Supermodels of New Jersey
On Liberating Flies

BY K. ELLS MENARD

The young man has returned temporarily to his childhood room after travels and varied disappointing stints away from home. He sits on his bed, watching a new fly trapped against the window. It’s huge and patient. He finds a tissue in the bathroom. For a few minutes the fly sits entirely still against the window glass, then it struggles and rattles. Against the window the fly sounds like sparks from a car battery mistakenly clamped to the wrong charge of a jumper-cable clip. Muffled sparks against the window. Even if the fly could manage to push through the shut-tight window, it would come up against the screen. Having made its way though a thick pane of glass, the fly, exhausted, exhilarated, thinking itself free, would rattle against the screen. Trapped by a grid of tight blackwire. The window that once kept it from the outside would lock the fly out. Between the window and the screen. Perpetually outside, free, but trapped. Night would come and the temperature would fall and the fly would drop dead on its wings, its little feet stiff for the pleasure of heaven. But the fly would never make its way through the window. It could never pass through the glass, through the seemingly open picture of the outside world, today’s sky, light and shadows—it could never make it outside without help. 

The young man who has returned for holidays, and is now considering extending his stay at his parent’s home for good, takes the tissue he found in the bathroom, and barely holding the juicy fly between thumb and forefinger, he works open the window and the screen, and lets the fly loose into its freedom. He saw it on the window and assumed it wanted to leave his room. He assumed it wanted to go frolic like a real primaveral housefly. Maybe it was born from maggots deep in the floorboards and explored the house for the first few hours of its life and then spent the rest trying to free itself into what seemed just beyond the clear wall detaining it. There’s a full world ahead of the fly. But it will get cold, and it will die. It’s a juicy fly. It’ll give even a large bird a substantial appetizer. He only let it out a few minutes ago, and already it’s probably digested. 

The Dead Boy
The Ruins