TheDeceased
Ex-Bluelighter
A year after I got married, my wife transformed into a huge fly. I woke up one day and there she was beside me in the bed, her six black legs sticking out from between the sheets. I squinting in disbelief for what seemed like hours at the bizarre inhuman form lying beside me and then finally gave up on trying to understand what had happened.
It’s probably just the drugs, I told myself and got out of bed, or maybe it’s something to do with her menstrual cycle. I had never fully grasped the concept of menstruation; the whole thing was alien to me. Maybe she’ll change back to her original form in a couple of days. After all, I had put up with far worse in the past.
A week passed and I started to worry. There was no sign of any change. In fact she seemed to be rapidly losing any trace of her original self. Her words had begun to blend into one another, forming an incomprehensible overlapping of syllables. And she would rarely walk, chosing instead to fly around the house, her oversized abdomen knocking into things and smashing them on the ground.
The weeks turned into months and she continued to buzz around the house, following me wherever I went; circling my head and distracting me; never letting me have a moments peace. But I kept my mouth shut. There was no point in starting an argument. Her speech had devolved to a vibrating screech and I could make no sense of it, whatsoever. So, I tried to pretend she wasn’t there.
Eventually, though, I found myself becoming incapable of enjoying anything. I couldn’t focus. If I tried to watch a movie or read the newspaper, all I could see was her huge black eyes staring at me from across the room. And that buzzing sound.
I began to grow numb to my environment. Whenever she was in the room, it was as if my brain switched itself off from everything else. I was hypnotized by her, incapable of thinking about anything else.
Soon I found myself contemplating killing her. I justified it instantly. After all, she was no longer human, so it wouldn’t be murder or anything. She was a fly. Nobody gives a shit about a fly. Hell, they made products specifically to kill them.
So I went down to the supermarket and bought all the poisons I could find. Incesticides, rat poisons, paint thinner. The cashier gave me a strange look as she scanned the items, but I explained that I was planning on killing my wife and that broke the ice. Actually, for some reason she thought it was funny.
When I had arrived home and unpacked everything, I suspected that the fly had become suspicious. It was flying around the stack of poisons furiously, knocking them onto the floor while making its deafening, high pitched screech.
I had underestimated it, underestimated her. She hadn’t regressed completely yet. She could still understand what was going on. Which meant that she wasn’t a fly. Not completely anway. And that mean this wasn’t pest control. It was murder.
I looked at her, flapping her huge wings, her legs dangling below her as she flew back and forth, bouncing off the walls. There wasn’t anything human about her. She was a fly. Or she was more fly than human at least, which was good enough for me.
Carefully dodging its erratic flight plan, I equipt myself with two cans of incesticide -one in each hand- and pulled the triggers, filling the room up with a chemical mist. After a couple of minutes, the air was thick with poison and I needed to reload. The fly seemed unaffected so far, but was becoming increasingly pissed off.
By the time the eigth and final can had run out, tears were pouring down my face and I was coughing profusely, but I kept spraying and chasing her around the house. Her wings were failing her and she had started to spin out of control. It was working.
The air was now so thick with chemical fog that I could only see two feet in front of my face. Beyond me, in the distance, I could hear its wings flapping against each other desperately. Between coughs, I smiled to myself and crouched down to undo my shoelace. Creeping slowly into the mist, my eyes darted backwards and forwards for some sign of her, ears focused on the dull buzzing sounds coming from the next room.
I found her slumped over the toilet, a foul smell coming up from the bowl. Holding one hand over my face and raising the other over my head, I brought down the heel of my shoe hard onto its big black head. Tears running from my eyes like water, I hit again and again with the shoe. Time passed in fast forward.
In what seemed like a split second, I found myself vomiting on the floor while walking backwards out of the bathroom, my eyes fixed in the direction of the toilet. Her legs were still fucking twitching. It wasn’t dead.
I felt dizzy suddenly and I almost fell over as I knelt down to put my shoe back on. The back of my throat burned with the dry taste of chemicals and I didn’t have the energy to stand back onto my feet, so I crawled into the kitchen and found the rest of the ammunition scattered across the floor.
Vomiting a trail of blood and bile, I crawled back to the bathroom and pulled myself up onto the toilet, pouring paint thinner all over the insects face. As it writhed around in pain, I thought I heard it say “help me” and I stopped, quickly losing my balance and falling onto the cold tile floor.
When I woke up, I coughed up blood into my hand. My head felt like it was weighed down with bricks. Sitting up, I remembered. The wings, the screeching, the poison. Slowly turning my head I caught site of what I had done.
My wife’s naked body was behind me, slumped backwards over the toilet, her face covered with cuts and burns, her hair falling out, her scull severely dented. I coughed violently, my throat burning and my cheeks wet. This time with real tears.
She was so fragile and beautiful, somehow, despite being mutilated almost beyond recognition and for the first time in almost a year she somewhat resembled the woman I married. Forcing my eyes down her body, I stared in horror at the big round lump that was to be my son. It looked like some sort of egg sack, protruding from her and for a second, she seemed alien again. This isn’t real. None of this is real.
My mind went blank and I left the room. Silently and completely without thought I followed my usual morning routine, placing a box of cereal, a bowl and a carton of milk on the kitchen table for breakfast. Shifting my gaze back and forth from the cereal to the rat poison, it all returned to me in vivid detail. The expression on her face, the terrified look in her eyes, those faint gargled words. “Help me.” I shifted in my seat, staring at a cartoon pirate on the box of cereal.
“Everything is obvious in retrospect,” I said aloud and let out a nervous chuckle while pouring milk into my rat poison.
It’s probably just the drugs, I told myself and got out of bed, or maybe it’s something to do with her menstrual cycle. I had never fully grasped the concept of menstruation; the whole thing was alien to me. Maybe she’ll change back to her original form in a couple of days. After all, I had put up with far worse in the past.
A week passed and I started to worry. There was no sign of any change. In fact she seemed to be rapidly losing any trace of her original self. Her words had begun to blend into one another, forming an incomprehensible overlapping of syllables. And she would rarely walk, chosing instead to fly around the house, her oversized abdomen knocking into things and smashing them on the ground.
The weeks turned into months and she continued to buzz around the house, following me wherever I went; circling my head and distracting me; never letting me have a moments peace. But I kept my mouth shut. There was no point in starting an argument. Her speech had devolved to a vibrating screech and I could make no sense of it, whatsoever. So, I tried to pretend she wasn’t there.
Eventually, though, I found myself becoming incapable of enjoying anything. I couldn’t focus. If I tried to watch a movie or read the newspaper, all I could see was her huge black eyes staring at me from across the room. And that buzzing sound.
I began to grow numb to my environment. Whenever she was in the room, it was as if my brain switched itself off from everything else. I was hypnotized by her, incapable of thinking about anything else.
Soon I found myself contemplating killing her. I justified it instantly. After all, she was no longer human, so it wouldn’t be murder or anything. She was a fly. Nobody gives a shit about a fly. Hell, they made products specifically to kill them.
So I went down to the supermarket and bought all the poisons I could find. Incesticides, rat poisons, paint thinner. The cashier gave me a strange look as she scanned the items, but I explained that I was planning on killing my wife and that broke the ice. Actually, for some reason she thought it was funny.
When I had arrived home and unpacked everything, I suspected that the fly had become suspicious. It was flying around the stack of poisons furiously, knocking them onto the floor while making its deafening, high pitched screech.
I had underestimated it, underestimated her. She hadn’t regressed completely yet. She could still understand what was going on. Which meant that she wasn’t a fly. Not completely anway. And that mean this wasn’t pest control. It was murder.
I looked at her, flapping her huge wings, her legs dangling below her as she flew back and forth, bouncing off the walls. There wasn’t anything human about her. She was a fly. Or she was more fly than human at least, which was good enough for me.
Carefully dodging its erratic flight plan, I equipt myself with two cans of incesticide -one in each hand- and pulled the triggers, filling the room up with a chemical mist. After a couple of minutes, the air was thick with poison and I needed to reload. The fly seemed unaffected so far, but was becoming increasingly pissed off.
By the time the eigth and final can had run out, tears were pouring down my face and I was coughing profusely, but I kept spraying and chasing her around the house. Her wings were failing her and she had started to spin out of control. It was working.
The air was now so thick with chemical fog that I could only see two feet in front of my face. Beyond me, in the distance, I could hear its wings flapping against each other desperately. Between coughs, I smiled to myself and crouched down to undo my shoelace. Creeping slowly into the mist, my eyes darted backwards and forwards for some sign of her, ears focused on the dull buzzing sounds coming from the next room.
I found her slumped over the toilet, a foul smell coming up from the bowl. Holding one hand over my face and raising the other over my head, I brought down the heel of my shoe hard onto its big black head. Tears running from my eyes like water, I hit again and again with the shoe. Time passed in fast forward.
In what seemed like a split second, I found myself vomiting on the floor while walking backwards out of the bathroom, my eyes fixed in the direction of the toilet. Her legs were still fucking twitching. It wasn’t dead.
I felt dizzy suddenly and I almost fell over as I knelt down to put my shoe back on. The back of my throat burned with the dry taste of chemicals and I didn’t have the energy to stand back onto my feet, so I crawled into the kitchen and found the rest of the ammunition scattered across the floor.
Vomiting a trail of blood and bile, I crawled back to the bathroom and pulled myself up onto the toilet, pouring paint thinner all over the insects face. As it writhed around in pain, I thought I heard it say “help me” and I stopped, quickly losing my balance and falling onto the cold tile floor.
When I woke up, I coughed up blood into my hand. My head felt like it was weighed down with bricks. Sitting up, I remembered. The wings, the screeching, the poison. Slowly turning my head I caught site of what I had done.
My wife’s naked body was behind me, slumped backwards over the toilet, her face covered with cuts and burns, her hair falling out, her scull severely dented. I coughed violently, my throat burning and my cheeks wet. This time with real tears.
She was so fragile and beautiful, somehow, despite being mutilated almost beyond recognition and for the first time in almost a year she somewhat resembled the woman I married. Forcing my eyes down her body, I stared in horror at the big round lump that was to be my son. It looked like some sort of egg sack, protruding from her and for a second, she seemed alien again. This isn’t real. None of this is real.
My mind went blank and I left the room. Silently and completely without thought I followed my usual morning routine, placing a box of cereal, a bowl and a carton of milk on the kitchen table for breakfast. Shifting my gaze back and forth from the cereal to the rat poison, it all returned to me in vivid detail. The expression on her face, the terrified look in her eyes, those faint gargled words. “Help me.” I shifted in my seat, staring at a cartoon pirate on the box of cereal.
“Everything is obvious in retrospect,” I said aloud and let out a nervous chuckle while pouring milk into my rat poison.
