A Murder Wasp Answers the Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire:

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

“It might be a cliche, but it’s stinging, it really is. And murdering, of course. Stinging and murdering. But inside of that, there’s the feeling of my stinger easily penetrating the thick outer layer of a beekeeping suit and then sinking into the soft, vulnerable human flesh, and at a certain point the creature knows it has no hope and just sort of gives up, full in the knowledge that it has just been murdered by a superior life form. It just doesn’t get any better than that.”

2. What is your greatest fear?

“ I have no fear. I am a Murder Hornet.”

3. Which living person do you most respect?

“There’s no person, living or dead, that a Murder Hornet is going to respect. Not now, not ever. We don’t roll that way. That being said, I like Joe Rogan. Think he’s okay.”

4. What is your favourite journey?

“For a Murder Wasp there is only one of two possible answers. Either your favourite journey is leaving the nest to assassinate a person, or returning to the nest after successfully assassinating a person. Personally, I prefer the anticipation, the moments leading to the murder. That is the journey I always want to be on.”

5. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

“You ain’t shit to me.”

6. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

“Well, let me assure you that there is no problem in the stinger department. I got that very well covered. Otherwise, I would have to say my thorax and abdomen. I would like to be about 7 times larger than I am, maybe the size of an Eagle of very large bat. It’s not that I don’t love myself as I am, I just think I would be more effective at murdering and causing terror if I were larger.”

7. Which talent would you most like to have?

“You mean add to my arsenal? Okay. That would be swimming. I would love to be able to murder creatures of the water. To murder a shark? I would like to experience that.”

8. On what occasion do you lie?

“ I never lie. I am always present. Always ready to kill. It is what I am. There is no deception in my being.”

9. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

“ I would like to come back as a particularly deadly and contagious virus, becoming nearly infinite in my capacity to murder.”

10. What do you most value in your friends?

“Subordination and obedience.”

11. What are your favourite names?

“ I have always liked Madeline for a Queen, and Nathan for a drone.

12. What is your motto?

“Keep calm and murder on.”