An innocent tenant discover a grisly secret buzzing about in the walls of her apartment and more on other floors
All it takes is one fly to start an infestation. A female fly can lay 150 eggs if you don’t catch her fast enough. I’ve always hated flies. They touch everything, your food, clothes and skin with their dirty little legs.
One has been flitting around my unit for days, incessantly buzzing in my ears, just barely escaping my grasp. Every time I turn my head I think I see it, the tiny black dot in the corner of my vision. I have hardly slept; the bags under my eyes have grown.
“Just try honey.” The landlord tells me while finishing taping a folded paper to another tenant’s door. Another person missing rent.
“Won’t that attract more flies?”
“It’s been working for me.” Several more papers jiggle in his hand.
A sickly-sweet smell permeates throughout my kitchen from the honey filled cup on the counter. I check it every hour for the last two days. You can imagine my joy when before I head to work I see a fly floating in the amber liquid, thread-like legs pointed to the sky.
The garage is damp and dim, unpleasant. It’s a weekday but as I walk down the path to my car, I notice no spots are empty. Every vehicle is parked. Stepping closer, some are even covered in a layer of dust.
My earlier joy was premature. Upon arriving home, I find thirty more flies drifting through the honey. The honey’s surface bounces as one fly fights to free itself from its inevitable end. I throw the cup onto the balcony and clean every area of my unit, every inch of my kitchen.
The buzzing is back, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. Along with it is a smell, like nothing I’ve smelt before. Sweet like the honey but it burns my nose. I block my vents as much as possible and go down to the landlord’s floor again.
I pass by the mailboxes but pause. White envelopes and ads stick out of people’s slots, some are so full they can’t close. Stray paper litters the floor.
Worried for my own mail, I take my key and open my slot. A scream escapes my lips as squirming yellow maggots fall out into my hand.
My fists bang against the landlord’s door until they are red and raw, but no answer. No one else comes to check on the commotion either. The buzzing is louder on this floor, the smell thicker.
Fed up, I start moving through the hall, banging on every door as I go, calling out to someone, anyone to tell me what’s going on. Until I go to hit a door and there’s nothing but air. An open unit.
“Hello?” I call out and then hesitantly step inside.
The tiled floor is a soiled tapestry, black mold growing where floor meets wall. But nothing could’ve prepared me for what is in the middle of the room. Laying in the centre of the floor is a corpse, bloated and grey, crawling with maggots, eaten to the bone in certain areas. A horde of flies hovers over the body, creating an inky mass in the air.
I try to back away slowly, quietly, but my shoe squeaks and the flies turn on me.
This story was originally published in Volume 24, Issue 6 on February 6, 2025
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