Priam and His Customers

1 • the beekeeper

the beekeeper

THERE ARE BEES inside the café, and they're making a hive above the doorway. Thankfully, it was Sunday. Priam doesn't open the café during Sundays.

Luckily, Priam had managed to unearth a beekeeping suit from the storage, one that his friend from uni gifted years ago. He decided to wear it as he wiped the wall pane to avoid being stung by the bees flying about inside the café. There was always the unnerving sound of buzzing as he did so, but it gradually faded to background noise the longer he cleaned.

He began dusting the bookshelves, wiping the tables, then tidied the materials on the counter and machines in the kitchen. Lastly, he patched up the deep claw marks on the dining area's wall with plaster. He had already rinsed off the blood splatters the night before and was displeased that the claw marks defiled the mural he personally commissioned from an elusive artist he managed to snag from the 19th century.

Now he had to make do with an artist skilled enough to replicate the clawed parts of the mural, which costs a lot.

He stretched his arms, sore at squatting for too long.

Screw that werewolf for causing a scene in his café. It was certainly not Priam's fault that her mate rejected her because she "kept eating their dog's food"—whatever the hell that meant. Why did she have to damage café property during her outburst? Not to mention clawing her mate's eye out, which resulted in yet another blood splattering extravaganza.

For Gehenna's sake, he just scrubbed that wall the day before because of a separate incident involving a blood feud between siren and mermaid descendants. He has had enough of the police coming in to take his statement regarding incidents that his customers cause.

Werewolves, especially, were temperamental customers. He occasionally had to deal with one or two (usually with a tranquilizer or a pepper spray imbued with a sleeping spell that he had purchased from an auction months ago) but they were tamer than the woman who clawed the wall yesterday. Priam was tempted to ban them from ever entering the book cafè but decided against it. After all, it's not all of the werewolves' fault that his prized mural was destroyed.

Yeah, he should just hunt down the woman and charge her for the damages instead. She came to the cafè in a Lamborghini so Priam was pretty sure she wouldn't mind a few donations to the cafè.

Then he could ban her afterward.

He was in the middle of rewriting the menu on the chalkboard, that he detached from the wall and placed on the floor when the door opened accompanied by the echoes of the chimes. Unaware of the crazed buzzing that grew louder as the bees' movements became frenzied, he calmly said, not looking towards the door, "I'm sorry but the store's closed for today. Please come back tomorrow if you need something."

There was silence save for the buzzing of the surrounding bees.

Now, if Priam had spared the effort to look up, he would've seen a man standing in front of the doorway. At least, it looked like a man. He was wearing an old, denim jumper and leather boots. He wore no shirt and was completely covered in what seemed to be bees squirming about his upper body, trailing down his wrists, as if they were his twitching, sentient sweater. (If sweaters were made of bees, that is.)

But Priam kept his head down, still immersed in perfecting his wobbly calligraphy on the chalkboard. He was struggling due to the beekeeping suit he wore, but that didn't stop him because he's a stubborn git who refuses to hire a graphic designer to make his menu and print it for display. No, he wanted it handwritten for authenticity despite the trouble it causes.