Hello hello Mister Rawlins thank you for visiting no one has visited us in such a long long time we have been waiting.
“Hello?” Zachary answers, not meaning it to sound quite so much like a question but it is a question, he is nothing but questions as he enters the dollhouse. His feet sink into the honey that coats the floor as he steps into the entrance hall.
Hello Mister Rawlins hellohellohello.
The giant bees move this way and that over the honeycomb-encased rooms, traveling up and down the stairs, flitting from room to room, going about their business whatever their business might be.
“How…how do you know my name?” Zachary asks.
It has been told to us many times Mister Zachary Ezra Rawlins sir.
“What is this?” he asks. He walks farther into the house, each step slow and sticky.
This is a dollhouse a house for dolls a house to keep the story in it doesn’t all fit in the house most stories don’t most stories are bigger this one is very big.
“Why am I here?”
You are here because you are dead so now you are here in between places also because you are the key she said she would send us a key when it was time to end a key to lock the story away when it was finished and here you are.
Zachary looks down at the key-shaped scar on his chest.
“Who told you that?” he asks, though he knows.
The story sculptor, comes the buzzing answer, not the one that Zachary expected. The one who sculpts the story sometimes she is in the story sometimes she is not sometimes she is pieces sometimes she is a person she told us you were coming very long ago we have waited for you a long long time Mister Rawlins.
“For me?”
Yes Mister Rawlins you have brought the story here thank you thank you the story has not been here in a very long time we cannot lock away a Harbor story that has wandered so far away from us we usually go up up up and this time we came down down down we came down here to wait and now we are here together with the story would you like a cup of tea?
“No, thank you,” Zachary says. He peers at a grandfather clock dripping with honey in the front hall, its decorative face depicting an owl and a cat in a small boat, its hands paused in wax a minute before midnight. “How do I get out of here?” he asks.
There is no out there is only in.
“Well then what happens next?”
There is no next not here this is the end do you not know what end means?
“I know what end means,” Zachary says. The calm he felt before is gone, replaced by a humming buzzing agitation and he cannot tell if it is coming from the bees themselves or from somewhere else.
Are you all right Mister Rawlins what is the matter you should be happy you like this story you like us you are our key you are our friend you love us you said you did.
“I did not.”
You did you did we gave you cupcakes.
Zachary remembers writing his eternal devotion in fountain pen on paper sent down a dumbwaiter that feels long ago and far away.
“You’re the Kitchen,” he says, realizing that he has already had several conversations with bees before though they seem to be more articulate in writing.
In that place we are the Kitchen but here we are ourselves.
“You’re bees.”
We like bees. Would you care for a refreshment we can turn honey into anything anything anything you can imagine we are very good at it we have had a lot of practice we can give you the idea of a cupcake and it would taste very real exactly like real cake only smaller. Would you like a cupcake?
“No.”
Would you like two cupcakes?