The average house fly can carry over one hundred different pathogens. It can transmit cholera, salmonella and tuberculosis.
I was near the end, Clara whispering in my ear that I was a big man, oh, yes, indeed, no little testes-boy here, when a fly landed on my back. The fly, I was sure.
I pushed off of her and slapped at my back frantically. The fly was long gone, of course, buzzing off to safety.
Clara looked at me with disappointed eyes, like I was a little kid who had spilled his milk on the floor. “We’re not done,” she said. “Not yet.”
At the base of her throat, a patch of white, dry skin had started to peel. It looked like scales.
I got out of bed and pulled on my sweat pants.
“Don’t be so afraid,” Clara said. “Nakedness is natural.”
The fly swooped past me again and landed once more on my wife. This time, it favored the spot on her right breast above her nipple. She made no move to swat it away.
Flies live off of organic waste and human excrement, even sweat. They excrete saliva to predigest food and then slurp it back up like a liquid carpet cleaner. And because they are constantly eating, they are also constantly shitting. They leave their invisible crap everywhere. That’s how the diseases spread. Like typhoid and cholera.
“A fly,” I said and pointed.
She checked herself, found the fly and brought her hand to it--slowly as if it were something poisonous that should not be startled. She cupped her hand around her breast, circling her nipple with thumb and forefinger. The fly walked across her breast and onto her hand. She brought her hand up slowly to her face.
She was going to eat it; I could already see it happening.
She waved her hand and the fly flew off.
The fly trailed over my ear with its ever so tiny and ever so delicate little legs. The sensation sent chills down my side.
Every fly is covered in hair-like projections that make them look like flying warts.
I swatted at the thing and it went right into my ear. Its buzzing echoed through my head loudly and furiously. I clawed at my ear with both hands, pulling and yanking at my ear while trying to work my fingers into the canal, but none of them could fit. And still the fly buzzed on. Burrowing toward my brain.
I ran for the master bathroom. From the corner of my eye, I saw Clara naked on the bed, hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter.
The buzzing got louder and louder until it was the only thing I heard, even while I flung open drawers and knocked items out of the medicine cabinet while I tried to find the damn Q-tips. They were underneath the sink, buried beneath boxes of tampons. I ripped open the back of the box. Q-tips spilled all around me. I grabbed one and jammed it into my ear. For a moment, the buzzing got even louder and then, mercifully, it stopped. My hearing went fuzzy.
The end of the Q-tip was tinged yellow and green. I used a bulb syringe to flush my ear. Greenish black mush seeped out of my ear and dropped into the sink with a soft splat.
Flies can also transmit parasitic worms that eat away at your insides.
* * *
Clara made me try again and I finally did what she wanted. “You’re such a very good little boy,” she said before turning away from me and going to sleep. She had made sure to slip her engagement and wedding rings back on.
I couldn’t sleep for a while. I could still hear that insane buzzing in my ear, though it was distant, a memory of discomfort, and my ear was wet and moist.
Clara was soon snoring.
A fly shot past my face, just above my nose.
I threw back the comforter and got out of bed. I wore boxers and an undershirt.
The nightlight in the bathroom cast the room in a greenish, sickening haze. I stopped at the open doorway and listened. Only Clara’s gentle snore came back to me. I waited.
No fly flew past, but I could hear it. That quiet buzzing sound, almost like a bee. And the more I strained to listen, the louder the buzzing became. There wasn’t just one more fly, but at least two, maybe a few, maybe more. All of them hiding in the dark of my bathroom.
Waiting.
I reached my hand inside the door and slid it up the wall to the light switch. Just before I turned on the light and stepped into Hell, I felt a fly crawl over my hand. Only it wasn’t a tiny house fly or even one of those bloated black flies that are easy to kill but so full of gooey guts; no, this fly was bigger, much bigger--beetle-sized bigger.
My scream of surprise was swallowed in the vibrating hum of thousands of flies crawling all over the bathroom. They covered the mirror and sink. They obscured the flower-print wallpaper and even surrounded the vanity bulbs above the mirror, shadowing the bathroom in blobs of darkness. They covered the toilet completely, inside and out to form one grotesque living chamber pot.
Even worse, not all the flies were of the small, ordinary house variety. Some were big like the beetle-sized one that crawled over my hand, yet still others were larger, almost kitten-sized. Their sharp hairs stuck out like spikes as the bugs crawled over each other with their jointed stick legs that almost sounded like little pins tapping on a hard surface, but that was just my ears playing tricks because all I could really hear was that droning buzz. That humming of their bodies and the frequent flap of their transparent wings.
I backed slowly out of the doorway, sure that at any moment all of the flies would leap into the air and attack me. They’d swarm around me in one gruesome hive and start suckling at my skin. The large ones might have enough suction to rip the flesh. What would happen if they got inside me? Could the flies eat me alive?
I hurried down the hallway and into the kitchen. I flipped on the hallway overhead light and then the fluorescent kitchen light. I thought there was bug spray under the sink, maybe even a bug bomb.
I stopped. There were flies everywhere. They were crawling over the wood cabinets and the drawers and over the stove and completely concealing the microwave. The front of the dishwasher was now a swirling mass of gray and black bodies, each with black stripes that made them look menacing. They surrounded the fluorescent light as if it were a hanging deposit of food and they canvassed the floor like scavengers.
A large fly, easily the size of a toy poodle, hobbled across the counter over the uneven terrain of thousands of other flies. Its bulbous eyes were black and monstrous. It stopped, cocked its head in my direction. Gelatinous slime slipped from its snout. I swore I could hear it slurp the slime back up into its mouth.
No fly swatter could kill that thing. I needed a phonebook or the giant dictionary we used as a doorstop. Or a shovel or a--
I turned and ran down the steps toward the garage but stopped on the landing. Flies covered the huge wall leading up from the foyer in one giant, living swirl. It was an enormous black eye, an all-knowing evil eye. I know that now. That eye was peering through from the darkness beyond reality; it was watching me, knowing what I did not.
I went down the second flight of stairs to the garage. A beetle-sized fly buzzed into my face. I screamed and slapped it away. It bounced off the wall with a thwap. I didn’t pause to stare at the flies covering the garage door or even swat away the ones on the doorknob; I squeezed the knob, letting the flies crush beneath my grip, their guts oozing onto my flesh, and swung open the door.
Thousands of flies filled the air like a dark cloud. The buzzing throbbed and echoed in here like the sound of a giant, groaning machine.
The shovels were on the opposite end of the garage, leaning against the wall between the two large car entrances.