Jerry’s eyes widened and he gulped loudly. He hurriedly fished a worn wallet out of his pants pocket and dropped a pile of crumpled bills on the counter. With a hasty apology about having to get home, he turned to grab his briefcase and slide out of the booth. The case caught the corner of the tabletop and popped open, sending brochures and paper samples spilling across the linoleum tiles. Jerry cursed and stooped to shovel the mess back into his briefcase, and Stanley bent down to lend a hand. Neither man noticed the small fly as it landed awkwardly on the ground, angrily twitched its desiccated wings, and crawled determinedly toward a brown leather loafer.
After Jerry had fled the diner, Stanley tried to spark up conversation with a few other patrons, but his efforts were consistently rebuked. Lonely and dejected, Stanley finally braved the drive back to his little house in the woods. After arriving home, he stomped loose snow off his worn, brown loafers, left them by the front door, and readied himself for another evening alone. Stanley had just tuned into the local news when a sound caught his attention. At first, it was so quiet he thought he’d imagined it. Silencing the television, he cocked his head and listened in earnest.
There. A soft buzz. The buzz of wings. Insect wings. He waited with uncharacteristic patience until he heard it again.
Bzzz. Bzzzzzz. Bzzz.
Taking halting, careful steps, he started to circle his living room. Every few steps, Stanley would pause and tilt his head from one side to the other and wait until he heard the tell-tale sound again.
Bzzz. Bzzzzzz.
The sound was definitely coming from the front of the room. He tip-toed closer to the door...
Bzzz.
Stanley swooped in and grabbed a loafer. Lifting it up for closer inspection, he saw what he’d hoped he would find. Stuck to a corner of duct tape that had peeled loose from the loafer’s heel was a small fly.
“Woohoo!” he yelped with sudden excitement. “This m-might be it. You just be c-calm, Stanley. You j-just be quiet.”
Taking three deep breaths, he let the final one out slowly through his nose. Stanley had been collecting various insects for years with the hope that he would discover a new species. After a mosquito had turned Herb into a vampire and a wood tick had turned Dallas into a werewolf, Stanley had devoted even more energy to his quest. He didn’t doubt that he would discover a new bug. People discovered stuff all the time. For Stanley, it was really just a question of when.
Turning the loafer to allow himself a better look at the little bug, his forced calm started to crack.
“T-tabanus sudeticus,” Stanley breathed. One of his favorites. He’d have to look closer at its mouthparts to see if it was male or female horse fly. Males had weak mouths suited to their primary diet of plant nectar. Females had more gruesome tastes: blood. Their mouthparts had serrated little blades perfect for cutting through skin and flesh.
“M-maybe you’re a lady fly,” Stanley wondered out loud. “You have some b-babies, and I’ll know for sure.”
A soft click accompanied the unfolding of a pocket magnifying glass. Stanley held it up and brought the loafer closer. He peered with first one eye, then the other, trying to get a look at the fly’s mouth. Unfortunately, it had managed to get stuck in a position that obscured its proboscis. While disappointing, the magnifying lens did make it abundantly clear that the fly’s coloring was odd. Horse flies usually had multi-colored compound eyes, brown-black hair on their thorax, and smooth, dark abdomens. Tilting his head for a better look, Stanley saw that this particular fly had eyes that were a uniform bloody red. The short hairs on its thorax were a bit wilted, and its abdomen was more of a jaundiced dark yellow than the usual grey or black. On top of that, its wings hardly seemed up to the task of flying. They looked dried up and useless and hung at odd angles between occasional twitches.
Excitement pushed Stanley to his feet, and he took off on a fresh lap around the living room. His tube socks tread rapidly across the carpet while his mind whirled off into the clouds. He’d done it. He’d found a new bug. Fame and fortune were sure to follow. Shaking hands with the President. A Nobel Prize. An appearance on Oprah.
“G-gotta be sure though, g-gotta be sure,” he counseled himself as he paced.
Inspiration struck, and Stanley pivoted toward his modest kitchen. After quickly emptying a half-glass of Mr. Pibb into the sink, he set it on the table and carefully propped the loafer next to it fly-side up. A quick rummage produced a roll of duct-tape and a round coaster he’d taken from Steinknocker’s Bar.
“G-good thing Stein let me borrow this,” Stanley commented, delighted by his good fortune. He made a mental note to return it to the bar once he’d received his Nobel Prize.
Next, he ran upstairs and returned with his nose hair tweezers and a small notepad. With surgical care, he plucked the fly from the sticky loafer, dropped it in the empty glass, and secured the coaster on top with a strip of duct-tape. Once the fly was secure, he grabbed a pen and made some brief notes on the pad.
Stanley leaned back and exhaled. Phase one of his impromptu experiment was complete. Now he needed to move into phase two.
“Flowers, flowers,” he muttered. “D-don’t got none. Hmmm. What’re you hungry for, little fly?” he asked rhetorically. “Would syrup t-taste good?”
A plastic bottle full of dark amber liquid appeared alongside the glass. Stanley peeled back the coaster and squeezed a few sticky drops inside. Raising the glass up close to his face, he watched intently to see how the fly would react. It completely ignored the maple syrup and instead lurched directly toward his eye.
“Okay. N-not syrup,” Stanley announced with authority while adding more notes to the notepad. “I’m g-guessing you’re a lady. Are you hungry, little lady?”
Stanley peeled back the coaster again and stuck a pointy finger into the glass. The fly reacted instantly and moved at a sideways stagger until it bumped his fingernail. Stanley obligingly turned his finger to offer up the meaty part, and the fly bit deep.
It hurt. Stanley had endured plenty of bug bites. It was par for the course when you lived in the Wisconsin northwoods. This particular bite put all those others to shame. He resisted the urge to pull his finger back and forced himself to count to ten before flicking the little fly off. Once the coaster lid was taped back in place, Stanley stuck the finger in his mouth and made a few more notes in his notepad.
“D-definitely a lady fly. No doubt about th-that.”
Enthused with his progress, Stanley decided it was time to celebrate. Still sucking on his finger, he pulled a can of Milwaukee’s Best from the fridge, carried it back to his small dining room, and popped the tab. The cool lip of the can replaced his finger, and a long stream of alcoholic goodness washed the taste of blood away.
“Gonna b-be famous,” he said with a smile, and then everything went dark.
Chapter 2
Awake. Had he been sleeping? He must’ve been.
What woke him? Usually he’d be roused by an electronic beep signaling the start of a brand new day. He’d stretch his wiry frame and reach for the snooze bar of his favorite alarm clock. Not now, though. Not this time. It was quiet. Really quiet. So quiet you could hear a caterpillar fart.
He had probably just woken up early. That happened from time to time. When it did, he’d wait with barely contained anticipation for that beautiful beeping. He must’ve woken up early, so he waited, waited again, and waited some more.
Still quiet. Quieter than the crowd at Lambeau when the Packers were down by two at the end of the fourth and Crosby missed the field goal.
He tried to sit up, but someone had tied him down. Every time he tried to raise his back, he felt a distant tightness in his chest and something seemed to pull in his gut, but his torso wouldn’t bend. A tiny memory sparked. Dallas. It was the kind of prank Dallas would play. Dallas was notorious for his pranks. For as long as Stanley had known Dallas, he had endured Dallas’s sense of humor. Once, when Stanley had tried to own a cat, Dallas had crapped in
its litter box. Stanley had come home to find the traumatized feline trying desperately to bury what Dallas had left behind.
Sure, Dallas was a prankster, but Dallas was gone, wasn’t he? Was he back?
Stanley reached to pull at the cords restraining him. He tried to reach to pull at the cords restraining him. He tried to move his arm.
Dallas. He must’ve tied his arm down too.
Stanley closed and opened his eyelids, mostly to make sure Dallas hadn’t done something really mean like glue them shut. They moved, but it required more effort than blinking should, like wipers pushing mud off a windshield. Another laborious blink, and someone turned a light on. No. Someone turned the knob on a dimmer, either up a little on a grey, diffuse light, or down on the dark. Whichever it was, more light or less dark, it relieved the complete and utter blackness of a moment before and let in shades of smoke and charcoal.
Inspiration struck. He couldn’t move one of his arms, but maybe he could move the other. It seemed like a good idea, so he gave it a shot. A moment later, something passed in front of his face. That was interesting, so he tried moving his arm again. Yep. That blurry, hard to discern shape drifting slowly in front of him was likely an arm, and likelier his. The arm was apparently connected to his eyes, because the more he waved the one back and forth, the better the others registered shapes and tracked motion.
He returned his attention to the cords holding him Gulliver-like in place. It took a bit of convincing, but eventually he made the arm flop down on his torso. Fingers pulled, but he couldn’t tell to what effect. They, like the rest of his arm, seemed numb.
Must’ve slept on it, he reasoned.
Stanley waited for the tell-tale tingling of blood returning to a sleeping limb. He waited again, and waited some more. No tingling. Just the same sort of cool… nothing. He willed his fingers to bend and pull again. Something. Something soft. Pully. Stretchy. Velour? Velour. Like his favorite shirt.
That was weird. There should have been ropes crisscrossing his body. Suddenly suspicious, he tried to sit up again. His back raised up inch by slow inch, and he managed another couple of blinks at the same time. The flowing montage of shadows took on depth and color and became recognizable things. The blurry leg of a wooden table. An expanse of featureless brown carpet that stretched to a nearby, blurry horizon. Closer were two skinny legs wrapped in denim and stretching down to a pair of tube socks.
Just like Stanley’s, he thought.
He completed the thought at the same time he finished bending himself into a sitting position. Not having to concentrate on moving his reluctant muscles allowed him to more fully consider his last thought. Like a gummy tumbler in an old lock, the realization that he was Stanley fell into place.
Well, of course I am, he decided. That was easy enough to figure out. Why he was on the floor between his living room and dining room instead of upstairs in his bed was another mystery altogether.
A mystery. He liked mysteries. At least, he thought he did. Stanley sat on the floor for long minutes. During that time, he didn’t feel much interest in solving a mystery. He didn’t feel much interest in anything at all.
Stanley continued to sit until he decided he wasn’t interested in just sitting either. Bending his stiff limbs, he managed to awkwardly get to his feet. The new perspective did little to alleviate his lethargy, but it was a smidge more interesting than sitting. More minutes stretched away as Stanley simply stood and stared at nothing in particular. When he finally lost interest in nothing in particular, he decided he should try to take an interest in something. A foggy memory of watching television seeped into his consciousness. Stanley pivoted slowly toward the Barca Lounger and took a halting step. A second step followed, and a third.
Each halting step added a little kindling to the embers of his awareness. It was deep night, he was in his living room, he wanted to watch T.V., and he was trying to find the remote. The realization that he had a goal, a specific desire, pushed against the lethargy and felt almost fervent in comparison. Unfortunately, finding the remote was unexpectedly challenging. Heavy blinks had cleared some of the haze, but things still looked squishy and indistinct. Clumsy fingers fumbled around the seat of the Barca Lounger, but failed to find the remote control.
Crappers, his sluggish thoughts grumbled. Need my glasses.
Stanley kept a pair of readers in the house. Not because he really needed them, but because he liked the way Angela Lansbury would slip hers on when she needed to look intently at something. This seemed to be the perfect opportunity to slip on a pair of spectacles so he could look intently for the remote control. A lazy, uncoordinated turn pointed him back toward the dining room table. His feet dragged softly across the carpet until the edge of the table bumped against his waist. Hands waved back and forth while fingers twitched.
Gotcha, he thought with a vague sense of accomplishment. Raising up his hand, he felt the hard plastic frames hit the side of his mouth. A second attempt overcompensated and poked him in the forehead. Third time paid for all. He felt a satisfying pressure against the bridge of his nose, only to realize that he’d forgotten to unfold the stems.
Some indeterminate amount of time later, Stanley realized he was staring through smudged lenses, and they were staying on his face without assistance. He experimented by turning his head left and right, each turn giving him a slow panoramic view of the main floor of his home. Things were still a little blurry, but they were bigger. Good enough.
When he finally found the remote, a spark of excitement flared, only to extinguish when his fingers refused to press the right buttons. Annoyance filled the space excitement had vacated, and Stanley let the remote drop from his hand to the floor below. Lurching steps took him to the credenza. Flailing arms bumped and knocked the various T.V.s, but he couldn’t seem to hit the right buttons. He tried pushing harder, but instead of getting the tubes to light up, he only managed to send one television tumbling to the carpet below. Definitely annoying.
He stayed annoyed as long as he could, but even that emotion finally succumbed to the waiting listlessness. More of the night slipped away as Stanley simply stood and stared at the televisions he couldn’t turn on.
Could read, he finally decided. Reading’s good.
The plan held long enough for him to swipe a number of books from their shelves to the floor. When he finally accepted that holding a book and opening it to a page was a feat he wasn’t capable of, Stanley tossed the plan and went back to the much easier task of standing in place and staring at nothing.
The hunger started somewhere indistinct. For all he knew, it might’ve started in his toe, or his shoulder, or his earlobe. Wherever it started, it didn’t make much of an impression. It wasn’t until the hunger found its way to his gut that Stanley took notice, and once he noticed it, he couldn’t think of anything else. His feet moved of their own volition until the blurred, oversized door of his refrigerator filled his vision. After a few swipes, he managed to wedge his hand in the door handle. Leaning back, he let the weight of his body stretch his arm out until finally the door pulled open.
Stanley’s hunger considered the contents of the fridge. There was meat. A hotdog. He grabbed it with hands that seemed as cold as the fridge and lifted the meat to his lips.
Plate. It should be on a plate, he realized.
The thought bothered him. Something was finally going the way he wanted. He was hungry, and he was about to eat. This was good. This was progress.
Should really use a plate, though, he thought again.
The little log of over-processed animal parts fell as he relaxed his fingers, producing a wet thwap when it landed on the kitchen linoleum. Waving his arms, Stanley managed to pull open a cupboard and reach for the dinner plates. The resulting cacophony of shattering dishes did little to improve his mood. Fortunately, there was still one unbroken plate. It was in the sink, and all he needed to do was give it a wash.
Moving like the unfortunate plaything of a drunken puppeteer, St
anley hit the faucet handle and produced a powerful stream of water. His attempt to grab the bottle of soap did little more than deposit the bottle in the bottom of the sink beside the plate. Rather than try to pick it up again, he pressed down and sent a stream of soap spraying. As the clear liquid hit the faucet’s stream, bubbles formed.
So far, so good, he decided.
Now for the washing part. He moved his arms and dragged his numb hands back and forth through the sink, trusting that at least a few of the swipes were getting the plate. Satisfied that he’d done a decent job, he punched at the faucet again. The ice cold water turned scalding hot, but its flow didn’t cease. A second jab was more successful. Water still trickled from the faucet, but it was better than the fire hose from a moment before. Concentrating fiercely, Stanley hooked his fingers under the plate’s edges, lifted slowly, turned… and dropped it on the floor. The sound of another shattering dish was a stern reminder that he really shouldn’t have nice things.
Crappers, he muttered to himself.
Eating from a plate was apparently about as doable as using the T.V. remote or reading a book. Sure, manners were important, but so was eating meat when hungry. With a mental shrug, Stanley started the awkward endeavor of bending over. His simple goal was to reach down, pick up the hotdog, and pop it into his waiting mouth. Easy peasy.
Not so easy. Bending was hard. He felt like someone had replaced his spine with rebar. The hunger drove him onward, but when his torso got to about a forty-five degree angle he started to tip forward. Reversing the bend settled him back onto his heels and deep into thought.
Huh. Knees maybe?
Stanley slowly lowered his weight and heard his knees creak in protest. Inch by slow inch, he descended into a squat while holding his arms straight out in front of him for balance. When his elbows touched his knees, he decided he’d made it about as low as he could. Stiff fingers twitched and fidgeted, but the hotdog was too far away. The impatient hunger refused to let him stand. Instead, he set himself to rocking. Side to side, Stanley shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Once he felt he had enough momentum, he rocked left and scooted his right foot forward a smidge.
Undead Cheesehead (Monsters in the Midwest Book 3) Page 3
