Distribution: Please ask.
Summary: Kyle POV. Set in CYN.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters.
Thanks: To Elizabeth, for being such fantastic beta extraordinaire and patiently putting up with my neurosis. To Ivy, for the title and the poem.
Author's note: To read "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died." by Emily Dickinson, click here.
And then the windows failed.
by Marianna
***
Drosophila melanogaster is a fruit fly, a little insect about 3mm long, of the kind that accumulates around spoiled fruit. It is also one of the most valuable of organisms in biological research, particularly in genetics and developmental biology.
***The thought, your thought--you are too short. It's there, in the back of your mind and it's not very clear because you don't even know what it means. You don't.
You say something into the receiver. Or maybe you just nod--your throat is not cooperating very well, all that comes out are these sounds, these strange, alien sounds, either high-pitched or too low. Then there's a 'thank you' on the other end, right before the line goes dead and you think that something probably happened to the cord that you are bending and twisting in your hands, and that you must've said something.
And then you realise that you are too short for this.
Given that all is well or at least given that there are no alien invasions, you should move in time from one minute to the next, present should become past, future should become present. Instead all continuity is lost; days and hours broken into unconnected minutes and you find yourself trapped inside moments. A slide show from hell. The fucking problem today is that there are no asses to kick and nobody to save, and also there are no evil aliens to blame. Whatever. Next slide coming up, pointlessness round two.
Still at home, it seems. You are standing by the phone still and there is pain--useless telephone cord twisted four times around your palm, clenched tight in your fist, making tiny wrinkles in your skin as it's folded around the cord. You are barefoot but not cold, standing right in the middle of the little circle that the sun has drawn on the hardwood floor. Briefly--a flickering thought--Where is dad? And then, another one--you are too short for this. That thought is like a fly you can't get rid of. You can't understand what it means, and it's driving you nuts. Buzzing.
Flies can make you look crazy, especially fruit flies. They are too small and people around can't see them. They are annoying and almost involuntarily you try to catch them. You can't help it. Which, in turn, makes you look like an idiot grabbing air and squishing it in your fists.
Bzzzzzzzz--you are too short. See, there it is. Again.
Liz probably knows the actual name for a fruit fly, long scientific sounding syllables. You think that maybe you shouldn't bring up fruit flies with her. You think you might sound crazy, you think she probably wouldn't hear you anyway.
You are too short.
There is no way you can get rid of this thought. Or understand it.
You find yourself in the school office, staring at Liz's timetable. Then you realise that you have spent first period looking for her. Looks like you've moved on to another moment. If that's what you call aimless walking up and down school hallways, bumping into people and saying nothing when they offer condolences. Strange how everybody suddenly knows that you are...fuck. Rewind. Strange how everybody suddenly knows that you were friends with the geek, who basically never hung with you, not until them.
But you aren't you anymore, are you?
Also, isn't it strange that there are people in the hallways? Shouldn't they be in class?
Everybody is surprisingly nice and their kindness is fucking sickening. Guerin must be having a fit, but doesn't he always? In the office still, and they should give you hard time about asking for another student's schedule. Instead there is somebody on the other side of the counter talking; you can't quite concentrate on the voice, and the sounds seem to dance around your ears without quite forming into words, like a bunch of flies.
Fruit flies multiply at some enormous speed, and what the hell did the science textbook call them?
Your eyes follow, follow, focus on a nail with chipped pink nail polish, pointing to something on the schedule--Liz has chemistry next period.
More aimless walking down the hallways. Where the fuck is Liz, and who the fuck are these people with red-rimmed eyes, as if they cried for a very long time? You stop because there is a girl standing in front of you. It takes a few seconds for you to remember that you used to date her. Now she is talking and you hear tears in her voice and she keeps playing with the button on your shirt. Her lips move and there are more and more flies buzzing in your ears.
She is taller than you are, but you were captain of the football team. And you are popular. Or were. And so she didn't care.
Which brings you back to being too short, which reminds you that you have somewhere to be.
Drosophilas, that's what the fruit flies are called. You ask Vicky Delaney, because that's who she is, you even remember her name, if she'd seen them. And you even manage to understand what she answers.
A few more minutes (hours?) lost. Another slide, it looks like.
How did you get outside and how long have you been standing here, looking at the sun? Long enough and your eyes hurt and you don't see anything but flickering multicoloured circles. Somehow you have to make it to the other side and the football field has never seemed so long. And definitely never that crowded.
You are too short. You are too short and you can't just wave for them to see you.
Maybe if you were taller.
Next slide--under the bleachers--you are squinting your eyes, and can't even say their names. "...asked me and you and you to be the pallbearers." -- half sentence is already floating in the air, buzzing around your ears, by the time you recognise your own voice and realise that you are talking and they are nodding (saying something?) in agreement and that they are much taller than you. You are too short for this.
And you finally know where you are and you know what this is--the casket. The casket. How the fuck are you supposed to carry the casket with Evans and Guerin and Alex's dad, who is probably the tallest person you had ever met?
You are too short, but somehow you manage.
Your arm hurts as hell and you can barely feel your right shoulder. But your dad is behind you and you know that if he can keep up so can you. That or fucking die trying. Ha ha, you are still funny, it seems. Not that you want to think about dying and getting second chances, because not everybody gets them.
You look up at the sun and hear muffled cursing, feel your arm pulled down. Pain flies up and explodes in your shoulder, but at least it's not numb anymore. You wish Guerin would stop looking back at Maria and looks under his feet so that maybe he'll fucking stop stumbling over every stone. He is right across from you holding the middle handle. His towering height doesn't help matters either.
The house is as crowded as the school, and you barely know any of these people. You think that you can count your own relatives on one hand. Isabel is wearing high heels and normally you would have to look up to talk to her, only normal doesn't exist any more and you know that she is looking straight ahead when she talks. Her gaze is permanently glued to the picture of Alex in the next room and she keeps staring at it through the open doors and when somebody blocks her vision she starts to stumble over every word until either people move away or until she moves so that the picture is within her sight again.
Michael comes into the room, talks to you and maybe Isabel can hear him, because now she is heading upstairs and you follow.
You always follow, it seems.
Liz is pacing back and forth her lips move and the flies around your ears multiply faster and faster. Buzz.
You can't hear anything any more and then again you catch yourself speak. "...with Liz." and then everybody talks at the same time.
That's when you realise that it doesn't fucking matter that you are too short for this, because you will simply have to do. You will have to do because there is simply nobody else left and deep down you knew that all along.
End