The Swarm

The Swarm

They were everywhere. John Bullman had never known anything like it. Yes, there had been summers when there had been a few flies in the house, but this was something else. And anyway it was autumn and getting colder, why weren’t these damn flies dying?  Last week he had purchased a small box from a shop in the high street – a box that had a picture of a giant fly on its lid. And now John Bullman was wondering if this damn box had anything to do with the proliferation of flies in his house, was it hexed? He couldn’t offer any rational explanation.  It was just a box with a fly on it, but somehow it now seemed a lot more menacing and not an innocent little box at all.

He’d bought several aerosol cans of insecticide, and now he was getting fed up. The more he zapped them the more they came back at him. It was like cutting the head off the hydra, more and more menace appeared . They seemed a much more virulent strain of fly. You got the impression of strength from them and that was disturbing, strength in numbers. There were thousands of them in the house and now he couldn’t cope. They were in his cups, his glasses, his plates on the table, all over the curtains, the walls, the furniture. It was truly gross and now John Bullman was becoming afraid, afraid they’d never go.

He had to be careful where he aimed the aerosol; there was the cat’s water bowl and food dish to consider, and now you would find tens of these horrible flies dead in the cat’s water bowl, or in the bottom of a cup. There would be several of these little black creatures in their death throes, but always there would be the swarming of the live ones, a fantastic buzz of life you couldn’t get away from. The buzz got more and more intense and John Bullman knew he was a victim of the humble housefly, a fly that was humble no longer, but a distinct threat to human life.

They were all over his face, his hands, his body, he couldn’t get away from them. They were ineluctable. His aunt had advised he get a bug bat when he’d told her about them, an instrument of torture he thought, but effective. The bat gave the flies an electric shock on contact. He went around the walls of his home placing the bat over them and seeing them drop dead to the floor, but he couldn’t do it fast enough, there were so many it was impossible. Soon the floor was covered with the corpses of these dead flies. The house was not his anymore. It belonged to flies, dead flies and awful, lingering and persistent live flies.

John Bullman felt he needed help, but the first thing he must do was get rid of that terrible box; maybe if he got rid of that the flies would go. He was sure there was something weird about it. Maybe he should have just placed the box in the rubbish bin outside, but no he decided to take it to a charity shop near to where he lived. He hated wasting anything and anyway the box couldn’t really have special powers over flies,could it? But it did seem as if it was a magnet to flies, but it was his imagination surely. The flies had nothing to do with this box, he must remain rational. Once he’d dumped the box he felt an immense sense of relief, but it was to be short-lived, when he got back to the house the flies were swarming everywhere. There seemed to be more not less now he had got rid of the box. He must contact pest control. He needed professional help. When he rang them on the phone they said they were extremely busy and it would be next week before they could call. He would wait, soon he would get the help he needed. But all the while he felt desperate inside; he felt hated and persecuted by this terrible evil, the evil of hordes of flies, which once unleashed were impossible to contain.

No longer a young man John Bullman began to feel weak, weak in the face of evil. He took to his bed, but the sheets were covered in flies; he was eating them when he licked his lips, swallowing them whole, choking on them. They had become a living nightmare. Great swathes of flies produced an overwhelming buzz, the deathly sinister sound of menace and of hate. Soon they covered every inch of John Bullman. And he became a corpse, a man that was killed by flies. Be very careful of what you buy in charity shops they might well possess no charity at all.