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Wednesday, May 14, 2003

"He lost his mind today. He left it out back on the highway."
-Guns 'N Roses

"I was an insect who dreamed he was a man. Now the dream is over and the insect is awake."
-Brundlefly



FICTION:



Flying (part 1)



Bored enough to leash flies?

James was thinking of ways to kill time. Eat time. Beat time. Waste time. He thought maybe he would try tying a leash onto a fly.

Now that's fucking bored,he thought.

He’d trapped one fly in a shoe by quickly stuffing that shoe into a sock. He could still hear it looking for a way out. He had another fly crushed under that same shoe. He had another fly locked inside his fist and he could feel it wriggling around looking for some light and it made him a little sick. He knew it was spitting and shitting and pissing all over his fingers to be spiteful. And he had another fly, a big green one, stuck under a shot glass and staring right at him.

James pulled the longest hairs from a soiled dog-bowl he had resting on his knee, breathing through his mouth when he leaned over the gray water so he wouldn’t gag.

Dog hair has to be best, James thought. Even tougher than a cunt hair. Who said that? Grampa said that. When I was little. That day I cried ‘cause he picked up my dog by it’s back. He said that dog hairs were the toughest and quit crying that dog will be fine. Did he ever try to tie a knot with one of these though? Damn that bowl is ripe. . .

He gently hung ten of the long thick hairs across his other knee to dry. He tried to remember where he’d first heard about someone trying to leash flies. He wanted it to be him.

I know someone tried this once, when I was young, little boys do it for sport, he thought. Or did I read about it somewhere?

"No." James decided out loud. The thought of the fly-wrangling not being his idea was making him angry. "It was me. I can’t prove it by doing it. I know I’ve tried this once before. It’s almost impossible unless your fingers are rock steady. . ."

He reached for the first fly, pulling the shoe from the sock and covering the hole with his hand. He tried shaking the fly into a stupor so that it would crawl or fall out stunned. Nothing. He tried shaking as fast as he could, hoping it would panic and squirm for the sunlight creeping between his fingers. Still, he felt nothing and banged the shoe on the floor in frustration. The dog bowl sloshed and fell off his knee, splashing his ankle with foul gray water. Finally he could feel the fly trying to get out, tickling around the palm of his hand. Then there was a sharp bite or sting and he flinched and tried to shake the fly into oblivion. Eventually his arm got tired and he dropped the shoe to the floor. He leaned down to look inside and saw the fly sitting on the top of his hand, calmly rubbing two legs above it’s back. It hopped down three knuckles and flew away.

Bored enough to leash flies? Okay, maybe not. At least I’m bored enough to keep trying.

He turned the other shoe over and peeled the dead fly off the tread. He decided he needed some practice before he tried again with a live on. He glanced over at the fly under the shot glass and he saw it had stopped buzzing and bashing its head around looking for an opening. It was quiet and still, big green eyes against the glass. James was sure it was watching him. He pulled a dog hair off his knee and watched it snap and disintegrate between his fingers. He sighed and brushed all the stray hairs off his legs and went back down to the bowl for a wet one.

James curled up cross-legged on the wooden floor with a new hair and the dead fly. First he tried a knot on the wing. The wing crunched like a paper airplane under a bike tire and then popped off in his tiny lasso. James wondered if the fly under the glass could hear that wing tear loose. He thought the sound of the wing ripping would be deafening to a fly. He hunched over back over with another knot, nose brushing the hairs on the back of his sweaty hand. He tried the remaining wing, holding his breath and tightening it slower this time. He bit his tongue when it tore loose. He blew some sweat off his nose and leaned in with it again. The phone rang and he ignored it (little fuckers, crank-calling at a time like this) trying a leg until the dog hair snapped.

He grunted and went fishing for another wet one. He held three long hairs up to the light to find a thick one. He tried another tiny leg, slipping the knot up past the joint. The loop closed tight on nothing when he pulled it away. He tried again and again. He couldn’t thread the needle.

“Have you ever been so bored that you’re flying?”

Someone asked him that question once and he didn’t know what it meant at the time. He couldn’t remember who said it, just that it seemed to James that it meant boredom was something good. Something that inspired good ideas when you closed your eyes. Now he knew it wasn’t. Maybe it was just something he’d heard when he was half-asleep, something whispered in his ear by those boys on the phone.

The drop of sweat ran down his nose, too fast to blow away, and it splashed down onto his cramping thumb. James exhaled, his concentration broken.

James guessed that a drop of sweat would be like a bullet to a fly.

He looked at what was left of the dead fly he was working on. It was more like a grub than a fly at this point. He looked for any tiny limbs that he been left in the tread of the shoe that could hold a knot and found none. He went for the head (What head? It’s all eyes!) carefully looping the knot and slipping the noose gently around the fly's neck. He sucked in a breath and fought to keep his fingers still. The head was in the hole. His eyes were wide as he slowly pulled the ends of the hair tighter. He felt like a boy watching a cat play with a balloon. Another bead of sweat dropped from an eyebrow and he blew it up into his hair before it could pick up escape speed down the slope of his nose.

He brought the fly up to his face, straightening his sore back while he squinted. It hung spinning in the air, successfully leashed to the hair. Twisting and untwisting, twisting and untwisting, twisting and. . . suddenly he couldn't help himself. He took the free ends of the dog hair and yanked them tight. The hair snapped and the head flew off over his shoulder.

Why the hell did I do that? Guess dogs’ hair just ain't strong enough. He laughed at himself as he stood up, stretching with a loud nobody's-home groan. Then he went back to the window to look for more flies. There's always more flies.

In the corner of the window was a spiderweb. He stopped and stared, letting the shot glasses rattle on the sill. Brainstorm. He gathered a handful of web and went back to the fly watching him from under the glass. He thought about smoking it with a match. Or shaking it senseless or dead. He looked down at his hand, slowly opening and closing his fingers, watching the web stretch and pull without breaking.

This, this I have done before, he thought with his mouth still moving around the words in his head. I swear I have. I just don't remember how.

James looked at the clock on the VCR. He never knew when Steven would get home. He thought he probably still had time for the surprise. The handshake or the wave. It would be so goddamn funny. James sitting there with a book or a movie, then suddenly a hello to Steven and his hand comes around from his back or out from under the book with flies circling around his fingertips like magic. Steven might think he trained them (hell, training flies might be easier than leashing them) or maybe he’d just think he was sculpting with dogshit all morning.

Who knows what he’d think. James just knew that Steven would be standing there, his brain searching for the answer. It would take a real close look for anyone to see that the flies were leashed to his fingers.

Maybe that would feel like flying.


- © 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 1:10 AM [+] :::
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