Colette sat up on the edge of the bed
and waited for the room to stop swirling.
She had been dreaming. Wisps of
colors and tendrils of thoughts still clung to her as her gasping subsided.
There
alway, alway something sings. Where
had that come from? A fragment of a poem
protruded from her dream into reality.
She snapped on the light and grabbed
her journal. As quickly as she could,
she jotted down what still lingered of her dream. It was a new spiral notebook; her previous
one had been confiscated by the FBI.
To Colette, dreams were hidden
messages from the Universe. To Colette,
people were swathed in colors and shapes which revealed their true
identities. To Colette, even simple
playing cards foretold the future. To
the rest of the world, Colette was a psychic – when they were being nice.
Colette wrote, “Follow the bees. A hint of honey and bar-B-Q. A train whistle - forlorn and far away. Follow the bees.” And then she wrote the quote: “’There always,
always something sings.’ – research.”
No, that wasn’t right. She
crossed out the s on the two always.
Alway something sings. Sounded wrong. But that’s what she’d heard in her
dreams. Alway.
The digits on her clock changed to
1:23. Colette found portents in time,
too. 1 – 2 – 3, a beginning.
She bit her lip and thought longingly
of the clear plastic bottle filled with amber liquid waiting for her inside the
refrigerator: Canadian Mist. It would be
nice and cold by now; she’d just bought it this evening. Now she sucked on her top lip, imagining how
it would taste.
A car drove by the house, its
headlights dancing along the walls. An
owl hooted and was answered by a mate farther away. She shouldn’t have bought the whiskey. She was starting over here. New town, new house, new damn dream journal.
Colette placed the notebook back on
the bureau and snapped off the light.
The whiskey would only make things worse. It would open doors and let the crazies
in. Again.
She grunted a sigh and slid back under
her covers. Something scratched her
cheek. Jumping out of bed, she flipped
on the overhead light. On her pillow was
a dead bumble bee.
“Follow the bees,” she whispered.
Excerpt from
Follow
the Bees
© Evelyn Rainey
Available for publication.
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