The Swarm: Chapter 1

Staring out the window of his used car, Collin sighed. It was a gloomy day, made even gloomier by the prospect of moving away from the apartment in Toronto that his family shared. He loved the city, and it was all he knew. He couldn't imagine sleeping without the sound of car horns and ambulance sirens, without the constant glow of city lights, without the constant motion of city life. His parents were moving to Pommetiers of all places, and by extension forcing his teenage self to come with them.

Pommetiers was a peaceful little town, considered by many to be the very essence of idealism. Built around a hill topped by a lovely, century old catholic church and filled with crab apple tree-lined boulevards, a landscape of the town would not be out of place on a postcard. It seemed like everyone in the town knew everyone else, or at least had enough contacts to feel invested in the town and its future. Even the most modern of architecture was designed to incorporate an old, French village feeling. The result was that although Pommetiers was a sizable town, it had maintained the air of a small, French village. The whole town had a surreal, almost ethereal quality to it.

To Collin, however, this place was a higher power's punishment for his misdeeds. He hated everything about the place: the creepy old church with it's innumerable statues that cast their ghoulish shadows across the walls, the wasps the crab apple trees attracted, the snobbery of the "French" citizens, many of whom had a tenuous grasp of the language at best and no french ancestry whatsoever. But most of all, he hated that nothing ever seemed to happen. Although the town was actually Canadian and supposedly French, Pommetiers seemed to be trapped in a 1950's version of the All-American dream, complete with white picket fences, apple pies, and trying to outdo the Jones'. This aspect of the town's identity enraged Collin all the more. He didn't want to live in a safe little bubble of a town, he wanted to experience the real world, with all it's flaws and unpleasantries. This town wasn't real, it was too...perfect to be. At least, that was the case until THEY showed up.

To be continued...