Midsummer Day's Nightmare

            by Eunjie Song

 

It was a hot -- murderously hot -- summer day. I had seen worse days back in Korea, where the humidity was so high that you were literally being boiled alive. You could drop an egg on the asphalt and five seconds later, you’d have a nice meal of scrambled egg. I’m not even making this up; they actually showed it on the seven o’ clock news that came on after Pokémon. This is why throwing eggs is technically illegal there. I had an unbelievable tolerance for heat back then, playing dodge ball at the sizzling playground while smelling the meat of my own body cooking beneath the sun. But after spending two years in Berkeley, I had already adapted to the new ways of life, piling on parkas in the middle of July. Without air conditioning or any other cooling system inside my tiny little apartment, I had to find some other way to cool myself down.

So I left the door open. In came the gentle breeze, wiping the sweat off my lifeless body dangling from the couch. I cracked open my newly obtained copy of Harry Potter. Everything blurred away as I became hypnotized by the magic of the book (it was probably telling me to buy the next book), turning into more of a cult member every time I turned the page.

Then there he was. Loud, rude and simply, unwelcome. He didn't even knock when he entered the door and began to snoop around the apartment. Now he hung around by my head, blowing air into my ear and making annoying buzzing noises.

"Stupid fly!" I yelled out and swung my fists in the empty air, trying to shoo him out the door. He was abnormally huge, shiny and ugly; I didn't want it anywhere near me. But instead, he took a dramatic U-turn and hovered above my head out of my reach. I quickly grabbed a can of Raid and launched my attack. Chhhhhhhh. He was now hovering about an inch lower at much slower speed. I waited for him to fall down, but instead he fled into my room.

"Shit!" I swore under my breath as I ran after him. I do not like anything that has more than two pairs of limbs, especially in my room. There had already been enough invertebrate-related dramas there. Last winter, the desperate ants had drilled a tunnel into my room in search of warmth. They wanted my electric blanketed bed. Doubtful, but I may possibly sort of have been willing to share it with them if they asked nicely. But they chose war instead, trying to eat away my entire body little by little. After months of mass merchandise of Raid products (the guy at the counter probably thought we were trying to cook some illegal drug or something), we finally summoned an exterminator and the war was over. But every now and then I still picked up dead ant bodies in my room, and to think that I might be unknowingly sleeping in the same bed with those gave me the chills.

The Reader’s Digest didn’t really help me much either, informing me that an average American eats about six spiders per year while sleeping. The last thing I wanted was another dead insect body rotting in some gap I couldn’t reach and me unknowingly inhaling one of its rotting limbs floating in the air. (I get enough protein from my beans, thank you.)

The fly ran into the glass window, repeatedly. He seemed so desperate to get out. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Too bad, I tried to show him the way out, but he refused and decided to barge into my room instead. I pressed down the button and held it up firmly. Raid dripped down the window, and the soaked fly fell on the windowsill, where it now lay with its legs up in the air. I felt triumphant and did a little jig, just like the crusaders who cheered after they recaptured the Holy Land from the Pagans.

I looked over at the little invader. He wasn't dead yet, continuously wiggling his lower body. He wasn't going to die anytime soon. It'd probably take a whole can of Raid to kill a fly that huge, but I didn't want to try it. Instead, a horribly geeky idea popped into my freshman brain. I was going to take biology after that summer, so it seemed like a good idea to put the fly in a glass jar and observe him. I had heard that we were going to work with fruit flies during the lab. It wasn't exactly a fruit fly, but it was a fly, so it had to be helpful for my future biology class. (I also wanted to show it off a little; it was GIGANTIC. You should have seen the size of that thing.)

I stood in the living room, looking around for something transparent and spacious to keep hold the bug. The kitchen came into my view, but using a drinking glass would be a bad move; I did not want to gulp down a fly limb. Instead, I grabbed my brother’s glass pencil jar, emptying out all the contents sprawled on his desk, and excitedly ran back to my room. Ewwwwww. He was letting go of number two. Arming myself with bundles of Kleenex, I lifted him up and put him in the jar, sealing it carefully with plastic wrap. The lab was set.

I took out a journal and began to write on it. Hmm. The fly was not moving his legs anymore, but he was still letting go of number two. White feces was coming out from its bottom. Weird. The feces was moving as well. Hm. The feces moves? Interesting. How?

Oh.

Oh no.

Fuck.

FUCK.

He wasn't doing number two. Actually, it wasn't he either.

And that white thing, that wasn't body waste.

The fly was already dead. She was moving only because the maggots were crawling out of...whatever it is that you call it.

“MOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. But she wasn't there to answer. I panicked, flailing my arms in the air. They were coming after another, pouring out and exponentially increasing in number. It's amazing how they could all fit in to that little fly. I decided I'd drown them and filled the jar halfway with water. Then Mom walked in with the laundry in her arms. I ran up to her and explained how my unsupervised scientific experiment had gone horribly wrong. Mom recalls that I looked so pale that she wondered whether I needed an IV.

“You know, I grew up on a farm in the seventies,” Mom said. “And they had Porta-Potties there. During summer, you can look down there. It's all liquefied and it's all water. And you know what? There are thousands of maggots living there. They swim around.”

I was horrified. “You mean...?”

“They're not going to drown.”

I looked at the jar. The maggots didn't seem to be suffering. Rather, they seemed quite content with the newly added supply of fresh water.

“What do I do? How do I kill them?”

Another stupidly brilliant idea popped into my head. If I pour oil over the water, they are not going to be able to breathe and suffocate to death. At the speed of light, I grabbed the canola oil from the kitchen and poured it over the water. The maggots simply squirmed around more vigorously. Oh, great. I just fed them with the nutritious fatty acids. I was not going to wait forty-five years until they finally fattened up and died from a heart attack. I picked up the can of Raid again.

“You know,” Mom commented as she walked by. “Maggots and flies are different. Fly poison doesn’t really work as well on the maggots.”

Oh no. I had to think. Quick. What now? My head had long lost its ability to think since the first day of summer vacation. I didn’t have any new ideas.

As my last resolution, I decided to turn to physics – I would leave them at the entrance of our apartment parking lot, so they would get crushed by the cars.

I sprawled the mixture of liquid and maggots on the ground of the parking lot. Water began to evaporate at fast rate under the hot summer sun. The maggots kept struggling, never stopping with their squeamish movements. I sprayed another layer of Raid over them. I shut the door and closed the blinds for good. I decided that I wasn’t going outside for the rest of summer.

That evening, Mom served a bowl of white rice as dinner as always. But that day, I just could not even stand to look at the shiny, slimy glutinous rice.

“Do you have anything other than rice I can eat for dinner?” I asked.

“You can have some rice crispies,” Mom answered.

I skipped dinner that night.