I was five years old the last time I was sick. I have no recollection of the illness except for one fleeting memory of flies hovering around my window as my mom spoon fed me medicine. Twenty years later and my body’s fighting off another virus. My auburn pillowcase is stained a grayish white from snot and reeks of vomit. I’m drenched as if laying on a broken waterbed, my sweat creating a crime scene chalk line around my body. There’s a ringing and I can’t tell if it’s in my head or if it’s the white noise of the air conditioning. The window next to me is open to let the winter air fight off the heat of the infection.
A fly lands on my forehead but my hands refuse to swat it away. The ringing stops and all I can hear is a slow buzzing build. The sound of one fly flapping its wings and rubbing its hands together, preparing to dine on the feast of grime running from my matted hair. That buzzing gets louder when I see another fly land on my windowsill. I can’t tell if it’s outside or inside. The weight of the fly on my scalp burns a hole in my skull, my head starts to throb with the buzzing. A constant hum of filth and trash. Three more flies linger around the ceiling my eyes are fixated on. The throbbing moves from my temple to the back of my head when I realize that I don’t bother to question where the flies come from, like accepting surreal realities in dreams. A biting sting above my right collarbone makes my mind lucid. A dead bee rests in the valley between my neck and shoulder, a stinger protruding the skin next to it. I look at the three flies on the ceiling and see their black, scaly skin fall away, a point extend from their backside, their wings flutter once and fall away. Like high hit badminton birdies, these once-flies plunge toward me. One lands above my upper lip and two land on either side of my neck. The pain is instant and doesn’t fade. I sense the sting on my shoulder bubbling, the pressure of the swelling intensifying. Like a pimple being squeezed by an uncaring mother, puss erupts from the red sore. The puss is a milky white, but milky like expired whole milk. The white turns a trash bag black and starts floating away from my body. It disperses across the room into hundreds of pellet sized black pearls. The black beads sprout hundreds of wings and shit-loving legs. The throbbing, buzzing, humming in my head is replaced by an awareness of the blisters on my lip and neck. The puss-born flies cover my popcorn ceiling. Black skin and papery wings descend like confetti followed by a hundred bullets piercing every pore of my body. My brain shuts off when the bubbling, boiling, ballooning starts. A voice in my head tells me the pain will stop if I let him in. My skin bursts, releasing white, red, black cream and exposing muscle, nerve, bone. I open up.
