HENRY HINKLE’S HYACINTH HONEY
A Short Story By
Voiceguy
Inspired by the Story "Royal Jelly" by Roald Dahl
Harriet was in a state. Her husband was at it again. All
the time he spent with those damn bees! And for what? He
was convinced he could find a way to mass-produce
all-natural honey made only from the nectar of
hyacinths. Hyacinths, of all things! Like people even
cared about what kind of flowers the bees collected their
honey from.
"You’ll see, my dear," Henry had once told her. "As soon as
I’ve solved the problem of mass-producing all-natural honey,
Henry Hinkle’s Hyacinth Honey is going to make us rich
beyond our wildest dreams!"
Henry Hinkle’s Hyacinth Honey hadn’t always been his life’s
ambition. Raising the bees started out as a hobby, a little
something for a retired high school science teacher to keep
busy with while waiting for life itself to finally wind
down. And, if she was going to be completely fair about it,
she had supported him in his early pursuits. She admitted
to herself that having fresh honey for her toast in the
morning or her SleepyTime Tea at night was a real treat --
at first. But then Henry had just gotten...Well, the best
word she could think of was strange about his hobby. He
started experimenting with nectars from various flowers,
spending a fortune at the florist to make sure his bees had
only the finest of flowers from which to make their honey.
"You’ll see, my dear," Henry told her. "When I’m finished
you and I will be enjoying the most delicious honey ever
produced. My bees won’t flitter about here or there,
gathering just any old nectar for their honey -- oh,
no. They will be gathering only the finest nectar from the
most suitable flowers -- once I determine which variety of
flower that is, of course."
She pointed out to him that -- living on fixed incomes as
they were -- buying dozens of fresh flowers every day simply
did not fit into their budget, but Henry Hinkle had laid a
finger on the side of his nose (an affectation he had picked
up goodness only knows where) and with a sly wink intoned,
"Don’t think of it as money wasted -- think of it as an
investment in our future."
This investment so depleted their savings after a while that
Harriet started a small housecleaning service to make a
little extra on the side. It was when she had returned home
from one of these jobs the previous year that she found
Henry sitting in his favorite chair holding a small jar of
viscous amber fluid. At first she thought he hadn’t even
noticed her coming in, his gaze was so intensely set upon
the jar. She started past him to go into the kitchen and
prepare dinner when he spoke a single fateful word.
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"Hyacinths."
His voice stopped her. "I beg your pardon?"
"Hyacinths, Harriet. Oh! Isn’t it wonderful? I found
it! I found the golden nectar to make the finest
honey! Hyacinths, Harriet! Hyacinths, I say!"
He grabbed her hands and spun her about the room. Harriet
shrieked in terror, believing him to be mad. Her shriek
made him finally stop spinning her and he stood there with a
bemused look on his face. "Why, my dear Harriet," he asked,
"whatever is the matter?"
Harriet had managed -- barely -- to control her
anger. "Henry, you are behaving like a fool and spinning me
like a dervish. What in God’s name are you going on about?"
"Of course, of course. You weren’t here, you don’t know
about the breakthrough. Hyacinths, Harriet, hyacinths!"
Harriet backed away in fear that he would begin spinning her
about the room again, but instead he thrust the jar in her
face. "Taste it," he said smugly. "Then you’ll see."
Harriet tentatively stuck her finger into the amber goo in
the jar and placed a dollop on her tongue. It was honey,
perhaps just a tad sweeter than she had expected, but
nothing more than honey nevertheless.
She shrugged. "It’s honey," she admitted, then added as his
face fell, "It’s very good honey, but it is just honey."
This seemed to anger him. "Just honey? Just honey? My
dear Harriet, that is the finest honey ever made, using only
nectar from the finest of hyacinths. I’ve planted rows and
rows of them in the back yard. I’ve also bought enough
netting to make our yard into an enclosed apiary so the bees
get their nectar only from my specially grown
hyacinths." Harriet blanched at the thought of how much
money her husband had spent on his hobby, but he didn’t slow
down for a second. "I see that face you’re making. I know
it was a lot of money, but it will all pay for itself, don’t
you see? I can sell the honey to the neighbors and at the
farmer’s market. Henry Hinkle’s Hyacinth Honey! Oh, you
just wait and see, my dear, just wait and see. This honey
is going to make us rich!"
And so it had gone for the next six months, Henry harvesting
his honey and selling it. To Harriet’s great surprise, the
honey had indeed been popular with the people in the
neighborhood. Every Saturday morning Henry loaded up the
back of the second-hand cargo van he bought for next to
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nothing and chugged out to the farmer’s market with a
hundred or so small jars of Henry Hinkle’s Hyacinth Honey,
and every Saturday night he returned home with hundreds of
dollars in tax-free cash.
Still, despite the success of his venture, Henry Hinkle had
not been satisfied. He began to feel that he was not
reaching a large enough market with his honey. "After all,"
he would muse, "why settle for hundreds of dollars a week
when I could be making thousands of dollars? Millions of
dollars?"
Harriet blanched again when he told her his plan for mass
producing his home-made honey. He intended to mortgage
their home (their home, for God’s sake -- which they had
only just paid off the year before) and use the money to buy
the house next door, raze it to the ground, and use the
entire lot to expand his enclosed apiary and hyacinth
garden. Harriet pleaded with him not to take so foolish a
risk, but the house was in Henry’s name alone and she could
do nothing to stop him. "You’ll see, my dear", Henry
said. "Soon enough the money will come rolling in faster
than you can count it."
"But Henry," she moaned, "you’re risking everything we spent
our lives paying for to chase after some fool pipe dream of
being a honey magnate. Can’t you see what this
means? Think of how much your insane plan is going to cost
us! We’ll have two mortgages! We’ll have dozens of new
bills! Oh, Henry, stop this now before it’s too
late. Think, my darling! Where is the money going to come
from?"
Henry held up a jar of his precious honey. "Why, from this,
of course. You know how they sometimes refer to oil as
liquid gold? Well, they’re wrong. This, my dear Harriet,
this truly is liquid gold. Once we are able to mass produce
my honey, in a completely natural way, you’ll forget you
ever had any doubts about my enterprise. And look at the
bright side: think how much more it would have cost if I
had said ’Let’s build a factory’."
Harriet’s mouth fell open. "A factory? Oh, Henry -- you
wouldn’t!"
Henry chuckled at the gaping stare she had given him. "Of
course not, my dear. Oh, do close your mouth before you
attract flies. I would never dream of owning a
factory. Everything must be done meticulously by my own two
hands. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be completely natural, would
it?"
And that had been the end of that. Henry had gotten his
way, and now his combination apiary and hyacinth garden
4.
covered well over an acre of ground. He planted thousands
of hyacinths, collected millions of bees, and honey seemed
to flow like water into the small jars which he labeled and
shipped out to customers and stores in the area. He had to
incorporate himself (more money!) and start paying income
taxes, business taxes, zoning taxes, taxes, taxes,
taxes! None of it seemed to faze him in the least, nor did
any of it (or Harriet’s constant pleading that "enough is
enough, already") stop him from pursuing his dream of
becoming the wealthiest purveyor of honey in the country.
Unfortunately, like so many dreams, things had begun to
unravel in the past month. Demand far exceeded what he had
been able to supply, and markets were beginning to cancel
their orders with him in favor of more reliable sources of
honey. Harriet hoped he would finally slow down before he
worked himself into a heart attack or worse, but nothing
would deter him from his dream.
"You’ll see, my dear," he said. "I’ll find a way to lick
this problem, never you fear."
Fearing the worst, Harriet moaned, "Not another
expansion. We’re almost out of money as it is. We can
barely afford to feed ourselves, let alone buy another
house."
Henry patted her hand in a reassuring manner. "Don’t worry,
my dear. We’ll always have honey to eat. If it can sustain
such industrious workers as bees, it can surely sustain us
as well. And I will grant that you are right -- expansion
is not a viable answer to increased production given our
current financial state. I don’t think it’s a matter of a
bigger apiary. What I need to increase production is bigger
bees and hyacinths!"
Looking back on it now, Harriet began to think that
expanding the apiary might have been more time efficient,
for it seemed that Henry now spent every waking moment in
his precious apiary or in the small laboratory in the
basement. (He had once had a much larger laboratory in the
garage, but the garage had gone the way of the house next
door; torn down to create more space for the apiary.) She
couldn’t see how it was costing any less either. Henry was
importing larger bees from all over the world, even the
deadly killer bees from Africa and South America which he
managed to obtain from an unscrupulous importer/smuggler for
a hefty fee.
"You’ll see, my dear," Henry said when she had confronted
him with the bill. "It will all be worth it in the end."
"It isn’t just the money, Henry!", she cried. "Those bees
5.
are illegal! They’re deadly! If the Department of
Agriculture were to find out--"
"But they won’t find out, will they, dear?" Henry took her
hand in a grip that was perhaps just a trifle too
tight. "After all, apart from the man who imported them for
me -- whose silence I have more than adequately purchased --
you and I are the only two people who know I have them. I’m
certainly not going to tell anyone -- and neither are you,
are you?"
Despite the pleasant smile on his face, there had been
something in Henry’s voice that caused Harriet’s conviction
to waver. "Why...I mean...Well, no, my darling, of course
not."
Henry’s grip loosened and he gave her hand a reassuring
squeeze. "That’s my girl. Now let me get on with my
cross-breeding. By the way, would you mind doing me a
favor? I’ve managed to cross-pollinate my hyacinths with a
breed of giant orchid that has allowed me to grow them to
three times their previous size, but I’m a trifle concerned
that the nectar might be affected. Would you be a darling
and go upstairs to the kitchen? You’ll find a jar of the
new batch of honey sitting on the counter. Make yourself
some toast and try it and tell me what you think."
Harriet did as he asked. The new honey was thicker, almost
gelatinous in nature, but the flavor was unmatched even by
Henry’s previous efforts. She called down to him, "It’s
delicious! Oh, my! I think I begin to see how this could
be the solution to all of our problems." Henry did not
reply as such, but she could hear him chuckling.
Now she lay in bed, replaying in her mind all of the events
which had led to this moment. Henry was still in the
apiary, playing with his damn bees. She sighed and rolled
over. The new honey was delicious, she could not deny
that. It had a consistency thick enough to provide a decent
sustenance, and Henry even reassured her that he had found a
way to increase the vitamin content. She was feeling
stronger, she could not deny that fact. What troubled her
now was Henry himself. He had grown secretive about his
bees. Where once he had bored her with endless lectures
about the entomological changes he was experimenting with,
now he hardly talked to her at all. She knew that
eventually he would walk through their bedroom door, undress
and fall into bed in an instant slumber so deep that she
would be unable to arouse him until he chose to be roused.
To top things off, the past few evenings when she had tried
to bring Henry his dinner, he had been nowhere to be
found. True, Harriet never went into the apiary as she was
6.
terrified of the new bees Henry had imported, but usually
she could see him from outside the apiary’s netting. He was
hard to miss in his bulky white beekeeper’s outfit. She had
also noticed when he came to bed that he had a strange new
musky scent about him.
Was he having an affair? It hardly seemed possible after
forty-seven years of matrimonial bliss, but stranger things
had happened to others she knew. Had her constant concern
about his fascination -- no, not fascination, obsession --
with the bees finally driven him into the arms of some other
woman who was willing to be more understanding, especially
if he convinced her of how rich he would become when he had
solved all of his problems? It wasn’t like Henry to take an
interest in other women, but perhaps the new honey had
awakened urges in him that she no longer fulfilled. And
there was certainly no denying the strange scent that he
wore to bed recently like some exotic perfume. She was
determined to get to the bottom of things, even if it meant
the end of their marriage, and so she sat up and waited for
Henry to come to bed.
She did not have to wait long. Less than a half hour had
passed since she made her resolution to get everything out
into the open before Henry entered the room and began to
undress.
"Henry," she began.
Henry stopped, a strange expression -- guilt, perhaps? -- on
his face. "Harriet," he said, "you know I love you but I’m
absolutely exhausted. Whatever this is, can’t it wait until
morning?"
Harriet held up her hand. "You know full well that by
morning you’ll be out with those damn bees again."
Henry sighed. "Is that what this is about? Those ’damn
bees’? Are we going to go through all of this again at this
time of night?"
"This time of night is the only time I can talk to you," she
replied haughtily. "And no, this isn’t about the
bees. It’s about you."
"What about me?"
"I want to know what you’re up to."
Henry sighed again. "Up to? I’m up to my ass in hyacinths,
bees and honey. Thank you for asking."
"Are you cheating on me?"
7.
The accusation cut through the air like a knife. Henry
stopped tying his pajama bottoms and stood there looking at
her in disbelief. "What would make you think--?"
"You smell different, some strange new perfume. And don’t
tell me you’re trying out a new cologne. I know perfectly
well you never wear the stuff." The silence was
palpable. "Well?"
Suddenly, Henry burst out laughing. "I smell
different? That’s what this is about? Oh, my dear, that is
just too much!" He laughed again.
Harriet could feel her fury growing inside of her. "Don’t
just stand there laughing like a fool. I’ve been checking
on you. You haven’t been in the lab, and I know you haven’t
been in the apiary. The white suit of yours stands out like
a sore thumb. So where have you been? I demand an
explanation!"
"And an explanation you shall have, my dear. I am at a
critical phase in my work. I am attempting to adjust the
bee DNA to create larger bees for my larger
hyacinths. Larger bees plus larger flowers equals a
dramatic increase in honey production. It is, however,
extremely delicate work. I am doing some very precise
manipulation of the egg sacs of my queens, and you simply
cannot imagine how difficult the process is. It can’t be
done in the lab as I don’t dare to remove them from the
hives, lest the other bees attack me mercilessly. It is of
such a delicate nature that I cannot do it in the suit, it’s
much too clumsy of an outfit. But to approach the queens
without protection? That would be as sure a death sentence
as stepping out in front of a speeding truck.
"I know how upset you were about the African and South
American bees. I know you probably thought I was planning
to cross-breed them with the honey bees to make some
monstrous and ultimately dangerous hybrid, but such was not
the case. I assure you, all of those bees are dead. I
wanted them not for their DNA, but for their
pheromones. You see, in order to do the work I had to do, I
had to convince the bees that I myself was a bee in order to
enter the apiary and approach the queens without being
attacked. Using the pheromones of such strong and deadly
bees simply increased my odds that the other bees would
leave me alone."
Harriet gave him a skeptical glance. "And your delicate
work?"
"Is almost complete. Another day or so, I should
think. Good thing, too -- I fear the pheromones are
8.
starting to wear off. See?" He held up his hand to show
her a bright red welt. "One of the little suckers stung
me."
Harriet’s anger subsided at the sight of the welt. Perhaps
he was telling the truth after all? "Oh, Henry, you poor
thing. Don’t go in the apiary again without protection, I
beg you. If those pheromones are wearing off, you could get
stung to death."
"But I must. One more trip only, I promise you, but I
simply must complete this course of action. You’ll see, my
dear." He winked and laid his finger aside his nose. "It
will all be over soon. One more trip and my work in the
apiary will be complete. It will be worth a few stings, I
assure you. And once I’ve finished my work, you will be my
number one priority. Just wait and see. Oh, Harriet, I
know I’ve been ignoring you and I am sorry about that,
really I am. One more day, that’s all I’ll need, and then I
swear I am going to make it all up to you. Just wait and
see if I don’t."
Henry was as good as his word. The next day he stopped
working early, though Harriet suspected from the welts on
his arms that the bees might have had a say in that
matter. He assured her he was fine though, and offered to
let her relax while he made dinner. He served her some
scrumptious honey cakes made from scratch, and later on he
even surprised her by making her a cup of her SleepyTime
Tea. True, he had put a little too much honey in it and
Harriet found the tea to be cloyingly sweet, but she decided
to show her appreciation by gamely downing the brew.
She slept a deep and dreamless sleep that night, but the
next morning awoke to a mild pain in her lower
abdomen. Henry clucked around her, expressing his concern
and insisting on taking the day off from his precious bees
to take care of her. Harriet thought about calling the
doctor to see if she could squeeze in an appointment with
him, but Henry was convinced it was probably his horrid
cooking causing her severe indigestion. He reprimanded her
to stay in bed for the day, and assured her that if the pain
was not gone by the next morning he would drive her to the
emergency room. That night, he brought her tea and left her
to rest. It was far too sweet, like the night before, and
she put it aside after only a few sips. She felt tired
enough to sleep without it.
She was dozing when the feeling of cold metal clamped
tightly around her wrist awakened her. She tried to sit up,
but discovered she was handcuffed to the bed rail. She
looked frantically around and saw Henry standing at the foot
of the bed. "Henry!", she cried, "What’s going on?"
9.
Henry allowed an odd little titter to escape his lips, then
fought it down. "I am so sorry about the handcuffs, my dear,
I want you to believe that; but, you see, you didn’t drink
your tea -- and I couldn’t allow you to ruin the most
delicate part of my experiment."
"Experiment? What experiment? Henry, what are you talking
about?"
"I completed phase one last night while you were
asleep. The drugs I put in your tea caused you to slip into
an almost comatose state. Tonight is phase two, but you
didn’t drink your tea so I knew you would wake up and I
couldn’t let that happen because it would ruin everything
just everything would be ruined and I couldn’t have that oh
no I couldn’t have that at all could I?" His jabbering
evaporated into another of those odd titters and he fought
to control them again.
Harriet felt the icy grip of fear clutch at her
throat. "Henry, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but
please, my darling, undo these handcuffs."
"Oh, I’m afraid I couldn’t do that, oh dear me, no. You
might upset them if you struggle too much."
"Them? Who?"
In answer, Henry held up a plastic case filled with buzzing
bees. "The drones, of course."
Harriet began to realize that her husband was definitely
tipping over the edge of madness if he thought she was going
to lie still for whatever he had in mind. "Henry, I don’t
know what you’re thinking, but if you think I’m going to lie
still and let you--"
"LYING STILL IS JUST WHAT YOU’LL DO!", Henry roared. He
calmed himself. "It’s for the honey, don’t you
understand? For the last few weeks, all of the honey you’ve
consumed has contained copious amounts of Royal Jelly."
"Royal Jelly?"
"Yes. Royal Jelly is what makes a queen a queen. You see,
in order to achieve my goal of creating a species of bee
large enough to produce the vast quantities of honey I need
to keep up with demand, I realized I had to somehow infuse
the eggs and larvae with the DNA of a much larger species --
human DNA, to be exact. I discovered in my researches that
our DNA is surprisingly compatible to Apini DNA. Yesterday
morning, I went to the hives and painstakingly collected the
unlaid eggs from all of my queens. Last night as you slept,
10.
I implanted those eggs in your womb. Now all that remains
is for those eggs to be..." He gave another little
titter. "...inseminated."
Harriet’s eyes focused on the plastic case in Henry’s hand
and widened in terror. "You -- You can’t mean --", she
stammered.
Henry tittered again. "Oh, yes, I’m afraid I do. I thought
of doing the job myself, of course -- I’ve been feeling ever
so much more virile since we started consuming the Royal
Jelly -- but the eggs are quite delicate and I have been
forced to the conclusion that it must be done by the
experts."
He opened the plastic case, and the drones began to buzz
about the bedroom. Harriet was beside
herself. "Henry! No! Please no! You know how terrified I
am of those things! They’ll sting me!"
"Oh, no," he reassured her, "they won’t sting you. You’re
their queen. You’re my queen. You’ll see, my dear. It
will all be quite painless." He tittered once again, and
this time did not try to control it. "I only wish I could
say the same about the birth."
Harriet couldn’t hear the door as Henry snicked it closed
and locked it. She couldn’t hear the buzz of the bees as
their tickling legs crawled slowly up her thighs. All
Harriet could hear was the sound of her own screams.
