The first story....

Tom noticed a hole in the door of the abandoned house, kicked in, probably from some drunk with a mission to do the door some real harm, as the door had it coming. "Missions aren‘t just for drunks," Tom thought, and got down on his hands and knees and stuck his head in the hole, then both his hands. For the slightest moment he thought about how he felt like a schnauzer, crawling through a puppy door that you see in every movie with a pet in it. Tom really liked Bethoven's Second the best, though he couldn't remember any schnauzers in that one. And then, "No time for dogs," he thought. "Bees can fly."

He looked behind him and saw the thick cloud of pissed off bees, all hot and hungry and buzzing, ready for some sweaty flesh, which Tom owned.

Tom ran along the porch heading straight over the rail and into the thicket surrounding the house.

Tom hated thickets. Tom hated running. But most of all, Tom hated bees. If you knew a little bit of Tom's backstory, you might understand.

Tom had a long history with bees. You see, a swarm of angry bees had once ruined his entire life. And whether or not this was the same swarm didn't matter; Tom still hated them.

For once upon a time, when Tom was a small child growing up in Nebraska, a wild swarm of angry bees had killed his pa. And Tom had vowed revenge on all bees everywhere, until the end of time. His only problem was that with one sting, Tom would die. And he'd be just as dead of his pa. So Tom, while harboring a hatred beyond all words, had never done a thing about his vow. Instead, he went into computer science. And that's how he got mixed up in this whole fiasco.