The Fly (Story)

The Fly (Story)

In all my childhood I remember no place of greater boon or greater woe than the dungeon impressed upon me and my peers by those named our superiors. This place was none other than the nefarious training ground called school. Do not mark me wrong, it was not the classes that aggravated me so but the arbitrary ever changing social spider web that was the true queen of the school chess board while the administration was deemed king. Even so, to a well trained eye the spider web was easy enough to avoid –and with it often the spider- but the mere presence of the spider web was the real stressor. My peers’ continual notion that Armageddon was just around the corner and that they must gather the strongest allies and define their enemies was not what so vexed me about their presence. It was instead their self purpose they derived from their ant like wars that made me feel shunned and ostracized for not being able to produce the same reaction as they to such events.
But school was not all the chaos and insect like warfare that I’ve spoken of it too be. I remember in History classes and English classes learning about heroes both real and fictional who saved someone or something and were sung about as legends to be recorded between the pages of lore for all time. I wanted to be a hero too and every night I prayed to God to give me a chance to prove myself to those around me who shunned me for my differences. And different I was. My difference even had a name: Dymonia Nocturneral. A rare mutation in the DNA resulting in the patient being biologically programmed to be nocturnal. It had several other symptoms as well. Besides sudden and arbitrary loss of appetite and slightly transparent skin, the eyes are a blood red and the fingers posses and extra joint. The latter two (and perhaps the one previously) caused me the most grief. I worse sunglasses and extra long sleeves no matter the season, I was thin so most of my clothes had to be tailored anyway. I often wondered if my parents were ashamed of my condition and secluded myself from them as I would from my peers.
My seclusion turned to be a boon as I shall soon explain. In everyday life my condition did no inhibit me. My fingers could accomplish all the tasks normal ones could and perhaps more, my eye sight was 20/20 and my skin could withstand the same stress as anyone else’s. My weight was always below what my doctor said it should be however, though it hovered continuously at the same spot my parents feared it might fall further if I was exposed to too much stress. And thus they worried for my seclusion, but as I have told you: this seclusion was a good thing.
I’m not sure how old I was when I first woke up with wings. It was a shock the first time I noticed them, mind you, but upon seeing them I had the distinct feeling that I’d felt them there before and had perhaps woken up with them previously and not noticed. I could move them as I could any arm or leg though I spent some months alone in the forest learning to fly. They would stretch to a remarkable length and it was only though this that I was able to get any lift at all. I concluded that I must’ve had hollow bones like a bird’s in order to achieve this lift although it puzzled me why it remained unknown to my doctors. Perhaps there had just never been a reason to check, I’d never broken anything.
With my light body and the training I engaged in to learn how to fly I soon discovered a vast resource of speed at my disposal. I trained them together and found that the freedom of the wind I experienced in both brought me more pleasure than I’d ever found in the spider web of society. Many a time I was tempted to leave my family, school, and all of society together in pursuit of a northern wilderness with maze like forests, twisting rivers, and rolling valleys. But I had a duty to my family and the knowledge that no one was safe from the spider of society so I remained weaving between the deadly strands of the web.
It was a Friday when our business teacher decided to take us on a field trip to a part of town I will describe only as “not so nice”. She wanted to show us businesses in the process of being born to demonstrate how hard it was to start out a new business. Now I say this was a not so nice part of town because it was a crime center, shops had their windows bars in ways that made it look as if even the clerks were criminals. The society spider here was a trapdoor spider: a thick hidden web and a quick vicious bite.
The shop we entered was small and disorganized. A friendly little bell on the door cheerfully chimed hello as we entered. Merchandise was cluttered and badly displayed around the store. The manager was at the counter and quickly began a prepared speech about how he categorized his inventory and gave us a brief tour of his store room. Then the bell chimed cheerfully as someone new entered the store and the manager paused to look up. But the fly saw the spider too late.
I’m not sure if anyone screamed when the first gunshot went off. I’m not even sure if the manager was killed with the first shot or not. But there was screaming afterwards and the man shouted at us to get into the corner. Everyone complied. He demanded that we empty our pockets and quickly. Everyone complied. He tore open the cash register and stuffed bills in his pockets, some girls were whimpering over in the corner and he shouted for them to be quiet. They couldn’t comply. One of them didn’t get a second chance. Her blood splattered against the wall and flowed out on the floor. People nearest it screamed and squished together to avoid it.
I was next to her and her blood splattered across my face and chest. I couldn’t squirm away from it, it was already on me. The girl’s friend was biting her arm to keep from screaming. I watched her, tears streaming down her face in fear and agony, and suddenly something boiled up inside me that transcended anger. I can only describe it as wrath at its outer most limits. So furious that the emotion even begins to tear its own self apart leaving a void of madness. I pulled off my blood stained coat and draped it over the dead girl.
“Don’t worry” the trap-door spider man said, “I read a story once where all young virgins go to heaven.”
He cackled. My blood boiled.
“I read a story once too” he was shocked that I would speak to him even if though clenched teeth, “and I memorized the whole thing.”
Then I let my wings tear through my shirt as I leapt at him. We crashed through a cheap cabinet and he mistakenly sent a bullet into the roof. More people screamed. The man was stronger than me with my light frame and pushed me back into a set of shelves. Things broke. He scrambled for his gun as I scaled the shelves and disappeared into the rafters. The old rafters were dusty and I remained still and flat along the beam in the darkness above the lights. The man looked fearfully up pointing his gun at the still shadows.
“‘Will you walk into my parlor?’ Said the spider to the fly. ‘It’s the prettiest little parlor that you ever did spy.’” I quoted as I slowly crept forward hidden, then I dropped right down behind him, putting my lips to his ear and began to whisper before he even knew I was there, “after all my little fly, in this world it’s do or die.”
He shrieked in fear and whipped around intent on disassembling my head onto the wall behind me with his gun. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist and yanked it to the side sending the bullet off into a plastic display case. He shrieked again and attempted to beat me off him with his free hand and one leg. I yanked his arm to the side to momentarily unbalance him before kicking him into the wall causing objects on the shelves to rattle and one of them to fall and break. I transcended my existence as a fly with my rage. The man was wide-eyed with terror as I descended upon him like a revenging eagle. With one swift motion I slammed his head into the wall and knocked him unconscious. The spider’s head hung limb in defeat amidst the eagle’s claws.
Then I was unsure what to do. I looked up in hopes of finding an answer only to be confronted with panic-stricken eyes containing pupils so dilated they seemed to have ceased to exist. I had never imagined my fellow flies amidst the spider’s web could have contained within their bodies and minds such fear of me. They were motionless and I reached toward the nearest one in hopes of showing her I meant no harm. She both squealed and whimpered and crunched herself farther into the corner to avoid my touch. Something inside me crunched with her.
I stood silently and watched them. They stared back at me as a fly might look up at the spider whose web it’s become entangled in. Without a word I walked to the door of the store and the bell chimed as I opened and closed the door. It sounded like it was bidding me a cheerful goodbye. Police cars blared in the distance and I could see their lights reflecting on windows of high-rises not far from the store. I gave a last look back inside. They stared back like doomed flies. So I turned and left my fellow flies alone with the sleeping spider. When I turned, I ran. And I never looked back.