The Hive Mind

A comedy horror about a hive mind

Brenda lived for her individuality. She had mismatched socks, a perpetually messy bun, and opinions so niche they practically had their own postal code. So when Mrs. Henderson, a woman whose entire existence revolved around meticulously trimmed petunias, started humming the same grating jingle for "Sprinkle-Shine Toilet Bowl Cleaner" as Mr. Peterson, the grumpy retired taxidermist, Brenda merely raised a skeptical, slightly greasy eyebrow.

"Must be an earworm going around," she muttered to her half-eaten bowl of cereal.

The earworm, however, began to propagate faster than a rogue tweet. Soon, everyone on Elm Street was not only humming Sprinkly-Shine, but also spontaneously stopping mid-conversation to adjust their spectacles �" even people who didn’t wear spectacles. Then came the beige. Suddenly, every house on the block, from the vibrant turquoise of the Miller twins' place to Brenda's own charmingly peeling lilac, was being repainted in the exact same shade of 'Misty Morning Beige.'

"It's just so harmonious," gushed a normally argumentative Mrs. Gable, her eyes a little too wide, as she dabbed a pristine brush at her formerly sunshine-yellow porch.

Brenda choked on her lukewarm coffee. "Harmonious? It looks like a giant, sedated digestive biscuit!"

The beige was just the beginning. Soon, everyone was wearing sensible khaki shorts and matching teal polo shirts. Their voices, once varied pitches of gossip and grumbling, began to flatten into a disturbingly even tone. They moved with a disturbing synchronicity, weeding gardens at precisely 8:17 AM, waving identically at passing cars, and laughing with the same, slightly delayed, forced chuckle.

Brenda, still in her beloved band t-shirt and ripped jeans, felt like a rogue pixel in a perfectly rendered, intensely boring image. She saw her reflection in a window, a single spark of chaos in a sea of beige and teal, and shivered. This wasn't just conformity; this was... something else. Something that felt like a gentle, insistent hum at the back of her own mind, a soft whisper suggesting that a teal polo shirt would be rather comfortable.

She tried to talk to her neighbor, Gary, a man whose passion for conspiracy theories once made him excellent company. "Gary, don't you think it's weird that everyone's eating only kale salads for lunch now?" she whispered, gesturing at the row of identical plastic containers on doorsteps.

Gary, mid-synchronised porch sweep with Mrs. Gable, paused, his movements momentarily out of sync. He looked at her, his eyes unblinking, and then a slow, serene smile spread across his face. "Brenda," he said, his voice the uniform, gentle hum, "it is simply efficient." He then returned to his sweeping, perfectly synchronized once more.

Brenda backed away slowly. Every interaction was the same. A vacant smile, an unsettlingly calm response, and the faint, persistent thrumming in her own head. It wasn't just imitation; it was a connection. A collective consciousness was blooming on Elm Street, and it was demanding she join.

She barricaded herself inside her house, pulling down the blinds. The silence was deafening, occasionally punctuated by the perfectly synchronized rustle of collective leaf blowing from outside. She could feel them, a vast, gentle network of humming minds, just beyond her walls, waiting. Wanting. Not with malice, but with an almost suffocating benevolence. They just wanted her to be part of the us.

The front door shook. Not violently, but with a persistent, rhythmic thud. Tap-tap-pause-tap-tap-pause. It was the synchronized knock, the one they all used. Brenda squeezed her eyes shut, clutching a rusty wrench she'd found under the sink.

"Brenda," a chorus of voices, perfectly modulated, flowed through the door. "We are only trying to help you achieve optimal harmonious integration."

"No thanks!" she yelled, her voice cracking. "I prefer optimal greasy hair and existential dread!"

She heard a soft click, and then the doorknob slowly turned. They weren't breaking in; they had a spare key. Of course they did. They all had a spare key to everyone's house. Because it was efficient.

The door swung open. A sea of teal polo shirts and beige slacks stood before her, their faces reflecting the same placid, serene smile. Mrs. Henderson, Gary, Mr. Peterson �" all of them, a unified front. The humming inside Brenda's head intensified. It felt like warm water filling her brain, gently dissolving the sharp edges of her unique thoughts. She saw herself, suddenly, in a teal polo, her hair neatly tied back, a faint, contented smile on her face. Oh, the peace! The utter lack of decision-making! It would be so simple. So... beige.

Just as the first sensation of utter, joyful blandness began to wash over her, Brenda's phone buzzed in her pocket. It was her alarm, set to remind her to watch the finale of "Zombie Babysitters from Space," her favorite trashy sci-fi show. The tinny, ridiculous theme music blared from her phone, a cacophony of cheesy synth and mismatched sound effects.

The hive mind faltered. A ripple went through the unified crowd. A few heads tilted, almost imperceptibly, as if trying to process the discordant, utterly inefficient noise. The hum in Brenda's head lessened, replaced by the insistent, glorious absurdity of the theme song.

In that split second of confusion, Brenda saw her chance. "Zombie Babysitters, assemble!" she screamed, flailing the rusty wrench and accidentally dropping her phone. The phone skittered across the floor, still blasting its theme. The hive mind recoiled, not in terror, but in a kind of collective, bewildered aesthetic offense.

Brenda bolted. She ran out the back door, scrambled over her fence, and didn't stop until she was several blocks away, panting in a neglected park. She looked back. Elm Street was a picture of serene, beige uniformity. But now, she noticed, the synchronized movements seemed to have a faint, almost rhythmic wobble to them, as if a tiny, incongruous beat had been introduced.

Brenda never went back to Elm Street. She moved to the city, embracing the glorious chaos of individuality, mismatched socks, and all. She still occasionally got a phantom urge to paint things beige or hum the Sprinkly-Shine jingle, but she fought it with extreme prejudice.

Sometimes, late at night, she’d see news reports from small, impeccably neat towns across the country. Towns where everyone dressed alike, moved in unison, and referred to themselves collectively as "We, the Harmonized Collective." And one time, during a particularly bland weather report from a town called Pleasantville, she swore she saw a news anchor, mid-report, adjust his spectacles with a subtle, almost imperceptible wobble. And then, just as the camera cut away, she heard it, faintly, under his perfectly modulated voice: a tiny, tinny, almost fully assimilated synth beat. The harmony, it seemed, was occasionally interrupted by a very faint, almost entirely suppressed jingle. Some things, even a hive mind, couldn't quite get rid of. Especially if they were truly, wonderfully inefficient.