The morning of Monday August 4th there were 4 flies zipping around the kitchen windows. I swiftly grabbed a fly swatter, cleaned up the crime scene, and went about my day as usual.
“It’s summertime,” I thought to myself as I drove to the grocery store down the street. “There’s always a ton of flies in the summertime.”
When my husband came home that evening, I greeted him warmly. He asked me how my day had been and what I had done as he surveyed the perfectly clean house that I painstakingly take care of. He strolled slowly towards the kitchen, his eyes glued to a phone in each hand.
“I killed 4 flies in here today.”
“..4 flies?”
“Yes, four. Never seen that many flies in the house before.”
He sat and pondered. “Maybe we need to take the trash out?” he said as he never lifted his head and walked straight to his office.
I sighed, and stomped on the pedal of the trash can to see if it was full. No, I had taken it out that morning. Besides a piece of paper there was nothing in it.
Our home was unfortunately notorious for creepy crawlies; we had ant infestations yearly, spiders in all corners, you name it. Depending on the season there would be something hiding in dark corners or under baseboards. Because of this, I spent that night looking for holes. In the pitch black, I was shining a flashlight in every nook and cranny I could find. Sometimes it would be a trap for dog hair or dust, sometimes a spider web, but never a fly. As I was peering into a hole in a corner of the dining room, I felt a hand grip my shoulder.
“What are you doing, hun?”
“Looking for where those dang flies came in!” I exasperated as I struggled to see in the tall hole. My husband gingerly grabbed the flashlight from my hand and shined it directly into the crevasse.
“Nothing here. I think you should rest. You have a big day coming up!”
I nodded my head as I made my way to the master suite, defeated but happy to call it a day.
On the morning of Tuesday August 5th I killed 15 flies in the kitchen. Dressed in my bathrobe, my hair in rollers, I violently smacked the swatter at the flurry of flies at my kitchen window. My hair fell around my face as I panted curses at my tiny foes. One by one I brought down the hammer of justice in the form of my yellow daisy fly swatter. When the dust had settled, I calmly got ready for the day, drank my little cup of coffee and drove myself to the hardware store downtown.
“Can I help you find something, ma’am?” The elderly man who owns the shop is stocking shelves as light jazz plays quietly over the ancient speaker system.
“Fly paper?” I asked timidly, knowing that I’m telling a stranger that my perfect home was infested with pests.
“Aisle 6.”
I grab the first thing I see and check out as quickly as possible, for fear someone from the neighborhood might see our dirty secret.
I strategically hung the sticky sheets for maximum effect in the large window in the kitchen. Relief washed over me as I backed away and admired the death traps from afar. No messing around. I meant business.
When my husband came home that evening, he reeked of cigarettes and bourbon. He quit smoking cigarettes ages ago, but tonight he smelled like a walking ashtray. His tie was haphazardly thrown around his neck and he had this devilish grin on his face as he swerved around the kitchen island to where I sat at the wet bar.
“Max…I killed 15 flies in the kitchen today. It’s the strangest thing, I ended up going down to the hardware store to get fly paper. I was so–”
“You look so pretty tonight.” the words came out of him like sludge seeping out of a manhole.
“Thank you darling but I’m trying to tell you something important.”
“Do you want some fun money for the weekend? You could get a nice…dress! For-your big day!” He hiccupped between breaths, the scent of bourbon and tobacco filling the air between us.
“What is this big day you keep going on about?” I knew I had lost him at that point, and that he was attempting to solicit a drunken tussle in exchange for a new dress from Saks.
“YoOOoou’ll seeEEeeEEee!” He giggled at himself as he sauntered toward the back patio with a cigarette in his mouth and a spark in his eyes. What a ham.
On Wednesday August 6th, I unintentionally shattered a water glass as I stared in horror at the state of the fly paper. Solid black, writhing and buzzing almost hypnotically. It was so loud I could almost hear them inside of my head, erratically shrieking at being trapped on a piece of heavy duty scotch tape.
I stepped around the glass pieces, reluctantly taking my eyes off of the horror show in the form of a fly orgy. I approached with extreme caution, as I truly couldn’t help my absolute repulsion from the mess. I couldn’t take this, I marched through the kitchen and snatched my phone out of my handbag.
“Hello? Josie? Is this an emergency?” Max whispered quickly, I knew he had a meeting this morning, I just didn’t care.”
“Max the fly tape is…it’s covered. Completely covered in flies. A swarm of them! It’s disgusting! I can barely bring myself to look at it.” I shriek, while continuing to stare at the tape.
“Josie it sounds to me like the tape is doing its job.” he said, rather curtly.
“Max, that’s not the point and you know it–”
“And if it’s doing the job, then we don’t have anything to worry about!”
“I just think that there is something going on and I feel like I’m going–”
“How’s about I send you a little more money? So you can buy…a new pair of shoes! For your big day!”
“Fine. Goodbye, darling.”
His hush money meant nothing to me at this moment. I was determined to end this.
On the morning of Thursday August 7th, my good friend Hannah stopped by for coffee.
The fly paper needed to be changed regularly at this point, and I grew accustomed to the sound of white noise coming from the kitchen window.
Hannah wasn’t one to judge anyone for shortcomings. She was kind and considerate, and wasn’t one to make a fuss over dusty baseboards. Even so, I changed the fly paper as she began pulling into the driveway. I was determined to have a pleasant, fly-free visit.
“Jos!” Hannah had a booming voice that wrapped you in its arms way before she got ahold of you.
“Oh Hannah, you have no idea how much I needed this.”
Hannah brought tea cakes from a bakery an hour north, they were decorated with tiny roses and tasted like wedding cake.
Before we even began gabbing I noticed that Hannah was acting a little off. She sat staring at her plate, almost questionably. She lifted it to her face and took a long sniff. “Hmm!” She smelled the air around her, when she suddenly furrowed her brows.
“Do you smell that?” she asked, now standing and pacing around the room as she smelled every corner.
“No? Smell what?” I was perturbed. I hadn’t noticed any malodorous smells.
“It smells like…like…” she took a long pause as her skin shifted to a sickly green hue. “it smells like something died.”
I stared at Hannah for what felt like an eternity, then I consciously took a large breath of the air in my home.
The putrid scent of rotten flesh in the hot and humid summer hit me like a ton of bricks. The hair on the back of my neck pricked up as I felt an intense wave of nausea sweep over my body.
“Oh my god. Oh my god, I didn’t…I didn’t notice! Until you said something!”
The two of us went through the house, smelling our way along trying to distinguish where the awful smell came from.
We reached the kitchen and before I could say anything Hannah stepped in.
“DEAR LORD!” she exclaimed, her hands covered her mouth and the whites of her eyes were completely visible. She gazed in horror at what could only be described as an invasion. Hundreds of flies swarmed the kitchen, and the rancid smell of decay was stronger than ever. We both held our hands over our mouths as we exchanged panic glances from across the kitchen.
I grabbed the swatter and started swinging with all of my might in every direction; my wrist throbbing in pain as I whacked fly after fly against my kitchen cabinets. Time slowed down as I tried to over power the swarm of black overtaking every inch of airspace. Hannah whipped a dish towel in the air, her blouse pulled up over her mouth and nose. We frantically swiped to no avail, eventually bursting into the sunroom for relief and fresh air.
Panting, I could almost laugh at the two of us at that moment. That was until I saw Hannah’s face. It had fallen completely as she said so softly. “I think you need to check your crawl space.”
On the morning of Friday August 8th, the smell was unbearable, and the flies were now in every room of our home. Whatever poor animal was under our home was rotting in the sweltering heat and the unrelenting stench was enough to make it impossible to do anything in our home.
As my husband got ready to go to the office, I approached him cautiously.
“I think something died in our crawl space. It smells awful, you smell it too right?”
“Eh, maybe? Doesn’t seem likely. That’s never happened before.” He didn’t skip a beat as he smoothed his hair down and plucked a gray while staring at himself in the mirror.
“Hannah said it smells like rotten flesh. I’m inclined to believe her. I’m going to contact an exterminator to have them come out and take a look. Whatever it is, the smell is only getting worse.’
I felt his eyes on me in the mirror. He had stopped what he was doing and was now very intentionally staring directly into my eyes for what felt like an eternity.
“Don’t bother with that. I will look at it this weekend. Besides, tonight is your big night! I want you dressed and ready by 7pm.”
A peck on the cheek and he was out the door. Like our home doesn’t smell like death. Like there aren’t flies swarming us at any given place in our home at any given time.
I knew that I should listen to him, and trust that he would look into it, but I had seen too many Saturdays go to “the boys”, and I couldn’t live in this nightmare any longer.
I waited until his car was out of sight before I pulled out my phone and made a search that would change my life forever.
His name was Randy and he had all about half of his teeth. Randy drove a red painted van with a crudely drawn dead possum on the side. He smelled like diesel and looked as though he hadn’t spent a day out of the sun in his life. He greeted me with a warm smile, with all of the teeth he had left.
“Hi Mrs. Wright I’m here about a critter in yer crawlspace?”
I took him around to the side of our home, the side closest to the kitchen. The smell was too much to take outside, and I was sure my neighbors could smell it as well.
“The smell has been the strongest in the kitchen. It could be under here?”
Randy threw down his bag of tools, and pulled his pants up with a loud grunt. He let of a loud sigh as he crouched down.
“Phew!” He fanned the air in front of him. “That is rank! You may have a whole family of critters down here!”
My stomach sank at the thought of multiple dead animals under our home. How did they get there? How many are there? I was in a tizzy when Randy interrupted.
“I’m gonna get down there, see what I can find.”
He entered under the back deck, his heavily-worn work boots stuck out from under the house he crawled his way into the darkness. I could hear Randy grunt and sigh as he worked his way under the house.
“Do you see anything yet?”
“Not yet, ma’am. But the stench is every present! I must be getting close!”
I waited with bated breath as my hero, Randy, continued to save the day by finding the root of all of this evil.
Randy suddenly went quiet. No movements, no grunts, just silence.
“Randy? Are you alright down there?”
Silence again. Not a peep.
“Randy?”
A fury of yelps and cries erupted from under the house as Randy frantically crawled back towards the deck. Knocks and heavy breathing, erratic scratching at the space around him, he popped out of the hole as white as a ghost. He met my eyes for a minute and I could see that he was in pure shock.
“Randy…what did you see?”
Without a word, Randy takes off. I grabbed his tool bag and rushed after him.
“Randy! What is going on?! Where are you going?”
I could hear his van door slam shut and sputter to a start as I rounded the side of the house. Before I could tell him he forgot his bag, he was gone. Dust from the gravel driveway left in his place.
I had had enough. I had to know what Randy saw. What made him leave without a single word.
I was already dressed for an evening with Max, my hair and makeup done up, my heels strapped on. He would be home in an hour and I didn’t have time to change or even think about what my big night could entail. With my heels on and my designed dress hiked up over my knees, I knelt down in the cold, wet dirt and proceeded to trace Randy’s steps.
With my phone as my only light, I flashed around the space as I made my way. The smell of rot was making my eyes water, and if I wasn’t careful I could taste it on the tip of my tongue.
The first thing I saw was a dead squirrel. It’s tiny, half-decayed body laid half-covered with rotten foliage. A dead thing, but not enough to cause the stench.
The next thing I saw was a foot.
A human foot.
I shook as I stared at the pale appearance of the flesh. All life had been drained from this person.
I took a deep breath as I pushed forward and saw the body attached to the feet. A young man, probably in his early 20s. Glasses, blonde hair, a tattoo of a sunset on his left arm. He was holding something in his left hand.
A hand. He was holding someone else’s hand.
This was a young girl, around the same age as the boy. Blue hair, black nail polish, the same pale, lifeless vacant expression on her young face as the boy holding her hand.
Tears were uncontrollably pouring down my face. I was covered in dirt and mud, my knees aching from digging them into the rock beneath them. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t see anymore. Or, rather, I didn’t want to see anymore. I backed out slowly, keeping my flashlight on the couple, hoping to God they would magically wake up. Watching the young man’s foot, knowing it wasn’t going to move. Knowing no miracle could save these two.
I saw the entrance ahead, and the relief of getting out caused me to forget about what I was wearing. I slopped my dress through the sludge, I knew my heels were destroyed. I didn’t care, I needed to get out of there.
I was in my last stretch when a figure appeared in the opening.
He was wearing a suit, a tie haphazardly wrapped around his neck.
In his right hand, an ax. He smiled at me, pushing himself into the opening, blocking the golden hour light.
“Darling! You didn’t wait for me! I told you this was your big night!”