The Lilac and The Housefly: A Tale of Tortured Romanticism

The lilac was unimpressive. Nothing more than a stick jabbed into soil with a price tag tied around the base of its stem, like some sort of prank on a naive consumer. And it worked. I saw the dingy branch and fell in love, sharing the same compassion as Charlie Brown when he bought that pathetic little Christmas Tree. I liked the idea of improving something.

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury writes, “It doesn’t matter what you do … so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away” and “when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.” And I wanted so badly to be in that undefinable there.

The shrub waited for care, just visible outside the kitchen window sitting on my backyard patio in a large, blue, plastic pot. In my desire to exist somewhere tangible, I remembered the age-old advice: If you want a plant to grow well, let it hear you. Loose scientific evidence links the phenomenon to vibrational frequencies of the human voice, but those with more wistful imaginations believe companionship can aid just about anything.

Of course, early morning internet forums recommended speaking positively. Instead, the tall twig became a dumping ground of every worry, fear, and crippling anxiety—The clothes need folding today. I don’t think I leave the house enough. I think I need a second job. I think I might be dying slow but consistently. I think my cat is sick. She’s not eating but neither am I. My father lost another tooth last night. They’re dismantling the Department of Education. I have 13 cents in my bank account, 49 cents in my savings. I think it is starting again. And the plant listened as well as any audience can, although I saw little improvement.

Sitting on my patio, nearly a month later, I was admiring the achievement of a new leaf when I noticed a housefly clinging to the end of the main stem. The it mentioned in my list of worries referred to Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, and it was in fact starting again. PMDD, a cyclic misery arriving one week pre-period, causes auditory hallucinations, a failure to recognize myself in mirrors, a deep, dreadful depression, and a series of delusions romanticizing my surroundings. In truth, I do little to mitigate the damage done by the disorder, simply waiting until logic returns. In these times, I’ve a tendency toward impulse, and it’s better to keep the mind busy as the devil fawns over idle hands. Tending the shrub should’ve been a prime distraction, but the task never took up enough time, and the fly was irresistible to whatever madness brewed just below the flush of my cheeks.

A delicate thing with red compound eyes and a fluffy abdomen holding forewings spread wide, I observed him closely, breathing whirlwinds over frail wings. Still, he made no attempt to fly away—not a twitch or budge in sight. The disorder already starting its infiltration, I assumed he heard my distant morning monologues and wanted a front row seat. With each day returned, the delusion deepened when I found the fly still there, still clinging, thinking to myself, Huh, what a loyal little bastard.

A lonely thing, I saw in this fly a potential for friendship, and I believed he felt the same. The prospect of companionship compelled me to forget all about the dysphoria dripping into my reality. Our relationship wasn’t an example of healthy communion or an effort to connect with nature. I believed he was there for me in some grandiose way. Personification comes easy in delusion. I told the fly about my longing for camaraderie, thanked him for staying, and asked him questions about existence—the same way others pray to a God—knowing I’d never receive a satisfactory response. I liked getting to know him through one-sided conversations. My more human interactions can leave me feeling self-conscious, but a fly doesn’t have the same capacity for judgement, or require context. I took full advantage of my patient new audience.

This became routine, our chats lasting an hour, maybe two, with me being psychotic and him polite enough not to mention it. By day four, I grew bold. I wanted contact. To stroke him like a feral cat who finally trusts you. So, I poked him. A tiny stab of flesh on fuzzy thorax. The force pushed him, legs dislodged, and he fell lifeless into the potting soil. My tentative friend, dead. Nothing more than a husk. I can’t tell you how long he was dead, but it was likely the entire time. I stared, remembering Bradbury’s words, and I retreated inside, wondering if a husk is all I’d ever grow to be.

Later that night, insomnia trickled in and frustration drove me from my bed. I wanted answers, something resembling closure. Something to prove the fly wasn’t a mirror of my own reality, that it wasn’t my hands that killed him. I shut myself in my office, Googled “fly dead on tip of branch,” and found the fungus, Entomophthora muscae. No autopsy needed.

The pathogenic fungus, transported through airborne spores, attaches to the fly, penetrating the exoskeleton, and continues its nightmarish journey to the brain replacing whatever flies normally think of with summit disease—a forced desire to crawl upwards on whatever surface reaches for the sky. And like the fabled Icarus, the fly ascends only to die. A glue-like substance then releases from their proboscis and, with death near, the fly remains firmly attached to whatever “tip” found. The tale is macabre, gross, and ultimately, very, very sad.

Although just a husk, I told this dead fly everything. I talk to stars, beg under the moon (it’s my way), but for those few days, I believed someone, something tangible, was listening. While his guts were being devoured, I was yapping like a small dog fresh out of the shelter. They say ignorance is bliss, and he was oblivious, every mental faculty replaced by spores. But I don’t know if I’d describe the fly’s experience as heavenly.

I never returned to see his body wither further, and I abandoned the lilac altogether. I don’t visit graves. But the fly stays with me still—the way delusion can take control, digging under our skin and infecting every logical thought. And I wonder if one day the ignorance will take me, too. If I’m headed towards the tip of a branch, just waiting to die. Sprouting spores the same way I sprout nonsense when PMDD returns for another week of tortured romanticism. And I wonder if anyone will notice when it kills me. When I am the husk hallowed by circumstance. When I’m no longer clinging, but something stuck, waiting to be pushed.