Life of Peter

“Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!” Peter panted, his tiny heart pumping faster than he could flap his equally tiny wings. “I need to find somewhere to land! But where? WHERE?”

He spied a welcoming, white windowsill. Carefully, his six feet touched down on what tasted like a freshly cleaned ledge. He breathed a sigh of relief. He quickly raised his front two feet up and began to tidy himself up as the warmth of the sun shone through the window. 

“Finally!! I have been needing to clean these grimy things since breakfast!”  he mumbled to himself. As he brought his feet into his mouth he was pleasantly surprised to find that he was correct in assuming the windowsill had been just been cleaned. “Organic lemon! My favorite,” he chuckled to himself as he carried on cleaning his legs and eyes. He was so focused on untangling a particularly uncomfortable particle of dirt from the very back of his hind legs, that he was oblivious to the danger that was waiting.

Suddenly, he felt a strong gush of wind and force come crashing down from above him. He abandoned what he was doing and took off with all the speed he could find. Peter felt the whip of the ripples the force had left in its wake as he narrowly escaped. 

“Oh my goodness, oh my goodness! What was THAT!?” he wheezed to no one. After taking a few security laps around the endless room, he found a moment’s peace on the back of a brown corduroy couch. It, however, had not been freshly cleaned and rather, smelled of fresh dog; not that Peter minded in the slightest.

Before beginning his self-sanitization regime again, he paused for a few extra moments to make sure it was safe to do so. This time,  he had been smart to choose a darker color to land on, no matter how tempting returning to the windowsill was. At least here, he thought, he could hide out as he blended nicely. Peter raised his front two legs once more and finally freed the particularly uncomfortable piece of dirt and rested all of his legs once more. He meticulously  “I suppose now that I am clean, I should find some food!” 

Finding wouldn’t take him too long for he already began to pick up something pungent permeating from down the hall. Peter followed his antennae to the sharp fragrance and found himself atop a seemingly endless wooden dining table, littered with enormous circular food vessels containing what Peter believed to be the most delicious-smelling food in the world. Though, to be fair, Peter thought everything smelled like the best food in the world. He certainly didn’t waste any time circling from above as he tried to decide which would be first. He chose a vessel at the head of the table. He decided it would be wise to land on the edge versus the middle of the vessel so as not to find himself in another near-death soup situation. 

Once more, he compulsively needed to clean his body before eating. He quietly sat and began meticulously preening any stray debris he may have picked up from the dog’s couch. He hurried his work as he could already taste the tempting and unsupervised food. Peter took one last look around for safety and he can begin to collect all of the salivae he could muster and sprayed it onto the feast in front of him. Now he simply waited for the spit to dissolve the food and he could eat his treasure.

While Peter was waiting for his spittle to liquefy tonight’s first course, a deep aching sense of dread and rushing power was building above his head. He couldn’t react fast enough and his rear leg and right-wing were crushed by the murderous force that had threatened him earlier, sending him catapulting off the vessel and onto the unforgiving wooden top. But where had it come from? How did it find him again? Peter lay on his side, painfully dragging his now broken limbs across the edge of the table. Bringing air into his lungs proved laborious but with each gasping whisper, he was determined to survive. 

It was now that his short life began to play in Peter’s mind like a moving picture. He recalled hatching from his mother’s egg, learning to fly, and then... arriving in this place. Oh, why did he have to choose this place? If only Peter had known the dangers of being around these particular types of food vessels, he would like to imagine he would make a better, different choice. A choice that would have led him to a more fulfilling life full of adventures. This suddenly made him think about a bedtime story his mother used to tell him and his eight hundred and fifty brothers and sisters. He could only remember bits and pieces since he was just a larva at the time. He remembered hearing about the shiny column food vessels that were filled up and left outside for us in a neat row every week. A life, he liked to think, that was full of new and exciting smells. He was saddened to think he would never visit one of these places. 

Peter knew he couldn’t move. He knew that even if he tried, it would be futile. He suspected this was going to be the last time of light he would ever experience. All he could do now was brace his mangled body as the final fatal wave of pain crashed over him. He knew this was the end. He only managed to open half of his eyes to see where the sudden warmth was coming from when the windowsill was so far away. Peter’s gaze traced the curves of his own twisted body to spy his soft insides, spilling down his legs and onto the wooden place. 

Finally, he rested his head and relaxed his body for the last time. He laughed to himself as his final thoughts were on how dirty his wings must be. 

With Peter dead, the deadly force echoed its battle cry through the halls. “Honey, I think I finally got that damn fly!”