Strawberry Fields Forever

I sat at the kitchen counter with a bowl of Fruit Loops trying to ignore my uncle’s snoring behind the bedroom door. With each snore I felt certain he would wake himself up; he sounded like a car accelerating through a ditch. Trevor was reclusive; besides his snores, I rarely heard his vocal chords in action. He worked as a trucker for the Andersville dairy farms, which is why our milk was always fresh. Trevor was the opposite. His personality was like rancid milk, but he never disturbed me, so I didn’t mind staying with him.

Finishing the cereal, I was hankering for some real fruit. I had put out a bowl filled with strawberries last night when I got home from Arnold’s farm, where I was spending harvest season picking fruit from sun-up ’til dark while staying with Trevor. But now, even in the dim light before dawn, I could make out the hovering outlines of flies buzzing around the berries. So much for that.  

I was irritated I had left the berries out, knowing the house was swarmed with flies. The window screens did not have a tight enough mesh. I stared at the ceiling where a helical flypaper hung ominously. It was covered with dots, some still writhing, only half their appendages stuck to the gloss. The single strip was not enough.  

Shaking my head with disgust, I was about to lace up my boots and head out when I heard a buzz in my pocket. This time, it was not a fly. Arnold was calling.

“Hey man, I’m on my way over,” I said.  

“Is that a tractor in the background?” Arnold said.

“My uncle snoring.”

“Oh...wow. Hey, the reason I called is I don’t want you coming in today. We have a bit of a problem on our hands.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, at about one in the morning last night, Paulette drove our tractor into the river. She said she was driving towards a patch of lapis lazuli pumpkins. Apparently she believed if she broke one of them open it would be filled with crystals. Yeah, a geode pumpkin. Somehow after she wrecked our tractor she managed to stumble back to the farmhouse with a bloodied leg and heart rate galloping. We sent her to the hospital in an ambulance.”

“Was she asleep?” I was concerned. Paulette was the most sane of the fruit-picking team. She could spot mold on a berry halfway down the field.  

“No, that’s the weird part. The doctors found her behavior similar to patients drugged with psychotropics, but whatever it was couldn’t be traced.”

“What? No way!”

“The hospital just called me to tell me they have seven other cases like her in the emergency room right now, all from this town. All brought in last night. People raving and hallucinating, with insanely fast heartbeats.”

All I could think was: had something gotten into the water? Most folks around here had well-water, so there was no reservoir to poison. But it was too early to make any assumptions. 

“We need to figure out what’s going on,” I said. “If no one knows what was used to drug Paulette and the others, it will keep happening.” 

“I was gonna tell you to quarantine while we figure it out, but if you want to help, come on over,” said Arnold. "We'll be picking brains, not berries."

“Right,” I said. “I’ll be on my way.” We hung up.

I was still lacing my boots when I glanced up at the flypaper once more. Dawn was breaking, and the dangling strip was being hit by the first ray of sunlight coming through the window. The light passed through its diaphanous surface, and it glowed golden, looking like a shred remaining from a Chinese lantern after a mercilessly windy night. Suddenly, as it was illuminated, the strangest thing happened: the presumably dead flies stuck to the flypaper began to detach themselves and fly away. First one, next two, then a mass migration of at least fifty insects departed from the flypaper and began flitting about the room. The smarter ones flew out the windows before I could begin to fathom an explanation. It was as if I had just witnessed an entomological resurrection from the dead. The warmth of the light itself had summoned the tiny insect souls back from beyond the veil.  

The flypaper began to curl at the edges, recoiling from the light, shriveling into a tight vertical scroll. Mystified by the unusual properties the flypaper was displaying, I stepped forward and raised my hand to touch it. As the tip of my finger brushed against it, instead of a sticky surface, I found that the paper was brittle and dry. I withdrew my hand quickly. Had the light caused this? Who ever heard of photo-reactive flypaper? What was the point of flypaper that lost its adhesive ability and gave its victims an easy jailbreak? My thoughts swirled and I felt dizzy. With Paulette’s strange delirium of the night before and the flypaper that released its prey, it was as though a glass dome had been placed over the town and Andersville had become a cosmic testing facility for the likes of a trickster god. Uneasy, I walked to the door and pulled on my boots, half expecting the laces to hiss at me as I tied them.

All day I spent at Arnold’s farm. We researched hallucinogens, disease outbreaks that had caused insanity or delirium in the past, pathogens airborne and poisons untraceable. Ten times we were interrupted with calls from the local authorities. They respected Arnold, whose acres of strawberries and melons were a staple crop in the community, giving him practically baron status, and they kept him updated minute-to-minute on the local crisis. Ten times that day another person was found wandering down the dirt roads or through the cornfields, dazed and babbling nonsense. How many more unlucky folks in a similar state had wandered off into the thick forests that encroached on the town’s borders we could only speculate. School was shut down midday and families were urged to stay at home, watch their children’s behavior closely, and boil all water before drinking.  

By nightfall, we had investigated so many dead ends we were wearier than if we had spent the day in the fields. Arnold and his wife chopped up vegetables and pork and made a stew, which I downed gratefully, guzzling the savory broth as if I’d just come back from a desert vision quest.  

“Go straight home and don’t make any stops on the way,” Arnold said as he bid me good night at the door. “It’s not a night for runnin’ with the wolves.”

I stared out at my dusty car in the driveway, its long shadow tethered to Arnold’s house, lit by the cold blue moon above. “Don’t worry, I know how to act like a hermit.”

“I’m talking cloistered nun,” said Arnold, chuckling. 

“Nun role-playing...cool,” I said. We laughed.

“Well, good night.”

“Night!”

By the time I got back to Uncle Trevor’s house, the lights were off. It was later than I thought. Past eleven o’clock I had stayed at Arnold’s as we mulled over the facts and gaping abysses in our knowledge. I slunk into the house, but I shouldn’t have worried about waking my uncle. A bottle of brandy sat on the counter, half-drunk. Trevor was surely deep asleep. I turned on the light in the living room. To my surprise, another flypaper hung from the ceiling, again covered in flies. I supposed Trevor had noticed the withered paper this morning and replaced it. Now my curiosity was peaked. I had to touch the paper. Was it really sticky? And if so, what possible material could explain its daylight transformation, assuming this flypaper was the same type as before.  

Touching it, sure enough, the paper was sticky as pine sap. In fact, once my fingers had made contact, I discovered I could not detach them without using my second hand, getting that one stuck to the surface in the process. Having two hands stuck to the flypaper sounded disgusting. There wasn’t another inch I could take hold of without touching a plastered-flat fly.  

Better to pull down the entire structure than sacrifice my hand to the nasty sticky paper. I yanked my hand down, expecting the flypaper to tear off the ceiling. Instead, the string attached to the top of the flypaper turned out to be made of a stronger cord than I expected. It came down five inches, the cord extending out of a tiny drilled hole in the ceiling that I hadn’t noticed before. I was not satisfied, my finger still attached to the paper. With the second tug, the cord gave way another three inches, and I heard a drawn-out creaaaak. Looking up, I saw that pulling the flypaper had opened a square trap-door entrance in the ceiling, above which was dark.  

My eyes darted to Uncle Trevor’s bedroom. Had he heard the loud creak? Not a sound emerged from the room, not even a snore. I looked back at the hole in the ceiling. Having a trap door controlled by pulling on a strip of flypaper… the idea, though vile, was genius, especially if you didn’t want anyone up there. I knew that there were bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor of the house (no attic or basement), but something in my gut told me the floor layout didn’t account for the space up there. I stopped caring about keeping the flypaper intact; with a final jerk, my fingers were free from the sticky trap.

I grabbed the stool by the kitchen counter and placed it silently on the floor beneath the hole. I climbed onto it and steadied my balance by reaching my arms over the edge of the hole onto the floor of the secret cavity. With a deep breath, I heaved my torso and legs up and into the darkness. Luckily, the trap door did not close behind me so there was slight visibility. Enough for me to know that the space I was in, the size of a closet, was not a closet I had ever seen in the house before. But to discern more, I realized I would need more light.  

I dropped down from the secret room to the first floor of the house as noiselessly as I could, and went to my room for the flashlight, still packed in my suitcase. Then I hoisted myself up again. This time, I shone the flashlight on every wall of the compartment, confirming that there was no door besides the one that opened up in the floor. There was, however, a pull cord in this ceiling, too. Oh no, not another tier of secret door madness, I thought, and pulled it. A light flickered then brightened the room. I put my flashlight face-down on a table in front of me.  

Now that I could see the whole room at once, I realized I was in what appeared to be a mini laboratory. On the table were a variety of vials, pipettes, and labeled flasks with liquids within. Immediately I recognized Uncle Trevor’s shaky handwriting. It would have been easier to figure out what he had been working on if he had typed his labels, but so much for that. I began to scrutinize each sticker, hoping I would recognize bits and pieces of the jargon, if I even managed to make out the words themselves.

On one flask I could make out the words: Concentrate of Brugmansia. I racked my brain for a memory. Brugmanshwaaa?? It sounded like a scientific name, but biology class had failed me again. Not for the life of me could I remember a genus or phylum that was vaguely useful. 

A book on the corner of the table with a few sheets of paper shoved into it at random seemed like a logical item to investigate next. I opened it and quickly found the answers I needed: scrawled on the opening page of Trevor’s notes were the words: Brugmansia, pg. 215. On page two hundred and fifteen I found something that made my eyes bulge; Brugmansia was a nightshade-family species that contained alkaloids (basically plant hormones) which could be used as a poison or hallucinogen. On a post-it note on the page, Trevor had written: Brugmansia alkaloid concentrate + Blotting paper strips = Overnight Soak Formula for Flypaper. When dry, apply a light-sensitive adhesive bond and store in a dark place.

My eyes darted around the room. Now I noticed a multi-layer wire drying rack where rows and rows of wet strips of what appeared to be flypaper laid. Flypaper that was saturated with a hallucinogenic coating so potent it would rub off on flies’ legs like pollen… 

My mind flashed to recent memories at Arnold’s strawberry field- swatting flies so thick in the air I started to hold a grudge against Arnold for his oath to the environment to keep his fruit crop pesticide-free. I could imagine their spindly legs landing on the sweet, ripe fruit. I zoomed in on the image in my head; it looked like they were wiping their feet on a doormat as they danced on the tender berry skin. Suddenly, everything clicked. Trevor must have been handing out his doctored flypaper to everyone he knew in town (it was a small town, so that meant a good portion of the population). It was pest season, so he could pass it off as a favor to any desperate swatter-swinging housewife. The flies would land on the strips and get stuck overnight, giving their bodies time to absorb the delirium-inducing chemicals on the paper. Then, when freed in the morning, they would fly off to flit about the fields and deposit the chemicals on their feet on fruits and leaves. 

Paulette must have eaten those berries.

There wasn’t a moment to lose. Though it was the middle of the night, I could still hightail it around town and warn the citizens of Andersville to take down their flypaper before dawn! 

I turned off the light, grabbed my flashlight, and replaced the book how I thought I had found it. Climbing down from the secret room, I closed the trapdoor carefully and fed the flypaper cord back through the hole in the ceiling. I was out the door and in my car in seconds.

At Arnold’s house, I parked, ran up the stairs, and banged on the door. Arnold answered.

“What’s gotten into you, man?” Arnold said. “I told you to go straight home…It’s two in the morning!” 

“It’s the flies! The flies are poisoning the berries! Did my uncle give you any flypaper?”

“...Yes,” said Arnold, staring blankly. “Earlier this week. He had extra.”

“It’s acid flypaper! Well not exactly, but you get the idea. There’s a toxic plant, Bragnosia or something, and he’s using it to make some seriously evil juice! And then he lets strips of flypaper take a nice long bath in the juice and it’s all primed and ready to be hung in your house to attract flies, who go and hop all over town with the poison on their feet!”  

Arnold put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh! My wife is trying to get back to sleep! If you’re gonna talk crazy like Paulette, I will call an ambulance.”

I was shocked. “God, Arnold! You don’t believe me?”

He just blinked.

I looked at him bitterly. “Well I won’t waste your time then. Just one thing- I beg you- take down your flypaper and hide it in the basement, or the flies will escape!”

He shook his head sadly. “Dude, they can’t escape; it’s flypaper. Please go home.” He shut the door and I heard the bolt grind into place. 

I snorted, disgusted. I’d spent the day searching for solutions with him, and when I found a lead, he slammed the door in my face? It would be a long night at this rate. I had been driving for a few minutes past the strawberry fields which separated Arnold’s property from the neighbors when I heard sirens behind me. In the dark, I could make out police headlights blinking in the rearview mirror. I pulled over.  

As I rolled down the window, a police flashlight shone in my eyes. “Arnold suspects you’re infected with the local contagion. We have to take you in.” 

“I’m not infected with anything! I solved the mystery! It’s a poison contaminating the strawberry fields, spread by the flies! I can prove it to you. There’s a secret lab in my uncle’s house.”

“Right,” said the officer. “Strawberry Fields- that’s a Beatles’ song, isn’t it? What’s the next line? Ohhhh, I remember- Nothing is real. Meditate on that while I take you to the hospital.”

The sirens wailed. I sat in the back seat of the patrol car as we passed the strawberry fields. In vain, the plants tried to photosynthesize by moonlight.