The Flies

• Anna Scott, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2015

I stared at the ceiling, the flies making geometrical triangles. Isosceles, equilateral, scalene. They were free to fly around as they wanted. I let out a long breath, and leapt up suddenly, but fell on the ground due to a sudden cramp in my leg. A few seconds passed and I mustered enough of something to stand up, however, this time not leaping, as though I had come to the decision that that was a bad idea.
“Beth-eth?” I heard my mother calling and echoing from below.
“YES!” I shouted as loud as I could, hoping to wake the neighbours that I so much hated. I heard a thump from next door as though someone had just fallen out of bed.
“Come down here, I want to show you something,” I moved slowly, thinking it was something I did not really care about, as usual. But as I descended the stairs, something was slightly different... maybe because the room was bare. The furniture was piled in a heap in the wilting backyard and my favourite painting was smashed to pieces and slightly sticking up out of the bin.
“We’re staring afresh”, my mother announced, as I gazed around the room with a horrified look of disgust mingled with confusion etched onto my face. But I did not want to start afresh, where was my say in this? It was like the government election all over again, still not being able to vote for a party of all of which I detested. I thought back to those flies, maybe I should have swatted one, it may have made the start of the day a little more tolerable…

The light shone through the trees, trickling through my eye lashes, making my eyes ache, squirming, yet not being able to squirm. The flies…the flies…the inherent buzz. A terrible buzz. A deafening buzz. Yet as I squirmed, it became louder and louder and louder. Hotter, hotter, hotter.

The rain started, then started to pour, and anything I had any hope of salvaging was gone now. “Ah! Beth!” my mother exclaimed. “Where did all our furniture go?”
“Where do you think?” looking sarcastically around the room, I settled my eyes back on those annoying flies.
“Don’t use that tone with me.”
“You threw them out, remember?”
“No…” she trailed off, staring into the distance, a glazed look moving slowly over her eyes.
And then she started to hum to herself, and I just stared at her. And I saw her glance up at the flies on the ceiling, and stare for quite a while. Then, one by one, she swatted each fly. She saw the wet and soggy furniture outside and I saw the recognition in her eyes.
“Oh yes! We’re starting afresh!”
I groaned internally and possibly externally.
And the furniture stayed out there. Everything stayed out there. We lived in a bare house, with bare memories, and bare cupboards.
And I wondered if you could ever, truly, be free.