The Fly, or I Choose to Live in the Light

The fly slips into the apartment a little after noon.

I set my purse down, slip off my shoes and sigh.  Newly-moved on to the third floor, where I have discovered that I am devoid of scissors, nail clippers, decent lighting, or salt and pepper, a fly swatter is also unaccounted for.

I close the door.

“Well I’m not going to feed ya,” I mutter.

Earlier in the day I’d been trying my neighborhood wireless signals, hoping, fruitlessly, that someone’s password was, indeed, “password”. 

I report without satisfaction that none of my neighbors are that stupid.

It’s lonely at the top. 

But now I have company.

The fly bounces off the walls, against the shadowed ceiling, looking for an exit. 

I lower my chin, make menacing eyes at the fly.  “I shall be forced to kill you,” I say, ominously.

The fly crawls up the wall and says nothing.

The third floor, a dim and cave-like place with an angled ceiling, offers little escape.  I search for something to roll up and kill him with. 

I search in vain.

Dejectedly, I stand in the middle of the loft and sigh.  “Then again, maybe you’ll stay for dinner?  How much can you eat anyway, am I right?”

The fly buzzes, heads toward the door, the filtered light streaming through its glass and onto a puddle on the floor, settles on the light switch.  I walk toward it, already working on the story I will tell of how I stalked and caught a fly with my bare hands…

And there, under the fly, I discover the dimmer switch.

I reach toward it, slide the tiny lever upward.

And the room explodes with light.

Smiling, I open the door, and the fly escapes, to buzz another day.