Call me Flykiller

I am a mass murderer.

It's not like I wanted to be a murderer. I kept telling them to go, escape, leave before I crushed and dismembered them and threw them in the toilet. But they wouldn't listen.

Three days ago I was suddenly attacked by a swarm of flies. It was like The Birds, but with flies. But not like Jeff Goldblum flies, more like fruit flies. Lots and lots of fruit flies.

I guess it all began when I failed to take out the trash. I live alone with Cyrano the cat (pictured above) so I don't fill up a trash can very quickly. Sometimes I throw old food into the trash and forget about it until a mass of gnats finds its way in my apartment through my always open balcony door and then I'm attacked every time I turn on the faucet.

This was the case a week ago. So I threw out the trash and washed my hands of the whole affair.

Only it appears the gnats never left. They hid, waiting, growing, surviving off the tiny food particles too small for the human eye to see, making midnight raids in the kitchen while I slept, oblivious.

Then one day they were flies, swarming my five-headed lamp and buzzing around my head as I tried to watch Pushing Daisies (isn't that show just the bee's knees?). At first I thought there were a dozen of them. Oh, no, my friend, this was no mere dozen. This was an entire army of flies, amassed to steal my light and attack my kitty.

At first I thought I'd just leave the door open. Maybe they'd disappear on their own when they discovered the world outside. After all, they grew up in this apartment, perhaps they'd like to fly free into Hollywood and make their way into movies.

But they were too comfortable and afraid of the sounds of moving traffic. So I tried turning off all the lights in the apartment and turning on the balcony light. Go into the light! I shouted in the darkness, my face lit only by the yellow glow outside.

A few small bodies whizzed out and landed on the light. Success.

I closed the door and turned on the light. Five hundred twenty-two thousand and a half flies still clung to my lamp.

The cat, my 17 pound muscular professional wrestler of a feline, would not come out from under the desk in my bedroom. Sometimes, just to taunt him, they would do barrel rolls right by his face. He made food raids, running into the kitchen, munching on whatever was in his bowl, then racing back as soon as a fly brushed past his fur.

Something had to be done. I had to improvise as I had no fly swatter on hand. I grabbed a large unopened envelope containing many useless papers and a fake credit card and began swatting.

Oh, it was brutal! They break so easily, those fruit flies! One would land on the wall and I would barely tap it with the envelope and it would flutter to the floor as its terrified kin took off in a myriad of directions looking for a nonexistent safe haven.

I chased them down, foam draining from my lips, shouting obscenities that kept my neighbors locked in their apartments from fear. I knocked a fly right out of the air and while he wobbled around stunned on the hardwood floor I crushed him with my bare palm. It was gross.

I thought I'd gotten them all so I called Cyrano out and put him in my lap to show him it was safe. He was afraid but he trusted me until another gang of flies whizzed by his head and mocked me in the lamplight. He ran for it. What a pussy.

One fly in particular refused to make things easy. He would land on the ceiling or inside the lampshade or on a curved surface. But I got him eventually. I got them all eventually.

And I went to bed, believing my world to be safe from flies. The cat slept with me, just in case.

The next morning I awoke to find five hundred sixty seven and one third flies waiting by the balcony door, praying to escape the carnage that destroyed their brothers and sisters. So I opened the door and shooed them out with my Envelope of Death. Any uncooperative little bastards I crushed.

I think there's still one left. I will wipe him off the earth eventually. Little fucker.