by rick ellis
There are many flies and one fly says, “Man, this is excellent. This, this is the real stuff.”
Another fly says, “You got that right. Good thing we got it too. I only have a few more hours left on the old ticker. I gotta lay me some maggots down before I fly out of this life. Mm, this is fine.”
“ He was a drinker. I like them when they’re drinkers. The aroma cuts through all that other shit, heady and robust.”
Two flies start fucking. Another fly is laying some maggots down, as they say.
“ Do you mind?” asks a fly of them. “Some of us don’t need to see that right now.”
“ Sorry, brother,” say the two fucking flies and fly off for privacy.
“ This guy really knew how to drink too. Hell, I know it was red wine, but what a trip. It had to be imported. You can’t get a grape like the ones this was made with if you’re just kicking it around this godforsaken sand trap.”
“ You said a mouthful there.”
“ I bet he was a thief, huh? They probably got him for stealing the wine. God, I’m getting a little buzz off it if you can believe that.”
A turd like a one ton snail comes oozing down the board leaving a nice wide streak in its wake along the knotty wood. It plops down on the already sizable pile and all the flies buzz around, first nervously, then joyously, occasionally touching down on the fresh stuff. Soon, they all find a place.
“ It’s best nice and warm like this.”
“ Hell, baby. In this desert heat it’s always nice and warm. When it’s at its best it’s fresh and moist like this.”
“ Yeah, but that sun seems to have been down for an age now. Things are getting cold pretty quick around here.”
“ That is true,” he says pondering that particular truth, rubbing his front legs together, but then a new fly swoops on down, casually, making a cool entrance that turns some of the heads of the delicate sex. He says, “You got that right. But you cats are wasting time on the mound at the bottom of the world when the fresh action is at the source. We’ve been scatting up there all day around that funky dude’s shooter,” he winks and soars away, straight up. Three lady flies follow.
“ What do you say?” one of the flies still on the pile asks another.
“ I say, ‘let’s do this shit right,’” and with that they both ascend.
The action is fairly light around the fount of sustenance. Flies suck on the wood and zip around, landing around the main trough to feed, and then aborting the feast at the slightest movements. One fly gets caught up in some curly hairs. The hairs enfold her. She beats her wings frantically, then kicks her legs but it is no use. The source starts to shift and twitch. Buttock muscles flexing, and then in one great movement the entire area swings out from the wooden back drop, and snaps back, violently smashing into the wood. The whole structure vibrates and even the flies at the bottom of the world begin madly swarming. Up at the source, horrified onlookers see the corpse of the young fly girl, mangled and flattened in the nappy ass hairs. One of the spectators to her death darts in and starts sucking at her remains.
“ Oh, mmm,” he cries. “She’s full of his goodness. Her body accentuates the already fine flavors.”
“ I don’t think I can handle what I’m seeing here,” says a sister fly.
“ This is sinful,” says a brother fly.
“ Come on eat her body. What point is there in letting it go to waste?”
“ Decency.”
“ Courtesy.”
“ Do you think only of yourself?”
“ Foulness.”
“ Treachery.”
“ He’d do the same to us.” The voices rise, overlapping until there are no discernible individuals, just the angry mobs long wail of fury. As one body united, the outraged flies set upon their wayward brother, tearing asunder his wings and cracking his carapace in two. They all spin out of control to the bottom of the world with the falling corpse of their brother fly. The flies below on the pile are quite startled.
“ What goes on here?” an elder fly queries. Many voices ring out from the mob to reply and after some minor deliberation the mob chooses a spokesman. A spokeswoman actually, but the distinction is slight.
“ We set upon fallen brother fly in one great drunken rage after he suckled at the squashed remains of a sister fly who was savaged by the ass above, brother,” she says.
“ Is this to be our justice: a fly for a fly?” the elder asks.
“ Oh, mother!” cries a young member of the mob, flying forth, his eyes wildly reflecting in a hundred directions. “He got what he had coming to him, the rotten blighter.”
“ We feel our justice was righteous, brother,” the spokesfly asserts, regaining the reins as the voice of the people. “We should not allow brother to consume brother.”
“ What if,” states the elder fly, philosophically, “A brother fly has been consumed by another beast and then purged from the beasts system as a scrumptious bit of turd?”
“ Well, I guess that would be different,” says the spokeswoman.
“ Different?” says the elder fly, “How different is it for a fellow fly to have his life dashed from him by the front end of a beast rather than the hind end of a beast?”
“ No different in the end for the fellow fly thus dashed,” she responds.
“ And why should we, the living make such distinctions?”
“ You’re out of your mind geez!” the surly young fly steps forward once again. “We must maintain decency and order whether or not it makes sense after you’ve blended it through your old e-coli infected head!”
“ Hear! Hear!” cry several members of the swarm.
Just then, a young maggot crawls forth from the life giving dung heap, “Fellow and sister musca domestica, hear the voice of the next generation! With but our short time of less than one lunar cycle upon the world, why bicker over such things? There is no need for hostility. Why can’t we just love one another?”
The question hangs on the stale night air, as a mighty tank of a fly strides forth. She measures 9mm in length, greater by 2mm than any other fly present and when you’re 9mm you’re really starting to make it as a fly. Before anybody can speak, she sucks in the maggots head, regurgitates and devours it. There is much gasping and beating of wings.
“ By what right did you slaughter that child?” the spokeswoman asks.
“ It was my maggot. I popped the little fucker out not three days ago and he’s already talking shit. I’ve been around, Missy, and I can tell you that that love talk’ll get you nowhere but knocked up, living in shit on a road to nowhere,” she answers with sass and vigor.
“ Golgotha,” responds the spokeswoman.
“ What?” says the big 9mm bitch.
“ Golgotha, we’re on the road to Golgotha, not nowhere.”
“ Are you getting fresh with me, hon? Cuz I won’t put up with that from a little sister like you,” she says and charges her sister fly, who meets the charge head on. Their battle takes wing up high into the air, and they’re really pounding the tar out of each other for a couple of girl flies. The big one easily has three millimeters on the smaller. A group of flies fly up and form a circle around the fighters. They all hoot and holler, some start placing bets. The little one sure can take a heck of a pounding. They crash into the big man’s bearded face and resemble two pestilent warts battling it out for the right to blemish his face. The eyes of the man look gently and kindly upon the flies. They are at it in his moustache. This tickles his lip and he decides to take action. He blows, aiming the blast of breath upwards, it hits the fighter flies, who split and spin momentarily out of control. The fight is over and most of the flies slip back down to the shit pile at the bottom of the cross.
Up above, two flies sit in the dark hair atop the human’s head.
“ There’s plenty of good stuff up here,” one of them says.
“ Yeah, who needs their politics. I like to keep my nose as far from that stench as possible,” replies the other.
“ Oh, I know what you mean. I think I’ll ditch this scene all together, baby.”
“ But this is some special stuff here, man. I mean do you remember ever talking this way, really communicating like this before feeding off the many excretions of this cat?”
“No, I guess not.”
“ That’s it baby. If we leave, I don’t think we’ll have this anymore. We’ll be back to the old life. You know?”
“ Eating, vomiting, shitting, fucking? Man, there was nothing terrible about that.”
“ So you really want to ditch this party?”
“ In the worst of ways. I’m getting confused and seem to be coming on with a pain in my head I’ve never felt before.”
“ All right. Let’s make this bad trip a thing of the past, baby.”
The two flies take off after a final slurp off the noggin. They soar out a few feet and turn back around to check out the big picture. There is the old streak down the cross arriving at the shit heap. All the flies are attacking one another. Chaos rules.
“ They’re really at it now,” says the fly who first decided to leave.
“ It’s full scale, all out war. Holy shit.”
“ Jesus.”
“What?”
“ That’s what it says up there above his head, see.”
“ Oh yeah. ‘THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.’ Wonder what he did?”
“ Who knows. Probably had something to do with that thing,” he says, gesturing downwards.
“ Good gravy, man! He’s hung like a June Bug in late July! What’s up with the Jewish king, eh?”
“ That thing’d’ve given the Tower of Babel a run for reaching up to heaven.”
Jesus just hangs there looking sad in the darkness as the flies chatter on about this and that. One claims Herod had a cock down to his knees, but obviously that can’t be substantiated in any way. Eventually, the flies find it difficult to communicate.
“ Food,” one says.
“ Mmmm, feces,” says the other.
“ Maggots,” one says.
“ Mmm, fucking,” says the other. Disoriented and dizzy, they fly off towards another cross and body where the flies seem happier, more content. The flies here freely fuck, drop maggots, suck, puke, eat and so forth and no one says a god damn word. This is where our flies decide to stay and spend the rest of their remaining ten or so days. Wouldn’t you?
