conversation with a house fly

Conversation with a summer house fly
By Wally Nichols
203 858 3634

(insert fly buzzing sound)
Hey house fly buzzing about my head: You are wily, unlike your plump, lethargic, green-bottle brethren that like to hang out by the kitchen sink. They are easy to dismantle with my swatter. Whap! Gone.
Not you. You are elusive.
Not so readily distracted as they by the accidental, sweet , summer melon juice on the counter. Even as the dark waffled shadow of the orange plastic swatter gets larger, little fly smiles remain on their content little fly faces. That is, until they are rendered pulp.
Not you. You chose not to live and die in my kitchen. Is that too obvious a spot? Have you ambition? Some other plan? Am I doing your genus and species the disservice of generalization by considering you all to be obsessed only with eating (and laying larvae) for the 4 days you get to live?
I say you are unique. Educated? Focused in your game of torment? You have been buzzing my head in my office. Are you looking for something? Treasure? A lost relative?
Hopping from my knuckle to the unpaid Sprint bill on my desk. Why? Then the arm, then the toe, then the neck. Repeat. Subtle, surreptitious, stealthy.
(insert buzzing sound)
Why can’t you just be a fly on the wall, the wish of so many?
I have a swatter nearby yet you never sit still long enough to let me get a lock on you. I’ve learned to use it with the deadly speed and accuracy required of a still standing six shooter at the OK Corral. But I’ve been flummoxed by your cunning. Again and again.
You go to my right ear. Bzzzzzzzz. I flick you off (no I won’t swat myself if that’s your game, but nice try). I write a few more words and you are back. Refreshed. Regrouped. Ready to pester. You buzz around so quickly that I can hardly see you. Just a slight irritation on my skin and I see you have landed again on some other part of my body-- a passing spec in my visual periphery- a baker’s dozen jagged fingernails on the chalkboard of my nerves.
It seems like a design flaw of nature. You are obsessed with landing on me like I’m some sort of foreign planet that has food , shelter, entertainment and a mate for you. Yet for your needs, I am fallow. You have no tools to penetrate my skin and get my blood to feed your young like your annoying cousins the summer mosquitoes. And even if you acquired some discarded BP mining tool for that job, time is not a luxury you have.
Yet, surely the great designer who made us both knew that by giving me a nervous system that carries a message to my brain saying “There is something irritating on your arm,” and a brain that then says to the hand muscles, “neutralize the irritation by lifting up the orange swatter you bought for a dollar at Shoprite last night and pulverize it,” surely that great creator knew you would be smote by me, and I victorious over you.
(insert buzzing sound)
Yet even with no reason to land on this dead, hostile planet, you try. Repeatedly. At the risk of sounding paranoid (and frustrated that I have trouble finishing one single sentence because of your pesky interruptions), I am left no choice but to conclude your raison d’etre is to annoy me.
If that’s the case, so be it. Game on. Let us do what comes to us naturally so I may mush you and this folly be over once and for all. I will temporarily suspend my life goals of happiness, love, compassion and productivity. I will instead focus on your demise, as you, and nature herself, have so forced me.
(insert buzzing sound)
I’ve picked up the swatter with my best hand- the one that can deliver a sizzling first serve on the tennis court every now and then. Hold on- this part is going to be shaky as I’m not good at typing lefty while scanning the skies for a tiny buzzing something that is, admittedly, and with all due respect, quick and cagey in flight.
It’s hard to concentrate on writing when… Whap. Damn I missed. You little F-er… Ok, Ok… There you are, camouflaged on the thin edge of my black computer screen. Finally you stop moving for a nanosecond. Enjoy your last second on Ear…Whap. Damn.
(insert buzzing sound)
Whap Whap Whap.
Damn Damn Damn.
My wife pokes her head in my office. “Is everything OK?”
“Yes,” I growl. But it’s not.
(insert buzzing sound)
Ok Ok Ok, I reassure myself in a lunatic’s whisper. Now I’ve got you... You have moved to my LED backlit screen which betrays your position. You show up like a broken femur on a bright X-ray. A fly on a wedding cake.
Checkmate, fucker.
(Insert buzzing sound)
(Insert swatting sound – buzzing sound stops abruptly)
(A beat then...throat clear)
For the record, let it not be said Wally Nichols wouldn’t hurt a fly.