The Ephemeral Life of a Fly

When the man awoke that morning the sun was birthing bright upon the horizon, and its sparkling, pink rays streamed through a gap in the curtains and onto his bed, where it settled upon his face like a warm, soft hand. He smiled and contemplated how strange and beautiful it was to wake up and for a few infinite moments, not know where he was or, indeed, who he was, and he rested with the riddle of this echoing quietly within his being. The man gathered the woollen blankets around him to form a soft, warm cocoon, and he nestled within its darkness content to rest as a nobody who knew nothing.

After a long, fecund spell the man began to stir blindly within his shell, the steaming warmth of his cocoon initiating a sequence of wriggles that propelled him slowly, steadily up and out, as each layer of his gestation was peeled away and discarded like snake skins upon the floor. When it was done the man rested, his chest heaving, his dimpled flesh warm and pink and soft. He raised his face to the light and his eyes slowly opened to receive it, before closing again in a reflex that shielded them from the sun’s, toasty rays.

The man emerged from his chrysalis to sit wobbling on the bed’s edge, and he rubbed his eyes before ripping the scaly, transparent skin from them so he could better see the objects within the room. One of the flaps became stuck to his finger as he tried shaking them off. The man flicked at his finger tips in a crescendo of disgust until the weird little, bloody avulsions were finally loosed from his hands to lie crumpled up in a slimy tier upon the floor. He tilted then slowly rotated his head around, taking in the scope of this shiny, new world. Everything looked familiar but somehow different, as if lit up from below by a warm, translucent light.

The man walked slowly around his bedroom, touching and marvelling at things he had owned for years and had half forgotten - objects he had long ceased to celebrate after their initial lustre was covered over by dust, familiarity and neglect. He picked up a small, wooden buddha that was the centrepiece of his alter. He had brought it at a market in Thailand some twenty years before. Initially, it had served as a totem providing inspiration for his spiritual endeavours. But as the years passed it went the way of all the items on the alter, serving more as kitschy memorabilia than inspiring reminders of the challenges, and ultimate majesty of the quest. How had he ceased to notice the calm, beatific smile on the buddha’s face, or how he was surrounded by gemstones that encircled him like radiant monks testifying to the Glories of Nirvana. He couldn’t remember placing them there, nor could he, at that moment, remember much of anything. It felt good to not know, and he was in no hurry to have it all come screaming back to him.

The man put the buddha down and picked up a small, wooden rod and absently traced it around the rim of a rotund, Tibetan bowl. It was a bright, emerald green with esoteric inscriptions decorating its steely veneer. It made the sound of a full moon at midnight, and it drew from his eyes quiet, dangling tears that stung the raw flesh as they fell.

It was then he noticed, sitting on the bedroom table, a small, white envelope. The man sniffed as he walked to it and opened it up. Inside was an ivory coloured card embossed with a wavy border of sparkling gold. It looked to him like some kind of invitation, like he had seen over the years on cards requesting his attendance at various weddings and birthday parties - most of which he never attended. The card read:

Welcome To The World!

You have One Day To Live,

Make it count.

Your last Day Will Include A Road trip. I Will See You There:

1324 Wackkleblurry Drive,

Dolphin Point, 6895.

The man hunkered down in an awkward karate stance, his knees bent, his elbows thrust forwards and armed with tight hands ready to deliver a flurry of lethal chops. He shuffled around the room like this until it was obvious he was alone. Who the hell had broken into his home and carefully and quietly placed the envelope on the table? His mind conjured up a frothing river of alarm and discontent in the light of the card's information. Fair enough, though, given the circumstances. One day to live! The man was bummed out, hanging his head and thinking how much happier he was when he was a nobody who knew nothing.

The man picked up the card again and regarded it for a long, solemn time. It had been a strange day already and, what the hell, it was going to get a lot stranger wether he stayed where he was - and what choice did he really have? - or follow the cards instructions and drive down to Dolphin Point. Dolphin Point was a favourite seaside destination for the cities population, and a place he had stubbornly avoided, thus far. He didn’t need to participate, as his friends and work colleagues did, in the cheery, “me time” scenario that compelled them towards it like twittering lemmings to a cliff. Perhaps, he now considered, he had been a bit hasty and regretted not giving it a go at least once! The man was a bit of a loner, truth be told, and he found himself wishing he had made more of an effort to find a partner and raise a big, happy family.

Dying alone sucked!

How much better it could have been if he had grasped with both hands the opportunities that had been gifted to him - chances he had briefly considered before discarding like a petulant child, leaving them to wither and rot by life's, bumpy roadside.

He packed his things into a back pack, filled a water bottle, grabbed his keys of its hook, and hopped in his car. It was about a six and half hour drive to Dolphin Point. He started it up, over-revved it a little, then programmed his phone to direct him to the address given on the card.

‘Head east on woofle street for seven kilometres’ said the Maps G.P.S. function. ‘Then, stay left and merge onto route 52.’

The man did as he was told.

He wondered if he was doing the right thing.

The day had started so wonderfully, with the dawn’s light melting him out from his cocoon - and the feeling of it like he had been born again into a world of rapturous Beauty and Light.

‘Where the hell had that gone,’ he wondered. Now he was driving, and so soon after, frightened and alone to a place he had never been to rendezvous with a person he had never met - a mysterious entity that seemed happy to inform him of his impending demise, possibly at their own, bloody hands. The man considered this, before planting his foot down on the accelerator and hitting 110 on the gauge.

‘In six hundred metres take a left turn onto waffle street.’

The man slowed down and turned as he was told.

‘Continue on waffle street for four kilometres, then merge left onto wiffle drive...’

‘This is getting oddly repetitive,’ thought the man, ‘first “woofle,” then “waffle,” and now “wiffle”. Something was amiss, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Then it hit him that he had never heard of any of these streets. There was a “floofalle” lane but that didn’t begin with a “w” and was situated in Lobster Point, a posh suburb ten klicks east of where he lived.

The man slowed and merged left onto wiffle drive.

Then, as he sped along, he noticed people dancing in the sky. Amazing! He checked his rear mirror as if this tiny piece of glass could somehow divulge an alternate perspective to what was going on. The sky dancers were dressed, even the men, in colourful, jokey leotards and he watched slack-jawed as they described the most beautiful patterns through the air. They twirled, twisted and flung each other about with a raw, almost comical grace - he had never seen anything quite as daring and quite as beautiful.

‘In two hundred metres take a right into wookle wynd, and continue on for four hundred and thirty kilometres.’ ‘Hallelujah,’ thought the man, ‘now we’re getting somewhere!’

The man did as he was told and continued on down wookle wynd for what felt like an eternity, as the car purred along eating up the straights and gliding around the dreamy, subtle curves. Wookle wynd was a long, thin road spotted with muddy pot holes filled to the brim from a recent rain. It had very few houses along it, but was bordered by an avenue of flowering trees and beyond them, wide expanses of green, rolling hills.

After he had been driving for a long, indeterminate amount of time, the man pulled over into a roadhouse with pretty pink and green neon lights announcing he had arrived at "Jiggy Joe's, Rodeo and Steak House." The man was tired from all the day's taxing kerfuffle and even a little hungry - though his stomach was still busing squelching around puddles of acidic fear and trepidation. The man wondered why he didn't call the police, or simply wait the day out in a motel room along the way. It was like he was impelled helplessy forward by something much bigger and grander than him - a macabre, cosmic ballett that danced him onwards like a puppet on a string.

When the man had eaten his fill, he emerged from the diner wiping his mouth with a napkin and looking up at a watery sun. He was relieved to see there wern't any flying cow's wearing Stetson hats performing a line dance up there. He felt much better and even allowed himself the comfort of a little radio time. He kicked the engine over and tuned the radio to the “Creepy Midnight Country Hoedown”, a program that played at random times during the day and one - given the specifics within its title - that had never been heard to play after 8 p.m. He laughed and tapped his foot, as one of his favourite Sudsy Hoggins songs came on.

“We all gunna stay up late,

and eviscerate by a moonlit gate.

But I swear by God’s midnight creep,

I’ve never killed a cow or sheep.

Cos baby, you don’t like that tuuuune,

singing, blood so red under a pearly moon,

blood so red under a pearly moooon.”

Sudsy Hoggins sure knew how to write a love ballad, thought the man. The G.P.S. broke the spell with its latest directional advice - it sounded a bit put out at it's sudden call to duty after such a long, sweet rest. The man spat in sympathetic accord, ‘sheeeit!’ - feeling a little downcast himself after being so high with the quiet cruising and the Sudsy song and all. He thought again how nice it had been when he was a nobody who knew nothing. Now, he was a somebody who knew way too much about not much at all! But that didn’t keep score with the rats in the barn, or with the wolves at the door, no sir no way no how!!

The man braked and took a hard left on wepple, a slide right onto whakkle and last, but by no means least, he was advised into merging left onto woofungle terrace, a route that slowed him down to a smooth coast into wackkleblurry drive.

‘You have arrived at your destination’ announced the G.P.S.

The man slowed to a crawl but continued on down wackkleblurry drive, mesmerised by all that had gone before and a little afraid to come to a final halt. By now he had forgotten exactly why he was driving to a place he had never been, to meet someone he had never met. A someone who seemed hell-bent on taking him out. Why was it his last day and why did a person he had never met want to kill him? It had been a very strange day, indeed, with him emerging at dawn from a cocoon and finding a card informing him he had but hours to live, and the same card summoning him on a very doomed, inauspicious road trip. He had seen people dancing in the sky - which was a highlight - but he had been so confused by all these strange street names, names that fogged up his head like an afternoon of high school algebra. He thought it could only get odder, weirder and much more odder from here. What if he was killed - if he stumbled upon some other dark, spooky place he had never been to meet another person he had never met.

The man hoped this other person he’d never met, if he did bump into them in a place he had never been to, didn’t want to kill him - like the maniac he had been inexplicably speeding towards for the last five, plus hours.

It was then the man fully discerned that he had arrived. He carefully U-turned around on wackkleblurry drive and stopped outside a small, wooden house. It had huge, creeper-infested bushes blocking out the light seeping from large, bay windows. It was getting dark and misty rain twinkled down to cover everything with a sullen, slippery sheen. The G.P.S. repeated that he had arrived at his destination : 1324 Wackkleblurry drive. It sounded proud and even a little smug. He went to a large, wooden door and rang the bell. A person he had never met greeted him warmly.

‘Hello’ said the man, ‘nice bit of rain you’ve been having. I have a few questions, if you don't mind. Why exactly is this my last day, and why do you want to kill me? he enquired.

The woman was middle aged and didn’t look like a killer. The man wondered if he was at the right place, and if she was the person he had never met who the card had lured him into meeting. The woman was middle aged and the more he looked at her, the more she looked like a killer.

‘Did you see all those ballerinas dancing in the sky?’ She asked, a smile, turned up to one side, sliding around like a tiny eel on her face.

‘Yes' he replied, relieved to see any kind of a smile at all, 'and this morning I wriggled out of a cocoon and was born again into a world of rapturous Love and Light.’

‘Sweet,’ she said, ‘hey, do you know how to change a tyre? I’ve been invited to a place I’ve never been to meet a person I’ve never met. Oh, and I suspect they might try to kill me.’

The man laughed. He changed her tyre as he hummed another sweet, old timey Sudsy tune. He was too busy whistling and singing away to notice as she came up behind him with a tyre lever.

If you look up into a dawn sky you might see him grooving amidst the clouds like a funky, if slightly portly ballerina.

That fella sure has some bonafide disco moves!

The woman got another flat on her way to a place she has never been to meet...let’s just conclude by saying she's had a hard life and couldn’t afford ballet lessons, and that she was a homebody who didn’t much like travelling out of town.

So it’s not her fault. What happened, I mean. Well not entirely, anyway...

But more about that another time. Probably best if you read it in a familiar place surrounded by people you know and trust.

Just saying...