The Bee

This is a short short that I knocked up in my spare time, I hope you all like it.

Callie poured herself a glass of wine and carried it into the living room, from there she headed out to the garden. She had a nice afternoon of relaxing in the sun to look forward to, and she wanted to make the most of it; she could hear the soft music coming from the radio and paused for a moment to try and identify the song, it was familiar but she just couldn’t pull the name out of the recesses of her mind.

Giving up she started moving again and was soon as the French windows. The moment she pulled one open the volume doubled and she recognised the song as Chandelier by SIA. She barely had chance to take a congratulatory sip of her wine when she was bowled off her feet to fall on her backside, the wine in her glass splashing over her face, blinding her momentarily. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision and looked around to find out what had happened. What she saw answered her question, it was her boyfriend that had knocked her down, but left her with more, namely ‘why had he knocked her down’ and ‘why was he dancing around the living room and waving his arms around like he was on fire’.

Bewildered, she got to her feet and wiped away the wine that ran down her face as best she could. Only when she had done that, and she felt a little more like herself, did she attempt to figure out what was going on.

“What’re you doing, Nick?” she asked as she approached her wildly moving and gesticulating boyfriend, being careful not to get close enough that she might get hit by accident.

“Bee,” Nick gasped. “There’s a bee.”

Callie understood why her boyfriend was acting the way he was when she heard that; he was allergic to bees, a single sting had the potential to kill him. She couldn’t help being amused, despite the danger, now that she knew what was going on; she knew about his allergy but had never seen him react like that to the presence of a bee.

“I think you can calm down,” she told him. “There’s no need for dancing around like an idiot, the crazy person’s karate did the job, you got him.”

“Huh?” Nick wasn’t sure what Callie was on about but he did calm down a little and allow his hands to fall to his sides.

Bending down, Callie picked something up from the floor, the bee Nick had been fighting. She displayed its immobile form on the palm of her hand. “See, you got it. I wouldn’t recommend you use it on a mugger or anything, but clearly the crazy person’s karate works on bees.”

Nick leaned forward so he could take a closer look at the thing he had been so afraid of, getting so close that his nose almost touched the palm of his girlfriend’s hand. The bee chose that moment to make a miraculous recovery and take flight again. Nick flinched back away from the danger and lashed out with one hand; unfortunately he was a little too enthusiastic in his effort to defend himself and he caught his girlfriend full in th eface, not just knocking her over but knocking her out.

It was almost a minute before she regained consciousness, and when she did she found Nick leaning over her, concern in his eyes, though when he saw that she was awake he proudly held up the bee and declared, 2I definitely got it this time, see, it’s definitely dead.”

“Great,” Callie said in a voice filled with sarcasm. This was not how she wanted to spend her afternoon, she thought as she dropped her head back onto the carpet, an innocent casualty in a fight between her boyfriend and a bee.