Bee-cause I Said Hello

When my son was little, he’d lift up the receiver on the phone and say, “hello bees.”  I think he borrowed the idea from “The Rugrats,” but none the less his tiny voice speaking to the dial tone was rather endearing. 

In remembering him and what used to be, I lifted up the phone and said through a chuckle, “hello bees.” Of course at the fold just before morning this was to acknowledge my own sentiment.  HHHHUUUUMMMMM….monotonous din, blank sound, bees…

I know my fingers should have been flying across the keyboard sculpting an amazing tale regarding the current project I’m working on…but for some reason I had nothing.  The cursor blinked, surrounded by the great white of an empty page.  Huge teeth were biting me as I swam in an endless sea of brain fog.

I suspected writer’s block was similar to lifting the phone with no one on the other end.  I called, “hello bees” in jest, but the most disturbing reality at least in that moment…was how someone on the other side answered me.

In the still between night and day, it remains my favorite time to write.  With the house at rest, the dog upstairs on her pillow fast asleep…no cats, no kids, no kidding...  It stands as my official hour to stir the martini of all tales, except on this occasion…blank screen…a flat line of creativity.  The clock movement whispered tick-taunt, tick-taunt; the central heat whomed near my office, the low level of sound was what I craved…and there it was.  “Hello bees,” I’d said into the din and in response there was a cavern full of insects bellowing “hello” in return.

My first inclination was to slam the receiver down and flee for my life.  What if they flew through the line and attacked?  Chicken.  No, I needed to be brave.  I took a quick breath, shifted my weight in the chair and repositioned my footing.

“What do you want?”  The bees asked me with great volume.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing!”  I announced as I gently placed the receiver back onto the cradle. 

At that particular moment, the insanity of bee-talk didn’t quite register.  It reminded me of my sister Mary and the many times I’d pick up the extension phone while she was knee deep in conversation with her boyfriend back in high school.  I’d interrupt their lovey-dovey banter.  “Lovey-dovey” to someone five years her junior was the sappy-sweet elixir of romance that was laced with the poisonous venom of yuck.  “You hang up first,” she’d say.  On the other end he’d reply, “no you…”  Over and over, round and round, seconds, minutes, twenty minutes…and then of course she noticed the click from my end on the extension.

“What do you want?”  She snipped, except she followed up by calling me a “brat.”  By the way, I probably was a brat from her perspective, for Mary picked on me and I picked on Mary in equal portions.  There always seemed to be a bell ringing that announced the next round of our twisted version of family feud.

The voice present day was NOT Mary.

“Hey,” I said as I lifted the receiver.  “Who are you and why are you on the other end of my phone?”

“Trixie Archer right?” 

“Who is this?”  I answered with a question.

“You are Trixie Archer yes?”

“Who wants to know?”

“YOU called me remember?  You asked for the bees and I answered.”

“I um…”  I said hanging up.  Who exactly was on the other side?  I thought the bee-phone line was all just a “kid thing,” a private joke shared between children, but all of a sudden there was a lot more to it.  Fear rising.  I’ll be honest with you; I felt a surge of panic with sweat beading on my forehead; my pulse racing and my throat meter leaning towards desert-dry empty.  This was an absolute mind twist.  What the heck?

I gazed about.  The clock on my desk had stopped.  The time was cryptic, 3:33. 

“This can’t be good,” I mumbled half anticipating eerie music to fill the air followed by a startling boom of abrupt just as someone rushed me from behind.

I decided to turn off my computer abandoning the white screen of doom…I was after all experiencing a zero score for writing.   I needed to find Monkeyshine.  I knew she’d alert me to anything out of the ordinary.  (Check out her picture on my blog…notice the rather large ears on her head?  She has radar hearing…so it was my turn to pester the dog for something…a complete role reversal.)

I moved to the stairway except the direction of the stairs had changed somehow.  It now only led down instead of up.  “Huh?”  I was on the lowest level but somehow I became disorientated.  This was NOT a stairway to heaven…great song but not here, not now.

Was it the tea I was drinking?  The language was foreign and I had no idea what the ingredients were.  There was a picture of a llama wearing pajamas on the packaging and I believed the mixture was a relaxing sort of concoction based solely on the illustration.   It had been a gift from my daughter for Christmas. 

“Try this,” she explained, “its herbal…it’ll fix you right up!”  Tripping, that’s what it was; a tea trip to the land where all midnight writers go as they skip, skip, skip to my Lou…but there was no darling…there was only the blasted phone and a swarm that seemed to be stalking me.

As if on cue, the phone began to ring.  I hurried back to my office for the kids upstairs needed to sleep uninterrupted.  “Hello?”  I called to the bees on the other end of the line. 

“Trixie Archer?”  The peculiar voice asked once again.

“Yes,” I finally admitted.

“You may wish to awaken right now, that is if you have the courage…”

“If I ha-have the courage?  What the heck are you talking about?”

Laughter…deep…sinister bursts of laughter.  Goosebumps up and down my arms and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“WHO is this?”  I demanded as my zone of understanding became deflated.

“Mom.”

“This isn’t my mother.  I know her voice and you sound as if you swallowed a frog on croak or something.”

“No, I’m calling you…mom.”

“I’m not your mother!”  I replied with upset into the phone.

“Mom, you need to wake up.  You fell asleep on your keyboard again and I could hear the beeping from my room above.”

“Huh?”  I asked squinting as my eyes adjusted to the light my son had clicked on above me.

“Did you hear the phone ring a few minutes ago?”  I wondered.

“No, you must’ve been dreaming.”

“Okay, off to bed mister…”  I said with authority while accepting his explanation.

I watched him head up the stairs that were now leading in the proper direction.  When my attention returned to the screen I stopped dead in my tracks.  I couldn’t believe what was before my eyes.  With my pillow being the keyboard, I somehow landed in a place between dream and reality, reality and dream.  Before me were words typed clear as day, perfectly spaced and spelled correctly.  It read:

BRAT BRAT BRAT BRAT BRAT BRAT BRAT BRAT BRAT BRAT BRAT BRAT…ten pages, over and over and over again…an obvious message from that in-between place known as dreamland.

“Now it all makes perfect sense,” I whispered with great relief.  “I’ll need to phone Mary tomorrow and wish her a happy birthday.  Of course!”

As I clicked off the overhead light, I paused for a moment, lifted the receiver and said into the dial tone.  “Thanks for the reminder bees.  I almost forgot my sister’s birthday.”

Just as I was entering my bedroom the phone began to ring…at that point, it was one call that I decided not to answer. 

Writing flat-line, maybe-maybe not…this blog however has been brought to you from the great land of bees.  There’s either too much honey in my tea or crazy in my disposition, you decide.