Disco Honey
Roy Fartham was a struggling apiarist — a calling also known as ‘beekeeper’ to those who know nothing about apiary.
Roy’s last name was pronounced “Farth-Hem,” but that was not the pronunciation his coming-of-age contemporaries employed. But one day he’d show them — by becoming an apiarist…
His plan failed. No matter how many shelves of honey he was slinging from his apiaries.
Everyone seemed to like the idea of beekeeping, but nobody liked the idea of “Beekeeping with Roy.” To them Roy was a sweaty man in a creepy beekeeper suit, and they were already frightened by bees.
Popular phobias that were not bested until Roy started lacing his shelves of honey with LSD.
Roy Fartham in:
Disco Honey
Once Roy mastered the formula, by mixing-in enough LSD to send a gorilla into mind orbit, the demand of the market turned to him. Roy was hot. Too hot. Now a lucrative man in a ruthless corporate cartel, Roy regrets the day he accepted a board seat on “The Honey Traders Organization.”
The HTO ran outside the law, and Roy was quickly sucked into their underworld. Faster than Fartham’s LSD honey usurped the entire dark-market honey trade.
Roy’s bees couldn’t make Disco Honey fast enough. His fortunes turned to fortune overnight. People started pronouncing it “Farth-Hem.”
With the HTO wanting a tax sanctuary, Roy opened a honey dispensary a short time later. People appeared from all over the country to visit his honey shop and trip balls.
Roy catered to his customers’ needs, often anticipating them. The walls of his dispensary were a mosaic of soft neons. And just behind those walls Roy installed a mushroom-themed labyrinth — made exclusively for his customers’ frolicking. Or as Roy says “When they are deep in the throes of acid.”
Smartly, the walls of the maze are three-feet high, in case customers lose their path in Roy’s simple labyrinth. Sometimes patrons would create a bottleneck, getting stuck on a crude painting Roy placed along an early turn of the maze. Something “[he] drew up when he was struggling and at a wine-and-paint-themed singles gathering, where [he] painted a bird perched on a bush with red berries.”
As “Honey Heads” wandered through Roy’s maze, running their fingers along the texture of its walls, Roy hawked newer and newer versions of his product. Honey teas and honey tinctures, all guaranteed to melt your mind into enlightenment.
Roy’s customers grew so loyal he formed a loyalty program. Discounts were discharged to his most ardent customers. But loyalty, as diamond-hard as it sounds, is a fickle thing. And in this case, Roy’s misinterpretation of loyalty was the precipice of his downfall.
The more honey his consumers consumed, the less loyalty they reserved for Roy, and the more they devoted to The Queen.
The success behind Roy’s honey was two-fold. His honey was 1.) single-sourced and 2.) loaded with LSD. But Roy forgot condition three.
Did he keep his Queen happy?
Roy thought he had kept his Queen content, constantly upgrading her apiary. But it wasn’t enough. With a product as lucrative as Disco Honey, enough never is.
After another successful 9–7 day, Roy handed off the evening shift to an employee and walked up the hill beyond his dispensary. A well-worn trail under the evening sun led to a gate that opened toward Roy’s beautiful two-story Craftsman home.
Roy’s walk home from work was typically tranquil, but today there was a messenger. They say “Don’t shoot the messenger.” But this messenger was a mercenary, and Roy quickly surmised that the opposite condition applied. His grand front doors were covered in honeybees. Stingers at the ready.
The Queen wanted a sit down.
Roy knew the only way to communicate with the bees was through LSD. So he dripped a lipid-rich honey tincture under his tongue. Soon partaking on a trip as he wandered down to the apiary.
The Queen lived in a master apiary nine-times the size of the other bee houses. Blasted on LSD, Roy stepped into his beekeeper suit, and stuck his sheltered head into The Queen’s palatial lair.
The first thing he heard was Donna Summer.
Disco was still very alive in this hive.
Honeycombs glistened under oozing honey as The Queen appraised Roy from her throne of golden wax. Hornets guarded her flank as drones served to her every want.
“Remove your veil. I wish not to harm you.”
Roy heard The Queen’s words deep inside his mind, and removed his beekeeper’s hat and veil.
The Queen looked upon Roy’s sweaty face.
“It’s time we push cocaine.”
“Did you just say cocaine, your Majesty?” Roy protested gently, wary to disturb the hornets.
As everyone should know, the popularity of LSD leads to Disco, and Disco leads to cocaine. History was repeating itself on a relentless 45-year arc.
And The Queen controlled the production of base honey, so Roy had to comply:
“They’ll pay for it. Give them something harder.”
Roy was strong-minded, but even he wilted to The Queen.
“But don’t you have enough, your Majesty? Don’t we have enough?”
“Enough never is.” The Queen telepathically replied as two muscular drones groomed her wings.
Roy nodded his head, bumping the roof of the apiary and momentarily shaking the throne room. The Queen bristled, but held off her hornets. Roy apologized and guided his head back outside.
Rubbing the back of his head and appraising his thoughts, Roy was forced to appraise his property. Sixteen hundred kilograms of cocaine sat on his front porch.
