The rain was coming down in droves. The mud as viscous as fresh poured concrete on a February morning. The flames that once surrounded us had simmered down for now.
“What and the hell are we doing here?” I asked her.
“Well sir, that is up to you and the writer,” she said, as a cosmic wind whispered round my soul.
Her mascara was dripping down her cheeks from the rain like ink bleeding through soaking wet sheets of paper. She stared with intent at the barely lit heart-shaped cage ahead of us off in the distance.
“Hell, you only live once, so let’s get this show on the road shall we?” I said, trudging through the mud, brimming with confidence, and a typewriter balanced steady on my head.
We made our way out of the door and towards the cage through the seemingly eternally abandoned zoo, down a slippery slope, and around a rather large circuitous puddle. The path led us past an abandoned circus tent with a once bustling sideshow burlesque display of some kind of half man, half beast "extravaganza de rendezvous.” I couldn’t help but notice the damn thing had been ripped in half by something out of this world.
We spoke very little to each other for a hot minute and that was only about why she would wear those bright white galoshes on such a dark and muddy night.
“That way, you’ll always be able to find me when you’re lost in the dark,” she said without even realizing it. “And if that doesn’t help, I know of another light that’ll help show you the way out, just in case an unforeseen emergency were ever to arise.”
“Well, let’s hope it comes to that.” I said with a little chuckle, as we drew closer to the cage.
The excitable silhouette in the cage had settled down quite significantly. And by all accords of the slow repetitive movements from its chest, which I assumed to be deep breaths, did indeed mean, the thing was fast asleep, and most definitely dreaming.
Next to the cage though, was a black and yellow-striped travel trailer tent looking thing that looked as though someone painted it to look like a bee. It had one of those old school TV antennae pointed diagonal from upon the roof, as though it were reaching for the stars, which helped to tie the whole damn image together, with its keen little stinger.
The trailer was propped up by a few blocks of wood painted bright white. The light inside had a welcoming warmth, an amber glow which I could feel in my old worn out bones even out here in the rain and freezing cold.
One look at the travel trailer tent thingamajig and you just knew it was never going anywhere, ever again. It had found its final resting place in that long abandoned zoo, tucked away in some distant sort of heaven, a place where inspirational words were forever written just to be prayed too. It was really something to watch the wisps of smoke swirl around spirally from two hidden chimneys into the cloudy, yet halfway clear and starry sky above us.
I could see a silhoutte of a kind of half-beast, half-man creature inside the tent through an open window. It looked as though the feral son of a gun was making something, maybe he was making spaghetti, I couldn’t really tell though.
There was about a cord of well-seasoned wood stacked criss-cross upon the front porch, along with an empty chair, a pencil pad filled with chicken scratch with two pens as a paperweight, and an apple with a bite taken out of it beside a half smoked cigarette burning away in the ashtray.
“This is it. The moment we’ve been waiting so patiently for,” the woman beamed.
As she went to open the door, the door gently swung open before she even had a chance to reach it, and a man wearing a hat that apparently liked to write a little bit—whom looked to be about my age—stepped outside to greet us with a big ole grin.
He looked like your run-of-the-mill average Joe, nothing too special, nothing too hurtful.
The man held his right hand just upon his forehead, as if he were trying to shield his sensitive eye from a bright, beautiful, and smoking hot ray of sunshine, though the landscape around us was dark and dreary and windy with the harsh anticipation of a stark and stormy night.
“Howdy sir,” he said, reaching out his hand to me. “I assume you are the editor/typist she has been so adamant about me collaborating with on this project.”
“Right back at you old friend,” I said, meeting his hand halfway. “And yes, you are correct in that assumption, as I assume you are the writer that I’ve been hearing so much about as of late?”
“Hey there, honeybee,” he said to her, ignoring my question altogether. “I’ve missed you, now where’s my sugar at?”
“You babe, are something else,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck, while giving him a wet sloppy kiss on the lips.
“So my little honeybee, I hate to sound like an asshole, but do you mind buzzing on back to the hive for a hot minute or two. Me and this guy have a few words to discuss at length, man to man, until we meet halfway”
“Yes, but don’t be too long handsome. I have something of a surprise to show you, and I think you're really going to like it.” She said as she just flew away in the direction of the barely lit cage, batting her eyelashes like fluttering little bee wings along the way.
He pointed me towards the door and blew her a kiss, as did I, and we both headed inside.
"Goddamn she really is the only one of her kind isn't she that little honeybee, like a gift of love all wrapped up in human flesh from the universe above. we both agreed as we shook our heads simultaneously.
”Better yet, who knew diamonds were native to northern Nevada?” I chimed in with a wink.
The place was tiny, mud had been tracked in, and it was everywhere. It reeked of wet soil, and stagnant rain. There was a heaping pile of charred ashes, and a california king sized unmade bed that took up a lot of what little space there was, and it looked as if it had been the partner of a recent lackadaisical love making session.
There was also a small table that looked like a half-charred little green bush with a couple of ladybug chairs spun around it. There was a pale and colorful couch shaped like a caterpillar, and a little sink next to two small wood burning stoves that were probably used for cooking, and the sink for cleaning. There were seeds—some even budding—everywhere, as well as a couple shovels too. Somebody had definitely been trying to bury a lot of things here recently, and I couldn’t help but get a feel that the place was a sort of metaphor for a garden.
There were a couple of forgotten dirty dishes in the little sink. They looked as if they had always been dirty: left dirty to be cleansed forever, like my soul, I thought.
I could hear a record spinning a faint song somewhere in the confined spaces of the room and after what little bit of effort I put into looking for it, I couldn’t find it. I looked in every nook and cranny but it was out of sight. It was probably just in my head, or someone could have buried it recently for all I knew, or something like that.
“So you’re the editor guy that can balance a typewriter on his head,” the man asked. “And you get half for doing most of the legwork. Do you think that’s fair, and are you okay with doing all that with so much weight on your head?“
“I find it fair enough,” I said, finally putting the typewriter down. “You need someone to do the editing and the typing. I need somebody to do the writing. It’s almost as if fate had a choice in the matter at having us meet and chose to do so.”
“Well, would you like to see the story I am in the process of writing?” He silently asked me.
“That’s why I’m here my old friend.” I answered back with a smart aleck tone.
“Okay. I have to warn you though, it’s not too well, or carefully written,” he said to me. “I never finished creative writing school, and I‘ve hardly retained what little bit I did learn way back then. So that’s why you’re going to have edit it. You know, straighten out the grammar and commas, tie up any loose ends in the plot, connect the characters together consistently, and all that other punctual and poetic jazz.”
He picked up a tattered and torn three ring binder that was lying on the heaping pile of ashes next to the bed and handed it to me.
On one side was a picture of a coloring book elephant that looked like a child once drew freehand, and on the other side was a name of sorts, which was “Barstool Buddha” followed by the quote, Everything Is Subject To Change, and on the inside of the binder was a picture of the writer, with little words that looked to spell out the words ”a promise” below the photo, but the “e” was missing, so I’m not sure how and the hell, one would go about trying to pronounce it.
The man in the photo looked awfully tired, almost as if he had spent the previous couple years working too damn much and chasing too much tail, as well as the moon, all over Northern Nevada, and barely had enough gas left in the tank to get back in the saddle.
There were about four hundred and forty-four pages of written words in the binder, the ink had faded and the paper had worn with time. The words that were still legible were jumbled together and flung about the pages: a frayed connection between gentle thoughts and patient penmanship it seemed to be.
“It’s far from finished yet,” he said.
“That’s fine. I’ll edit it and type it out, and we’ll go from there,” I said, starting to quickly scan over the story myself.
It was a story about a young writer falling in love with a waitress/kitchen helper extraordinaire. The story began when it was supposed to begin in an old-fashioned diner somewhere just on the outskirts of the universe called Honeybee’s.
The young writer was sitting at a table, and the waitress approached him to take his order. She was wearing a yellow and black striped tank top, with a short skirt to match. She was wearing these bright white boots that went halfway up her calf. She was the prettiest thing the young writer had ever seen with her hair in a ponytail bouncing back and forth around her rosy red and blushing cheeks.
“Good morning handsome, welcome to Honeybee’s where everything tastes as sweet as pie,” she said to the young man with a pen in his hand.
”What can I get started for you this fine morning?”
“Could I please get a cup of coffee and half a slice of your world famous honey pie?” Spoke the young man politely.
“Sure thing sweets” she said with a glowing smile while batting her eyes. “Would you like any cream or sugar with that, or just the cherry on top?”
“Just some half and half, if you have it please, and yes ma’am, a little bit of sugar ought to be suffice”
She scurried off to get his order ready, wings fluttering behind her, and shaking her keen little stinger, when the writer interrupted my ability to focus on the story.
“So you can handle the editing, type it all out, fill in the plot holes, and create connections between the characters, because it’s a helluva story, is it not?” He asked. “I get half, and you get the other half, and everybody’s happy as a honeybee in a garden of blooming flowers on a sunny day.”
“It seems like a really sweet, and probably is a goddamn amazing little love story, but don’t you have anything that is a little more revolutionary of your heart, more demanding of the task at hand, and more in tune with you yourself at the moment?” I asked him from the bottom of my soul.
“Oh my, I thought, well, to be honest, I thought you’d never ask, so I thought to never tell. But hell yes, absolutely yes, yes I do, I have something just for you.” He said, panting in amazement. Grinning from ear to shiny ear. “But first we have to find the key to the cage outside before he wakes up”
“Before who wakes up?” I asked to the sky confused.
“You’ll see for yourself, but first we have to hurry it up because we have to find the key before he wakes up. So quit thinking about the story so much and help me find the damn key,“ he said, as he picked up a shovel and started digging for the key.
The entire trailer began to shake with vigor. He started digging deep faster and faster. Everything was falling off the shelves, amber stained rain drops the size of beach balls started bouncing off the roof above us. It felt as if the earth was collapsing beneath our feet, so I quit trying to find balance altogether, and took a seat on the caterpillar shaped couch next to me.
“What and the hell is going on?“ I aked him with a hint of delightful confusion from my comfy spot on the couch when a bee stung me right between the eyes.
“By the sound of things, I don‘t think we’re going to need that key after all, he’s just going to tear the whole place down” he said, laughing uncontrollably, and as if he were ever nothing more than a wisp of smoke, he vanished into thin air!”
The walls had now completely caved in around me, the door ripped off the trailer. There was no longer a storm a brewing anymore. No clouds, no rain, just a clear, cold, shadowed moon, and starry starry sky, the path as clear as it has ever been. A plume of amber glazed smoke danced upon the horizon from a wildfire off in the distance.
“Welcome back stranger.” I greeted him with grin, a typewriter balanced steady on my head, my mind stung comfortably numb, all the while stargazing at a smoky silhouette mingling with the universe above…
”So where shall we begin?”
To Be Continued…
—Ryan Love
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