Blood Mountain

legs together and then over its bulbous eyes. I could almost see the sheath of mucus glistening on its alien face.

“You’re just proving my point,” she said. “I’m trying to have a conversation with you and you won’t even look me in the face. It’s like I’m not even here. Is that what you want? You want me to leave?” She paused. “I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not leaving this spot until you start talking to me.”

The fly stopped at her pinkie, head twitching side to side as if checking for danger, and then tested the finger with its two front legs. It climbed onto the finger and paused right beneath her knuckle in the little tuff of blonde hair that grew on her finger like mold.

“You’re not even paying attention,” she said.

I grunted. The fly walked over the gap between the pinkie and ring finger and stopped right where her rings would have been.

The fly glanced at me with its bulging, compound eyes. I almost laughed. It was her ring--the perfect one for her: a living fly that could disgust and annoy all at once.

Clara grabbed me under the chin with her other hand and roughly snapped my head up. Something cracked in my neck. She stared at me with her large, grey eyes (almost like a fly’s, I mused) from beneath her slanting eyebrows. She shook her head slowly back and forth.

I yanked out of her grip.

The fly was gone.

“This is because you have women issues,” Clara said. “Your mother warned me. Your testes didn’t descend properly.”

“What?” For the moment, I forgot the fly.

“When you were born, your testicles were inside your body. The doctor had to surgically drop them.”

Something was ringing in my ear.

“It’s quite common, but it is also normal for males who start that way to have male-related problems.”

“I don’t have problems.”

She tilted her head; Oh, really? that tilt said. “You know what tonight is?” she asked.

The fly buzzed past me, slicing through the air. It swooped around and landed on Clara’s right shoulder. It rested there like a little pet. Clara the Fly Mother.

“Don’t play dumb.”

The fly twitched its head at me as if nodding. Even the damn bug knew it was Friday and even it knew what the hell that meant. The fly rubbed its legs together and cleaned its eyes while it waited for me to admit that I knew it was Friday, too.

“Yes, I know,” I said.

Her face softened, but not too much. “It’s very important we’re consistent.”

“Right.”

“Try not to think about the testes thing. It’ll ruin your ability.”

I nodded and waited for the fly to nod back.

* * *

Once we were together in our weekly act of sex, I thought of that stupid fly again. She hadn’t even noticed it when it was on her finger. Hadn’t even glanced at it as if she hadn’t felt it moving through the hair on her finger.

The average house fly can carry over one hundred different pathogens. It can transmit cholera, salmonella and tuberculosis.

I was near the end, Clara whispering in my ear that I was a big man, oh, yes, indeed, no little testes-boy here, when a fly landed on my back. The fly, I was sure.

I pushed off of her and slapped at my back frantically. The fly was long gone, of course, buzzing off to safety.

Clara looked at me with disappointed eyes, like I was a little kid who had spilled his milk on the floor. “We’re not done,” she said. “Not yet.”

At the base of her throat, a patch of white, dry skin had started to peel. It looked like scales.

I got out of bed and pulled on my sweat pants.

“Don’t be so afraid,” Clara said. “Nakedness is natural.”

The fly swooped past me again and landed once more on my wife. This time, it favored the spot on her right breast above her nipple. She made no move to swat it away.

Flies live off of organic waste and human excrement, even sweat. They excrete saliva to predigest food and then slurp it back up like a liquid carpet cleaner. And because they are constantly eating, they are also constantly shitting. They leave their invisible crap everywhere. That’s how the diseases spread. Like typhoid and cholera.

“A fly,” I said and pointed.

She checked herself, found the fly and brought her hand to it--slowly as if it were something poisonous that should not be startled. She cupped her hand around her breast, circling her nipple with thumb and forefinger. The fly walked across her breast and onto her hand. She brought her hand up slowly to her face.

She was going to eat it; I could already see it happening.

She waved her hand and the fly flew off.

The fly trailed over my ear with its ever so tiny and ever so delicate little legs. The sensation sent chills down my side.

Every fly is covered in hair-like projections that make them look like flying warts.

I swatted at the thing and it went right into my ear. Its buzzing echoed through my head loudly and furiously. I clawed at my ear with both hands, pulling and yanking at my ear while trying to work my fingers into the canal, but none of them could fit. And still the fly buzzed on. Burrowing toward my brain.

I ran for the master bathroom. From the corner of my eye, I saw Clara naked on the bed, hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter.

The buzzing got louder and louder until it was the only thing I heard, even while I flung open drawers and knocked items out of the medicine cabinet while I tried to find the damn Q-tips. They were underneath the sink, buried beneath boxes of tampons. I ripped open the back of the box. Q-tips spilled all around me. I grabbed one and jammed it into my ear. For a moment, the buzzing got even louder and then, mercifully, it stopped. My hearing went fuzzy.

The end of the Q-tip was tinged yellow and green. I used a bulb syringe to flush my ear. Greenish black mush seeped out of my ear and dropped into the sink with a soft splat.

Flies can also transmit parasitic worms that eat away at your insides.

* * *

Clara made me try again and I finally did what she wanted. “You’re such a very good little boy,” she said before turning away from me and going to sleep. She had made sure to slip her engagement and wedding rings back on.

I couldn’t sleep for a while. I could still hear that insane buzzing in my ear, though it was distant, a memory of discomfort, and my ear was wet and moist.

Clara was soon snoring.

A fly shot past my face, just above my nose.

I threw back the comforter and got out of bed. I wore boxers and an undershirt.

The nightlight in the bathroom cast the room in a greenish, sickening haze. I stopped at the open doorway and listened. Only Clara’s gentle snore came back to me. I waited.

No fly flew past, but I could hear it. That quiet buzzing sound, almost like a bee. And the more I strained to listen, the louder the buzzing became. There wasn’t just one more fly, but at least two, maybe a few, maybe more. All of them hiding in the dark of my bathroom.

Waiting.

I reached my hand inside the door and slid it up the wall to the light switch. Just before I turned on the light and stepped into Hell, I felt a fly crawl over my hand. Only it wasn’t a tiny house fly or even one of those bloated black flies that are easy to kill but so full of gooey guts; no, this fly was bigger, much bigger--beetle-sized bigger.