I feel like I am dreaming. It is a hot summer, and I open all the windows to cool o the apartment. I enter my bedroom, and nine giant flies are resting on my bed. They are each about a foot long, and their bodies are black as oil with silvery highlights. They have long barbed legs that taper at their joints, making me think of crabs. Their wings are luminously opalescent with green, pink, orange, and violet streaked. There is a buzzing noise coming from the random movement of their wings, vibrating the whole room. My skin feels funny from the vibration, almost like it is moving.
They are at once beautiful and scary. I’m not quite sure if they are dangerous, so I go out of the room and get a broom to shoo them away. The buzzing stops, and it is dead calm. I hurry, feeling my stomach tighten as I peek around the door frame into the room.
I see a beautiful fragrant flower there on the bed with them. The whole room smells amazing, making me remember when my mother would bake ginger cookies. Then all of a sudden, I realize that the flower and memory is a gift from them. I feel silly for having thought they were scary. I say thank you, and they leave out my open window.
P. A. Harper writes about sustainability in all its many forms, is the founder of the Brooklyn Writer’s Exchange, loves to read, drinks too much tea, and writes fiction.
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