Lyrics

Tales from the Library of the Occult - Honey June 1967 Dope smoke bellowed from the Farina's rolled down windows as the car tore around another bend Headlights swept the hedgerows, sending wildlife into panicked flight She sang along with the blaring radio, the last of the oversized joints she'd rolled for the journey at the corner of her mouth She'd driven this route more times than she'd cared to remember, and knew its every twist and turn No surprises here, or, so she thought A flame flickered into existence along the dark lane ahead Not the cozy glow of campfire; there had been an accident Flames, licking out from beneath the Rover P6's ruined bonnet climbed the trunk that had stopped it dead The driver had met the elm less than a second after the bumper The remains of the head, and the shoulders of its owners expensive tailored suit were already aflame when she pulled up alongside Ugh, heavy... Something on the passenger side caught her eye Movement glimpsed through the haze Killing her engine, she heard groans amid crackling flames The door was locked, or jammed She found a half-brick sized rock on the roadside, and shattered its glass She dragged the girl from the wreckage and carried her to the Farina Emma awoke in screaming terror, as the car head around a bend To her confusion, she saw a woman at the wheel beside her "You are safe", the driver said softly Then, "What's your name?" Emma told her "They call me Honey", she replied, offering a smouldering inch of joint Dazedly, Emma took a long drag, spluttering dank smoke "Sorry to lay it on you like this Emma, but your dad didn't make it" Honey had guessed the girl to be in her early teens; Emma was 22 Once you got passed a certain age everyone else either looked like kids or old wrecks, didn't they? The dead man was not her father She was his secretary The pair had been on their way to a hotel for the weekend "Hah, cliché, babe!" Honey chuckled, tossing the roach-end from her window Emma laughed too: maybe it was shock, maybe the dope; either way, laughter turned to sobs soon enough Everything was settled over a late breakfast of sweet tea and honeyed toast The boss' wife thought he was away on business When the burned out P6 was discovered, the police would rightly assume that he'd had an accident on route Emma's parents thought she was staying with a friend for the weekend Honey could be that friend It had been a mistake to get involved with her boss But Emma hadn't been in love with him There was no need to make things worse, no need to drag her name through the mud It was no one's fault, accidents happened every day All things considered, it was better this way So, she'd stay Just for the weekend Then, Honey could drive her home Barefoot in the blazing afternoon, Emma roamed the overgrown grounds of the Georgian mansion Honey called home Bees buzzed busily about the pink-white flowers, which seemed to bloom everywhere on waxy-leaved bushes The place had been in the family for generations, Honey told her But she didn't spend much time here these days She was part of the whole swinging London scene Emma had only read about in the music papers, or heard about on the radio Emma wore a borrowed brightly patterned caftan as she wandered on She came to an orchard, the ground a mulch of rotted apples Fat, stripped bodies crawled drunkenly about them Overripe fruit squished between her toes as she walked A gigantic, honey-combed wild hive, alive with humming things, hung from one of the trees Dripping red-tinged sweetness as it swung lazily in the summer breeze Emma caught a few drops in wonder, and sucked at her finger "Careful babe, that's heavy stuff!" Honey had appeared in a cloud of dope-smoke "You've met mother then, hah" she laughed, looking up at the dripping hive "Poor old girl" Emma didn't understand "She couldn't hack it when dad traded her in, always had a flare for the dramatic. Still, hanging's not how I'd choose to go" Emma gagged and spat "Oh I doubt there's much of her left in there", Honey cooed, placing a reassuring hand on Emma's shoulder "It's been years and years and years now. She loved the bees though, so I thought it was kinda groovy, you know? Better than that whole 'ashes to ashes' trip" Honey had planted the rhododendron bushes which now crowed her family estate It was from their pollen that the bees made the heavy stuff "Mad Honey", some called it People had been tripping out on it for literally thousands of years Wasn't that wild? That was how she made her living down in London these days Psychedelics were in, baby! But she was the only one who could supply this special, all-natural high That was how she got her name, of course Personally, she hardly ever ate the stuff Her own special honey came from the glass house The glass house was a rusted Victorian construction half as big again as the main body of the house The kind of thing Emma had seen in pictures of the Great Exhibition, and Kew Garden Its countless windows fogged with the respiration of thousands of flowering plants, their leaves straining wetly against the glass Inside lived a colony of bees whose first queen, Honey said, had reigned during her grandfather's time The special honey they made was kept in a riveted metal tank, which made Emma think of an oversized old-fashioned travelling trunk Glowing amber sweetened oozed in slow motion, as Honey drew it from the squeaking tap at the side of the tank As soon as Emma tasted it, she knew she would never want to eat anything else ever again Days turned into weeks without Emma noticing or caring Sunshine and flowers and sweet, sweet nectar that was her life now She was at one with nature She helped herself to fat drops of mad honey which dripped from the many wild hives as she wandered the grounds hour after hour, day after day It was indeed, heavy stuff The glass house honey was her real sustenance, though She ate nothing but Ate so much that her skin shun yellow, and her sweat became sticky and sweet Honey came and went Emma was never sure whether she was along, or whether the other might be at her elbow, joint in-hand, to continue a conversation that had begun a week before The place was a maze, a mystery, the geography of which Emma never seemed able to fully comprehend Maybe it was the Mad Honey? More than once, she found herself buzzing around the big, empty house like a trapped insect, unable to find her way out into the sunshine One morning - or maybe it was an evening, she stood, staring at a faded portrait that hung above a long-dead fireplace Honey smiled down at her Only, it couldn't be Honey Wiping dust from the tarnished frame with a sticky paw, Emma read the words "Mistress Sylvia Arden, 1899" Honey's mother? She felt her flesh crawl as her thoughts turned to the dripping corpse hive in the orchard Bad vibes; she didn't need that She wandered on Emma turned the squeaking tap again, and again still, nothing came forth The glass house tap had run dry How long had it been now, since she'd tasted its perfect sweetness? Where was Honey? Out in the garden, Emma gorged herself on the red, mad honey like never before Not a single bee threatened to sting, even as she delved hungrily into their hives Honey found her in the garden She had carried the sticky, sickly sweet girl into the glass house And laid her on the bed of buzzing flowers The hives in their were positively oozing now, and she set about her harvest Honey talked as she worked, knowing Emma could hear every word Too much reanotoxin, the thing which made mad honey trippy, could slow your heart right down Put you in a kind of hibernation, like bees in the winter Great glass vessels of liquid gold were filled and arranged at the sleeping beauty's side Age-rusted bolts that secured the tanks lid were undone One by one, bees crawled about Emma's face, unrolling long tongues to suck sweetness from her unblinking eyes Mellification, something the ancients used to practice Something the same historians who wrote about mad honey said down in their records, long before Jesus walked the Earth... If he ever did Emma couldn't hear what Honey said next, her speech muffled and distorted inside the tank There was a squelching, sucking sound Honey laid a glistening, shrunken skeleton thing, gently on the flowers beside Emma Bees swarmed hungrily upon it Sweetness began to glug into the tank as one by one, Honey emptied the huge vessels to refill it She'd been a girl from Greenwood A few miles southeast of Ardenhouse, barely in her teens, Honey's father had become infatuated That was what had done for poor old mother Honey; Sylvia, as she'd been back then, had seen to it that there was no happy ever after for the pairing, however At first the idea had been to preserve the body, that was what mellification was supposed to do When her father returned, his young lover vanished She had walked into the orchard, show him what he had done, then when he was broken, she'd shown him what she had done Show him his dead-eyed sweetheart, now sweeter than ever But Mr. Arden never returned Whether it was curiosity, boredom, or madness that led to her first taste, she couldn't say The ancients wrote that honey from a mellified body was supposed to have miraculous, even magical properties Soon, she knew it was true Age did not wither her, she remained forever the young mistress of Ardenhouse Well, not quite forever You see recently, she'd begun to notice some changes; uncool changes She'd been thinking that it was time to replenish her supply, begun to wonder how she would do it And then one night, she'd come across a burning car on a deserted country lane Emma's vision faded slowly from glowing amber through the Stygian black As her living dead form sank, languorously The rusted bolts grasped into place, one by one Days turned to weeks, turned to months, without her noticing or caring The only sound, the intermittent squeaking of a rusted tap Echoing sluggishly through the viscous sweetness which enveloped all