The Buzzing Vigil
by J. K. Harris
Arthur's body felt like it had been filled with wet sand. Five consecutive twelve-hour shifts at the warehouse, each one bleeding into the next, had reduced him to something barely human—a shambling collection of aches and desperate thoughts of his bed. When he finally pushed open his apartment door at 11:47 PM, the only thing between him and oblivion was the thirty seconds it would take to cross the living room, stumble down the hall, and collapse.
He didn't bother with the lights. He didn't brush his teeth. His clothes formed a trail from doorway to bedside, and when his head finally met the pillow, the relief was so profound it was almost spiritual. The mattress seemed to embrace him, pulling him down into its depths. His muscles unclenched one by one, like a chain of dominoes falling into relaxation. His mind, which had been looping the same three anxious thoughts for days, went blessedly quiet.
He was sinking. Falling. The darkness behind his eyelids deepened to velvet black, and his breathing slowed to the rhythm of sleep.
Bzzzz.
The sound was so faint he almost missed it—a distant, high-pitched whine that could have been anything. A mosquito outside. The building's heating system. His imagination. Arthur's eyes flickered but didn't open. He was too far gone, too close to sleep to be pulled back by something so small.
Silence returned, and with it, the beautiful descent into unconsciousness. His jaw went slack. His fingers uncurled.
Bzz-bzz-BZZZZT.
His eyes snapped open.
The sound had been right there, inches from his ear, loud enough to feel like an invasion. Arthur lay perfectly still in the darkness, every muscle suddenly tense, listening with the intensity of a prey animal. The room was silent except for the distant hum of traffic outside and his own breathing, which had gone shallow and quick.
Just your imagination, he told himself. You're so tired you're hearing things. Go back to sleep.
He closed his eyes. Waited. Nothing.
See? Nothing.
He let out a long breath and willed his body to relax. Sleep was still there, just out of reach. He could feel it waiting for him. All he had to do was stop thinking, stop listening, and let himself—
The fly landed on his forehead.
He felt it immediately—the infinitesimal weight, the prickling sensation of tiny legs on his skin. Arthur's hand shot up on pure instinct, slapping himself in the face hard enough to sting. The fly buzzed away in the darkness, and Arthur sat up, breathing hard, his palm pressed against his forehead as if he could still feel it there.
"No," he said aloud to the empty room. "No, no, no."
He fumbled for the lamp switch. Light exploded across the room, harsh and white, and he squinted against it, scanning the walls, the ceiling, the air itself for any sign of movement. Nothing. The room was perfectly still, innocent, empty.
Arthur sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes. His exhaustion had taken on a new dimension now—not just physical fatigue but a kind of desperate, cornered feeling. He needed sleep. His body was screaming for it. But he was listening now, truly listening, and he knew with absolute certainty that the fly was still in the room.
He waited, counting slowly to sixty. Nothing moved. No sound came.
"Okay," he whispered. "Okay, maybe it flew out. Maybe it's gone."
He turned off the lamp. Lay back down. Closed his eyes.
Bzzzzzzzzzz.
"GOD DAMN IT!"
The lamp went back on. Arthur was on his feet now, a pillow clutched in both hands like a weapon. He stood in the center of his bedroom in his boxers, head swiveling, searching for his enemy. There—no, just a shadow. There—no, a piece of lint. Where was it? Where was the goddamn thing?
He waited, pillow raised, ready to strike. His arms began to tremble from holding the position. Nothing appeared. After two full minutes, he lowered the pillow, clicked off the lamp, and got back into bed.
The buzzing started before his head touched the pillow.
This time, Arthur didn't hesitate. Light on. He grabbed a magazine from his nightstand—some cooking publication he'd never read—and rolled it into a tight cylinder. He moved slowly now, deliberately, scanning every surface. There. THERE. A tiny black speck on the wall above his dresser.
He crept forward, magazine raised, barely breathing. The speck didn't move. Closer. Closer. When he was within range, he struck with all his strength, the magazine hitting the wall with a satisfying THWAP that surely would have ended any fly foolish enough to be there.
He pulled the magazine back. The wall was unmarked. No smear. No body. No fly.
From directly beside his left ear: Bzzzz.
Arthur spun, swinging wildly, hitting only air. The fly was already gone, and he was standing in his bedroom at one in the morning, breathing hard, wielding a rolled-up cooking magazine at nothing.
This continued. On and on. Off, on. Hunt, strike, miss. Lie down, wait, buzz. Each time he got close to killing it, the fly seemed to sense him and vanish. Each time he gave up and tried to sleep, it returned to torture him with that maddening, oscillating drone that seemed to be designed by evolution specifically to drive humans insane.
By 1:45 AM, Arthur was no longer fully rational. His eyes were bloodshot and wild. His hair stood up at odd angles from running his hands through it. He'd stopped moving carefully and was now lurching around his bedroom like a madman, swinging the magazine at shadows, at sounds, at the general concept of flies.
And then, miracle of miracles, he saw it. Truly saw it. The fly was sitting on the wall, bold as brass, grooming its front legs with what Arthur could only interpret as smug satisfaction.
He didn't think. He didn't plan. He lunged with the magazine, swinging with every ounce of rage and exhaustion in his body, and connected not with the wall but with the lamp on his nightstand.
The lightbulb exploded with a sharp POP and a shower of glass. The room plunged into absolute darkness. The smell of ozone filled the air, and Arthur heard the delicate tinkle of glass shards settling on his floor, his bed, everywhere.
He stood frozen, the magazine still clutched in his white-knuckled hands, breathing so hard it was almost sobbing. The darkness was complete. Silent. Heavy.
And then, from somewhere near the window, faint but unmistakable: bzzzz.
The sound that came out of Arthur was not quite a laugh and not quite a scream. It was the sound of a man who had been broken by something weighing less than a gram.
He didn't bother cleaning up the glass. What was the point? He dropped the magazine on the floor and crawled back into bed like a wounded animal returning to its den. He pulled the blankets up and over his head completely, cocooning himself in fabric and darkness and defeat.
Under the covers, the world became muffled and close. He could hear his own breathing, rapid and shallow. He could feel his pulse in his temples. And yes, very faintly, he could still hear it—that distant, infuriating buzz, circling his room like a victory lap.
Arthur lay rigid, eyes wide open in the darkness under the blankets, as minute after minute ticked by. He didn't move. He didn't sleep. He simply endured.
The grey light of dawn eventually filtered through the curtains and, presumably, through the layers of blanket covering Arthur's head. By then, he'd been lying in the same position for over four hours, listening to his tormentor patrol the airspace above him.
When his alarm went off at 6:00 AM, signaling time to get ready for another twelve-hour shift, Arthur didn't move. He lay there, still covered, still defeated, contemplating the cosmic injustice of being bested by an insect with a brain the size of a poppy seed.
Somewhere in the room, probably on his ceiling, the fly rested, satisfied, having won the night.
