'Listening to Mr Freckleston' by Katharine Kerr

The bees were first, they knew.  Mr Freckleston said it was because they had special hairs on their knees, but the skin on his face looked like rhubarb and he talked to himself at the bus stop, so nobody really listened to him.

They started returning to the hive speckled in white.  Nobody had any idea where it came from or what it was.  When the bees stopped producing honey people were worried, but only then.  Mr Freckleston said not to eat the honey in case any white stuff had got into it, but nobody listened because sometimes he dribbled and forgot what he was saying.

Small animals were next.  They tried to groom the white stuff from each other’s fur and they started to die.  Little rotting bodies appeared all over and then bigger animals scavenged them.  Mr Freckleston said he would burn every body he found and we should all do the same, but sometimes he would cry into the night and sound like a banshee, so we didn’t listen.

Now there are bees and there are animals and there are a few people who did burn the little bodies and there is Mr Freckleston and there is not much else.  Sometimes he laughs and it is a sad sort of laugh, but there isn’t anyone left to listen.