I then sent my delightful critic off on her merry way.
Okay; I'm above forty years old with the frame and constitution of a very slim and wobbly question mark; nerve damage has caused much of my musculature to degenerate and three of my limbs have been labeled "tri-plegic" by professing medical authorities. Fortunately my left leg has escaped slander and is useful for scratching behind my left ear. I am able to walk, but I find my equal in tortoises, snails and midday shadows. Due to a progressive prolonged atrophy limiting my range of motion, my left index finger is mostly useful for keyboard picking and scratching behind my orphaned ear. Unfortunately when I drop the left arm to my side my thumb unwontedly points outward, while the right arm, being mostly rigid and sharply bent at the elbow, causes my right thumb to inadvertently rest on the tip of my nose. Misconstrued interpretations of the gesture have caused me a raft of humiliating circumstances prompting me to retreat into my present, more privatized, realm.
Having said, I'll digress to a subject totally foreign to myself; that is, chronic pathetic behavior. During colonial times the affliction was called "cabin fever;" a mental disorder having detrimental affects on the afflicted person and on the associates of the afflicted through the burden of empathy. An unacquainted stranger confronting this type of personality will predictably avoid a second confrontation recognizing that interactions often end in unhealthy word exchanges; thereafter the stranger will seek a convenient way to extricate himself from the afflicted. This encourages a sad gravitation in the afflicted toward habitual isolation.
The disorder originates with inclement weather of the actual or figurative sort, causing the victim to retreat into a type of unapproachable sanctuary within his mind where he becomes the prisoner of hopes and fears that never seem to come to a clear resolvable fruition. Eventually the victim becomes a plaything of his own thought-demons and looses his interest in participating in the external, present realm.
If the fever's definition is broadened to include figurative incarcerations, no one is exempt from experiencing a form of cabin fever at some time during his or her lifetime. Personally I believe the affliction proceeds from the initial trauma experienced with unimpeded independent thinking. However, aside from the defamatory labeling of the Politically Correct, it is logical to assume that an individual who practices self control is predisposed to avoiding the more psychotic effects of cabin fever through the power of applied reason. Although I've spent many years in domestic solitude it is evident to me that my refined state of cognitive discipline has made me immune to the divergent behavior that is normally associated with cabin fever. For this reason I've obviated and dismissed the above consideration to uphold the most reasonable explanation for the supernatural phenomena that occurred during the prolonged winter of which I now write; that is, that the visiting fly could, in fact, both read and fully comprehend English literature.And having thus entertained superfluity above the call of both real and imagined necessity--specifically of my critic, I shall now introduce the reader to the particulars of my tale.
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In my realm, dust covered books and loose papers are scattered everywhere leaving no open place on a table or counter for any other kind of grace or idol, while tangled long-abandoned spider webs droop and wisp in the dark somewhere out there. I certainly know that they are out there somewhere--but definitely not here. This is my world of adventure. You on the outside may doubt that spiders, bugs, mice, and all manner of similar pests--which includes human relatives--avoid my living space for its total lack of entertainment, but I've observed this as being fact. Yes, I'm happily alone almost always, except for a cross-eyed cleaning lady who comes by once a day to check on me and re-rehearse her epithet to the effect that I need to, "go out, smell the roses, and enjoy the sunshine before (I) become dusty and smelly like (my) old books." I consider following her advice unnatural, but she is a good cook and agreeable in an intellectually simple and sporadic way, so I endure her Tabasco sauce sarcasm and dilute her occasional sting with an admixture of my own.I was alone (as is my preference) one winter evening when a fly appeared in my world. Where she came from I cannot say, she just appeared, it seemed, out of nowhere. Most flies go to their final resting place after the first frost, or become immobile barnacles in gloomy places until defrosted in the spring--I think. At any rate, she was an anomaly. She lit upon the upper corner of page two-hundred-and-twenty-two of Mark Twain's book A Tramp Abroad as I sat reading. In years gone by, as an answer to such a curiously convenient circumstance I would have slammed the book shut, permanently marking the pages with fly-parts for a future reference to the stupidity of the insect. However, being well seasoned with age in my present world of books, I was rather pleased to see there was at least one creature left on earth that could read, and seemed to enjoy a good book as much as I did.
As I stooped to turn the page, the fly flew onto the wall and began to wash her face with her hands and comb her wings with her feet. I told her she was beautiful and she blushed, and covered her face with her arms like a bashful chimpanzee. When I resumed reading she flew back down to the corner of the new page and joined me. In this cooperative manner we continued reading together well into the night. I closed the book and nabbed a late dinner while the fly flew to her newly claimed spot on the wall and busied herself cleaning and rearranging her wardrobe.
I placed the bowl of curried chicken, rice, and a cup of water on top of a pile of books on the table, using my teeth as the vehicle of transport. The fly lit on the cup, found a bead of water on the rim and lowered her curiously placed lips, like suction-cups at the end of an elephant's trunk, into the drop of water. She was very thirsty and within seconds the water-bead was gone. For a wandering moment of faulty reasoning I felt somewhat guilty for not providing her with water earlier, but then I came to myself and laughed at my befuddled demeanor, realizing that I had esteemed the creature in a way I had seldom, if ever, esteemed the more worthy pest-species.
Anyhow, after the fly performed some captivating aerial maneuvers, she lit on the edge of the bowl, and there joyfully bobbed her pogo-stick lips up and down sucking up specks of food around the rim that had haply fallen there during preparation. Afterwards, filled, and fully satisfied with the meal, she flew onto a book on the table that contained Nathaniel Hawthorn's The Snow Image. I opened the book for her and she assumed the page corner to read (silently to herself, of course) while I finished my supper.
The fly and I read Hawthorn's short stories until it was well past midnight. I found myself growing sleepy and so I gently closed the book. Through an encroaching haze of drowsiness I watched the fly light on the wall where she turned and made a "good night" gesture by lifting her proboscis and directing it toward me, pursing her suction-cup-like lips extended at its end.
The sight was grotesque--it appeared to be presented in the same spirit embodied in San Francisco street-hags as they go about "blowing kisses." The thought appalled me to the point that I indignantly discovered my shoe in my hand ready to put an end to both her and to my own woefully wandering imagination. Of course I was physically unable to kill the fly with the shoe; however, reasoning presented me with a more promising idea that would result in fly-parts stuck to my forehead and a slight headache but, nonetheless, an effective outlet for my fury-- But another thought prevented me; it occurred to me that her gesture was nothing more than an attempt to express a grateful smile for my hospitality for which she had no real means of a like communication other than through her cumbersomely constructed feeding apparatus. --I turned off the light, and went to bed.
The next morning was unusually cold without, but cozy within. I was up before the sun, moved with reflection upon the apparitions of the evening before. I held off my usual stretching until after I'd resumed last-evening's post, fully anticipating visual proof that the reading-fly was, in reality, just part of a curious dream that by law of reason would pass with waking. --But there she was, dancing in frenzied circles and figure-eights as if she were happy to see me!
"We shall have coffee and oatmeal for breakfast," I said, before I could seriously consider the implications arising from a discovered scene wherein a man speaks to a fly fully believing he is actually communicating with it.
The fly lit upon a book containing Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and so I opened it for her to read. I then nabbed a pre-prepared bowl of oatmeal from the refrigerator with my teeth, and nuked it in the oven. Afterwards I placed a tiny portion of the mush about the size of a sesame seed on the bowl's rim for my guest. In a similar fashion I prepared a cup of coffee with a single bead of coffee upon its brim--also for my guest. Having placed the material substance of "a good morning" on the table before the fly and me, I sat down to breakfast.
The fly flew from the book to the cup and slurped up the coffee-bead in one draught. After another brief yet stunning aerial show, she proceeded to the bowl--having the tiny serving on its edge--promptly sucked up her portion, and then--barfed. I would have forgiven her if she had not followed the performance by showing her delight in re-eating the mess as if vomit were the banquet of queens. This enraged me. I loped-up from my chair to my feet, and there to the door; sending the chair crashing to the floor (the whole demonstration taking less than a minute or two). I then flung open the door to the icy air which swirled in past my knees like a raging river, stealing the serenity of papers, books and curtains as it tore a path throughout my apartment. The fly trembled on the wall as a book's listless pages wafted the obscurities of Edgar Allan Poe--fluttering leaves in a draft; like the wings of a mortally stricken raven beaconing Death's entreaty. --With cruel delight I coldly pronounced the words of premeditated murder: "Get out."
Aside from the terrible whirring of the wind, there was silence for that one moment. The sky without was dark, yet displayed a blush of multihued indigo blue, anticipating the forthcoming sunrise. Frost provided an ethereal glitter and glow to roofs, lawns and shrubbery as far as the eye could see. And then, in my realm, just as suddenly as it had first presented, the wind quit, giving an impression that the end of its rampage marked a fulfilled vacuum, while the sudden loss of all warmth inside my apartment translated as the consumed void. Contrary to the dark presence, out in the distance joyful sounds of morning could be heard; but closer the answer was sheer mockery, twisted into the perverse by the play of the imp, as the dawn's cheer was supplanted by the grotesquely queer hollow piping of boat-tailed grackles.
"That," I grinned maliciously, "is the jeers and heckling of the political grackle. They are blacker than ravens and as innumerable as lunar shadows. It is said that they make a sport out of torturing an insect by tearing its limbs off; all except one, and then mocking its circumstantially rendered-ineffectual attempts at escape--that's what you're hearing."
Having verbally implanted the image, I assumed a slow stride, or rather a crow's cobble-hop toward the insect and continued, "Of course the favorite play-thing of the political grackle is a fly which, after they've torn off all its legs except the one--they pluck off one of its wings. And then, having done this nasty thing, they all pipe pandemonium around the wretched creature which--being deprived of leg support--has fallen helplessly upon its back. When the pitiful victim then tries to escape it whirls around like a pinwheel until it is completely drained of strength and quits moving. Having had the last flicker of hope extinguished the fly finally surrenders what's left of consciousness to an overwhelming flood of terror. And then the prince among the grackles, or one of his women, swallows you whole."
By the time I'd completed those words I'd hobbled toward and halted within two feet of the fly. From there I turned around and continued, "But never mind the grackles; you'll freeze to death before they find you." And then, abruptly turning, I bellowed out, "Now get out, you filthy parasite!"
The fly wouldn't budge; this forced me to sharpen my delivery. "You are nothing more than a worm with wings," I continued, again cobble-hopping away and back again, stopping fearfully close before the terrified insect for an affect that surely would have pleased the Great Tormentor. "Vanity is your Hope," I sneered; "Death is your father and Decay is your mother. Your kind was birthed in the filth of the dead. There will never be a noble maggot remembered among the quadrillions of your kin; therefore Life provides no design to redeem a single one of your execrable race.
PART 2
"Nonsensical lore!" I blurted out in spite of myself; "T is a fly, and nothing more!"
This brash declaration seemed to revive my senses and returned me to a more present state of mind. Loping to my feet, I spat out the words closest to the surface: "Am I a madman?" The question filled me with an air of devilish pride as I blurted out, "I'll finish off all of my troubles; now!" But when I looked to the wall--the fly was gone!
Two days passed without a trace of the fly. At noon on the third day as I sat down to a healthy pile of fig cookies and hard cheese, the church bell began to toll "twelve." Meanwhile a flurry of chattering house-sparrows swooped down gossiping merrily somewhere outside in the sunshine. In answer to the busy noise, I buried my passions in a good book-- But suddenly, rudely ending the wondrous serenity I'd
miraculously recovered, the cleaning lady, that is Miss Tabasco--who never failed to demonstrate her contempt for courtesies of all kinds, including knocking first--barged in.
"That's not food," she said chidingly, affirming her words with a twisted smile and a cursing glare that poisoned the delicacies I'd piled before me. I chose not to strain myself a second time by looking up at her, but rather answered with a duelling echo of contempt, "If not food, then what is it?"
"Things found in the pockets of rebellious little boys who never grow up," lectured the Spoiler; "It's a cold day, and on such days civilized people eat chicken soup to ward off colds and flues. So put your adventure snack back into your pocket along with your marbles and slingshot and I'll make the soup that keeps foolish little boys from getting sick." I had no choice but to yield.
And so Miss Tabasco (perhaps Miss Castor Oil is the better pseudonym), cut up the chicken gizzards, wings and guts, carrots, turnips, celery, parsley and other "healthy" things she'd carried in, and tossed the slaughtered bits into a pot of water with salt and pepper. She brought the whole to a boil and poured two raw eggs into the bubbling mess, covered it with a lid, and then turned the flame down to reduce the heated torments to a manageable, less vigorous, simmer. Happy with herself, she went about her business rearranging the back rooms of my apartment.
I shook my head to dislodge contrary constitutions that she had planting there. This caused me to take a side glance at the wall where the fly had once been--and there she was! But what a sorrowful sight she now presented. Her color had faded and her flighty nervous zeal was gone. In fact, she showed no inclination to move at all. She was grossly dehydrated and her abdomen appeared as flat as a tiny green leaf. I grabbed a spoon, applied a bead of water to its bowl, and held it to the wall just below her head. She slowly climbed onto the spoon, lowered her proboscis into the drop and drank deeply until her abdomen expanded to near normal proportions. She then crawled back up onto the wall. But she still appeared more dead than alive.
"Bring me a bottle of red wine," I shouted to Miss Tabasco.
Miss Tabasco soon appeared with the bottle in hand and a troubled look in her eyes. Nevertheless she didn't question me, but rather unscrewed the cork, set the bottle before me, and went back to her vain mission of changing my world one room at a time. I relocated a used swizzle-stick in a book, dipped it into the bottle, applied the drop of wine that clung to it to the spoon, and offered it to the fly.
The fly crept down onto the spoon timidly and sucked up the entire drop at once, leaving no trace behind. She remained motionless on the spoon for a full minute; and then, after rubbing her head in her arms in her usual bashful chimpanzee-like manner, she crawled back up onto the wall waddling as she went like the tail-end of a duck. Once back to her place on the wall, she began to dance with joy--just as she had on that first fateful morning!
Apparently the antidote had worked, for now the fly was not only dancing in familiar circles and figure-eights, but embellished her performance by dancing her way through the entire Roman alphabet! I applied another drop of wine to the spoon and held it out for her. She flew down and finished it off in seconds. She faltered on the spoon for a moment apparently puzzled over the effects; nevertheless her proboscis-gesture signified complete satisfaction with what appeared to be a hearty belch and perhaps a hiccup or two. Then she flew straight up and straight down, landing on her back on the pile of books on the table where she began to spin around madly like a pinwheel, falling over the edge of one book onto the other. I was horrified. The performance caused me to reflect back to the third day before, and the terrible consequences of my unbridled rage articulated by my cursed yarn about the grackles and the spinning one-winged fly. But then, as if in answer to my now-repentant reflection, the fly suddenly flipped over onto her feet with such perfect agility that I knew instantly that her entire performance had been nothing less than an act to chastise the villainous nature right out of me!
I stashed the spoon in a convenient hollow beneath the cover of Mr. Twain's A Tramp Abroad just before Miss Tabasco returned to check on the soup. When she removed the cover the wonderful aroma had the effect of unscrewing me from my seat and carrying me to a place standing close beside her--to inspect the progress. The aroma also attracted the fly who flew from her place in the dining room onto the kitchen wall, where she lit behind the stove just above the steadily boiling treasure now perfectly centred in the midst of the three of us.
I turned to the fly and said, "You're beautiful." She responded in her usual goofy way. However, Miss Tabasco thought I was talking to her, and blushed. She then stole a glance at me and, following my gaze to the wall, saw the fly. Her countenance suddenly changed from gentle abashment to perplexity:
"Who were you just now talking to?" she asked. "The fly," I replied. Miss Tabasco departed down the hall with a refreshed, invigorated stride, leaving the soup behind uncovered; she then resumed busying herself with rearranging my rooms.
Placing another drop of wine upon the spoon, I offered it to the fly and she again consumed it heartedly. Afterwards I quietly returned the spoon to the hollow of Twain's book just in time to prevent discovery. It wasn't long before Miss Tabasco had finished putting my rooms in disorder and returned to work in the kitchen. She wouldn't talk to me, so I watched the fly figure-dance on the ceiling. Having danced her way through the Roman alphabet, the fly went on to dance her way through the Greek alphabet. When I lost interest, she buzzed around the kitchen imitating the compulsive habit of Miss Tabasco. When Miss Tabasco finally walked off to tidy up for lunch I offered the fly more wine which she slurped up gleefully--and then, having flown back into the kitchen above the stove, she bumped off the wall and tumbled into the pot of boiling soup.
I rushed to the stove with the fly's wine-spoon still in my hand just in time to see the fly's corpse sink beneath the bubbling torrents. That was the last time I would ever see my beloved friend. I turned off the flame and frantically searched the rolling and seething bits of egg, chicken guts and stuff with the spoon hoping to retrieve the fly's body; but the soup refused to surrender its crowning ingredient. Then it occurred to me that to be caught in the kitchen with a spoon in the Cook's pot--that is, caught with a spoon in a woman's angrily boiling pot of soup (as-to-so-analogize)--a woman whose temperament had been exasperatedly stoked-up by heaven-knows-what--could have some really serious consequences, the type of consequences that could only add to my present grief; so I threw the spoon into the garbage and resumed my place at the table.
Miss Tabasco returned from the bathroom and tried to turn off the stove. I suppose puzzles were her lot that day and so she dismissed the unaccountably turned-off switch with a shoulder shrug. She then helped herself to the soup, scooping a healthy portion into a large bowl and carrying it to her opposing side of the table. Unable to find table space, she cast all her prejudice aside and set the bowl immediately before her on top of Lewis Carroll's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She then departed one last time to fetch herself a spoon before sitting down to eat; all without speaking a word. She wouldn't even lift her eyes high enough to take a civil glance at me. I understood fully, realizing that her self centeredness wouldn't allow her to come anywhere near to understanding my sad situation, and so I made good use of the quietude and mourned for my friend in my providentially provided moment of silence.
As I regained my composure, and just before I could say, "Where's my soup?" Miss Tabasco answered without a word; instead, wagging her head in the direction of the kitchen, she signified the concept; "Help your self." --She obviously wasn't without sensitivity to my downcast countenance, and after she had consumed a few spoonfuls of soup and allowed more time to pass to adequately punish me, she rehearsed her soul grinding epithet as another psychological assault of sore affectation against my bereaved soul, saying; "What you need, more than anything, is to go out, smell the roses, and enjoy the sunshine before you become as dusty and smelly as your old books." And finally, allowing more time to pass to compensate for my deficiency in appreciating her over-sung tune, she did fetch me the soup; however not without first spilling some on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels that lay closed before me and then deliberately setting the bowl, and spoon, right in the middle of the mess.
Over and beyond the barrage of provocations, the death of my friend had stolen my appetite; nevertheless I slowly worked my way through the soup inspecting every spoonful for traces of her. Miss Tabasco finished long before I did but patiently waited at the table afraid that I would take off half-fed the moment she took her eyes off me.
Immediately after I'd swallowed the last spoonful of soup I glanced over at Miss Tabasco's bowl which proved to be plainly empty, noting that it contained nothing more than a few drops of broth and some grains of pepper. Miss Tabasco caught my gaze, shook her head, gathered up the bowls and spoons and dumped them into the sink without speaking a word.
Sitting there as I mentally replayed the horrible scene ending with the loss of my beloved friend, I was rudely awakened to find the empty soup-pot under my nose with Miss Tabasco standing behind it, saying; "I just can't figure you out. When you should be hungry, you show no appetite; when you should be full, you act as if you're deprived of food. --See? The soup is gone."
I looked into the pot and saw her words were true; only a few drops of broth and pepper grains remained. Having thus emptied her mind of the curious situation as she saw it, Miss Tabasco irreverently tossed the empty pot into the sink where it assaulted the quiet bowls and spoons without mercy, the catastrophe sounding like a battery of crashing cymbals in my head. She then gathered herself up, and left.
The sight of my boiling friend has tormented me for weeks now, particularly when I'm alone at night; but I'm grateful that I was spared from ever having to dispose of, or having to see, her cruelly broiled and lifeless body, again.
The fly dropped her proboscis and suction-cupped her lips to the wall as an anchor. Her legs were too weak to support her. I fancied that there wasn't a single antidote-word that could revive her. No, she was not dead yet, but the poison had been administered and it was only a matter of time before it would complete its deadly task. --Then the seriousness of my report struck me--the creature was as good as dead and it was I, with my tongue, that had killed her! I fumbled to the door, slammed it shut, and cobble-hopped down the hallway to fire up the furnace.
"Oh, what a wretched man am I!" I cried, returning to the kitchen and slumping down into my one remaining un-assaulted chair. With that confession, whirling images flew through my head as if at war somewhere in the ether-world as gushing conduits of pounding blood screamed between light and darkness, fact and fiction; consuming what little space was left of my diminishing sense of reality. I found myself suddenly falling into a dark void, anticipating--bracing myself, yet never quite reaching the final crash... or splat. I saw drowning images and faces consumed in
