Hatred and House Flies

I hate house flies.

Hate is a strong word that is dangerously overused, and it is one that I try and avoid as much as possible.

But I really, really hate house flies.

Buzzing, constant buzzing. Louder and lower in pitch than a mosquito, the insects spin aimlessly across our lights and windows. For a second the noise stops as the fly lands, teasing me into a false sense of security, before it takes flight and the drone of the wings feels like sharp pins and needles throughout my entire body.

The day is over, crawl into bed, turn out the lights. Sleep is so close, I can taste it, then the dreaded sound of a single flying insect yanks me back into a state of fury. The fly is in the room, flying around under the cover of darkness. The light turns on, only to reveal the tiny culprit zooming across the walls, too quick to catch without the fly swatter that sits just too far away. The internal debate ensues: to get up and attempt to silence the fly once and for all with no promise of success, or to lie in bed and hope that the fly somehow vanishes. I finally rise off of my mattress, furiously swiping the air until I miraculously make contact. After an unnecessarily stressful distraction, sleep can finally come.

Morning comes, I blearily wander into the Main House. Walking to the windows reveals an empty juice bottle and abandoned paper clip still on the table from the night before. With a sudden, horrifying jolt, the peaceful morning bliss ends as ten, twenty, thirty black dots obscure the view beyond the windows. House flies swarm across the cold glass, too many to count, too many for any flyswatter. The buzzing is incessant, interrupted by occasional thuds of a fly ramming itself into the window. How can something so small, so harmless, so inconsequential in the sequence of my own life events, cause such a sharp and prickly feeling on the back of my neck? Is there an evolutionary rationale for the sound a fly makes, or is it simply there to slowly unravel the fibers of my sanity?