Bluebottle Impudence
In a time of seditionists, the writer was penning the last chapter of his “The History of Optimism.”
It was the summer’s worst storm. Humid, very wet, very muggy.
One of the street’s largest bluebottle inquisitors sought shelter through his open window, found a perch on his coffee cup, and proceeded to bug the author obsessively.
The invader flew from cup to keyboard, rousing the attention of the man and his cat as well.
Yet…
With numerous sighs and long pauses, the man persevered until the fly took up residence on the computer’s screen. While the writer struggled through a series of optimistic images aglow with imagined blue-sky radiance shining down on lovers picnicking on a field carpeted with yellow flowers… he couldn’t go on.
“Oh, alabaster-winged one,” he whispered, "you just don’t know what it’s like to be navigating one’s challenged lexiconic imagination using the white cane of Macular Degeneration, seeing mostly shadowed letters while groping for the right words—all because of you and your incessant pacing, preening and staring at me from my screen.”
The cat purred.
A paw whipped out.
The fly didn’t make it.
The book got published.
P.S. – the cat now has his own website: Quiet Killer.com
For writers, there’s always a distraction they can use as an excuse for non-productivity. Then there’s the occasional legitimate fly in the ointment. Such earns at least some flash fiction to record it into posterity.
With me it is my copious fruit flies that tend to like my eyes before temptation has them committing suicide in my wine.
I do hope you are not experiencing macular degeneration because it will eventually hamper your ability to read at all.
So short, and so sweet, especially for the keen eye and paw of the honored cat.
Ron