In the Spirit of Domitian
Jamie Knowles and his friend Stuey Squires had been outside playing when the decorator had arrived. On Jamie’s mother’s orders, they’d had to wait until he’d finished painting the front porch before they could come back inside, no matter how thirsty or how desperate for the toilet they might be.
They’d waited out most of that time at the park, watching birds and chasing squirrels in the sunshine. When they’d tired of that, they’d returned to Jamie’s house, and finding the decorator still at work, had sat in silence beside the crooked front gate, picking off flakes of rust until he was done.
The decorator had left just a minute ago, and the boys now stood before the freshly painted porch, their fingers trembling, minds at work. On the step, half-sunk in the blinding white, still-wet paint, was a housefly. It buzzed furiously, struggling to free itself.
“We could crush it?” said Stuey, holding out his thumb like a Roman emperor.
“No,” said Jamie, staring at the fly. “We’d leave our thumbprints in the paint. My mum would know it was us.”
Stuey squatted, inspecting the fly more closely. Its black head jerked robotically, its eyes burnished red. Its wings were a blur.
“We could pour water on it?” he said. “My dad says flies don’t drown, but I don’t believe him.”
“Won’t that take the paint off?” asked Jamie.
“No.” Stuey stood back up. “See how shiny it is? That’s the gloss. Water doesn’t mix with gloss. It will bounce right off.”
The fly continued to buzz loudly.
Jamie sighed. He should have come up with something by now—something good, something satisfying—but avoiding the paintwork was proving difficult.
It had crossed his mind to try burning the fly with a magnifying glass. Stuck in the paint, it would be much easier to light than the scurry of ants they’d come across in Stuey’s back garden last summer. But, besides the risk of scorching the step, something about a magnifying glass seemed unsatisfying, inappropriate. It was certainly a step down from hairspray and a lighter.
“I’ve got it!” said Stuey suddenly. “How about you get your mum’s tweezers? You know, like she uses for her eyebrows. We could pull off its wings and its legs, and that way we won’t touch the paint. No thumbprints.”
Jamie’s eyes lit up.
“We could squeeze its head!”
“See if it pops!”
The boys squealed. The fly buzzed.
“They’ll be upstairs, I think, in the bathroom,” said Jamie, stepping carefully over the porch.
“Check her bedroom, too,” said Stuey. “That’s where my mum keeps hers.”
Jamie hurried into the house. “I’ll be back in a minute. Make sure nothing happens to it.”
Stuey watched him scramble upstairs, then turned his attention back to the fly. He squatted again, leaning his face close to the step. The smell of fresh paint singed his nostrils. He inhaled deeply.
Beneath its thin, waxlike wings, the fly’s body was fuzzy and soft. Fascinated, Stuey slowly extended a finger towards it. The fly buzzed, writhing frantically. Its legs strained, threatened to tear from its thorax.
Stuey withdrew his finger. The fly continued to buzz.
Grumbling, Stuey stood back up. As he turned round, he noticed the Akroyd’s tailless grey and black tabby cat poking its nose through the rusty front gate. It watched him warily.
Stuey clapped his hands. “Go on.” He stamped his foot.
The cat didn’t flinch. It eyed the fly hungrily.
“I said get out of here!” yelled Stuey. He ran at the cat.
The cat bolted.
Scowling, Stuey watched it race across the road and hop over the low brick wall of the house opposite.
“I couldn’t find them.”
Stuey turned. Jamie stood in the doorway, empty-handed, watching the fly struggle, sadly.
Stuey frowned. “Did you check your mum’s bedroom?”
Jamie nodded.
“Did you ask her where they were?”
“No,” said Jamie. “She would want to know why we needed them.”
The boys deflated. The fly buzzed.
Jamie stepped over the porch and sat down beside it. He rested his arms on his knees and his chin on his arms and huffed. Someone was having a right good laugh looking down on them now, a right cruel joke someone was playing.
The fly buzzed.
“There must be something we can do,” said Stuey. He screwed up his face and began rapping his forehead with his knuckles, as if his brain might open up like a house on Halloween and offer him an idea.
What they needed, thought Jamie, wasn’t a trick or a treat, but a miracle. Like the time during frog season they’d found that discarded seven-iron stuffed into the hedgerow at the Captain’s Pit. Or the time they’d been crabbing at Red Rocks beach and the tide had washed ashore an old camping peg.
The fly buzzed. Jamie hung his head. At this rate, it would exhaust itself before they thought of something, would struggle itself to death before they got to it. And what would be the point then?
“You’re back?” said Stuey.
Jamie looked up at him, then to where he was looking.
The Akroyd’s tabby cat spied them through the front gate.
“I thought I told you to get out of here,” Stuey warned. He raised his hands, threatening a clap.
The cat ignored him and hopped onto the wall beside the gate. Jamie watched it slink along the wall, the hairy stump above its back legs twitching. It stopped not far from them, teasingly close. Its stump shuddered.
Stuey clapped, stamped his foot. The fly buzzed. The cat mewed.
Jamie shot to his feet.
He lunged for the cat, arms outstretched, baring his teeth like a rabid wild animal. He’d tear the thing apart with his hands, smash the fly with a hind leg—Stuey, too, if he didn’t shut up, bash his face until it was bloody and broken!
Quickly, the cat jumped down from the wall and darted into next door’s driveway. Jamie, giving chase, hopped the wall. As he landed, he kicked something hard and wooden. He looked down, snarling.
“I hate that cat,” said Stuey, punching his palm. “Next time, we should—”
“I’ve got it!”
#
“The decorator must have left it here by accident,” said Jamie, dipping the wooden brush into the can of paint. The bristles dripped glossy white.
“Why would he leave it on the other side of the wall?” Stuey asked, watching.
Jamie shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t want to spill any paint once he was done. Maybe he put it there and forgot about it.”
He wiped the brush on the rim of the can, removing the excess paint. Then he held out the handle for Stuey to take. Grinning, Stuey took hold of it together with Jamie. Something like lightning coursed up their fingers, their arms, their shoulders, and exploded in their chests.
“Smooth, remember,” said Jamie. “It’s got to look like the decorator did it.”
Stuey nodded.
Kneeling, they turned to face the fly. It squirmed on the step, buzzing desperately, wings beating up a storm.
“On my count,” said Jamie.
Stuey held his breath.
“Three…two…one…”
In one smooth stroke, they painted over the fly. The buzzing stopped.
Stillness.
“Jamie?” called a voice from inside the house.
“Yes, Mum?” Jamie called back.
“Is Stuey staying for tea tonight?”
The boys looked at each other excitedly.
“Yes, please, Mrs Knowles!” Stuey called.
“Well, come inside and tell me what you both want.”
The boys deposited the brush in the can. They jumped to their feet, stepped over the porch, and hurried inside, giggling.
Author’s Biography
Charlie Jones is a writer from Merseyside, UK. His short stories have appeared with Dead Sea Press, Liquid Imagination, Dark Tales, and Hypnopomp. He also writes film reviews at Angry Usher Reveiws, and in 2019, was part of Cinema Rediscovered's Film Critics Workshops Programme for emerging film critics.
