Housefly (Short Fiction)
A fat housefly rested on the side of the industrial grade plastic dinner tray, its body heavy with its meal of fuzzy apple sauce and the decaying meat from an old pork chop bone. Howard felt a tinge of pity for the fly. The pork chop was exceedingly awful when it was fresh; it must be especially putrid now, several days old and covered in a velvety green mold. Notorious for their brief lifespans, Howard wondered if the bug would be feasting on him next or if luck would allow him to outlive it.
Feeling hungry himself, Howard extended his long liver-spotted fingers into a sleeve of crackers. The crinkle of the plastic reverberated across the otherwise silent room. He gazed out vacantly at his dirty surroundings as he ate the last of the food that was available to him in his care room. The room was similar to the crackers; bland, beige, and slowly crumbling. The power had gone out several days ago now, which granted the suite an even more desolate appearance.
In our appearance driven society, someone naïve may assume that more money and effort would be put into the decor of seniors care homes, but Howard knew better. Why put effort into maintaining what is essentially a holding cell? In another life, Howard was a painter — mostly landscapes, and the occasional tasteful nude — but now that he was on his way out, he noticed no one cared about his opinions on much, let alone his opinions on the aesthetics of the care home. The appearance of the room was the least of his concerns these days though. Now that the world was ending, it felt especially frivolous to care about such things. Yes, hello maintenance office… Could you please send someone over to hang up more tasteful wallpaper? ‘Mind the corpses in the hallway on your way over… Howard let out a small bemused chuckle at that thought. He did wish his television still worked though. Waiting for death in silence was so tedious.
Reaching between the ugly brown cushions of his recliner, Howard retrieved his secret metal flask and poured a splash of whiskey into a stained coffee mug. The care home’s corporate logo had long since faded from the side of the ceramic cup. Howard used to wonder how many now deceased residents had used this mug over the years. How many old cracked lips had sipped bitter coffee out of it… How many aching elderly bodies had sat in this chair… He used to hate the chair and found it garish before realizing that it was the only place that the bloody nurses wouldn’t snoop. He hated the nurses. Hated bring frail. And hated that when he needed them the most, they were always unavailable, nose deep in their cell phones. The only thing they seemed good at was sleuthing out contraband or chastising Howard for “inappropriate comments.” Howard was the one forced to live out his remaining days in this tacky retirement home because of a bum leg, and these women couldn’t even humour him with a smile? Occasionally he would fantasize about ending it all. Sure, he could use pills, or even the gun he kept tucked away, but neither felt dramatic enough. Not for someone like Howard, since he always enjoyed making a scene. No, his suicidal fantasy was to hang himself in the shower since apparently, you shit yourself when you die. “That would really give the nurses something to complain about…” Howard thought, laughing to himself once again. With his stiff leg though, Howard could barely stand let alone grab a stool, drag it to the bathroom, and then tie the rope around his neck. He didn’t even have a stool. Or rope! And one of the rickety kitchen chairs would never make it through the bathroom door. Howard was going to have to let this daydream stay a daydream. Stupid bloody nurses.
Over the past two years Howard found himself growing increasingly reliant on his son who would smuggle in contraband for him. Deep down he knew it was because his son wanted a higher position in the will; this made Howard even more disappointed in the idiot that he had raised. If he had any money for his kids, he certainly wouldn’t be stuck in a residential care home like this, with all of the other poor broke old saps. He traced his finger absentmindedly around an engravement on the flask, For Richer or Poorer. He couldn’t remember where the flask had come from, it was most likely a gift from his loser son, but very well could have been from his own wedding thirty years prior. Who knows. And honestly, who cares anymore.
At 89, he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to have a fucking drink if he wanted one. What, is one drink going to kill an old man? Howard chuckled slightly again as he realized he no longer needed to hide his drinking from anyone. Rather than placing the flask back in the chair’s cushion, he left it on the side table next to a stack of increasingly moldy dishes. He wondered if his disappointment of a son was safe, if he had made it out of the city, but quickly shut that out of his mind. Having an unknown number of hours left to live, he thought he should make an effort to ensure his final thoughts were pleasant, whenever they were to happen. He closed his eyes and pictured the one nurse he didn’t hate — the one with the big tits. Several moments later, Howard opened his eyes in disappointment and glanced at the door to his room, which he had barricaded shut with a chair from his kitchen table set a few days prior. The kitchen table set was another thing that confused him. Who needs a table in a room the size of a shoe box? It’s not like he left his recliner enough to need an entirely separate seating area. It felt like something that was added to gussy up the place for outsiders — to make his quote unquote family feel better about stashing him in a place like this. Not that they ever came to visit. Shit. Did the chair just move? He lifted the coffee cup to his leathery old lips and took another swig of whiskey.
The whiskey helped to steady him slightly, at least enough to give him the strength to get up out of the chair and to hobble towards the dresser which doubled as a stand for his out of commission TV. He pulled open a drawer and moved the organized row of argyle knee socks and briefs out of the way. Once his hand was deep into the stack of poly-blend undergarments, he could feel the cold metallic handle of the Winchester. Howard carefully retrieved the gun with both hands. He held it gingerly, as he couldn’t remember if it was already loaded or not. Howard had managed to smuggle it in when he first moved here — even though it was a relic from his short-lived military days, he knew the nurses would take it from him if they were to discover it. Although he knew that the chance of needing a weapon in a care home was low, it wasn’t zero. Howard prided himself in staying prepared. While he initially stashed the weapon should he need to fend off a robber or perhaps one of the pill-addled nurses, he was extremely relieved to have it as the hoard of zombies made their way through each level in the care home.
Howard hadn’t actually seen one of the zombies for himself, but once visitors stopped showing up, he knew something was amiss. A week after his last visitor — his good for nothing son — Howard noticed that fewer residents were congregating in the dining room. That gave him even more reason for concern, which was when Howard began to stash food. His rational was that if shit was going down, he wanted to at least live long enough to watch it happen. There was nothing about the zombie outbreak on the nightly news, but he figured they were probably trying to keep things under wraps, lest they cause a panic amongst the mentally weaker of the populace. His last trip to the dining room was the previous Monday. He decided to barricade himself in his room that Tuesday morning, once he began hearing moans from the hallways. He’d peer through the peephole occasionally to see if anything was happening, but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The moans must have been coming from within the neighbouring rooms. Shortly after he barricaded himself in, the power to his room had gone out. Howard’s room was at the end of a hallway which housed approximately twenty residents; he rationalized it would take the hoard of zombies roughly three days to work through everyone, provided they consumed each senior along their way. And why wouldn’t they? Zombies were notoriously hungry, much like the fat housefly that had since departed the dirty dinner tray. Sure, some of the fatter residents might slow the hoard down a bit, but Howard knew the zombies would make up for lost time getting through some of the frailer residents. It wasn’t the end he was hoping for, but Howard was grateful for the morbid entertainment that the anxiety of the situation provided.
Howard took his gun and walked towards the window. The fly, presumably the one that had eaten his leftovers, was now bashing itself repeatedly into the glass pane. Feeling an odd empathy for it, Howard opened the window and allowed it to escape. What, too good to eat this old man? Howard once again let out a small chuckle. He would have made a break for it like the fly if he could, but he knew that a three-story fall would turn his knees to dust. He held the Winchester up to the now fading rays of sunlight and opened the chamber. Four bullets. Probably not enough to take on the entire horde, but he’d have a better fighting chance with the gun that with two broken legs in the garden below his window. Sure, he had bouts of suicidal ideation, but being killed by a group of zombies wasn’t how he wanted to go out.
Howard clicked the chamber of the gun closed and released the safety. Gun in hand, he hobbled back across his tiny coffin of a room. Pushing with all of his strength, Howard positioned the recliner so that it was facing the door. He’d rather be watching television, but without any power, this was sure to provide more entertainment. Besides, how many people get to live long enough to watch the end of the world? As the moans grew closer and the chair barricading the door began to wiggle, Howard cocked his gun and took a deep breath of the acrid stench of death. Three for them, and one for me. At least the fly would get to die outside amongst the flowers.
Author Bio:
Ashley Good is a writer and independent filmmaker from British Columbia. While most of her projects are comedic, she occasionally likes to exercise her darker writing muscles through irreverent and horror-adjacent short fiction and films. Ashley is also the director of the annual Foggy Isle Film Festival, based out of Victoria BC. To learn more about her work, visit ashleygood.ca.
