"That Damn Fly", by Some Guy

Apart from that, this one's actually a little more graphic than others too. It depicts animals getting killed by humans, and several other implied things about the protagonist. I'm sure you'll get it.

Like a bad habit, our valiant hero stayed up too late again. He was fully aware that that computer was draining his very life away. Little by little, he was losing more and more of his sanity to lack of sleep. It was also probably the reason his grades dropped in the recent past, which only caused more trouble between his growing adolescent body and his ever-vigilant parents. This helped that rift very little, as they once again had to give up their paychecks so their child could go to summer-school to make up for his poor study habits.

And what was he doing now? He wasn't studying his chemistry equations, or looking over his grammar terms; he was taking advantage of the unseeing web (and it never surprised him how far he could go when he believed he was over 18). The excitement in the room was nearing a peak when he heard his mother walking to the kitchen. Instantaneously, he deleted the history of the browser and put it back to a site he was looking at earlier about used cars.

"Are you still playing on the computer?" his mother asked. He always took it personally that she always assumed he was "playing" on the computer, which he always figured was a valuable workplace-tool.

"Yes mom, I'm playing on the computer." As those last words rolled of his tongue, he suddenly realized how much trouble he'd be in. His mother didn't really say anything reflecting on that, but that's why he always hated how she had eyes like glass - reflecting every thought and word back to him.

"You've got school tomorrow. Go to sleep." She simply said.

"Alright! I'm going!" he spat back coldly. His mother thought very little of that, and left - not without picking him off with another sniper's glance which shook his very essence into his ankles.

Needless to say, the excitement had died down quite suddenly.

Yet another reflex built from the dust, the computer was shut down, the monitor and speakers were clicked off. As he got up, his eyes passed over some old speakers for the computer, which only made him dislike his mother a little more. She, being the computer-illiterate type, always forgot that the speakers and monitor had to be shut down by hand now and then. That was enough to drain the "new" speakers, which were now useless until someone remembered to get them repaired. He began to dislike the current computer speakers a little more.

Upon turning off the lights to the room, a mosquito somehow found a way into the house. It naturally insisted on a meal of blood, which equally naturally came from the one with the outstretched arm. Remembering a trick a friend showed him, he pinched the skin on his forearm around the insect, forcing an excessive current of blood to pour into the tiny vampire. In a scaled-down display of gore, the mosquito exploded in a snap of human blood and yellowish liquid.

He began to dislike bugs a little more.

Considering he spent the past two hours sitting in front of that machine (and his recent struggle with nature's creations), it wasn't a shock that he drifted to the side of the hall to enter the small, tiled room residing there. Not feeling all that conscious about his situation, he saw closing the door as another needless act. He just wanted to get everything done as quickly as possible. Luckily for that, as per usual in this house, the seat was already up.

The warm water over his hands was surprisingly pleasant today. Of course, in light of the past two hours, probably anything would feel refreshing. Reaching for the bar of soap in the little blue dish, he felt a shot of discomfort as his fingers brushed through the cold, dirty water residing under the cake of Zest. The emanation of the lathering soap over the backs of his hands and the spot on his forearm systematically crept into his sinuses as if it were capable of controlling its direction of waft. It was strange to him, as washing his hands had never been so euphoric to him ever before.

After the complimentary rinse, he took the facecloth off the rack and ran it under the still-running water. Unsatisfied with the temperature of the water, he shut off the spigot to cold water and allowed the water to reach near-scalding levels of torridity. As if in a single motion, the cloth was wrung and the steaming towel was thrust into his face. He savored the feeling of the heat forcing its way into his pores, cleansing them dramatically in a wind of heat and rigorous scrubbing.

A sharp pain under his nose effectively ended that session. Looking into the mirror, he found himself bleeding. He gave a silent curse to himself as he tore, wet, and wadded a square of toilet paper. Needless to say, adolescent life had been fairly unkind to him. He tore and wadded another sheet of paper to absorb the remaining blood and fluids from his face as he finally headed to his bedroom.

He dove onto his bed, half-twisting so he'd land on his back, still holding the small bit of cotton paper on his face. Looking around his room, he once again held no interest in closing the door. Just another useless amenity to worry about in the time coming. Sensing his fatigue, he upped the volume to his alarm clock. Feeling all his rituals were covered, he got out of his street clothes and into a pair of drawstring pants. He then went to bed, fretting about his first day of school.

He couldn't sleep, of course. In his fifteen-some years of life, he spent the past twelve ALWAYS sleeping with the door closed. Groggily, he got out of bed and shut the entrance to his private sanctuary. Another effortless belly flop was taken back into his bed, and he once again attempted to acquire comfort. The pillows couldn't seem to stay firm, and he found himself struggling with disintegrating cushions. He finally settled on a face-down position that he knew he would regret with his hands under his head. He could already feel a tingling in his fingers, but that seemed slightly irrelevant to getting sleep. He ignored the invading numbness and closed his eyes.

Then it happened.

He was barely into an hour of sleep when he heard something faintly humming about his room. It wasn't much, but it was just enough to keep a person from getting a decent night's sleep. It was moving, too. It was somewhat of an erratic, circular motion; getting louder and softer now and then. It didn't sound like a mosquito, though. He'd been around enough of them to know they aren't this loud. He was certain it was a fly. The fly then proceeded to dive past his civilian ear. It caused a jump in him that he tried to suppress. After all, he was never one to be bullied by a bug.

The insect then continued to dive-bomb his head left and right, over and over.

A fly could never hurt you, and he knew that. He felt he should be strong enough to ignore it. This ignorance held nothing to his psyche, however. To him, the buzzing of those wings was like corroded chainsaws grinding on a concrete sidewalk. The kind of sound a person always hates to hear his car make. Although he knew it was impossible, the sound also seemed to be getting louder as a whole. As if the fly was actually circling his head just for spite. He couldn't take it anymore; that fly was going to die.

The hunt was on.

He shot out of bed like a rocket, and progressed to turn on both his reading lamp and his ceiling light. Eyes and ears like radar, he slowly began tracking the noise of his six-legged antagonist as it darted from wall to wall. After about a minute, the insect took a rest upon the carpeted floor near the door. It was much smaller than most flies he had seen; probably at least half the size of a usual fly. How this exceptionally-small fly was causing so much noise troubled him even more so - it would be harder to hit too. Seeing the bug sitting there, unmoving, he knew this may well be his only chance. He slowly picked up a large, plastic ruler from off his desk and began his advance on his prey.

An audible crack echoed through the small room as the ruler hit the floor - to no avail. The fly took to the artificial sky once more, causing him to flail the plastic utensil savagely through the air. The effort was quite futile, as he couldn't even see where that tiny black dot was anymore. Now and then he would see the fly dash along the while walls of his room, but only to lose it in the blue blanket of his bed. At one point the noise had stopped, but he wasn't sure where. Taking a hunch, he kicked his bed, and the buzzing resumed.

For another few minutes, tracking continued, and opportunities were lost. He was also losing it when the bug buzzed past his open closet - this gave him an idea. He heard it go by the closet again; heard it go into the closet. Immediately, he shut the two sliding doors, hearing the buzzing muffle to a crawl.

It was a crawl indeed; one that escaped through a vent in the doors.

He cursed himself once again, praying that this could end soon so he could finally rest. He took the closed closet as an asset, as the white of the doors displayed the fly much better than the shadows earlier. The fly was unrelenting in its desire to live, and wasn't letting up in its flight - his will for it to die was even more so, though. The fly eventually grew weary of its laps of the ceiling, and took asylum high on a wall. After tracking the insect for as long as he had, he was not going to lose this chance. He dropped the ruler to the floor and picked up an old shirt.

Feeling his chance to sleep so close, he began twisting the shirt like a wet towel. It snapped out furiously from his hip, and with a powerful whap, the shirt bounced back down to earth, with the fly following close behind. The tiny bug landed and sputtered on the carpet, coming to a standstill. Never one to leave something unchecked, he slowly pried under the still form with the ruler. It roared to life once more. It's final death-throes thrashing wildly, exhausted wings trying to take it away, but to no furtherance. The ruler came down again, popping the small bug off the carpet a few inches - the mercy-shot, so to speak. The remaining shell held no resistance to the ruler as it scooped it into the nearby trash receptacle.

A wave of relief flushed over him; he had won! He could finally go to sleep! He shut off the ceiling light, and continued to the lamp on his bureau drawer. As he clicked that off, he glanced to his clock. He had about four of five hours until he'd have to wake up again. He resumed fretting about what was to happen tomorrow - back at school. Once again returning to bed, he closed his eyes, and let out a heavy breath. Dead silence responded to him.

The rest of the night comprised of tossing and turning. Eventually it turned into a tossing, turning, and buzzing. The confusion was unbelievable; he wasn't sure if he was still sleeping, if the fly in the garbage had come back, or if there was a second one - trying frantically to escape its prison in the closet.

Pulling a pillow over his head, he shut his eyes tightly and hoped for morning, when he could go to school . . . and out of that bedroom - away from all the bugs.

The End

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