The Searching Fly

A steady wind suggests something of the ominous as I saw before me many tiny leaves being swept away, resistless, imparting in me a deep sense of awe. Yet what was bothering me I knew lay far deeper than any emotions of wonder. Simply put, the wind was not enjoying itself in the way it usually did when playing with leaves, and I knew that because of a rancid smell that wafted past as the wind came by the balcony window. It was a familiar smell, yet disturbing and made me feel somewhat distressed as I closed the window shut. But not before a common house fly zipped in. It carried with it that same stench, which came in on the wind, and I realised it was the rotting scent of dead flies; I remember squashing them as a boy. My mood seemed to attach itself to this zig-zagging insect as it flew throughout the upper study. My uncle wore an amber ring with a blow fly inside of it, which he would often tell stories about how he stole it from Beelzebub during his miraculous escape from Hell. But I never paid such stories any mind. The fly buzzed loudly at me, as if it were addressing my presence within its flight path. But as the windows turned black, I realised the buzzing was in actual fact a request for the rest of its swarm to appear. Millions of them, crowding the balcony, bursting through the window so thickly as to blanket all the eye could reach. They were insidious, loud and filled with the malice of losing their king, so they searched and searched, including down my throat, leaving nothing more than a suffocated corpse.