The Fly Massacre
Faced with another Saturday morning of waving away flies during my daughter’s horse riding lesson, my six-year old son and I thought long and hard before reaching for the fly swatters on our way out the door. He chose the yellow swatter, leaving me stuck with the pink one—although the pink had its advantages: it was stronger and easier to grip; and maybe the flies, if not color blind, would be mesmerized by the pink long enough for me to take advantage of their hesitation and smash them.
It was all about self-defense, I explained to Stan in the car. We were simply going to swat the ones that bothered us, and leave the rest alone. But while we waited near the benches in front of the barn, they all bothered us, so Maggie grabbed the yellow one and went on a rampage, nailing one after another on the hot concrete ground. Luckily for the rest of them, Maggie’s teacher appeared and Maggie had to get her horse ready, so she flipped the yellow one back Stan.
At first Stan was more interested in the cat that lay in the shade. He often went along to these lessons just so he could pet one of the two cats. He was good with animals. Little chicks, dogs, turtles, rabbits. He took good care of them. He was afraid of most bugs, though.
I sat on the cast-iron bench in front of the barn, remembering my brother-in-law who once stopped me from swatting at a fly with a towel. He caught it easily with two cupped hands. “Come here, baby,” he said and opened the back door to set it free.
Every living thing was precious, yes, I thought, waving a few flies away from my face but slapping at one (with lightning speed, I thought) that landed on my leg. It was long gone by the time my hand crashed into my thigh.
My son continued to pet the cat gently. We’d looked in a book about space the night before, and discovered that there were 100 billion stars in space, or something like that, or maybe that our own sun was 100 billion years old. Or both. “Amazing,” I said aloud while Stan urged me to move on and read more, but I just kept saying “amazing,” so he went on to other things.
Amazing—all those galaxies and suns, I thought, and we’re the only ones kicking around? Maybe our souls fly off to other worlds, and then to still others, over and over again. Maybe there really can be time travel. Or maybe (I swatted at the fly on my thigh again—the same damn one, I imagined) there was nothing at all, and we just croaked into blackness, pointlessly getting-older-and-wiser. Meaningless self-development. Nature cyclical, all about renewal, but not for us? Life beautiful, but pointless?
Couldn’t be, I thought.
Probably is, I frowned.
Several flies were on the ground near my feet. I chose one and nailed him hard with the swatter. Found another, smashed him. Cracked another, splat. My son came over, watching me kill another, and another. Missed only one—the one that kept landing on my thigh, probably. The others either smashed flat or showed a little white underbelly-sack if they flipped over on their sides. My son flailed at a few on the ground, but they got away.
“Come at them from above,” I advised him. He did, but he came from behind first and they flew away before he could even try.
“You know, I think they can see behind themselves or something, but they can’t see up, or they don’t look up, so get close, bring it straight down, and then ‘pop’, like this.” I killed one. “And another, like this.” Got one on the bench next to me. “And that.”
He smashed one into the concrete, and he knew. He’d learned.
I stood up. The barn door was aluminum with little crevices. It was hard to get them when they were close to the crevices, so I waited until I had clean shots. Stan got busy at the barn’s entrance, easily smashing them into the wood. We were both briefly interrupted by a curious wasp, so we sat clear of it and behaved, but when the wasp drifted away we got busy again.
“I think we got at least fifty already, Stan,” I said.
One of the barn workers walked by and looked over with knit brows. “We’re getting rid of your fly problem,” I explained sheepishly.
“Good luck with that,” she laughed.
Stan and I switched places. I drifted quietly into the barn, and careful not to scare the horses, I tap-tap-tapped flies one after another when they landed on the barn wall, sending them to the dirt.
“Dad, I got the green one,” Stan exclaimed from outside, and I went out with him to inspect it.
“Good shot. They’re fast,” I said.
And we went back to work. Fly carcasses were everywhere. Was it just blackness for them, I thought, or did they move on to fly heaven–or hell for the ones that were particularly pesky. Did they (whack!) have more chances to live, or (crack!) was this all it was for them, dying quick deaths on a horse farm? Or maybe…(I hesitated), I’d be called to account, my soul stopped on its journey—a huge palm halting me. “Oh, no you don’t,” a Voice might say.
“What do you mean?”
“Remember the fly massacre?”
“The fly–” and then my soul realizing it had blown everything.
Stan called me to come out and look at an ant carrying a dead fly away. We watched a large black ant drag one of the deceased to his hidey hole. Stan raised his yellow swatter, but I stopped him. “No, that’s dinner for the ants,” I said. So we agreed not to kill any ants. Only (slam!) flies. One landed on my chest and I missed it entirely and wacked myself in the face. No one saw it.
Because I was slightly injured, I went after them with a vengeance, spinning and zonking a string of them splat into the aluminum door. “I’m getting quicker, Stan,” I announced.
I went after one on the lower part of the door. He saw me coming and escaped, but in his panic flew right into a spider web at the edge of the door. “Wow, Stan, he got stuck,” I said, and we both bent to watch the fly struggle to get out. We waited for the owner of the web to crawl over and claim its meal, but after a while figured it must have been busy somewhere.
“You know, that’s a terrible way to go,” I said to my son. “Let’s get him out of there.” So I poked a little with the swatter until the fly was free but dazed on the concrete ground. Whack! “That’s better,” I concluded.
The hour went quickly. Stan and I watched several more ants hurry away fly carcasses. Soon we were able to sit comfortably without a fly happening by. But just when we were feeling complacent, a whole new shift came buzzing around, and we took up our swatters again.
The trainer came out of the barn with Maggie, breaking our concentration. “Ok, she did great,” she said. My daughter was sweating fiercely. “I asked her why she wore that long sleeve shirt and she said she didn’t like the flies bothering her.”
“Well, we killed about two hundred or so,” I said importantly, “so I don’t think they’ll be a problem for a while. But if any more show up, give us a call.”
“I’ll do that,” she said, smiling crookedly.
Leaving the carnage behind, we went to the ice cream shop down the road. Stan ordered black raspberry. Maggie ordered blueberry. And I ordered nothing, figuring I’d finish both of theirs.
“Two hundred flies,” I sighed to them, but Stan was busy keeping his black raspberry from dripping, and Maggie, still sweating, was down to the cone part already.
I looked out the shop window, at a little fish pond. “Gone to the next world,” I mused. Or eliminated from this beautiful one, I thought–smushed into oblivion.
Lou Gaglia lives and teaches in New York. He has published over twenty short stories, most recently in Rose & Thorn Journal, Bartleby Snopes, Breakwater Review, Blueline, FRiGG, and Lowestoft Chronicle. His short story, “Poor Advice”, which appears in Stirring, was nominated for storySouth’s 2011 Million Writer’s Award. Lou is a long-time T’ai Chi Ch’uan practitioner, having studied with Sophia Delza in New York City.
