Flies Away Home

Flies Away Home

We were told not to worry; the flesh-eating flies do not eat you if you are alive. This made us worry more—less about the flies, more about what was attracting over 100 over them into our house.
         
A block from the beach is not exactly a place for a house meant to punish—but that is what me and my three roommates felt like as the walls liquefied under tape and dripped white down our pictures, the ants infested everything but our fridge (which now hosted our milk, bread, shampoos, nice clothes, and lease) and the 5 plugs in the house that decided, on a whim, whether or not they wanted to power your lamp or explode your computer.
         
The homeowner, a sweet gentle lady whose blue eyeliner wrinkled with her eyelids in a cracked, stained-glass kind of way, suggested we move into her other house for a night while she set off the bug “Bomb”. She said we would have to make sure the “cloud” did not hit any unopened food or valuables, since it left a “white filmy excess” on everything—literally.
         
The idea of filling the place we would be calling home for three months with toxic waste and “white filmy excess” within the first 24 hours was enough convincing for me and my roommates. No bomb.
         
It’s been 5 weeks. The ants still attack every crumb of food left on the table, and seem to grow larger every time they are sprayed with bug spray. We have become used to them, and gradually our lease, our clothing, and our toiletries have come out of the fridge and onto the shelves and bureaus. We have become used to telling waitresses not to apologize when an ant skitters across our table at dinner—it probably came from our shirt. We are no longer alarmed at stepping out of the shower and watching the poppy-seed carcasses float down the drain. We make good use of flashlights, and pray every night that the last working plug does not explode the television. And we no longer have to make embarrassed excuses to our visitors about the flesh-eating flies—they are gone.
         
Apparently, the host has been dried up.