Friday Fiction: Funeral For a Fly

Funeral For a Fly 

He gazed out the window and wondered what time it was. He knew where he was: he lay on a childhood bunkbed in that fearfully decayed front bedroom at the old house. Before him was a window open to the screen, hedged with ill-hung curtains like moss; he could see the front yard bathed in a ghastly, disastrous light. If it was evening, the coming dark would be terrible. If it was morning, it would be even more frightening. The ancient rosebush clawed uneasily at the screen with a dim, feeble motion.

He could sense but not clearly see the room around him. Overhead the top bunk sagged, burdened with who knows what loads. He feared if he shifted his weigh too quickly it might crash down upon him. All around he could vaguely sense ancient cardboard boxes and piles of clothing, heaped almost to the ceiling, which towered into darkness, on dressers, on the floor. He felt like a cockroach, pinned immobile in a mound of filth. He kept looking out the window, as the only hope of light and air, but could see nothing clearly.

Suddenly one of his brothers (he thought it was one of his brothers, he couldn’t be sure; it sounded vaguely familiar but was only a dark presence, suggestive, sensed in the dark) came quietly into the room and stood, watching him.

“Well,” the figure asked, “What are you looking at there?”

He really didn’t know. He felt if he gave a vague, honest answer, it might very well trigger an unpleasant response, something he wouldn’t want to hear. So almost at random he said, “I’ve been watching a fly’s funeral.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

“There were three flies here on the windowsill. One of them was obviously dead. The other two buzzed around it with seeming concern. I mean, I’ve seen flies buzz around plenty of dead things but never one of their own. These two seemed intent on getting the dead one to move, and when that failed, stood buzzing their wings at it.”

“In what way was this a funeral?”

“It seemed so to me. They buzzed as if singing a thin, high little song. After a bit, the wind of their wings and little nudges with their forelegs moved the dead one off the sill and it dropped out of sight, to the grass below, I assume. It was if they couldn’t leave it lying stark on the white wood and had to conceal the corpse. After a moment of grooming each other in consolation, they flew away.”

“And what were your conclusions from this little drama?”

His mind raced in the darkness.

“I was reminded of second chapter of Romans,” he improvised. “If these little creatures ‘who do not have the law do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts,’ so much more should we, who know so much more, follow the Commandments of God.”

The figure that might have been his brother seemed mollified, even amused.

“Still preaching after all these years.”

“Sermons in stones, you know. Even now. Even here.”

Outside the light grew darker. A coming storm, or the night drawing down? Either way, it promised it would be grim. Around him the house seemed eternal, inescapable, and he wondered, before the last light flickered out, if he had ever really left it, and how it would weather the falling dark.

-December 19, 2025

Notes

"A sad tale's best for winter." - William Shakespeare. "In summer, 'tis off to the beach." - MAD Magazine. As you might be able to tell, this is the 'novelization' of another one of my disquieting dreams. It's as accurate - and as expressive - as I can make it. I'm really feeling much more cheerful than this.