Covered
© 1994 Matt Duncan

                  The man eating at the booth across from Vivian was reading the newspaper he held in one hand, and eating the egg sandwich he held in the other. She hadn't paid much attention to him at first, only casually glancing up from her omelette every so often when he furiously waved his paper to shoo a fly, or brought it down with a thwack! on one of the peskier insects. She hadn't even really noticed that the man was being covered with flies until the busboy dropped the dishes in the middle of the aisle. Startled, she looked up and glanced over at the table across from her, adding her screams to those of the baby in the corner and the little boy in the booth behind hers.
                  No flesh was visible on the man-shaped form in the opposing booth. Flies coated the body, green-gold glittering in the morning sun through the wall of windows. The newspaper was likewise covered, looking like a misshapen extension of the blackened arm, beating with less and less energy against the rest of the body in desperation. Tumors made of flies grew from the body as more and more settled on the writhing mass of insects. The outgrowth of flies on the man's left shoulder threatened to form a second head.
                  Vivian rushed out of the restaurant and into her car. Narrowly avoiding collision with an oncoming truck, she squeezed the hatchback into traffic. She drove around town for awhile, to shake the queasy feeling oozing up her spine. She didn't really want to go home. The event was so infinitely clear, so vivid, baked all around the edges, leaving its outline etched in her consciousness.
                  What she really wanted was to just park the car in the crumbling garage across the street from the apartment she and Walter had rented for three years.  She wanted to wrestle the gate closed on the service elevator, push the three button (since "two" didn't work) and pull the gate open at the second floor. She wanted Walter to take her in his arms and tell her it was okay, that the flies weren't real, that the whole thing had never happened. But that idea, that they might not have been real, frightened her even more. And the way he would laugh, that dry chuckle of stones grating together, would only make her more frightened, more miserable. The divorce had been difficult, leaving her with the guilty feeling that she had ruined her life before it had even begun.
                  She decided to stop at her friend Janice's house. Janice had helped her through a lot. They'd known one another since high school. Walter and Vivian double-dated with Janice and her boyfriend Peter to all the big high school dances.  She pulled into the driveway, and parked behind the house, near the garage.       
                  Janice's little boy Steven was playing in the back yard, building castles in the sandbox. She sighed, smiled, opened the gate and approached him. Every so often he reached back and scratched his little behind, absently. He had buried his legs in the sand, too, and become part of his own miniature landscape.
                  Vivian came up to him and crouched down. "Whatcha building?"
                  He kept his eyes down and shoveled on, shrugging his shoulders shyly. He had blonde hair, a yellow like just-fallen leaves in October, before they've crisped and browned. Walter's hair. And eyes like Walter's, too— transparent and blue, with long girlish lashes.
                  She smiled and looked at his work. "Well, whatever it is, it looks very nice. Where's your mommy. . ."
                  She stopped and scrambled backwards. The little boy pulled at his shorts again, leaving a red mark on his thigh. An ant crawled on his hand, and he flicked it away, returning to his building. Vivian realized that the child had not buried himself in the sand, but that an army of ants had covered the boy's lower legs as he knelt in the sandbox. She had no breath to gasp. Without so much as a scream or a goodbye, she struggled through the gate and back into the car. Home, she had to get home. 
                  Since dad's death, mom had been more and more withdrawn from the outside world. Though they had never really been a social family, her mother had at least gone to the church bingo games twice each month, but that had completely ended. Within a few months, she even stopped watching the local news. All she did was sew and knit, cook dinner, and listen to old Perry Como albums. Vivian had moved in about a year ago, to help out.
                  "Home again," Vivian called to her mother. Normally, the older woman answered with, "And not a moment too soon!" or some similar chiding welcome, but, today, silence was the only greeting. Vivian frowned. She shut the door and turned the deadbolt. Still spooked from the lunchtime horror, she quavered, "Mom? You here?"
                  No answer came. Vivian hurried through the house to the stairs, shouting for her mother at the foot of the staircase. No answer. She reached the first landing and, in a voice used for impertinent children and disobedient dogs, called again. No answer. At the top of the staircase, in the hallway on the second floor, she screamed for her mother.
                  No answer.
                  She raced down the hall to her mother's door. She slammed her shoulder painfully against the heavy oak, fumbling with the knob, and burst through.
                  Inside the room, Vivian's mother sat with her back to the door, her head under the bonnet of a hairdrier set upon the desk. A low hum filled the room.  Vivian sighed in relief, and moved to turn off the machine and let her mother know she was home. She reached for the switch on back of the machine, but it was already in the "OFF" position. The drone still filled the air. She gripped her mother's shoulder, and pulled the hood of the drier from her head. The old woman started, having fallen asleep, and turned toward her daughter, fright breaking into a smile.
                  "Hello, dear. I didn't realize you were home. Just drying my hair. . ."
                  Vivian answered her mother with a shriek. The low hum continued to fill the room, as more and more bees flew through the open window and rested with their sisters in the old lady's hair. Her head was a skullcap of yellow and black, undulating and active, as the bees spit wax and combed her hair into a hive. Vivian gurgled, "Mommy?" then rushed down the hall to the bathroom to vomit.
                  She stumbled down the stairs, delirious, temples pounding, the sour taste of onions and eggs coating her throat and tongue. Mom hadn't called after her, hadn't come to knock on the door and badger her about bulemia, hadn't offered to get the Pepto. As Vivian crossed through the dining room, immediately below her mother's room, she heard a thump that sounde, she thought, just like a person coated with bees collapsing to the floor. She snuffled a giggle into a sob, struck with the humor of her analogy, and doubled over in a coughing fit.
                  She pushed through the back door, and into the back yard, opened the gate and headed down the alley to the street. Early evening painted the sky a range of blues, from electric white steaming around the sun in the west to a heavy indigo on the eastern horizon. She wandered to the park at the end of her street, and collapsed. Gripping her hair in her hands, Vivian bent over and sobbed until she could no longer breathe. Another cluster of coughs cleared her throat and opened her lungs. She sucked air and rushed away, stumbling and tripping in the tall grass.
                  White moths fluttered from clover to clover in the evening breeze. Vivian tripped over an old baseball bat left in the outfield during t-ball season, and rolled face-first through the white and purple flowers littering the grass. She sprawled facedown in the weeds, then rolled onto her back. The sky was a velvety blue before her, the sun sinking in the west above her head, night already consuming the sky beneath her feet. Lacy flowers surrounded her, and moths dusted the air. Giant orange butterflies, speckled black and white, lit on the blossoms, in the grass, and upon her chest. Miniature black cousins of the Monarchs clustered on her hips, about her feet, in her hair. She stretched her arms wide to provide landing space for the cloud of purple, black, and red above her. Tears streamed down her face as a million graceful legs tickled her into giggles. She was warm beneath the blanket of fragile bodies, and fell asleep to the soft thrum of wings.