TINY LITTLE LEGS flitted across her flesh. She brought her hand down hard. Her teeth gritted as she sat up and turned on the lamp beside her bed. Looking down, the corpse of a tiny gnat lay flattened against the fine blonde hairs covering her forearm. She grimaced.
Addy looked up at the ceiling.
“Son of a—!”
The veins in her head pulsed as she came to her feet and kept her eyes fixated on the swirly patterned white ceiling. A color that allowed her to clearly see the dozens of black dots merely sitting there, staring at her as if they owned the entire apartment.
“You little black bastards,” she growled. “Why won’t you die already?”
Addy looked at her phone. The time said 06:50. Saturday morning. And the job she’d thought she’d finished the night before, all of her efforts, had obviously gone unheeded by the pests. A grimace crossed her face as she entered her walk-in closet and grabbed a shirt. The grimace grew deeper as she shook all of the little gnats loose and threw it on over her shoulders. She put on a pair of jeans, shaking her legs, and buttoning them around her waist. Then headed towards her dresser to grab some socks.
All the while, tiny flies continued to fly around. Taunting her with their audacity to even exist.
You have no idea how much I despise you, little bastards, do you? I do all the dishes, clean all the counters, clean out all the sinks, take out the trash, douse the toilet, do all the laundry, check every, single place that is dank and moist, treat them with spray, and what do I get for it? An apartment full of you cocks! I’m done with it! Time for desperate measures!
She finished dressing, stood up off the side of her bed, and made her way down the hall of her apartment. Little tiny bodies surrounded her as she reached the end of the hall and flipped on the kitchen light. They were everywhere. Covering the walls, the ceiling, even the floor.
Her body shuddered. However, the flushing of her face and the heated hate building in her skull caused her grimace to turn into a snarl.
“Don’t go away, you little turds! I’ll be right back to finish the job!”
Addy turned away from the pulsating layer of insects and cut through her living room. They were there too, of course. Why wouldn’t they be? she figured. She grabbed her keys by the door and exited her apartment.
IT WAS AMAZING how many different varieties of insect repellents and poisons there were. Addy chose some general foggers that included every sort of insect that was likely to be hiding in her apartment. True, there were probably spiders there. And she liked spiders well enough. However, they were obviously not doing their jobs in eliminating the rest of her fly problem.
Let’s see how you manage after a little chemical warfare… She smiled at the thought and went up front to the checkout counters.
“Whoa, that’s a lot of foggers,” the clerk said.
“I have a lot of pests.”
He nodded with a smile, checked her out, and off she went back home. To deal with the menaces who’d taken over her residence. They were pests that needed to be expunged.
Permanently.
***
ADDY RETURNED HOME. She went to work setting up the foggers. Placing one in her bedroom, one in the spare bedroom, one in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, one in the utility room, and one in the living room. The flies seemed to have multiplied exponentially in the time she’d been away. Some were flying. Some were just sitting on the surface of whatever thing they’d found themselves upon. She knew she should cover up her appliances and computer. Her TVs and other sensitive equipment. However, she was exhausted and just wanted them gone. She went through, set all of the bombs off. Left the apartment.
***
SIX HOURS LATER, she returned. They were all dead.
“Finally. I can replace everything else, I’m just glad you’re gone. You little bastards.”
The tang of chemical chaos clung to the air as she went about cleaning up the bodies of the insects and fixing dinner. Remarkably, the TVs still worked and the computer was fine. Nothing a little cleaner couldn’t fix.
At half-past nine, she closed the curtains to the deck doors and prepared for bed. That was when the buzzing began.
Addy looked around, eyes wide, mouth agape.
“What… what’s going on?”
From every vent, every hole in the wall, every nook, cranny, and hold came hundreds of gnats. They swarmed her, covered her body.
“Get off me! Get off me!”
She swatted at them, rubbed her hands across her skin as they covered every each of her existence. They dug into her pores. Her hands slapped down roughly, her skin welting under her own attacks. The scream she gave off was piercing, even to her own ears. She felt them digging into her flesh. Crawling under her skin, an almost ticklish sensation as they made their way up and under her flesh.
“No! No! Noooo!”
Addy fell to the floor clawing at her own skin. Before long the world went black, her mind blank.
***
HOURS LATER, ADDY emerged from her skin that had become a sort of shell. Her mind was singularly focused: Mate. Keep the brood alive. Stop those who would seek her extermination. After all, hadn’t that been the task all along? Finding the right body to bring the brood back to life?
Yes, that was the purpose. That was the need.
She wiped one hairy leg across the myriad of eyes of her bulbous head. The brood was tiny in form, at first. But they grew. They grew and they extinguished the minds meaning to harm them.
After all, they were all pests, weren’t they? And they deserved to be expunged.
Permanently.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tim Purvis is a writer of many genres. From Science-fiction to romance to fantasy and horror there is nothing he won’t write. He has struggled to get his work noticed, published only once in a Turkish magazine thanks to a pen pal. Yet, he continues to write hoping one day his works will reach a broader audience and he can make a living doing what he loves: spinning the tall tale.
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