Wings

Those were sweltering July days; the heat was suffocating and could throw anyone a little off kilter. This was when she committed her first conscious acts of cruelty to animals. Or rather insects. Come to think of it, she had probably been cruel to insects before, but never so deliberately, or with as much relish.

"The housefly (also house fly or house-fly), Musca domestica, is the most common fly occurring in homes, the most familiar of all flies and indeed one of the most widely distributed animals; it is a pest that can carry and transmit serious diseases."
The hot air stood completely still. The only thing that wafted through the open windows were flies, whole flotillas of them. No breeze whatsoever – only more and more flies. They took up residence in the house and buzzed about the windows, day and night. She couldn't sleep for the incessant buzzing. The insomnia started driving her insane – surely, this was the reason for her imminent transgression.

She would lie there in the dark, and the only thing she could hear was buzzing, buzzing; there would be a pause, and then more buzzing. After one particularly long night she had had enough. She went on a warpath with the swatter – she swatted and swatted, but the flies just seemed to keep coming. She tried sneaking up on them to try and catch some, but they were always too fast.

After several attempts, she found herself standing with her face to the wall with a fly crawling at her eye level. It paused and rubbed its two hind legs together, then the front two. What about the middle legs? She wondered how it cleaned those. Did it hold itself up on the back and front legs and rub them under its belly, or did it do a handstand, or perhaps stand up on its two hind legs? The enormous body of the fly seemed too fat for lift-off, yet it flew just fine.

She discovered that if she held her hand directly behind the fly as it was crawling up the wall – not above or in front where the millions of eyes could detect her – but just below the spot on the wall where the fly was crawling, it would not notice her. She clamped down a fingernail and pinned a hind leg between her finger and the wall. The fly buzzed like mad and tried to wriggle away. The thrashing of the fly tickled, and she almost released it on accident as she started giggling. But she caught herself and the fly was no match for her quick fingers. She held it up in front of her face and studied it.

Six hairy legs. Reddish, multi-faceted eyes. Two short antennae extending like a “Y” in front. Heavy, hairy body. Two sheer, silvery, fine-veined wings. Those beautiful, shimmering wings… She plucked one off. Then the other. Then she sat the fly down on the couch and watched it crawl around, wingless. Ha! Why don’t you try and buzz off now, you dirty little critter! she exclaimed silently. Oh, what’s that – you can’t buzz without your wings on?!

She did it to another fly. And then another and another. It was just too easy. Pretty soon, she had a whole little colony of about a dozen or so wingless flies crawling around the room like large, plump ants. And not one of them gave out as much as a choked buzz – not even a “z.”

It puzzled her how much she enjoyed this little act of sadism. But she told herself she had actually done the world a service – there would be no more insanity-inducing noise coming from these naked creeps, and yet she had let them live, hadn't she? What more could they ask, really? After all, they were the ones who had refused to shut up; come to think of it, they really had had it coming.

In the end, she couldn't stand watching them. She killed them all.