Mrs. Carstairs

There’s the one about old Mrs. Carstairs. When she was young she was a great beauty.

She’d stand in front of her mirror and picture herself at the ball dancing, and it felt to her like she flew. Her long sweeping gowns floated across the ballroom floor and it seemed to her like she wore wings.

But of course after years, after she married and after he died, nobody flew with her anymore under the candles. Nobody danced with her under the chandeliers. And she lived alone ina house with a big old ballroom and lots of mirrors, so she could look at herself and see the gray hair, and see the wrinkles on her face, and the way her muscles sagged under her arms.

But one day a salesman came knocking at her door. And he had a sample case. It was bulky and lack and it HUMMED. And she let him in, because old Mrs. Carstairs was lonely. She wasn’t afriad of anything that could happen.

And they sat across from each other in the parlor. He opened his case slowly, and its inside was hidden from her. And when he opened it, the humming got LOUDER. And he said to her, ‘Can I interest you in bright ribbons for your hair?’

And old Mrs. Carstairs said, ‘No, I am past ribbons for my hair.’

He asked her, ‘Might I sell you a wonderful dress to dance across the floor in?’ and he held up the most beautiful white pearled dress she had ever seen, and it looked like the wings of angels.

She shook her head sadly, and said ‘No, I am past all that.’

And he said ‘Might I sell you this cream to take away your wrinkles?’

She said, ‘Don’t be cruel!’ and old Mrs. Carstairs broke down and cried. And she told him how none of what he could sell could help, it was all a cruel lie. That age had taken her, and how she could never again fly across the smooth tiles of her ballroom floor.

And the salesman smiled a greasy wide smile, and he opened his case wider and said, then I have the thing for you.’

And he said, let us go into the ballroom, and so they went. And the salesman set a chair in the middle of the floor.

And he asked her to sit, and she did.

And he asked to close her eyes, and she did.

And then he took something out of his case… she couldn’t see of course, but the humming was louder, lounder still… and then as she tried to lean forward to listen for it, he grabbed her, and with quick sure movements, he tied her wrists to the chair!

Then she opened her eyes.

He said ‘This may hurt,’ and left the room, and closed the door.

And the humming resolved into a buzz, and her eyes went down to the jar he had left on the floor by her feet, and the thousands of tiny golden bees that poured out of it

They flew through the room like tiny lights, and they settled on her skin. When the first one bit and raised a welt, she let out a yelp. When the fifteenth one landed on her face and stung her cheek, she just cried. And when they walked on her eyelids and caressed her ears with their feelers, she opened her mouth to scream. And then they crawled in there as wel, and stung and stung and stung.

And her skin bubbled and crackled and welts went up, and eventually her body was a mass of sores and puffed out of recognition. It was rounded and it was cocooned in its hot, scarred bites.

And so it was that a day later, the cocoon on the chair began to shake, and the skin of old Mrs. Carstairs split. And it flaked from her, and it ripped down her chest, and from inside the ruined flesh she came…

Looking down at herself: she was young, and her legs were graceful, and her body had all the curves it did when she was eighteen. And she came out from the cocoon and she danced across the floor, and her wings carried her to the chandelier, and her six legs kept her in perfect balance, and her stinger was fresh and full of vibrant poison…

And then it was that the salesman came back in, and he walked up to the jar, and he called back the bees.

And back they went.

And I suppose Mrs. Carstairs got her wish… Young, and forever dancing on the glass in her own curved ballroom…