I write short stories and flash fiction. I’m currently working on my first novel. I occasionally share some pieces here.
Flash fiction:
Give or Take
Adrian Dobbs raised her freckled, blue-veined arm to ask a question. Art Brandon’s answer would kill her on Friday.
“Mr. Brandon, how many bee stings does it take to kill a person?”
Nineteen years of this asinine question. Humanity would disappear without pollinators, and all these kids care about is their least compelling feature. This year it’s the Dobbs girl. “A human body can handle about 10 bee stings per pound of body weight before the venom becomes lethal. For an average, non-allergic adult, a fatal dose by direct toxicity is usually around 1,700 stings. Give or take.”
“So if I weigh 130 pounds–”
“Bullshit,” Timmy Pusher coughed into his hand. Laughter rose from the back row.
Brandon made eye contact. “Enough, Pusher.” A month in and Brandon was already calling the mouth-breathing duo of Timmy Pusher and Franklin Best “The Butterknives.” Because they aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer.
He returned his attention to the front row. “Go ahead, Adrian.”
“So if a person weighs 130 pounds, it would take 1300 bees to kill them.”
Truly you are a champion of modern arithmetic, Dobbs. “Approximately, but I caution you against the figure as an absolute. Bodies vary, and this number comes from a rather small sample size and a lot of inference. There was a case in…” he consulted the ceiling. “Zimbabwe was it? Rhodesia? In any case, a farmer took nearly 2000 stings and survived. With kidney damage, of course.” He took up a piece of chalk.
“So the number is wrong, Mr. Brandon?”
She stared like a pug whose master held a dripping cheeseburger. “Not wrong, Dobbs. Soft. Again, variables. Now, who can tell me why the honeybee is the only one that dies upon stinging a victim?”
The fluorescents hummed. He drew a cross-section of the stinging apparatus on the board, its barbs canted backwards to grip and tear mammalian flesh. He added the muscular venom sac, which continued to pump poison once torn from the bee’s body, then turned back to the class. “Anyone at all.”
“She leaves it behind,” Dobbs said. “It rips out of her and fatally ruptures her digestive tract and vital organs. You can, like, see the entrails hanging out the back of her.”
“Correct, Adrian. And there’s a further elegance.” He circled the drawing. “The sting also releases isopentyl acetate, an alarm pheromone that smells like ripe bananas. It tells the other bees exactly where to go. So the first sting isn’t just an attack; It’s an address.”
The bell rang and bodies jostled through the door. “Hey Dobbs,” Pusher called out. “I got a ripe banana for you.” Franklin hit him in the back of the head, then dissolved into laughter.
Brandon fetched the thermos of coffee from his desk. After nineteen years of teaching, he could predict who’d be pumping gas at Sunoco (Pusher), who was just biding their time until they could take over daddy’s business (Best), who’d get pregnant, which kids had a shitty home life. He also saw the kids who wanted to learn, did the reading, asked questions. They gave a damn and made this worth it. Like Dobbs. She’ll be AP by spring—
“Do they know?”
Dobbs stood at the edge of his desk. Auburn hair framed her face like copper wire. Her right arm pressed a notebook to her Six Flags New England t-shirt; the left dangled like a windsock on a still day. Green Chuck Taylors protruded from the frayed hems of her jeans.
“Does who know what, Dobbs?”
“Do bees know they’re going to die? When they sting. Do they know it will kill them?”
He put the thermos down. “Well, no. There’s no cortex, no organ for such contemplation. It’s a reflex. They aren’t built to have an opinion about it.”
“Hive had a feeling you’d say that.”
“Was that a bee pun, Dobbs?”
“It was, sir.”
“It’s kind of sad though, right? The not knowing.”
“It’s a mercy, really. They simply act with no concept of consequences.” He sat in his chair. Folded his hands atop his belly. “You seem interested in this unit.”
“My grandfather has bees.”
“Ah. I see.” He glanced at the clock, and then his thermos. “Is there something further I can do for you, Dobbs?”
“No, sir.” She moved towards the door. Brandon poured his coffee. Kid’s a natural target. You’re a good kid, Dobbs. In a few years, Pusher will be pumping your gas.
———
Friday morning, Brandon was eleven papers into a stack of twenty-six. If he could grade two more in the next twenty minutes, he’d be halfway done by the first bell, and six hours closer to the weekend. The chemical smell of his Sharpie met him as he reached for the next one.
A pearl of sweat dotted question one, “Define homeostasis.” Shouldn’t be this warm in September. Whole planet is screwed. He crossed the room and opened a window four inches before it clicked into place. Not much of a breeze, but it was better than nothing.
Two buses rumbled into the drop-off lane. A student crossed the far end of the parking lot with a box in her arms. Did Miss Abrams assign one of her dioramas already? The poor parents. He squinted. Too tall to be Pierce. Wrong hair for the Ostroski girl. At last he landed on Dobbs.
Brandon craned his neck. The box seemed to be unfinished wood, with a strap around it. She put it down and stood with her hands on her knees. She picked it up again and carried it eight or nine steps before placing it back on the pavement. Jesus, what did she make? She can barely carry it.
The Butterknives threw a football behind the gym, their coats and bags in a heap at the curb. Pusher hurled a pass; Franklin leapt for it and collapsed into the turf. Yes, definitely toss a ball as cars move through the parking lot, Brandon thought. The ball bounced and wobbled past Dobbs, who pulled something from a pocket. She peeled it in thin, yellow strips, then squatted and rubbed it on each of their letterman jackets. Brandon’s mouth fell open.
“Hey!” Brandon shouted through the window’s narrow opening. He could smell the diesel of the idling buses. The first bell rang, drowning his words. “Dobbs! What are you doing?”
He watched Franklin pick up the football as Pusher stood behind him, putting his jacket on. He hesitated and put it up to his nose.
Adrian stood with the box in her arms, its strap at her feet. Franklin said something that Brandon couldn’t hear. Dobbs slid the lid off, then lifted the box to her chest with shaking, buckling arms. She tossed it onto the ground. Five frames thumped onto the pavement.
“Jesus Christ.” Five frames, two thousand bees per frame… Brandon sprinted past the front office. “Hold the kids in the buses! Seal the buses!” He ran through the gym. Abrams stumbled into the foyer, her breath coming in dry, shallow scrapes. She emptied her bag onto the tile, found the injector, and drove it into her thigh. Brandon shouldered through the exterior door.
In the lot, ten thousand bees swirled in a coalescing cloud. Getting their bearings. Looking for the address.
The Riverpass bus idled, windows up, a container of muffled screams. Somewhere a crackling walkie-talkie resolved into a voice. “No, do not let them off.” A classroom aide held two thrashing students, one under each arm. She fumbled for her key fob, her head a halo of bees.
Brandon froze. “Dobbs! Pusher!”
The bees had formed a dense wall around the Butterknives that hummed like a buzzsaw. Franklin pulled his jacket over his head and bolted, waving his arms like a pinwheel, headfirst into the fence. He fell onto his back, kicking and wailing. Pusher dragged him along the grass and back onto his feet before falling himself. He made a sound like screaming and choking at the same time.
Brandon stood at the edge of the bus lane. A horn blared. Behind the windshield, the driver pointed, shouting words Brandon couldn’t hear.
At the curb, she lay beside the open box, bees working her arms, her copper hair, the soft skin of her ear. All around her, the pavement was moving. Dying bodies trailed loose innards, their torn stingers pumping venom into Adrian Dobbs.
About thirteen hundred.
Give or take.
Dave Caolo 