"Welcome to Sting Street" Part 1
Another short story by Adam Smith
In 2007, my family packed up and moved to the big city, a shift so sharp that it still confuses me to this day. One week I was running around barefoot in a trailer park, and the next I was dropped into a middle-class neighborhood where every kid was dressed from the same three stores. I didn’t know it then, but that block shaped the boy I was and the man I’d end up becoming.
We called it Sting Street, even though that wasn’t its real name. The sign said Harvard Street, which always felt lame to me. But this is the story of how it earned the nickname everyone in town remembers, an event that hit near the end of my first summer there and turned into one of the most unforgettable days of my life.
So before I go any further, this story does contain bees. A lot of bees. Consider yourself officially warned. Welcome to Sting Street.
I was only ten years old and the middle child of three. So even as the new kid, I never felt completely out of place. I always had a couple of siblings waiting for me at home, though calling them “friends” was usually up for debate. Thankfully, we made friends pretty quickly, both around the neighborhood and at our new school.
A real sign of acceptance, especially when you’re the new kid, is the jump from being a nobody to having a designated lunch table. Once someone waves you over, you spend the rest of the week trying to act like you’ve always belonged there. I did exactly that, and it worked.
For the next several years, I bumped elbows at lunchtime with the same few friends. First, there was Devin. He never missed a day of school from kindergarten to senior year. The district gave him a brand new car for it, even though he was the worst driver I ever knew. And Jake was known as the “human garbage disposal” because he hit puberty way before the rest of us and could eat more than the lunch line could keep up with. He still eats like that today.
But my best friend at that table was Gerald, the biggest prankster I know. He was also the first kid I met on Sting Street, the one who showed me where everyone lived and which yards you could cut through without getting yelled at. And like most stories worth telling, this one started with him. Right in the middle of our social studies class, barely thirty-five minutes after lunch.
I was trying to listen to Mrs. Myers when Gerald leaned in, continuing a conversation I didn’t even know we were having. “Sometimes at night, I’ll go out and feed it. It really likes sugar water.”
“Wait, what?” I asked, torn between his whispering and Mrs. Myers’ passionate lecture about Benjamin Franklin.
“Dude, you should see how big it’s gotten. I can’t expl—”
Mrs. Myers’ voice cut through the room. “Boys, knock it off.”
But he’d said just enough. And I was curious. Curious enough to follow him home that day.
The final bell rang, and the hallways spat us out onto the street. It was me, Gerald, and my younger sister Jenny, who always got teacher-escorted out of her first-grade classroom. Gerald lived only a few houses down, which made being best friends easy. Ditching my sister at home was even easier.
Our block was always calm after school. Every driveway had the same two cars, the same trimmed bushes, even the same boring mailboxes. My house sat near the middle of the street, and Gerald’s was at the very end, a tall two-story place with an upstairs bedroom. That afternoon, neighbors were decorating for the End of Summer Bash while Clipboard Kenny, the neighborhood auditor, hovered nearby, making sure every decoration matched a pre-approved color palette.
“C’mon,” Gerald said, pulling me toward the end of the block. “It’s over here.”
We walked past his yard and toward the dead end where we played kickball or street hockey, a spot parents barely noticed unless one of us shattered a window or broke a bone. When we weren’t there, it stayed pretty quiet.
“Okay, don’t freak out,” Gerald said. “You promise?”
That question was scarier than anything he could show me, but I followed him anyway. We kept going until we reached the base of a large oak tree, jutting out from his backyard and towering over the street.
“Look up,” he said.
Before I did, I could already hear it. A steady, droning buzz. Like the tree itself were humming.
When I looked up, I saw a massive blue tarp stretched across the branches, sagging in the middle as if it were holding something heavy. It covered almost half the tree, tied down with rope in a way only a ten-year-old boy would think of.
“What is that…?” I asked.
Gerald grinned like he’d been waiting all day for that question. He checked over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming, then scurried up the tree like a feral cat.
“You’re gonna want to stand back,” he called down, gripping a rope tightly.
I stepped back as he tugged the first knot. A rope snapped free.
“Gerald? What’s in there?”
“You’ll see,” he said from somewhere above. “Just don’t scream.”
He yanked the final knot, and the tarp collapsed. Underneath was a massive bee hive that looked way too big to be real. Honey leaked from it in thin, glowing streams that almost looked radioactive. Then the thick smell of rot hit me, and I gagged hard. YUCK!
Gerald dropped from the tree and stood beneath the hive. He looked up at it with a strange smile, like it belonged to him. Like he’d raised it.
“Uh… what are you doing with this?” I asked.
“Mom told me to keep it covered until Dad gets back,” he said. “But she doesn’t know how big it got. I started feeding it a few weeks ago.”
I stared at him, confused and a little scared. “You’re feeding it? Why?”
He shrugged. “I was worried it was hungry. And once it started growing, I wanted to see how big it could get.”
We both stared up at the hive.
“I’d say it got pretty big, Gerald.”
“Yeah, I know. And I think it’s going to fall soon,” he responded.
I looked again. The branch was groaning, bending under the weight.
“This weekend, at the End of Summer Bash,” he added. “It’s the perfect place to do it.”
I blinked at him. “What? Why there?”
Gerald grinned like I should know this already. “Dude, the Bash. It’s where the big prank happens. Every year.”
That’s when he told me about the unofficial tradition. Last year the older kids tried to take the tires off every car on the street. Their mistake was doing it during the party when everyone was outside. They only made it two driveways before Mr. Griffin chased them off with a hot spatula. The year before that, someone snuck into every house and swapped out all the DVR remotes.
Maybe this neighborhood wasn’t so boring after all, I thought.
Gerald jabbed at the hive. “This would be the biggest prank yet. Plus, it’s just bees. They’re good for the environment.”
Honestly, that sounded like good enough logic to me. With only two days to plan, I was all in. First on the list was convincing my mom to let me spend the night at Gerald’s the night before. Which was huge for me. I’d never been allowed to have a sleepover before. Not even my older brother got the privilege.
“Alright, go ask your mom and tell me what she says,” he said.
I forgot to mention something important about Gerald. He was an only child. Being an only child comes with perks, sure, but you miss out on the survival instincts that all kids with siblings develop. People like me knew exactly which brother or sister to send in for certain missions. If I went in alone, Mom would say no before I even finished asking. But if I walked in with someone she had never met? That was different. She had to be polite. She had no other option.
“You’re coming with me,” I told him.
He frowned. “What? Why?”
“Because you’re my best shot. Just trust me.”
He followed me inside. Mom looked up the moment we stepped in. Her eyes moved from me to Gerald and back again, trying to figure out what I had just dragged into her kitchen.
“Hi,” I said, already sweating. “This is my friend Gerald.”
He gave a tiny wave. Mom softened a little. “Well, hello. Is everything alright?”
“Yes.” I swallowed. “Can I spend the night at his house tomorrow?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Tomorrow? At his house?”
“He just lives down the street,” I added quickly. “At the end.”
She didn’t want to be rude, not in front of company. So instead of the ‘no’ that I fully expected her to give, she hesitated. “And your parents are okay with it?”
With a big grin, Gerald said “yeah, I can go get my mom if you want.”
She hesitated before finally giving in. “Fine. But you boys better stay out of trouble.”
I nodded so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. “Yes ma’am.”
Gerald and I stepped out onto the porch, both trying not to explode with excitement. That was it. We had the permission we needed. The plan was locked in.
He elbowed me. “Pack a flashlight,” he said. “And some goggles... oh, and any old baseballs that you can find.”
Gerald sprinted off before I could ask what the baseballs were even for. But just like that, the countdown to the biggest prank of our lives had officially begun.
If only we knew what we were about to unleash…
And that’s the end of chapter one of “Welcome to Sting Street.” This new story is my best attempt at writing something in the vein of R. L. Stine. Like a lot of kids from my generation, the Goosebumps series was the reason I fell in love with the horror genre in the first place.
With this one, I wanted to try something different and upload it chapter by chapter until it’s complete. If you like this sort of thing and want to keep up with this story or any of my other writing, follow my Substack “Belly of the Well.”