For lack of a better word, I have an imaginary friend. A common house fly that lives in my peripheral vision always. If I am looking at a blank white wall, the fly will stand perched in the upper right hand corner, just out of my reach. If I am looking at my phone, the fly will flit across the screen, always nearly avoiding the swipes of my finger. It’s like having one of those eye floaters that re-enters your field of vision no matter where you look.
My mental health has suffered. It’s not lost on me that flies are associated with decay and disease. Sometimes I feel like a corpse. The fly is a circling vulture, waiting for my body to wither away so it can consume me. Sometimes I feel diseased - the fly, an embodiment of some malady rotting away my insides. Something undiagnosed and killing me slowly.
It has always been this way, for as long as I can remember.
I remember waiting for the bus as a kid. We were sitting nervously on the bench, me and my neighborhood crush. We somehow stuttered our way into both saying we wanted to kiss each other. So, hand-in-sweaty-hand, we leaned in. At the last moment I realized I needed to aim. The moment I looked down to her lips, the fly crawled out of her mouth. I ran away.
She didn’t seem too interested in me after that.
Of course I’ve tried to kill it. I read a thread somewhere on the internet – you have to clap your hands above where the fly is, so that when it takes off it flies into the impact. I’ve tried fly traps. One day I cracked and went to a reptile show. I remember feeling the pinch of the chameleon’s feet on my skin as I marveled at its 360 degree eyes. It never once perceived the winged passenger I wanted it to catch.
Nothing works.
The fly has plagued me for years and years. I do an okay job at ignoring it when I can. It’s a matter of basic survival — if I cared when a fly landed on my food, I’d starve.
Sometimes I mistake my illusion for the real thing. I thought nothing of that fly that landed on Mike Pence’s face during the 2020 vice presidential debate. Just my hyperactive imagination once again… until someone else in the room shouted, “DO YOU SEE THAT FLY!!”
It stands perched on the bezel of my computer screen as I type now. If I were to reach for it, it would fly away at the last second. If I were to capture it, it would escape the moment I looked away.
So I started therapy, and it didn’t take long before I made a discovery.
My therapist put me into a suggestive state, some kind of light hypnosis. She asked me to remember everything I could about FLIES.
From the depths of my subconscious a repressed memory emerged.
A classmate told me that you could put a fly on a string and it would zoom around like it was on a leash. So I caught a house fly under a glass — slipped a piece of cardboard underneath it, then put the fly in the freezer. When I took it out the fly was disabled, only able to watch paralyzed as I mangled its tiny body with my clumsy child hands.
My father caught me. He sat me down and explained how - even though this was a bug with no discernable emotions to the human eye - it still likely felt pain.
“It is not immoral to kill bugs, but it is immoral to torture. The measure of a man is how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” My father’s glasses flashed, reflecting my shame. It was the first time he’d looked at me in weeks.
The fly then crawled out from my fathers nose onto the peak of his upper lip.
From that day on, I’ve been haunted by a damn bug. A bug that represents my father’s shame in me. My shame in myself for not measuring up to a man, when I was only a child.
How is that fair?
While my fly remains, other creatures I’ve killed have come and gone.
I remember catching a fish as a teen and being taught how to kill and scale it myself. It gave me nightmares for weeks- the kind of nightmares where you wake up, but you’re still in the dream. I threw off the covers to see a gored fish, floundering bloody and hopeless, tangled in the sheets at my legs.
Another time my buddies and I spent a summer afternoon burning ants alive using a magnifying glass and the sun. For weeks afterwards, when I spit out my toothpaste, little incinerated ant bodies emerged from the froth in the sink.
I don’t eat most meat for this reason. I’ve found that if I don’t look directly at veal for example, it rises and falls. Like it is breathing.
Believe me — therapy has helped. Therapy brought the genesis of my problem to light. But if identifying the problem is step one, and you don’t know how to perform step two, you’re kind of shit-out-of-luck.
I don’t think my therapist really believes me anyway.
So I drink.
Or at least that’s what I’ve done since I was 13. Dad sure seemed to pay more attention to me once that started at least.
And I drink.
Is there such a thing as justifiable alcoholism? The fly seems to at least perch itself further away from me once I’m sufficiently blasted.
It’s been this way for a long time.
All I remember is that I was driving to my father’s house. I was going to do it - I was going to accuse him of not loving me. Show him what a barely-raised child looks like. Tell him how badly fucked up I was.
I remember getting behind the wheel.
All I feel now is sterile air. the smell of my own fear. the before-the-storm ache in my head that will multiply info a full-blown hangover. I open my eyes, squinting in the light. There’s a tube sticking out of my arm.
I’m in a hospital room?
I’ve been drinking for a while. This isn’t the first time I’ve woken up somewhere I don’t remember going to sleep. I can’t really move my neck. I ache and hurt all over. Feels like road rash underneath these bandages.
I crashed?
The nurse comes into the room. She’s asking me questions – and refusing to answer mine. She leaves without revealing anything.
She left a breakfast tray. I open the heat lid. What should have been breakfast was a plate of a thousand writhing maggots. I throw the tray across the room in disgust.
It lands at the feet of a family - a husband and wife sitting with their two children between them.
Why am I handcuffed to the bed?
I demand answers from the family but they don’t reply. Their eyes are vacant and don’t leave mine. I turn away, calling for the nurse through the closed door.
The family slowly stands up, and like an eye floater, re-enters my field of vision once again.