Once upon a time (just twenty-four hours ago, to be exact), I was so sappily sweet I wouldn’t hurt a fly. But now, they call me the Fly Annihilator. Allow me to walk you through my gristly transformation.
I was just in that wavy, hallucinogenic period between sleep and wakefulness when someone inserted a power tool directly into my eardrum. Or at least, it sounded like it.
BUZZ!
It was a fly. (You know how sounds are amplified when you’re trying to sleep.)
When I said there was a time I wouldn’t hurt a fly, I meant it. I’ve always believed every creature, whether it walks, crawls, flies, swims, or creeps, has as much a right to life on this planet as I did. Or maybe I was just afraid if I squashed a fly, I’d get reincarnated as a maggot. No matter.
My plan was so straightforward, even a fly could figure it out. I turned on the outside light, opened my window and waited in the dark. Surely the light would lure him straight out the window, unscathed, in no time.
I sat and listened until all I could hear was golden, buzzless silence. When I was satisfied that I was the only one left in the room, I flicked off the outdoor lights, shut the window, fluffed up my collection of pillows and fell back asleep.
At least, for all of thirty seconds. At that moment, the buzz continued, this time in my other ear.
My eyes shot open.
Immediately my brain began to calculate. I’d already lost a half hour of sleep on account of this fly, and now that I’d been woken up a second time, it would take me twice as long to fall back asleep. The kids would begin stirring shortly after 6 a.m. Maybe all creatures did have a right to inhabit the same planet as I did, as long as that portion of the planet did not exist within the confines of my bedroom.
It was time to bring out the ammo. That’s right—I exercised my Second Amendment rights, reached into my closet and brought out the fly swatter.
I flicked on all the lights and waited. I didn’t dare move, except for the rhythmic shifting of the swatter between my hands. All that could be heard was the sound of my own breathing and the ticking of the clock. (OK, so I have a digital alarm clock. The ticking is purely for effect.) My pulse quickened as I scanned the room, searching for a black speck on the walls, closets, corners, dresser, mirror, curtains. All was still.
I thought of enlisting Doug in my search, but he was downstairs watching a documentary about the apocalypse, and I didn’t want to be the one to interrupt his fun.
Maybe I was hearing things, I decided. Maybe I’d dreamed it. After all, I didn’t actually see the fly. Maybe after spending a day listening to three rambunctious children, it was natural to go to bed with a buzzing between one’s ears.
I lay the fly swatter on my nightstand, and just as I was ready to call it quits, there it was again. I heard it in the corner. Then by the window. Over by the dresser. On the ceiling. Across the floor. My head spun this way and that, like a cat watching a ghost (or at least, trying to convince its freaked-out owner that he’s watching one). I began to wonder if maybe the fly was indeed a ghost—the disgruntled spirit of a fly from swatters past. My house is old, built in 1960. Anything was possible.
I snapped off the light again.
BUZZ.
I flicked it back on.
Silence.
Off went the light once more. I lay there, staring into the darkness, waiting to be mocked and outsmarted for the third time by an insect. By now, sleep was a lost cause.
I turned on the computer. My best strategy at this point, I decided, was to know the enemy. If all failed, at least I would tire myself out by staring at a computer screen.
Female flies can lay up to 500 eggs in batches of 75 to 150, Wikipedia reported. Its larvae hatch from the eggs and feed on organic material, such as garbage or feces. I stared at my pretty blue wicker garbage basket before I continued. After three days, the females are ready for mating. There was picture of a male fly mounting female. I shuddered. No, I firmly decided. There was only one fly in this room. I read on.
They feed on solid substances that have been softened by saliva or vomit, Wikipedia continued. Because of their high intake of food, they deposit feces constantly, one of the factors that make it a dangerous carrier of pathogens. I shuddered once again.
Then, Wikipedia came out with a barefaced lie. “They are active only in daytime,” I read. “They rest at night, e.g., at the corners of rooms, ceiling hangings, cellars, and barns, where they can survive the coldest winters by hibernation.”
If this was true, while other flies across the planet were resting, mine must have been swimming in a pot of black coffee listening to Letterman. I decided to shut down and call it quits.
And then, out of nowhere, he landed smack in the middle of my computer screen, next to Wikipedia’s zoomed-in diagram of a fly’s head, abdomen and thorax, veiny wings and three pairs of hairy, segmented legs. I leaned in and stared. He stared back at me back with those red, compound eyes that took up half his head.
“Not so tough without your swatter, eh?” I swear I heard him sneer.
I looked over at my nightstand, where my weapon lay waiting. “Wait right there,” I whispered. “I’ve got a little something for you.”
Slowly, slowly I turned to my nightstand. But when I returned, the fly was gone.
By now, drugs were my only answer. I rummaged through the medicine cabinet in search of the sleeping pills. I was already half delusional from lack of sleep, and I reasoned sheer exhaustion, along with a good dose of antihistamine, would knock me out in so deep a coma the buzz of a thousand chainsaws couldn’t keep me awake. I left the door open, turned on a nightlight in the hallway, said a little prayer that the fly would find its way out, and begged for sleep.
BUZZ.
This time, I swear I felt it land right on my face.
That was it. There would be no rest until this war was won.
I flicked on the light and grabbed my swatter. First came the maniacal laughter, followed by the battle cry. “EAT SH*T, M*THA F*CKA!” (Then I remembered who I was talking to. I might as well have offered him a fillet mignon with a side of triple-decker chocolate raspberry rhapsody cake.) Nevertheless, I charged ahead, baring my teeth like a Venus Flytrap.
I swatted every corner of the room. I rustled the curtains and yanked up my blinds. I shook out the rugs. I opened the drawers to my dresser and slammed them shut. I tapped every square inch of all four walls.
Tumbleweeds rolled across the room.
I caught a glimpse of myself in my dresser mirror. My eyes were bulged and bloodshot red. My hair was sticking straight up, just like those hair-like projections all over a fly’s legs. I imagined my fly perched in some elusive hiding spot, a bird’s eye view of the room, watching me, laughing with all his specialized mouth parts.
I wept in defeat. It was over. The war between woman vs. fly had come to an end, and the fly was the victor. I lay down my swatter and reached for my lamp, hell bent on getting at least fifteen minutes of sleep before the kids woke up.
And that’s when it happened.
BUZZ.
It was coming from inside the lampshade. And this time, I was ready.
I tapped the lampshade, and a black little body rocketed about inside, crashing against its interior, buzzing angrily, his message loud and clear: “Can’t you see I’m trying to get some sleep?!”
Inch by inch, I reached for the swatter and waited as he orbited the outside of the lamp. Around and around he zoomed, as if knowing the second he landed, it would be all over. Finally, he landed on the lampshade and rubbed his front feelers together, as though plotting his next strategy.
I was going to wait until he landed on a harder, more stable surface, but thought the better of it. What if this was my last chance? What if he zoomed off to a new hiding place, taunting me till the break of day?
I held my breath and struck. I hit my target with a vengeance. Out of some reflex, I struck three times, just to make sure. By the third strike, the lamp fell right off the nightstand. I thought I saw the shadow of a fly drop somewhere beneath it.
I picked up the lamp and searched. I got on my hands and knees and looked under the nightstand. Nothing. Maybe he was wounded and crawled off under my bed. I pushed the bed aside and shone the lamp all over the floor. Emptiness. I noticed my nightstand drawer was open a crack. I peered inside the drawer, then slid it out and dumped its contents on the floor. Even in death, my fly was still toying with me.
My friend Katina Loomis said it best after a spider was creeping around in her car, then mysteriously disappeared after her husband swatted it. “A spider is like BinLaden,” she wrote. “I need a confirmed kill!” I knew I wouldn’t sleep peacefully until I found a body, but it would take the paparazzi, a fleet of FBI agents and Special Forces unit to find it.
There was nothing more to be done. I flicked off the light for the firth time that night and fell into a restless, fitful sleep, a ghostly buzz echoing in my head.
Late the next morning, Doug finally woke up, rested and rejuvenated, poured himself a cup of steaming hot coffee, and found me, bulging red eyes underlined by black circles, hair still sticking up like Medusa, scowling into my lemon water, cursing myself for giving up coffee.
“I’m going to be useless today,” I mumbled over the shrieking children, who quite obviously did not intend to cut me any slack. “All over a goddamn fly. And why are there flies swarming around my head anyway? Who am I, Pigpen?”
I did not get the sympathetic reaction I was looking for. Instead, he couldn’t stop laughing. I shot him my deadliest look of death. He kept right on laughing.
He made up for it by coming home with the most romantic gesture: the original electronic hand-held bug zapper. “Hazardous voltage,” it reads on the front. “Contact with energized components will cause electric shock. Use for flying insects only.”
And this is how I transformed from the Mother Teresa of all God’s creatures to Fly Annihilator, unleashing my reign of electric warfare at all those who dare to fly in my path.
I may come back to this world a maggot, but at least for now, I would annihilate in style.