Deborah – Bee about Town

 I was five the first time it happened, and I wet myself. The shock of it had demanded precipitate action so I’d had to take this thing by the throat. In annihilating it, I shoved it into one of those convenient bore-holes that seem to manifest when most needed. Deep into my sub-conscious I suppose it went.

Once it was buried there, in primordial soot and weighted with colossal stones, I could accept that virtual murder was done and the nightmare gone. I could conveniently forget the nebulous cairn and feel reassured that at least one of my demons was dealt with. Afterwards, I could happily get on with living my life (long live the spectre).

Thereafter, I managed to do all the usual dodging of the subliminal terrors that civilisation bestows. I also did the usual yearning for eternal sunlight, and while relishing the solid earth beneath the ‘souls’ of my feet, I found Life was good. Very good, in fact, until I was nine.

I won the English prize for my year at school, on the strength of a poem ‘what I wrote.’ Now, this jarring misuse of our beautiful language paves the way, in this account, for a cruel diminishing of my opus. The offender was someone in a leadership role, someone who really should have known better.

My poem was all about colour: ‘The Rainbow’s not a Bridge.’ and it scoured my whole being to get onto the page. In its explorations of the prismatic divisions of white light, it lamented humanity’s limited perception of the spectrum. Precocious stuff, it was. All my efforts were wrung out of me in its creation and I certainly felt deserving of the accolade.

Proud and pleased to accept the recognition, when the day of the Prizegiving dawned anticipation quivered and crackled through my aura, the Oscars couldn’t have demanded more. Still unknown to me, though, was the fact that it would very soon come to pass that a great, bright, white revealing light would be cast onto the limited spectrum of ‘education’ as a whole system…

Several prizes had been delivered when Mrs Bulsher, esteemed Head of School, announced my triumph before calling me to the stage. I was so excited. She began:

“I am delighted to present the English prize to Deborah Smith for her lovely little poem…”

Ouch!! This was the call to arms my demon had been waiting for…

Lovely little poem? Lovely. Little. Shitting. Poem?

The unearthly hissing from deep within my being, said much about ‘the old nightmare’ resurrecting. So poetic at its own level, it silently snarled something about ‘bloody gobshite Bulshite.’ The expletives predated my later command of Foulish and were relatively benign, but a lurching beneath the cairn tossed the boulders aside and signalled the resurrection of someone heroic who stood erect at my core. Burning coals scorched the insides of both corneas from behind my eyes. Her Time had come…

They told me I’d fainted, but I certainly had not. I bounced from my body and off the walls to sit in the vaults of the hall and watch them all ministering to my limp form. And I didn’t wet myself this time. Instead I spat nails onto Mrs Bullshite. Although spectral missiles they nonetheless caught her, causing her to cringe and touch her head and look up. She couldn’t clock me, though all that chaos was my doing and I was loving it. I returned to base only when I was ready. Oh, the prolonged panic when they couldn’t revive me.

Bloody lovely little poem… patronising yuk!

And now here I am: really big. I’m twenty-five and standing on the edge of a high-rise with my new friend, Bee.

“Shall we jump?”

“Of course, that’s why we’re here – you’ll love it.”

People do crazy things like this, I know. Only, as a rule, it’s with a bungy. But I’m about to discover that dirigible, free-fall floating is fabulous.

Bee and I almost collided as I crested my curved air trajectory after rather forcefully leaving my body once again. I have no idea how it happened on this occasion, so taken unawares was I when I was catapulted high over the town without a handle on my body. This disorientation is a first and it crosses my mind that I might be dead. Bee, it seems, can read my mind:

“You’re not dead yet, you know. We’ve just got some time together to play for a while and then… well, it’s not decided yet. Anyway ‘dead’ isn’t a thing.”

“Aren’t you dead?”

“Well, yes, in a way I suppose I am. Do you remember when we last met?”

There’s certainly a familiarity that’s almost - almost palpable. It’s of that sort born of a singular kindness passing from a someone to someone else. It never gets lost, hanging there always between the two like a golden shaft of echoey light, a permanent and quintessential link.

“Don’t you remember reviving me with water and honey?”

Dawning recognition suddenly triggers a sort of explosion deep inside me. My essence oscillates with excitement, changing colour like a hysterical mood lamp. This reaction of mine is pleasing and very much in keeping with the occasion. This is a momentous reunion now that I see it for what it is. I’d rescued Bee three or four summers before, when finding her gasping for air. Parched, too weak to drag herself out of a blaze of sunlight, I’d scooped her into an errant rose petal, dropping her into a shaded, newly opened bloom before dashing to fetch water and the jar of honey from the kitchen. I’d poured water into the petals adding a dollop of honey and recall leaving the poor creature in peace to revive. My return ten minutes later to check up was rewarded with the delight of discovering that the rose’s tenant was absent and a bee-shaped vacancy remained in its place. I carried it in my heart for ages.

“I continued to serve my Queen because of you. The colony prospered, new generations were raised because of me and my ilk. Still it prospers.” Thoughtful, we’re both moved by the interconnectedness of tiny gestures.

“Seeming to be like a mere droplet from an ocean, every good turn, however small, that enables service to others, escalates in goodness. It becomes a tsunami of benevolence that sweeps through time and space. You saved my life. I passed over, later, at the right time and I looked for you, found you and watched over you. We share the same name, you know?”

“Yes, of course that is true: our great namesake beeing a prophetess…”

Bee’s giggle at my cracking a funny, sounds like bubbles popping.

“She truly was. She probably brought us together with her patron saint-ness… Okay, so now I predict the leap of a lifetime. Are you game?…” 

After ‘3’ we jump, Bee and me. Looping loops, tracing arcs and parabolas, we’re like fiends.

On my second downward spiral a toddler spies me from her pram. She looks up and waves to me, squealing with delight.

“Debbie!” croons her mother, “aren’t you a happy little bunny? Is it fairies you’re watching?”

“Debbie? Haha! You see! She resonates with us, it’s why she can see us, maybe she’s one of us,” Bee observes. “Watching fairies indeed…” she giggles again.

No one else in the street seems aware of our antics. I wave to the baby with enthusiasm and try to capture more attention from elsewhere; maybe even from her enraptured mother, why not? But everyone’s oblivious. Still, my efforts to be noticed are overreaching and make me negligent.

Not watching where I fly, I slam into a hairdresser’s shop, going straight through the plate glass window, into the salon and out through the back. There, I narrowly avoid a brick wall: only by upping the G’s, do I save myself with a steep ascent. I crest and join Bee who, laughing and cavorting, seems not at all concerned by my near-miss.

“You’d have gone straight through it if you’d hit it, that brick wall…” Bee’s voice sang with mirth, “just the same as when you went through the window without it noticing…”

“I did, didn’t I? I’m going to test that out again.”

The re-run produces the same effect: no pain, no smashing, no breakages. I’m invincible. Imagine how that feels. Plus there’s the bonus of ‘beeing it’ all over town: a sure qualifier, methinks, for the ‘Wild and Reckless League.’ How could it get any better? I surface again at the top of the building where Bee is hovering. I can tell she’s in a bit of a flap.

“Quick, I just got Word. You have to go back…”

“Who says? I’ll decide. This is too much fun to be…”

“NOW. Come on, it’s almost too late, don’t argue. I’ll come with you.”

Bee grabs my arm, at least I think that’s how it is, but as I open my mouth (if that’s what I’m doing) to protest, we are sucked into this vortex. It’s as irresistible as those ridiculous vortices caused by bad urban planning, when a gentle breeze becomes a wind tunnel. Those, I’ve only ever experienced at street level, where I’d be in battle to take my next breath and my next step. Entering this one at roof level feels like the swirling and dragging of a riptide pulling me under.

I’m almost in the bed when I see the man in green who appears to have been ironing my chest. Apparently, he’s just applied a counter shock to my idling heart. As my descent takes me past him I feel resentment.

“Who asked him to the party?”

A woman takes my hand. A nurse, I think, she’s in scrubs, too.

“No, that’s it…” she says. “She’s gone, we’ve lost her…”

I can sense a crew of folk around the room and feel their deflation. I also sense my body is quite mangled, vaguely recalling an impact. RTA, I believe.

“What’s the time?”

“Precisely 12:17…”

“Did we find any next of kin?... Oh no! – MY GOD, what’s that doing in here. It’s a bee…”

Scurrying efforts are made to retrieve the alleged intruder to this sterile environment. It’s pandemonium let loose.

Bloody hell! she is my next of kin, my namesake, my soulmate – my only visitor. My dander comes right up. Big time. Enraged, I am, by this presumptuous takeover of my affairs.

Scorching indignation easily reaches the parts other defibrillators failed to galvanise. I’m as mad as a whole bag of bees and feel a sting coming on. With reverse logic, my demise is warded off by the reawakening of the old demon. Her fire breathing trick activates my leaky lungs, just as my heart takes its first tick. Her being invoked coincides with the general kerfuffle caused by these aspiring bee wranglers. No one notices my sharp intake of breath so there’s some considerable surprise in the room when my exhalation comes hot and harsh. It is matched by gasps of astonishment around me as my eyes flick open and I bark:

“Leave her be!” The same nurse, still beside me, nearly jumps out of her skin. I recognise the signs.

But then, I would wouldn’t I?