Black Flies

Winter brought an unprecedented haze over the ocean. The horizon advanced on us until the visibility dropped to about fifty yards. A stranger to the island could run along the beach and never find himself again.

The wind, too, was horrendous. This morning I found myself standing on the deck thumbing at a lighter (you need to do a better job at conserving those, Matthew always said) trying for a cigarette in the other hand (Matthew did not comment on this, except to say something vaguely esoteric) and found my tangled hair flung forward in a black wave by a sudden gust and almost catching on the flame. I suppose being one of two remaining humans on an island that used to house thousands doesn’t preclude setting your own hair on fire.

I walked the old Strand this morning and found another. To be honest, I was surprised; I thought we’d found them all. Small, but not frail; an old eighteen or a young twenty; very pale, like Matthew; eyes still open, nearly black like mine.

The body lay in the middle in the broad and cobbled street, between a couple of parked cars that would never move again; the strand was quiet around us, the old Victorian or neo-Victorian facades watched us through the fog with disinterest. Back when we found the bodies regularly—shortly after the bridges had been blown and the only way back to mainland was by boat—there were more people to aid in the disposal, and we would spend hours out of each day cleaning up.

The worst part of the initial disposal was when someone would be in the midst of pouring gasoline—or whiskey, if they were thinking about preserving gasoline, though most preferred to save the Jack at that point—over a body and the pourer would drop the bottle and then—four or five seconds later—drop dead. Heart stopped, just like that. The most efficient plague the world has ever seen, according to Matthew, at least.

I patted my pockets, looking for gloves and not expecting to find any. But I did. They were the blue surgical gloves that we had boxes and boxes of, courtesy of Matthew’s old university job. Thank the gods of biology that I didn’t end up with a geologist.

I took the cadaver gently under the arms and loaded it into the makeshift PVC trailer behind the little dull black motorcycle that Matthew and I shared. There were plenty of vehicles to commandeer, but it tended to be more efficient to siphon fuel to keep it running than, say, a large car that would burn through fuel faster. Besides, Matthew had a personal connection to the vehicle. Once upon a time, it was his hobby, just as I would go out every morning to surf, watching the sun rise as the ocean batted against my legs. Once upon a time, the island was very bike-friendly, and it wasn’t uncommon to see a pack of ten roaring between the palms on a sunny summer day, half the riders shirtless or in those loud pastel hibiscus shirts.

Today, it was silent as I cut the engine on the bike and scavenged the old candy store for some surviving taffee. Still wrapped, of course. The risk of eating uncovered foods was too high. Once upon a time, flies were harmless nuisances.

Cargo safely loaded, I revved the bike’s engine, shocking around the old gutted corpse of a downtown like a gunshot. The palms swayed in the wind, their greens mellowed out by the blue hue that the fog applies like varnish to everything it touches. Riding a motorcycle in shorts was not my best idea, but even the winters on the island were warm enough to do so. It isn’t solely that, though—a turquoise palm tree-patterned tanktop and ruddy denim shorts seemed incongruous to this atmosphere, but the end doesn’t always come bearing sweaters and long pants.

The Strand receded behind me, giving rise to more multicolored Victorian facades that dwindled as the road’s elevation dropped below sea level. I heard gulls and waves, but the visibility was too low to catch glimpses of the ocean between the stilts of those houses that were closer to shore. At this point, we could have had our pick of any house, but we remained in the place we’ve lived for exactly three years to the day, according to the marked-up calendar that hung in the kitchen. It was close to the Strand—and to the slightly newer downtown that sat a block away—so that I could take trips to get supplies (I always felt bad raiding people’s personal belongings); it was also close to the university where Matthew used to work, where he had the keys to, and where he still went occasionally. I never asked. Before the end, I drifted from place to place with a half a physics degree and a job-winning smile that also served to get me out of trouble when I needed it. I had a meaningless but content routine. For the academians—real academians, not me—it was different. They had had purpose.

Ours was a light blue—sky blue, I might have said, but the sky that day was too ashen to be an adequate blue—wider than it was tall, sans the whitewashed stilts that stood about twelve feet high. A wraparound porch, a couple of palm trees lording over a dead lawn, and unhindered ocean access that dug us further in debt than I’d admit. Off to the side, there was a little greenhouse that Matthew had been working on for about six months, using seeds he’d scoured from his university and that I’d found in a the same hardware store that had supplied us with the PVC to make the bike trailer.

I stopped and cut the engine again. I left the body, using caution to take off my gloves, throwing them in a little pit we’d made near the stairs just for that purpose. We would bury them, eventually, because there wasn’t much else to do. I made a mental note to also sanitize the bike’s handlebars.
I stroked the bannister before ascending, a flake of paint coming off under my dirtied fingernail. I never used to let my nails get this bad. Sign of the times.

The boards of the deck creaked beneath my feet, the wind up here pulling at my hair again, which was tied back in a tight knot. I could smell the salt off the waves. It wasn’t a crystalline and clear ocean by any means, like the ocean the last time I was in Costa Rica, when I’d go out every morning for a week to greet a manta ray with a ten-foot wingspan. I always tried to touch it before it glided away. The waves here, on the other hand, turned a dirty brown in the summer and the rays were about the size of car tires, but it was home.

Inside, candles burned around the kitchen and living room. We had a generator, but preferred to conserve the energy. Besides, feeling and softness smouldered with the candles, bringing the home an inch closer to our gratuitously unswollen hearts. Unswollen, for time being. Tapes of flies hung over the entryway as I slipped off my shoes. There were thin patches of sand all over the tiles, a hazard of living on the beach and not having a working broom.

“Amor.” I hesitated to speak at first, because even the gentlest words can sever calm.

Matthew’s back was turned as he hovered over something on the island in the kitchen. Even in the low light, I noticed that he’d given himself another choppy haircut, the silvery hair behind his ears sticking up at odd angles. I crossed to the kitchen and take him into a warm embrace, though he still doesn’t turn.

I touched an awry tuft of hair. “I could have done that.”

“You would have taken weeks.”

“Quality demands time. I’ll fix it.”

The humidity left its mark on his gleaming arms, and I could feel it on my hands, too. Air conditioning was something we used sparingly for the summers. Low-wattage fans were usually enough, as they tended to be gentler on the generators. He had something in his hands, but he shifted away to impede my view.

“Ambros.” I let go as Matthew turned, but I didn’t step back. “Have you been in the garden today?” He always referred to the greenhouse as the garden, preferring the connotation that the word garden carried. It was a place of life and light, though the garden was never what entered my mind when I thought of those words—especially when I found myself falling into his crystalline gaze, like when he took my fingers and cupped my hands around a thornless white rose, its petals blushed pink.

He nodded to the calendar that hung next to the old refrigerator that acted as a secure cabinet that worked well to keep out the flies. I smiled back.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. I picked a petal off the edge and pressed it against his cheek with my thumb, laughing. “And look, it matches. In color and beauty.”

“You’re too kind.” Smiling regardless, he brushed it off.

Something gnawed at me, an itch that I couldn’t quite get at; then I remembered what I’d come home for.

Over Matthew’s shoulder and through the slightly-open window, a few seagulls screeched, batting their wings against the wind. One by one, they disappeared into the gloom. I couldn’t see the sunset, but I knew that the darkness would soon press around us like a closing book. It had to bee soon.

The day was not the best for burning, but I didn’t want the flies to get at the body, although it didn’t matter; knowing flies, they already had. Still, I was selfishly unwilling to break the light mood. “I...I found another.”

Matthew’s lips twitched, trying not to kill the smile. “Oh. Okay. I have some gas in the cupboard. I’ll bring it. Be sure to wear gloves.”

“Yes, of course.” I set the rose in the vase in the center of the table and moved to leave, but turned to give Matthew a reassuring kiss on the cheek. He was still standing by the island when I left, eyes glassy. He always took it to heart more than I. Or maybe I was too wanton with my own.

I put on a new pair of gloves that I’d retrieved from the kitchen and dragged the body to the part on the beach where the dry sand met the damp. I set the body just before this divide, to allow it to burn. A strand of hair clung to my face and I almost brushed it away, but my hand dropped to my side when I realized that it may have been carrying plague.

The house was a dark and blurred silhouette, Matthew a smell cell that broke from it, emerging from the fog with a bright red canister of gasoline and a few matches.

He poured the gasoline over the body. It was sparing, just enough to keep the fire alive long enough to devour its prey. The first match ignited on the first try, dancing dangerously about in the breeze so that he had to turn his body against the wind in an effort to protect it. Instead of dropping the match, he slowly crouched, fire still in hand, and set the match atop the body so that it would catch without question.

The sun set, a hazy white circle against the marine horizon. We only stood long enough to reassure ourselves that the body would burn completely, before retreating back to the house, where Matthew wordlessly retired to the bedroom, blowing out the candles in his wake.

I was left with a single candle in the center of the kitchen table, twirling the rose absently in my fingers as I listened to the ocean shuffle over itself as the waves washed in and out.

In and out.

Sometimes I couldn’t believe the fact that the two of us were the only ones left on the island; sometimes I wondered about mainland, once cable and internet went out for most of us. Two of two thousand. One thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-eight hearts that had swollen past capacity, that had caused their users to drop like the black flies who’d been the first to vomit spread pestilence across borders and oceans and—us. Us: what the flies started, we finished. After two years, they were no longer needed. It was in our snot and sweat and urine and blood. It was in the pulses that stopped and the cities that died and the mounds of bodies that piled atop them.

In and out.

I rose. My breath the killing blow to a dying candle, I was left in the hazy light of a fog-enshrouded waxing moon. The fire outside had died, the ashes scattered by now. The white French doors that separated the bedroom from the kitchen and living room glowed, ghastly. They stood, crumpled ajar.

In and out.

I could still hear the waves; the wide window above our bed, too, was fully open. Here, the light was stronger; pillows and sheets found themselves in a halo of white roses around Matthew, who seemed to have his own iridescence apart from the moonlight. I fell in beside him, trying not to make a sound, but it didn’t matter; his eyes were open, glazed. In his ear I whispered a song of reassurances. The sheets crinkle as he shifts his shoulders and cranes his neck so that he can kiss me.

In.

The sea beat in time with our entwined heart.

Out.