brought it right up into her face. Her jaw crunched against the fly. It screeched. Black blood poured down her chin. Clara stumbled back a few steps, steadied herself, and reached for me again. The groan in her throat, impossibly, became words.
“
I swung the shovel again. It hit her face with a meaty crack. She stumbled. Another hit and she fell. Her hands came up to shield herself but now I had full advantage and I kept bringing the shovel down again and again until she stopped croaking words and that damn fly stopped screaming. At some point, I changed my grip on the wooden handle and brought the shovel down like a stake, right into her face. It tore her jaw completely off.
A new fly was crawling right out of her throat, its eyes covered in blood. It launched itself free and came right at my face. It landed on my nose, directly between my eyes, and stabbed me in the forehead. Intense pain erupted in my head like a blinding, white flash, and I had no thoughts, only reflexes. I brought the shoved directly up with a fast swing and knocked myself to the floor.
Intense pain flooded my head and the world spun beneath me. Darkness flooded in from the edges of my vision, but just before I fell into that black hole, I felt the fly crawl across my face and worm its way into my mouth, pushing my jaw open and tearing at my tongue with its beak.
* * *
Flies can live anywhere from a few hours to several months. In the proper conditions, like in a lab, flies can survive even longer, sometimes much longer.
I haven’t seen them in a long time, but I know where they are. Inside me, of course. I hear them buzzing in there. I feel them planting their eggs in my intestines. When the doctors come in, I try to tell them but they just give me shots. They won’t let me out of this jacket. Won’t let me get at the flies. They want them to be born. They think I’m some kind of freak experiment. They have no idea what they’re getting into.
But I do. When I close my eyes and listen to the flies buzzing away in my brain, I know what’s going to happen. I see that giant black eye made of thousands of flies, the way it stared at me. The way it brought me down into damnation. If they don’t let me kill the flies, they’ll all die, too. The doctors. The nurses. Die just like Clara.
I can feel the flies pushing against the inside of my stomach, beginning to wriggle their way up to my throat. They’re coming. Maybe it’s a blessing. Maybe they will finally put an end to everything. An end to me.
THE END
