Superstition slipped in with the last of the September flies. My hands were full and I couldn’t get the door shut fast enough behind me. There was a clog in the bathroom sink where drain flies had nested. Something about my slowness made me wonder if we didn’t deserve it. Jake said to get hot vinegar if I was too damn scared of store bought bug killer. The sour smell drove him out all afternoon and when he came back he saw I had let the vinegar boil out. He headed upstairs with a bottle of bleach but found the bathroom door locked. He shook the handle, his mad rattling brass on brass. I kept the bathroom key hidden in a bag of bread flour and started buying loaves from Ms. Debbie. On Tuesday she said I had autumn all over me and could I please take off my sleeves because the sun wasn’t done yet. I told her I didn’t feel him.
On Wednesday, Jake worked late so I cooked nothing and peered under the bathroom door. I heard more than I could see, a buzz louder than his engine in the drive. He came up behind me, a shock I can’t blame him for. I was captivated. A fly crawled under the door and then beside me on the floor, until it was under Jake’s boot.
On Thursday, I realized there was nothing in the drain but bar soap and toilet water. I wondered what they were eating. Jake left early the next morning, not mumbling like I thought, but shouting. Neighbor Mitchell came over with jam, said he’d seen all the bread I’d been carrying in and heard the yelling. I couldn’t think of what to reply because I hadn’t heard anything.
On Saturday, I combed the crumbs from Jake’s beard, wiped the jelly from his lips and stored the scraps in a paper napkin. He was late for the river yet drank his Busch slow while we waited for what, I wasn’t sure. When he left, he said the forest service would be burning the woods down and not to be afraid of any ash the wind might carry. I didn’t catch his meaning. I was busy shutting the front door behind him, then fishing the key out of the flour.
At the flies’ door, I sprinkled the collected crumbs on the ground and blew them into the bathroom. There was no obvious reason for me to have grabbed the key. I knew from the first larvae floating under the faucet that I would never let the flies free, but I knew it in the way one knows a lie they like better than the truth. Playing pretend, I put the key in the lock and let it rest a while, imagining what it’d mean to open the doorand see what I’d let grow. The outside air was cooler now, no flies swarming picnics or slipping through windows. The neighbors had already begun to eat a little slower; begun to keep the lids off butter dishes. What would it mean to unleash the end of their ease?
I pulled the key out knowing I could not open it and felt sick. A million flies thrashed inside that locked room. I pushed my forehead to the floor and the house vibrated in a familiar pattern, till I knew his boots were beside me. His hands didn’t notice the key still in the door; they carried a drill and went for the hinges. He didn’t notice how easy it could have been to open. I hollered, Jake, Jake we don’t want to know but the drill was in his ear and the screws fell to the carpet. At once the door laid him out flat, or rather the flies pushed the door down with him under it. I pulled the neck of my dress over my mouth and nose, sealed my eyes and through the pulsing air, felt my way to him. Flies were in my ears and over my body, the force of them so thick the air resisted as I pushed the door away. The flies did not disperse but were a continuous flood, layering over each other and on top of us, so that it took my roaming hands minutes before I found the key sticking out of the top of Jake’s leg. His hands found mine and pushed them away. He did not hear me as I said no, don’t make room for them in you. He pulled the metal out. Instinctively, I dug my fingers into the wound trying to fill the space but he didn’t understand.
He pushed me out and I came back and he pushed me out again. In seconds the flies found their way into the flesh, eggs were buried close to bone. Seconds more and the larva was spilling out of his thigh, growing wings, laying more eggs. Maggots hatched the infection in his blood, then sped the decay. The flies forced the rot and ate it up and then they went for the blood on my fingers and the crumbs on my dress. They ate the wishes out of my belly and the lies out of my mouth and by the end of it all I understood superstition had just been a false name for knowing.