below. But when he woke, the faint amber gloss on the drywall by the window had caught a stripe of sunrise. It looked like sap.  

Liam, in a move he was surprised to have even considered, had pressed his finger into it and tasted it. Sweet. Floral. Real.

Then the second night, it ran from the ceiling, slow threads dangling like a grotesque chandelier, slicking the lightbulb before dripping into the bowl of cereal he hadn’t finished. He didn’t taste it that time. He stared at the way it caught the light—too golden to be dust, too thick to be paint, too beautiful to be real.

The third night he didn’t sleep.

“I think I’m hallucinating,” Liam told Theo, half-smiling as he said it, like he hoped speaking it aloud would snap the world back into something tangible.

Theo was the only person he spoke to now, really. They’d met two months back at a gallery opening, the kind of divey art warehouse you only knew about if you already knew everyone inside it. Theo was in his thirties.  Older, cynical, soft-voiced, and utterly magnetic. His dark eyes always looked a little sleepy, like he'd already seen whatever horror you were about to admit and decided it wasn’t worth flinching at.

“You sleep?” Theo asked, voice flat but not unkind.

“Barely.”

“You dream?”

“I think I am one.”

That made Theo smile. Just a ghost of it. “Okay, poet. Maybe cut the Adderall and try a salad.”

The honey didn’t stop. It thickened.

It pooled in corners now. Under furniture. Behind the toilet. He couldn’t mop it fast enough. And it smelled stronger. Not like honey anymore.  Richer, ranker. Like wildflowers left too long in a sealed room. Like rot dressed up in sweetness.

He stopped letting Theo over. He didn’t want anyone seeing the stains.

Instead, they texted. A lot. Late night messages about nightmares, skin-picking, music neither of them liked but listened to anyway. Liam told himself he liked Theo’s distance. He liked the idea of someone out there who believed in him just enough not to question his unraveling.

“Open the wall,” Theo messaged him one night.

Liam stared at the message, rereading it. Three words. No context.

He didn’t reply.

But that night he did.

With a kitchen knife and a bottle of Evan Williams beside him, he jammed the blade into the drywall where the honey ran thickest and carved a jagged mouth into the structure of his home. The honey oozed out like blood. He should’ve gagged, should’ve stopped. But instead he scooped a bit up with the flat of the blade and tasted it again.

Bitter.

Metallic.

Not honey at all.

Inside the wall, a hive pulsed. Flesh-like. Breathing.

He vomited into the sink and didn’t remember falling asleep.

The dreams came back in layers. First, the sound.  Wet buzzing, not quite bees, not quite electrical, more like organs humming. Then the voices. Low murmurs, too close to his ear, like someone whispering through the marrow of his skull.

He dreamed of things moving behind the walls. Not insects. Not animals. Shapes. Human-sized. Just… not human.

“Do you ever feel like your body isn’t your own?” Liam asked Theo the next time they met.

They were in a half-empty laundromat, the kind with flickering lights and vending machines that only sold off-brand mints and condoms. It was two in the morning. A time for honesty.

“Yeah,” Theo said, not even pausing.

Liam blinked. “Really?”

Theo leaned forward, eyes too dark to be fully read. “I feel like someone else wears me sometimes. Like I’m rented.”

Liam’s throat tightened.

Theo tilted his head. “Why do you think I like you, Liam?”

Liam didn’t answer.

The next time he woke to the honey, it was pouring from the ceiling. Not dripping. Pouring.  It soaked his sheets, slicked his thighs, coated his chest.  He screamed. He couldn’t help it.

The sound that answered wasn’t his own voice. It was inside his head, but not. A voice like something pretending to be human.

You are soft.

You are new.

You are open.

He clawed at his own skin until he bled. The honey sealed the wounds.

Theo didn’t answer his texts for a week.

Then a knock at the door. Liam froze, his body trembling under layers of blankets he hadn’t left in days.

He cracked the door open and Theo stood there, looking perfectly normal. Which made it worse.

“Don’t come in,” Liam said, barely audible.

“I know,” Theo said, stepping inside anyway.

The smell hit him, feral and cloying. He flinched. But his eyes didn’t leave Liam’s.

“You let them in,” Theo said quietly.

Liam’s throat burned. “What are they?”

Theo stepped closer. “They’re what’s left when something loses itself.”

He reached out and touched the honey still glistening on Liam’s neck.

“They like you,” he whispered. “You’re already halfway gone.”

Liam shoved him, hard. “What the fuck are you talking about?!”

Theo didn’t fight. He just stared at him. “There’s a nest. In you. In the walls. It doesn’t matter. It’s the same. They use bodies.”

“I’m not a fucking host—”

“Yes,” Theo cut in. “You are. So was I.”

He woke in a puddle of honey and bile, his sheets torn to ribbons. His hands stung. His nails were gone.

The mirror showed a stranger.

Something with Liam’s face. But not his eyes.

He didn’t see Theo again. Not for a while.

But the honey kept coming.

The whispers turned to commands.

The flesh inside the walls began to pulse with rhythm. Breathing in time with his own.

Then one night, Theo returned.

But he wasn’t alone.

Three others. Eyes blank. Skin damp with gold. Standing behind him like shadows waiting for orders.

Theo stepped forward and kissed Liam on the mouth. Hard. Sweet. Wrong.

And whispered:

“You were always meant for this. You’re a better vessel than I ever was.”

Then he stepped aside.

Liam’s screams were honey-thick.