This Once was Home
By Maire Brown
Honey drips from the ceiling, pooling where my childhood bed used to sit. The puddle seeps into the floor, disappearing into the living room below. A wax hex work of honeycomb has taken the place of shingles and drywall, a patchwork quilt of organic and manmade structures.
The foundation of our house buzzes with the comings and goings of a thousand bees, a cacophony so strong I used to hear it when I lay awake at night. At the time, I didn’t know the source. I thought they were my guardian angels, whispering in my ears. They almost covered the noise of my parents, their tense conversations about putting food on the table and keeping the lights on.
It was easy to forget how little we had because of how sweet our world was. The saccharine kisses from my mother and candy-coated hugs from my father. The hand-me-down clothes and secondhand toys were as loved as anything new, more, because of the memories they held from before they got to us.
Honey bubbles up out of the cracks in the floorboard. My shoes stick to the hardwood, this place wanting me to stay as much as I want to be here, but I can’t stay. I escape my shoes and go barefoot, letting the honey squelch between my toes. My feet threaten to pull the floorboards up with every step, bringing the house with me wherever I go.
My old dollhouse, which once belonged to my mother and her mother before her, sits abandoned in the corner of the room by the door. It’s unrecognizable; a labyrinth of wax warps the shape until it’s more of a hive than a home. Bees mill about, one filling the tiny kitchen cabinets with new cells, ready to store more honey, until this tiny replica of our life is just as sugar coated as reality.
I didn’t mean to leave the dollhouse behind. As I grew older, it slipped from my mind the way this house was replaced by memories made at the house we moved to after dad got his promotion. I think about taking the dollhouse with me for my own daughter, but it belongs to the bees now.
As I leave the bedroom and close the door behind me, the knob breaks off in my hand. A bee floats out from the hole left behind and lands on my wrist. It nudges its way up my arm, touching the end of its abdomen down occasionally to test this new surface. When I flinch, it jabs its stinger down.
The bee breaks away from its stinger, leaving behind a small dark splinter in my skin. I use my nail to scrape it out and drop it to the floor. My arm burns as the venom works its way through me. It’s a hurt akin to a paper cut, too powerful when compared to how small and simple it is. I step over the bee, which lays dying in a pool of honey, and set down the doorknob. There is nothing I can do for the bee. Death by drowning may be more peaceful than succumbing to the missing stinger.
I haven’t lived here in twenty years. When my parents could afford it, they left this place of peeling, yellowed wallpaper and moved to a new house, which we still call “new” despite the decades. The walls don’t hum there, but then again, they have no children left to hide their voices from.
My home, the one I bought with a family of my own, is quiet too. It only has the sounds of people living. Though, from time to time, when the price of groceries rises or my husband and I argue, I hear buzzing.
Honey bleeds down the banister, keeping my hand from gliding smoothly across it. The stain is worn away from all the hands that touched it since last I was here. The cherry lacquer is the same one my mother and I added to make this place nice for the next family to move in. I assume someone lived here after we did, but they don’t live here anymore.
I wonder if they moved to a better life, like we did, or if they couldn’t stay here anymore. Not with the bees rattling the light fixtures in the ceiling and tearing the walls apart nail by nail. This place that was once our home is now condemned. Destined to be torn down and rebuilt to something new.
The honey is worth saving. Toothsome memories waiting to be made and savored. Goodness left behind like honey in a comb. But what will happen to the bees, I wonder? Will they die with their hive, or will they move to another house to haunt another family? I fear the buzzing will not stop when the walls fall.
THE END
Author Bio: Maire E. Brown graduated from Montana State University with a BA in writing in 2022, and hasn’t stopped typing since. Her work is featured in Suburban Witchcraft Magazine and on The Creepy Podcast.