By Martin Smith.
Bea Beeson knocked but once upon the office door
And awaited the call from the commander of her corps.
‘Enter,’ a stern voice barked from within,
And Bea squared her shoulders and raised her chin.
With a wheeze and a squeeze Bea did enter
And in haste beelined for the room’s centre.
She stood, stamped to attention and snapped a salute
As the officer paused her number-crunching mid-compute.
‘Ma’am,’ bellowed Bea, who then beamed a broad grin,
Because today, being Assignment Day, her future was to begin.
For all her brief being, Bea had yearned to be a normal miss,
A stop-and-smell-the-begonias lass living in blessed bliss.
Just a busy Bea loving a life of quiet anonymity,
Yet beloved by her large, melliferous community.
But Bea stood out. Bea drew attention. Bea was rare.
All because she had one unique feature: a big derrière;
Indeed, hers was a beefy, behemothic, beetling butt,
For from behind Bea glutei infiniti, not maximi, did jut.
In the classroom, Bea sat brooding beside her big bum,
Far, far away from the nearest school chum.
Despite blossoming at Spelling, Bea bumbled along,
Always looking backwards as her teachers droned on.
In the playground, not a single foe or friend
Dared to see-saw behind Bea at her end.
During the school play, she stood below the apron light,
Yet still her backside filled stages left, centre and right.
At ballet lessons, Bea rear-ended with her waggle
And sent the troupe into a bedraggled straggle.
At parties, blind-folded guests bypassed the braying ass
And pinned the tail on a bemuddled Bea’s vast arse.
Bea bedecked in bespoke fashion to bewitch and beguile,
But her horizontal stripes were of an unbecoming style.
Bea sought to bedazzle with a head of bejewelled beehive hair,
But her burly buttocks would not even fit in the salon chair.
Upon her chubby cheek did Bea bespot a beauty spot,
But, alas, still to others Bea’s bumper bot did besot.
Rather than befriend her, Bea’s classmates belittled her for fun,
Besmearing her good name with barbarous barbs that stung.
Between berated bejesuses, bedamns and profanities unrefined
Bea bemoaned the betrayal of her bloody big benign behind.
‘Threat to society, my arse,’ she bewailed in befretting gloom
As she beat a belligerent fist beneath a beaming full moon.
Once she left school, she enlisted in the air corps
To be a fighter pilot, to let her being soar.
Yes, she thought, it’s the armed forces for me,
so I can be the best Bea I can possibly be.
Now she was primed for active duty,
Her and her big bahookie.
The real deal was our Bea,
Not just some whimsical wannabe.
A not-so-lean, mean fighting machine
Ready to protect colony and Queen.
She’d show that non-believing throng.
She’d prove all them naysayers wrong.
For today, when assigned,
She’d leave her past behind.
Sweat beaded upon her brow of a beetroot hue,
And her mouth was as dry as a beagle’s bone, too.
Her heart boom-boomed disco beats
As her head buzzed with future phenomenal feats.
With bated breath and bouncing booty,
Bea awaited the announcement of her fated duty.
Her commanding officer looked up from her statistics
And said, ‘Private Beeson. Report to Logistics.’
‘But, ma’am—’ a bemused Bea beseeched.
‘No ifs or buts, Private!’ the commander screeched.
Bummer! bethought a befuddled Bea.
A bloody worker is all I am to be.
Bea flushed. Not a blush. Nor indignation.
Just hives. Upon her cheeks, to her consternation.
As Bea stood to attention and replaced her corps cap,
She cursed Life and Air Force for dealing her a bum rap.
But what was a gal of gargantuan girth to do?
What could she be or do, to get her just due?
Alas, nothing, for being beholden to a commander’s behest,
Meant she’d just have to turn the other cheek and let it rest.
With a salute and a ‘ma’am’ Bea turned towards the door
To begrudgingly exit from commander and corps.
But as behoves those less lucky than some
Upon an unseen object bumped Bea’s Brobdingnagian bum,
And from her titanic tush
Came a whopping whump and whishing whoosh.
A chair crashed.
A sideboard smashed.
And following a ghastly gasp and thundering thud,
The black beret before Bea lay in a flood of blood.
Bea’s knees turned to royal jelly,
And in bewilderment she sank to her bloated belly.
For a fickle fate had befallen our besieged lass,
And her astronomical ass was in deep, deep frass.
As she looked upon the beastly sight before her with dread,
Panic swarmed inside her beleaguered head,
For to Bea’s beggared belief her preposterous posterior
Had bestowed a bloody beheading on an unsuspecting superior.
Surely this was Bea’s rock bottom, her lowest low, but no,
For upon her bedevilled being she had inflicted a mortal blow.
What would historians bethink of Bea’s swansong?
Would Bea be besmirched forever and beyond?
Would Bea bequeath a bloody tale to scare
Beady-eyed bibliophiles into being beware?
Or would a belated citation for benevolent fire
Be laid beside a purple heart upon Bea’s burning pyre?
Maybe the Holy See would see fit to beatify Bea.
A martyr to misfortune our not-so-little feebee could be.
Or was there the slightest chance
Bea could plead mitigating circumstance?
No. Never. For her misbehaviour unwitting
Had been behaviour most unbefitting.
Bea begrieved the unbearable briefness of her being,
Of being betwixt and between being and non-being,
Of being a soon-to-be has-been,
Of being a Bea no longer seen,
Of being bereaved before the true Bea was on show;
Well, a being’s being should not be abbreviated so.
In life you get but one shot before you rot,
and Bea had now blown her only lot.
Had Bea been a human being and a Bea being not,
Might she have got another shot?
But, alas, it was not to be,
For Bea Beeson ceased to bee.
Eight-year-old Martin Smith
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Martin Smith is a writer of short fictions of humour. Having spent a working life crunching numbers, he retired to the Bellarine Peninsula in 2013, where he lives and writes in a beach house at Queenscliff. When he is not banging away on his keyboard with thumbs and index fingers or reading snippets of his scribblings to his beloved Rose, you’ll more likely than not find him walking the beach barefoot at low tide or downing a double scoop of Peppermint Chip at the local ice-creamery. He plans to publish two collections of stories of humour (This Laugh’s On Me and The Cannibal’s Guide to Health and Wellbeing) in 2023.
Martin joined Geelong Writers in 2022. He is a member of The Seaside Scribes, a writing group that meets at the Queenscliff Neighbourhood House every second Tuesday.
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