bee whisperer

When Maddy was eight, she swallowed a bee while riding her blue bicycle down the sidewalk by her grandparents' house. It didn't sting, but she could feel its little bee paws whereever it moved, as it explored around inside her lungs. She would point to where the bee was, just below her lowest left rib, but her parents didn't believe her.

The bee stayed inside her for two days. Then, when she was asleep, it flew out in a long snore, and returned to its bee friends. A little at a time, more each night, the bees followed it back to Maddy, until they had moved their entire community into Maddy's lungs. Each morning she would tell her parents that she was more full of bees than the last -- but it seemed too improbable to be true. Her avioli, the inner recesses of of her lungs, were shaped into tiny hexagons, each full of honey; and each side of her chest became an entire bee hive.

After the initial panic, Maddy began to get used to the bees. They would only go out at night; and when Maddy awoke in the morning she would have the flavors of exotic night-blooming flowers on her tongue. Her parents thought the bees that Maddy talked about were an unusual sort of imaginary friend, and decided that the best course of action would be to let her grow out of this fixation on her own.

When Maddy was nine, there were so many bees in her that when she opened her mouth, their singing would rush out with her words, so that it sounded like she was speaking through a kazoo. Her teachers thought that this was some sort of speech impediment, and quietly instructed the other children not to make fun of her. She explained her situation to selected friendsl; but though none were cruel, they all seemed to find reasons to avoid her after she did -- so she learned to stopped telling at all. She wasn't lonely though; she felt full of warmth. She had the bees.

Then one day, when it was Maddy's turn to clap the erasers, an amazing thing happened. The chalk dust tickled her nose, and she sneezed an enormous sneeze. The bees all flew out into the room, frightening the class and causing the teacher to shout. The insects swarmed about in confusion. Then, before their eyes, Maddy opened her mouth back up, and all the bees flew back in, a long string of furry black and yellow wings disappearing into her throat. In one long, grinning gulp, they were gone. "I told you so," Maddy said in her kazoo voice.

For the rest of the semester, Maddy the crazy bee-girl enjoyed a newfound respect from her classmates. Born partly from fearful fascination, partly from the desire to associate with the girl with superhuman powers, Maddy always seemed to have a few people around her, hanging on her every word. She was the bee queen.

As Maddy got older, the story about the day the bees flew out was regarded as a bald-faced lie by the years of students who followed. She went to college and got a degree in entimology. As an adult, her peers have always been far too polite to inquire about her unusual voice. She is currently alone, researching a little known species of bees in the Amazon basin that grow to the size of pigeons. Quite happily, actually.