The bug had it coming. They all do.
Waving like a fly strip in the wind, you know, I don’t look forward to seeing you again.
Over the last few days/weeks/moments buried in blinks, flies have been buzzing through my kitchen and around my bathroom mirror.
I hate flies. They mean death is near. Shit is piling up. Something is decaying.
And these disgusting carriers of disease and vectors of pathogens do not belong in my home, near my hearth, landing near my goddamn vodka cranberry, but somehow they got in.
My mother-in-law swears the weather is to blame. I don’t care what brought them here, I won’t share my space with bacteria bringers. As I watch the twitchy legs move from surface to countertop, I wait with swatter in hand. The broken yellow plastic busted from fast swings that landed hard and crooked.
“It worked,” my daughter said. “We got one.”
Her brother heads toward the window and comments. He’s two years younger but gaining on her in height. Peach fuzz decorates his upper lip like a monochrome mustache.
When Dad notices our catch, he suggests the kids learn to rip off just one wing. “Give it hope,” their grandfather jokes cruelly.
But, really, fuck these flies that land on our fresh fruit like a child licking a cookie so no one else would want to eat it.
I’ve hated the sight of flies since seeing them gathered around cows in a field and squirrels squished on the roads.
The fly in my hospital room in the pediatric intensive care unit symbolized decay in my mind when I was twenty. My decay facilitated by drugs, addiction and the losing of my purpose.
Those translucent and veiny wings stirred the still air that I had trouble breathing. That bed with the guardrails and nurse call button didn’t support my mental health when I panicked at the sight of a harbinger of death in my convalescent space.
But that bug is long since turned to dust, swept away by janitorial staff and never thought of again. Today, we watch one struggle and hope it warns its friends that we won’t accept death here.