Men and Flies

Maby Gaby was not a happy man.

He was a perpetually disturbed and a uniquely depressed patient of a burdensome life that had recently decreed a grave condition upon him, the symptoms of which had rendered him both – mindless and jobless.

The day still haunted him.

It was a Friday evening when the company representatives had summoned him like a djinni from the wishing lamp that was Maby’s diminutive cubicle. As Maby bustled into the room, a broken lamp hanging on a noose, three broken pencils and crumpled pieces of papers desolately grinned back at him. The room was blindingly floodlit by an assaulting barrage of the sun’s fearsome beams that weaved their ways through the patchy windows, trampled over the unplastered walls and plummeted against the dust motes, before hauntingly charging into Maby’s eyes.

Maby settled himself in front of his grumpy boss – Mr. Deckard Johnson. Mr. Deckard Johnson was a man of very few words, yet those little words were enough to strip a poor man of his joy. He wore a black shirt, and Maby felt pity for the ill-fated buttons. Superfluous layers of fat protruded from his belly and silently carved a foot-long perimeter around him, and any living entity that tried to breach that perimeter was met by the unfazed and relentless gaze of his haunting bloodshot eyes. With winter-white wafer-thin hair drooping on his face, Mr. Deckard Johnson bore the gnarly smile of pure wickedness when he relieved Maby from his work.

This was seven weeks ago.

Since then, it was Maby’s fifty-six-year-old housemaid Dolphinwood who suffered the repercussions for Deckard Johnson’s acts. During the first week, she noticed the floor be enigmatically covered in fish bones, tuna cans and broken milk glasses. By the third week, the rats had emerged with their looming presence from their holes and decided to enjoy their feast. By the seventh week, the cockroaches joined the party, but only on the weekends. The ants were invited, but it seemed to Dolphinwood that with the cockroaches on weekends and the rats on weekdays, the schedule was too packed to accommodate for more guests.

Meanwhile, as the weeks had progressed, Maby had retreated into the comfort of his bed. He refused to awaken himself even after his seventh alarm for twelve in the afternoon had bludgeoned the neighborhood with its cacophonous tune. Maby would sleep past the ringing doorbells and the concerned voicemails.

Dolphinwood had started accepting this new and disimproved version of Maby. She knew he kept his key under the doorknob and would promptly enter his house to sort out his mails and clean his house to a certain degree of cleanliness, ensuring that she did not leave the house to a full degree of cleanliness. The only reason she was still leaving his house clean to a certain degree of cleanliness was because Dolphinwood felt pity for Maby, who couldn’t afford to pay her or anyone anymore. Maby had forgotten that Dolphinwood required payments, and Dolphinwood did not bother to inform Maby. She pitied him and made sure that her former recruiter wasn’t left as an offering to those rats and cockroaches that had seized his territory.

Even while Dolphinwood suffered these consequences, there was one thing she refused to do. She drew a thick line at that task. She refused to enter the dragon’s chamber that Maby dared to call his fridge.

On one very random morning, seven weeks after being fired, Maby noticed a stench wafting in his kitchen. A smell that spoke of imminent danger. Spontaneously, it dawned upon Maby that he had not opened his fridge since he was fired. It also loomed upon him that he needed to have his fridge cleaned. But he refused to open it. The stench was enough to paint the picture of deathly hallows on the other side of that wretched door. Miraculously, the image of Dolphinwood in the drapes of a Roman Knight riding a horse hewed through Maby’s mind. There stood his savior – the gracious Dolphinwood. Maby knew that to ask Dolphinwood to open the fridge and clean it directly was too barbaric for her health and would portray Maby in an extremely unremorseful light, so he plucked a piece of paper, scribbled ‘PLEASE CLEAN’ across it, and neatly stuck it with dried saliva against the door. She would have to open it, then.

The day passed, and Maby persevered, somehow. The next day, he returned downstairs and confronted his fridge. He noticed something odd. At first, Maby took the incredibly illegible markings on the note next to his note as signs of an interstellar invasion, but upon careful re-consideration, Maby was unhappy to decode the message as a sad ‘NO!’.

Maby was flabbergasted. It was then that Maby remembered what his father had taught him.

Maby’s father had iterated that a man is like a fly – flies will hover around the leftovers, and even when the window is left ajar for them to leave, they will push this opportunity aside with an insouciant shrug, acting as if they have dementia and they won’t leave. Just like men. Why? Because a fly and a man share a very important quality – persistence. This persistence is broken only in the presence of a swat. A swat encourages the flies and the men to think differently. It wheedles them to give up on their persistence. But when the swat disappears (even if just for a second), the flies return. And so do men.

Maby saw no swat, and so he clenched his fist in resolve. For the first time since he was fired, Maby galloped to the nearest supermarket and used the last remaining bills in his wallet to buy eggs and a loaf of bread. He returned home and left it on top of the fridge with a new note that read ‘PLEASE, DEAR DOLPHINWOOD, PUT THESE EGGS AND BREAD INSIDE THE FRIDGE. KINDLY CONSIDER CLEANING IT TOO, PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE.’

Maby went back to his bed.

The next day he returned to find the egg and the bread missing. He was then overhauled by the problem that the poor chap Schrodinger had mercilessly thrust upon his cat. Just like the lunatic Schrodinger had no way to tell whether his cat inside the box was dead or alive, Maby had no way to know if the egg and bread were inside the fridge or not. What if this was an elaborative plan by Dolphinwood to coerce Maby into opening his fridge? If Maby opened his fridge, he knew he wouldn’t be able to resist cleaning it. The smell would inveigle him into its bidding. Luckily for Maby, he found an answer to his problem inside his dustbin.

The eggs and the bread had been slaughtered and disposed off in the dustbin. Rage consumed Maby. The little elves of ecstasy that had danced around his mind were now being huddled back into their burrows. He stuffed his dustbin with tissue paper so Dolphinwood wouldn’t throw his stuff away again. He ran back to the supermarket and gawked at his empty wallet when he was asked to pay for his eggs and bread. Maby tried to please the urgency with the manager, asking to have his account put on a ledger, but the manager angrily swatted him away.

Maby needed a job.

Maby knew how to get a job.

Maby returned home and walked to his closet, opening the dusty chambers of hell to rummage for his guitar. He went to the nearest bar near him that his friend owned and worked out a deal with his friend to earn twenty-two dollars per hour for every hour that Maby played at the bar. Maby needed to have his fridge cleaned, so he spent the next five hours playing music for the bar, collected his cash, dashed off to the nearest supermarket and returned home victorious with a polythene bag carrying eggs and a loaf of bread.

He placed it on top of the fridge with another note ‘PLEASE, DEAR DOLPHINWOOD, PUT THESE EGGS AND BREAD INSIDE THE FRIDGE. KINDLY CONSIDER CLEANING IT TOO, PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE. ON A SIDENOTE, REFRAIN FROM PUTTING THEM IN THE DUSTBIN. YOU MIGHT NOTICE THAT THE DUSTBIN IS FULL.’

The next day, the bag had disappeared. Had Maby won? Maby carefully plodded to his dustbin and, with a curious gaze, discovered his dustbin full of his discarded tissue papers. Where were his eggs and bread? Were they inside the fridge? What if this was another trick? Maby clapped his hands and began rummaging through his house to confirm that the polythene bag had not been abandoned somewhere and left alone in its privacy. To Maby’s dismay, he found the bag inside the dustbin in his living room. Maby let out a roar as loud as the soldiers who fought for Valhalla, and he vehemently stuffed his dustbin in the living room with tissue paper.

He ran back to his friend’s bar, performed for a few hours, and then hurdled back to the supermarket.

This went on for four more weeks.

Each day Maby would find his bag of eggs and loaf at a different place in the house. But Maby’s battle with Dolphinwood had re-invigorated a sense of purpose in his callous body. As Maby began waiting for hours in front of the fridge, craving for any spots, his warm smile and the curiosity in his eyes had returned. He had started to notice that his surroundings were greener since the day he was fired. There was more calmness in the breeze. He even enjoyed playing music at the bar, and he had started playing music at the bar for his own pleasure. He had started enjoying life again. His battle with Dolphinwood had given him meaning again.

Then, on the fifteenth week since Maby’s firing, the battle suddenly stopped. At first, Maby credited it to a holiday or sickness that had brought forth this ceasefire, but the battleground remained at ceasefire for another three weeks. The eggs and the bread went nowhere and were beginning to crowd on top of the fridge like a group of angry spectators at the football stadium waiting for the game to resume. Maby grew tired of waiting in disappointment for the battle to resume. He did not want it to be over. He didn’t know what to do without it.

Soon, he started waking up early and even recalled the hidden key he kept under his doormat to his own side. He longed to hear Dolphinwood chuckle outside his door, or to just get a glimpse of Dolphinwood. When Dolphinwood did not appear at Maby’s door, Maby realized that the ceasefire existed only because Dolphinwood herself had gone missing.

So, in the eighteenth week since he was fired, Maby began his search for Dolphinwood. He scrambled for the telephone records, hunting for Dolphinwood’s number. Where had he gotten her number from? He couldn’t remember. It was a friend, maybe? Yes! Maby remembered! As soon as he did, a cloud thundering with tension and warning appeared to form right above his head. Maby had received Dolphinwood’s number from his boss. The boss who had fired him. From work.

The next day, Maby returned to the place he was fired from. The old place seemed familiar but strange, nonetheless. All this while, Maby thought that he missed watching the long line of desks and hearing the pattering music of pens dropping, the printers clicking, the cubicles hissing…the music and comfort Maby sought from this place were absent. In the world of harmony that Maby sought in this place, there was now a monotonous tone of melancholy. It was almost as if Maby could sense the computers slurp the essence of soul out of every single entity trapped on the other side of those barricade-like cubicles.

Maby no longer wanted this.

Maby wanted his music. And he wanted to return to his battle with Dolphinwood. He had to.

Stopping outside Deckard Johnson’s cabin, Maby’s mind momentarily meandered through a quivering wall of shame before Maby’s new-found spirit saw the wall be burned down by roses of glee. Maby laughed out his worries, and knocked against Deckard Johnson’s cabin, who boomingly and unwillingly invited Maby in.

“You,” Deckard Johnson exclaimed abhorrently, just as Maby walked in.

“Me,” Maby replied, adjourning a smile out of courtesy.

“What brings you here?”

“I need Dolphinwood’s number.”

“Who is Dolphinwood?”

“She was a cleaner that you recommended. I think she used to work for you before.”

“Dolphinwood!” Deckard Johnson puffed, “That poor lady! How could I forget? I’ve never met a kinder lady than her. It is tragic what happened to her.”

“What happened to her?” Maby said, concerned and drawing himself closer to Deckard Johnson’s desk.

“Oh, you haven’t heard. Well, she passed away a few weeks back. I have her family’s number if you want. You know, I was invited to her funeral. Her family mentioned you. I was surprised, but they said that Dolphinwood mentioned you a lot. Something to do with a fridge. Sounded bonkers to me,” said Deckard Johnson solemnly. “Her family said that she came to your house even when she wasn’t being paid. They said she weirdly enjoyed it. ‘It reminded her of a son she could never have’ they had said. Anyways, here’s their number.”

Maby grabbed the piece of paper that Deckard Johnson passed and left the office.

As Maby walked to his home, the ubiquitous susurration of the leaves sounded like the unceasing din of clanging metals amidst the dreary, murky silence that had formed around him. The barrels of his heart were on a shooting spree. The heart-wrenching massacre of the nerves was a terrifying sight for the tottering brain to behold. Mangled bullets of agony pierced through his flesh to wrap him in a state of paralyzed fright and sorrow.

Not a bird chirping; not a leaf moving; not a life living.

There was just emptiness all around Maby.

He felt a familiar hand emerge from the abyss to devour him, but he couldn’t return to it. Not anymore. Dolphinwood pitied Maby, but he did not want to pity himself anymore.

Maby wanted to live again. He had to break free from these shackles.

As the door to his house closed behind him, Maby let the tears flow. He walked with a heavy heart towards his fridge, watching the cascade of notes that Dolphinwood and he had left on the fridge door. Dolphinwood’s loud ‘NO!’ slapped and pulled Maby away from the encroaching darkness.

With a heavy sigh, Maby opened the door back into the world of light.