Flies, a true story...
It happened one hot summer day. I don't know which month it was. At that time
in my life, things just really blended together. Maybe it was July, August,
it really doesn't matter I guess. I originally thought it was Monty's fault.
He had been letting his two cats and his dog, Lemmy, have the run of the
house, and they were leaving their stinky piles whereever they felt like it.
Yes, that kind of bothered me, maybe that's why it was so easy for me to get
so mad at Monty at the time. But, looking back on that day, it wasn't his
fault, it just happened.
Cluster flies! That's what happened.
I've since been told, by an exterminating expert, that cluster flies lay
their eggs outside the house. I'm not sure how long they remain maggots, but
knowing what maggots are and what their purpose on this planet is, it
probably isn't very long. Well, the maggots, or maybe even after they have
turned into these big black lumbering flies, crawl up the side of the house.
This is especially true for houses trimmed with a lot of wood. Who knows, the
results are the same, they get into the walls and eventually into the house.
Once inside, in a seemingly drunken state, they cluster around windows. Hence
the title, "cluster flies." They're almost logy in flight, slowly drifting
randomly around the house, bumping into each other, the walls, or whatever
they don't happen to be paying attention to at the time. Some times they just
let go of what they are hanging onto, especially over your food, and drop
whereever gravity takes them. So, you now know how I feel about these
germ-ridden things. Actually, it gets worse. Back to my story now. Let me
tell you what happened to me that day.
Like I said, it was a hot summer day. I'm not sure why I had the day off, but
I did. For whatever reason, I had to go up into the attic of our house.
Monty, my brother Matt, and me had rented a three-story house in downtown
Rochester, New York. In our neighborhood, the houses were so close you could
reach out the window and hand something to your neighbor without having to
stretch very far. Anyway, I had to, for whatever reason, go up to the attic.
It was mid day, the sun was shining outside and of course, the attic was
twice as hot as the rest of the house. Five minutes up there and you were
sweating pretty good. There was a window on either end of the attic, the
front and the back. It was open from one end to the other. There were no
curtains up there. I remember once being up there and watching police lights
flashing a few blocks over. They were at some guy's house. I guess he'd
gotten into a fight at a bar. He got stabbed and crawled a couple blocks
home. He died in the garage. I sat up their and imagined the poor bastard at
first staggering, and then as he lost blood, on his hands and knees and
eventually with his last view of home in sight, dragging himself by his arms
until he made it into his garage. So much for "home sweet home", huh? So, the
attic should have been pretty bright In the middle of the day. But no, it
wasn't. It seemed kind of, well, I don't know how to put it, dingy I guess.
It was kind of like when there's an eclipse, but the sun isn't totally
blocked out. It's day and you know it, but it seems like evening and it just
doesn't feel right. I couldn't figure it out. It felt weird. I looked over
at the front window. Maybe some passing cloud dimmed the attic a little. And
of course that wasn't the case. I went over to the window to see why it
looked so dirty. Well, it wasn't dirty, it was covered in flies, cluster
flies to be exact. They looked like that spray-on snow, except black. They
were two or three thick around the edges and crawling all over each other,
making the edges of the window look like they were squirming. Eventually they
thinned out towards the middle of the window. It seemed like they were afraid
of the sun, but desperately wanted to get outside. They were partially
blocking out the light. You could call it a "fly-clipse." The back window was
the same. I went to the back window and stopped a few feet away. Yep, same
thing flies all over it. It didn't creep me out at first. There were a few
piles of cat leftovers here and there on the floor. I thought I'd asked Monty
to clean them up, but he never was very good at cleaning things up. Once he'd
washed the dishes. We didn't have any dish soap. He just scraped them off,
soaked them in water, and put them in the dish rack to dry. Pretty much
disgusted me at the time. Matt and I ate off paper plates from then on. So, I
figured the flies must have just spontaneously generated from the piles of
cat poop on the floor. Therefore, I blamed Monty. Like I said, I wasn't real
creeped out at first, I was just plain pissed off. I said a few four-letter
words in Monty's honor, and decided I'd have to clean up the mess myself. It
took a few minutes of constipating on the fate of our house pets, but
eventually I heard it. There was a low buzzing coming from both ends of the
attic. At first it was barely noticeable over my fuming anger, but slowly the
air filled with their humming. In a matter of minutes, that was all I could
hear. That incessant buzzing was just about deafening after five minutes.
Maybe not exactly deafening. But at the time, being outnumbered about a
thousand to one, it seemed like it. OK, I'll get rid of them. And then, I'll
have to clean up frick and frack's little messes myself. I decided to go down
to the hardware store, get a can of that flying insect death spray and then
nuke the little bastards into oblivion with a few bug bombs. I took one last
look at them. Yep, they were goners for sure.
The steps leading down from the attic were jimmy-rigged by our landlord.
There was, at one time, just a pull down folding ladder going up there and he
somehow had made stairs. It was more like a ladder built into the wall. It
led up there so that it could be used as a bedroom or for storage or for what
ever. At this time, the attic it was being used by Monty and his band for
practice sessions. They were just stars waiting to be discovered, yeah,
right! But now I started getting creeped out, the more I thought about that
sound. I fell down the last four or five steps on the way down, son of bitch!
OW! Clutz that I am, my foot hit the edge of one of the steps. I was facing
forward and dropped on my back and slid down the bottom few steps. I remember
thinking that, too, was Monty's fault. And now I have a nice little rug burn
on my back. Which, I'd probably forget about 'til I hopped into the shower
the next day. Yes, that's when I'd remember tripping down the stairs. When
that hot water hit that skinless spot on my back, that's when I'd remember. I
made it downstairs, grabbed a beer, went into the living room and burned one.
Yes, like I said, those days seemed to blend together back then.
I walked down to the store to get the tools I needed to destroy what was for
that day, the bane of my existence. Ya know, if those two damn cats and that
friggin' dog weren't messing all over the house, I wouldn't be wasting my
time, or my cash for that matter. This, I knew, was gonna set me back at
least twenty bucks and that in itself was enough to piss me off. I had to
spend another twenty, and Monty stilled owed me like two hundred bucks for
the power bill he was late on, three months late by the way. Yes, I'll just
throw that on his tab, the son of a bitch. Why did I bother?
The store had quite a nice selection of anti bug weaponry on hand. I grabbed
a can of flying insect spray. The can that said you could hit them from like
thirty feet away. It showed a giant dying wasp with a big x through it on the
front. Yes, nice, I chuckled. I'll spray the little bastards, then I'll bomb
them into oblivion. I grabbed two bombs. The warning label on them said that
they were hazardous to animals like cats and dogs and little caged pets. The
thought of killing a thousand and three birds with one stone didn't really
bother me. In fact, it was kind of gratifying at the time. Oh well Monty, I
didn't realize the bombs would hurt your precious little friends. Too bad, so
sad..He, he, he. Nope, I didn't feel bad at all. Back to the house of flies
it was. But first, quick stop off at the grocery store to pick up six cans of
instant guts. I was kind of thirsty anyway.
Back at the house my mood changed from impending ecstasy, to an
unidentifiable dread. I quickly remembered that droning buzz in the attic. I
kind of thought I could hear it from down stairs. Probably not, but the more
I thought about what I was gonna do, the louder it seemed I could hear it. I
finished off a few beers, burnt another one, and grabbed a can for the road.
Yes, that's it, I'm ready. Bring the little devils on, I thought. I grabbed
the spray and the bombs, and headed up stairs. At the bottom of the steps
leading up to the attic I stopped. I looked up and chugged the beer I had in
my hand. OK, lets go.
I climbed up the stairs, throwing a quick four-letter reference at the bottom
steps. Oh yeah, I'll remember you guys tomorrow morning in the shower. That's
for sure. Gee, thanks Monty, I owe ya one. I got to the top and looked to the
front and then to the back. Yep, they were still there. And yep, that buzzing
was still there too. Strange, I thought, I think it got louder when I reached
the top step. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they knew, I thought. Maybe they could
smell the spray. Maybe at the factory some of the poison drips down the side
of the can when they fill these things. I looked down at the can. Nah, you're
just getting a little paranoid John. I knew it was time to stop smoking
things other than cigarettes. It wasn't fun anymore. I guess I just smoked it
out of boredom, maybe even habit. Yeah, right, it's not addicting. Any way,
at the top of the attic steps I scoped out the situation. I needed to
strategically place these bombs. I figured I'd put one about ten feet from
either window in the center of the floor. That way, when I hit them with the
first wave, the spray, they'd scatter, hitting a cloud of death as they tried
to escape. I'll just set off the bombs first, then the cloud of death will be
there for the second punch! I'll knock'm down with the old one-two. I'll hit
the front window first with the spray, because the exit leading down was
closer to the back window. Yes, good plan, I mentally patted myself on the
back.
I placed the bombs, pulled the tab on the back one first, then the front one.
I took one last deep breath of air and headed over the front bomb to the
window. The bombs worked a little better than I expected. I thought I'd have
a four or five minutes to finish them all off. Yes, I was wrong. I started
spraying the front window. I was, however, not the recommended thirty feet
away like the can said I was supposed to be. The flies instantly took flight.
The buzzing really was deafening this time. They were everywhere. I stepped
back through the cloud of death and turned to the back window. Oh my god! I
saw that the flies in the back window had just felt the death cloud coming
their way. They were already lifting off, but they had no where to go. I let
loose with the spray anyway, what the heck.
I kind of remember them starting to drop all around me. But at the same time,
they were forming their own little insane death cloud in the attic. They were
everywhere. They started landing on me. They were bouncing off my head, they
were stuck in my hair, my ears. I could feel them crawling around on my face,
I could hear them buzzing, right up against my eardrums. I started freaking
out. I've never been more skeeved in my life. The thought that they were
actually coming after me crossed my mind. Were they pissed? Did they realize
I was the enemy, and they had me a thousand to one? I half expected to hear a
collective, "get out, get out" or a pitiful, "why you do this to me Johnny?"
As this horror unfolded on and around me, I realized I couldn't see anymore.
My eyes were burning like the time I cut up those jalapeno peppers and
accidentally wiped my eyes before washing my hands. The tears were streaming
down my face, and the tearing itself caused my eyes to burn even more. In the
mass fly- steria, the cloud of death had grabbed me by the throat too. Snot
was flowing from my nose in torrents. It was trapping the flies on my face.
It worse than flypaper, they could still crawl around, but they couldn't get
away. This stuff is what the military uses on its foes. I was suddenly sure
that this was what they made their chemical weapons out of. I couldn't hold
my breath any longer, and I was now starting to panic. It had been at least
two minutes since I set off the bombs, so I took a deep breath. So what if I
took in a fly or too? I needed air, or I was gonna pass out. My throat burned
as the poison filled my lungs. Man, I thought, Amityville, it was a true
story. I felt my head start to daze over. The flies were dropping like, well,
I guess like flies. I felt their little seizing bodies pop under my sneakers
as I staggered over to where I thought the steps were. I had to get out. I
was slapping my head, trying to untangle the ones in my hair. Alternately
swatting at the ones still bouncing off my face. Unfortunately for me, I
hadn't let go of the death spray. And now, in a total panic, I never let off
the button. With every other swat, I knew what the flies felt when the spray
hit them in the face. I could feel some flies squirming around in my shirt.
They must have dropped down my neck or crawled up my back in the confusion. I
swatted them too, imagining their guts smearing all over my skin. Then I
found the steps, they were there and gone in the same instant. I must have
lost my balance on the top step, because I don't remember stepping down. The
last thing I do remember was swinging my arms wildly in the air while
realizing I wasn't actually going to catch my balance. I was going down,
going down the hard way.
I don't know how long I laid there at the bottom of the stairs. I remember
waking up covered in dead flies and realizing there was dead silence. Thank
God! That sound was gone. My left arm felt like it was broken, but it wasn't.
I could move it just fine, but a large bruise was forming just over my elbow.
I knew that would only get worse by tomorrow. My head though, my head was
just a pounding, Whether I hit it on the way down, or it was a side effect
from the bomb, I'm not sure. My tongue was tingling, but I never ended up
with an egg on my noggin. I was dazed for a few days after that. I know that,
for sure. But wait, there's more. The can of spray landed under me, or I
landed on it. Either way, it landed just right and spent itself on my right
side. That spot on my ribs was numb for a week. I had a few other bruises and
some contusions from falling down the stairs, but it wasn't anything I
couldn't live with.
I got up with a pain filled groan, and then went back down stairs. I finished
off the last two beers
The End
All Rights Owned By the Author:John Privitt.
Links to other sites on the Web
If you enjoyed this story, why not tell the writer that you did? Send your e-mail to this address and it will be forwarded to him.
© 2000 jaxferguson@hotmail.com
