the hell was he afraid of? A fly? Seriously? The things didn’t bite, at least not these little things. It wasn’t one of those big horse fly things, those big, fat, blue-black, hairy little monsters. Those didn’t usually show up until summer, which was still a couple of months off. This was just a stupid little fly … and a weirdly-colored one, at that. He noticed the unusual color of the fly as it finally landed upon his desk, almost mocking him by crawling across the fresh white page of his report.
Come on, the fly seemed to be taunting him. Swat me. I dare you. I’m just going to make an even bigger mess of your paperwork than the last little guy. You thought that little gnat made a mess? Just think how big of a splat I’m going to make if you smash me! A big, lumpy, yellow-green, snot-like mess of bug guts and…
Whack! James swung at the fly on the desk. So what if he had to start his report over again? He was only an hour or so along, and it wasn’t like he had anything else going on. But as he lifted the swatter from his page, he saw that the page was clean. A buzzing to his left informed him that the fly had escaped his swing somehow. How embarrassing, to miss a clean, easy shot like that when he had so skillfully smacked it right out of the air a few moments beforehand. He was sure of it now. This fly had to go, no mercy, no sport, just kill it.
He missed a couple of times, but on the third swing, he finally nailed the fly again in mid-air. It bounced off the closed window blinds and landed upon the desk. He finished it off with a firm downward slash of the swatter, wielding it almost like a samurai sword, and he turned it into a goopy, nasty splat on a corner of the desk before it could recover and zip away again. He scooted the trash can over, scraped the remains of the fly off the edge of the desk with the edge of the swatter, and then kicked the wastebasket back under the desk. James grabbed a spray can of window cleaner and a roll of paper towels, tore off a square, folded it neatly, and cleaned the remaining bug-smear from the worn and chewed-up old desk. He added one more mark to the back of his report, and then settled into his chair again, tipping back his mug of coffee that had now turned cool and somewhat gross.
He waited for almost thirty minutes for the next insect to appear. Outside, he could see a few moths bumping against the glass as they sought the glare of the ceiling light inside his shack. A thin cluster of bugs of assorted sizes swirling around the lights on the pole above the diesel generator. He kept the swatter in one hand, tapping it upon his shoe impatiently as he sat with his ankle propped upon his knee.
Eventually, he started to space out. His thoughts drifted away from the bug hunt and off to other things: repairs he needed to make to his truck, things he wanted to change with his house, and the cute girl that his friend was trying to send his way by putting in a good word for him. It wasn’t long before those wandering thoughts started to turn into something bordering upon sleep. It was when he actually caught his head lolling forward with a half-snore escaping his lips that he sat upright abruptly, then stood. He shook his head vigorously, slapped his cheeks a few times, and took the lid off his coffee cup. He tossed out the cold, stale coffee and set about the task of brewing a fresh pot.
It was too damned early in the shift for him to be nodding off like this. Normally, it wasn’t a problem for him to stay up all night on a graveyard shift, even at this ridiculously boring post. But while he was trying to sleep during daylight hours, the rest of the world lived on, and they were annoyingly noisy about it. His neighbor on one side had a piece-of-crap pickup truck with no muffler, and that guy was coming and going at all hours of the day and night, always standing on the throttle when he took off. His neighbor on the other side was usually quiet, but lately he’d been having some contractors build a ramp up to the front door for his elderly mother’s motorized wheelchair. Between the annoying pickup, the construction noises, and that stupid damned woodpecker that thought the satellite dish on top of his house was a tree, he’d been lucky to even get a solid four hours of sleep the day before. Now, he was trying to drink away his weariness with the magic of coffee beans.
James had only left the shack’s door open for just a few seconds, only long enough for him to step out, chuck the mug full of coffee away into the dirt outside, and then head back inside. Apparently, that bit of time had been long enough to invite in yet another bug, another fly … bigger, fatter, hairier, and louder with its buzzing. He was more annoyed than unsettled by the fact that this appeared to be one of those big flies that could bite. It was pretty surprising to see one this big and this early in the season. Did these things hibernate or something? He wasn’t all that familiar with bug details, only that the bigger they were, the more likely they were to bite or sting him.
Well, it didn’t matter. Fly swatter in hand, James felt a smirk tug at the corner of his mouth as he closed the door, sealing the big fly’s fate. You’re on my turf now, he thought. You just made your last mistake, coming into my shack.
In spite of its size, this fly was quicker and craftier. It dodged no less than four of his swings, and it seemed to refuse to land upon anything for more than half a second. His sleepiness had made him a little slow to react, but the excitement of the chase was quickly waking him up. Adding a small thrill to the chase was the small but real potential for the fly to bite him, especially if he chose to ignore it and sit still long enough for the fly to land upon him.
Sitting still didn’t seem like much of an option, though. Not only was this fly active, it actually seemed to be coming after him. Over and over again, the fly kept zipping towards his head and upper torso, veering off at the last instant as he either bobbed his head out of the way or took a swing at it with the swatter. He got it, though. It was a sloppy hit, actually striking the fly with the shaft of the swatter rather than the wide, flat, plastic part, but it bounced it off a wall and onto the floor. James let out a triumphant laugh and swung for the fly as it buzzed around in a circle upon the floor, trying to upright itself. He hit it … and it continued to buzz and spin around. He hit it again. It still buzzed. This was one tough damned fly.
He finally wasted it with a solid and shack-shaking stomp from the heel of his hiking boot. He could feel just how solid and crunchy that fly was, almost freakishly hard-bodied, thus understanding why his fly swatter had been inadequate for a killing blow. Maybe he needed to come up with something more heavy-duty for these bigger bugs? As he marked another kill on the back of his report, filled the decanter from the nearby water cooler, and started scooping Golfers coffee into the filter basket, he began to think of how he could make a hardcore bug-smashing swatter. Maybe a thick piece of rubber from something like a truck’s mud flap attached with bolts and washers to a piece of steel rebar?
The auto-drip coffeemaker gurgled, hissed, and filled the atmosphere of the little shack with the pleasing aroma of its fresh liquid sleep substitute. So loud was this little device within the confines of the shack that James didn’t initially notice the louder, deeper buzz of yet another bug … bigger, more sturdy, and actually more threatening than the last. This one looked a lot like a hornet or a wasp, although it was unlike any he had seen before. It had the same body and wing shape as a hornet, but it was thicker, fatter, and visibly hairy, sort of like a bee. And it was colored all wrong, both beautiful and ominous at once with its iridescent natural paintjob that changed from blue to green to black, depending upon how the overhead light hit it. This bug wasn’t afraid to land and crawl around on walls and such, and it wasn’t fast at all. In fact, it was so slow that he probably could have snatched it right out of the air with his hand … if not for the fact that it visibly had a stinger, as well as some wicked-looking pincers.
What the hell is that thing? James thought with a bit of alarm. He had never in his life seen a bug like this, not even in pictures on the Internet or on any of those nature shows on TV. Of course, he was out here in the mountains, out in the middle of freaking nowhere, one man amidst the high desert wilderness. For all he knew, this thing was probably fairly common for the area, but he’d certainly never heard
about it. He would have expected to have heard tales from others about these big, fat, dark-colored wasp things, especially about how painful their stings and/or bites might be. What were they called? Bird-eaters? Demon wasps? People pokers?
It was while he was pondering this that the bug made its first go at him. And that’s exactly what it was, a deliberate and direct flight path right for his face. He ducked with a cry of alarm, feeling it zip by so closely that he could feel the air movement from its wings, the heavy buzz causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. Somehow, as crazy a thought as it might have been, James just knew that this thing was purposely attacking him. There was no other way it could be. He was the only other living thing in that little room, and this bug followed its first fly-by with another almost immediately after. James swung at it wildly with the swatter as he bobbed and weaved like a clumsy boxer within the confines of the shack.
At one point, he felt the swatter make contact with the huge, dark bug, and the hum of its flight sputtered for a moment as it had to regain its bearings. James