The Fly

Three

The next morning was a grotty mess, but the night before was sensational in the fact that the five High Life beers he drank coerced him into a wonderful sleep while watching some of his favorite Youtubers. He wasn't much of a Netflix kind of guy where people came to watch the new exclusive releases of pishy-poshy teen movies or shanty remakes of older TV shows and movies. And he never did text Gayle back.

The TV was still on and the reversal arrow button in the middle of the boxed in video lay in the dimmed screen from non-usage. Eyes cracked open from the crust plaque that built up like bacteria in the corners of his eyes and his mouth tasted dryer than ocean sex. Laying on his stomach, drooling on the couch pillow, he heard something. Deja vu? It was that electric shaver again, but he knew better this time than to listen to his abstemious conscience. Using two fingers for each eye, he wiped the crust away to look around. Lo and behold, there was another fly in his house. Bigger, too. Coursing the air around and around under the ceiling elliptically like a plane circling the opaque mist of the Bermuda Triangle trying to get a signal.

He rubbed his eyes again, this time a little harder and looked at the monster again. It was still there, traversing its immutable path round and round again, resounding a droning that made his teeth feel weird and his skin to rout. Hair bristled on his arms and he swore he could pick up on a new malodorous fume in his house like rotting meat. Or stomach bile. But he didn't worry about such trivial things when a bird sized fly searched aimlessly above his head; though, it wasn't actually the size of a bird, more like a large cicada.

"Gayle!" he yelled. Not taking his eyes off the insect, he waited for his wife to respond. "Gayle bring me the fly swatter, please!"

She wasn't answering, that was when he heard a car door slam outside, an engine starting, then back out of their driveway. Before he could gather the courage to get up and stop her, she was already gone, leaving him isolated with a beast of an intruder. Off to work most likely. The fly finally took its landing on the ceiling. The repulsive humming of its wings settled casually and its oblong shape was teeming with tiny hairs that may not have been noticeable if the thing were of ordinary size, but this thing was not ordinary.

Slowly, and crouched, he went across the living room to the hall closet where they kept the swatter hung on a key hanger just to the right of it. Never dreaming of taking his eyes off of it, he came to the key hanger and snatched it off. Did she not see this thing? he thought. I guess this kind of thing is normal, right? Just a fly the size of my ear roaming about freely and she couldn't care less. Then again, maybe that was the point, she is probably still pissed at me and wanted me to deal with it on my own. What a bitch.

He was under it now, watching it putter in its nice, little cozy spot on the ceiling. Being this close to it made his skin tickle all over: in multiple places on his back all at once that would require skillful dexterity to reach proficiently. He ignored that too and braced for impact.

The fly moved a little. He halted, eager to keep still in case it flew away. It stopped. He swung. Missed. The fucker was quick (and lucky for it, the swatter thwacked the plaster with a mighty slap) and Jack ducked clumsily, bumping the coffee table askew, knocking a couple of empty glass soldiers to the ground. The fly was frantic, swirling in miniature circles from the torrents of Jack's swings. Concussions of air churning it left and right, but he could not hit it. Finally it got tired of dealing with his shit and it swooped down to escape the tempest. Falling towards him, diving into his face. The exoskeleton frame donked against his forehead, causing the hairs on the nape of his neck and down his spine to bristle madly.

Next, it went down the hall towards his bedroom and the bathroom at the very end. Blue morning light came in through the bathroom casement window, limning the fly's dark body like a flying Brillo. He ran after it fervently and manically, desperate to disparage it from the walls of his home at any cost. It went straight for the little window above the bathtub where the soothing light came in and landed solemnly. Jack rapped repeatedly, hard, but not brainlessly to cause collateral damage to his window. The first two hits missed, disorienting it with the violent gusts the swatter conjured, slewing its aerial evasion, but the third one clipped its wing and down it sailed into the bathtub to writhe like a fish out of water. Now it resorted to climbing its way out of the porcelain walls, but Jack struck it again sending it back down the steep slope. Whacking it over and over until he could see its guts strewn. But the task was not that easy because of its immensity; its armor had upgraded to swatter-repellent. The most he was able to do to it was bruise it.