Flies

Jonathan was a mild man. He enjoyed the scent of flowers, the sound of mellow music. He loved the poor, pets, most children, red sunsets, formations of geese. His heart was filled with these sorts of love. He had little patience for hate. He feared violence, anger, or any other extreme emotion.

Jonathan was a tolerant man. Except for the common house fly. He hated them. He could abide moths, mosquitos, roaches, or other pests. Flies were the only living things he truly hated. He had an irresistible impulse that led him to kill flies.

During his life, he had killed thousands of flies. He had begun as a small child. The first he had ever killed had buzzed around a light in his playroom. He had swatted it with a plastic stick, and it had fallen, helpless, at his feet. When another entered his bathroom as he bathed, he splashed, squealing with delight when the fly fell into the tub and drowned.

Killing flies soon became his favorite game, eventually his hobby, and quickly thereafter, his obsession. When he was fourteen, a steaming summer shower had forced him indoors. The rain herded scores of flies into his house through frayed window screens. He killed forty-two flies that day, a personal record up to that date.

The walls and ceiling of his room were dotted with spots that marked the moment of death for innumerable flies. He killed them in every conceivable way. He squashed them with comic books (his favorite weapon was a DC Batman Monthly, which had just the right sort of heft as well as a sort of poetic satisfaction). He batted them with commercial fly swatters - although he soon discarded them as less than sporting. He skillfully snapped towels intercepting their daring zagging flights. He shot them down with water pistols and drowned them when they spun wing heavy to a landing. He poisoned them with spray, trapped them in hot fudge the way that tar trapped the saber tooth tigers, suffocated them under overturned glass traps.

The obsession continued throughout Jonathan's life. He kept mental records of his scores. When the seasons changed and the numbers of flies became scarce, he became sullen and depressed. He walked around his apartment aimlessly, carrying a rolled up magazine, hunting with ears sharpened by a lifetime of experience.

One evening in the forty-second winter of Jonathan's life, he noticed a familiar buzzing in his otherwise silent room. Reaching for his ever close weapon, he searched the room for his quarry. He could see nothing, no movement, no shadow of movement. The buzzing continued, teasing.

The volume of the buzzing sound increased in his ears, becoming so apparent that he was unable to concentrate, or to sleep despite the fatigue the constant sound induced.

Jonathan sought medical help. A doctor found no injury or ailment to account for the buzzing. Still, it persisted, until Jonathan in desperation demanded futher tests. A series of expensive scans, imaging, using the latest machinery, failed to discover any cause. Medication was prescribed to deaden his senses. Jonathan toyed with the idea of detaching his auditory nerves, but could find no doctor willing to do it.

The buzzing worsened. Thinking became impossible. Jonathan had no choice; the blood flowed when he punctured his own eardrums, but the blessed silence made the pain tolerable.

Now, he could see flies darting in their crazy frantic patterns, could sometimes feel the tickle on the hairs of his arms as they landed, as they tasted his salty sweat, as they departed an instant before his slap could get them. It was worst during the long, restless nights. Summer and winter, Jonathan kept his air conditioner churning at full blast. He buried himself under blankets in the cold.

Still, he felt the teasing presence of the everpresent insects. He would switch on the light, search out his tormenters, and in the rare instance when he found prey, would smash them with a damning curse. Exhausted, he would return to bed, and more often than not, be awakened later with another sense of silken wings brushing his cheek. He would be compelled to resume the hunt again. And so the night would pass.

In time, he had used up all of his sick pay and was fired from his job. He locked himself in his darkened room, sealed the windows and doors, sprayed hourly with insecticides. The flies laughed at his efforts.

When they broke into Jonathan's room, his emaciated body was found in a praying position, arms thrown over his eyes. In his right hand was a rolled up newspaper. The room was airless, rank with chemical fumes. Dozens of spray cans were strewn about. Death was ascribed to suffocaation, poisoning from skin absorption, lung congestion. His body was an awful sight. The coroner refused to finish the examination. The biochemical hazard team carted his body away in leaded containers, buried him deep in the earth.

There was not a fly within miles.