Swatted Read online

Swatted

  By David M. Bachman

  Copyright 2015 David M. Bachman

  ****~~~~****

  James had just sat down and finished his initial routine of settling into his post for the night when he first noticed the small, gnat-like bug on his desk. The bug was so small that it was only the contrast between the white of his report’s paper and the dark brown-black color of the insect that made it visible. James stared at it for a few moments. The bug moved slowly, crawling along lazily toward the pen he laid down upon the security officer’s hourly report. It was either late in the winter or early in the spring – James was never clear on which season it was officially on the calendar – and the first few flies of the season had begun to appear during the daytime, with a few moths and other obnoxious airborne, light-seeking critters also making their annual debut. Up here in Arizona’s mountainous terrain near Globe, essentially out in the middle of nowhere, it seemed only logical to find oneself surrounded by wildlife of one form or another at most times of the year.

  James was working the graveyard shift, manning a tiny little guard shack out in the wilderness. The one and only responsibility of this post was to ensure that unauthorized persons did not trespass onto the mine company’s property and/or tamper with equipment on the site. Well, and obviously he was required to stay awake for the duration of his entire shift, an obligation he could only meet by finding ways to amuse himself. There was no cell phone reception out here, he was miles away from any Wi-Fi connections, and he was having a hard time getting into the book he had brought along for the past couple of nights. There wasn’t even a direct line of electricity out here; the only means by which he was able to have working lights and a heater in the little shack was from a portable diesel generator that hummed and clattered softly outside, illuminating the area with a few huge sodium-vapor lights. So, James busied himself with a crude and possibly cruel but what he saw as an essential activity.

  He crushed the little bug upon the paper with his thumb, grinding it into a tiny wet spot and bits of little bug parts with a twisting, grinding motion.

  The kill was not particularly satisfying. No chase, no effort, no skill required. Just … squish. Actually, crunch. For being such a tiny little bug, the insect’s body seemed unusually strong, but still no match for the pressure of a single digit pressing it against a hard surface. He gave his thumb a single swipe upon his pants to clear away the remains of the critter before swiveling in his chair, leaning back, and taking a swig from his large insulated mug of coffee.

  The bug hadn’t been hurting anything, really. It wasn’t a stinging insect. It wasn’t going to eat his paperwork or get into his food and spread any diseases. It simply was there, and it annoyed him with its very presence. It had been one of those obnoxious little things whose only purpose in life seemed to be for the sake of trying to fly up one of his nostrils at an opportune moment, although what it might intend to do once it got there was a mystery. James denied it the opportunity to engage in that minor assault upon him, destroying the tiny little thing for the mere crime of having been in a place that he had deemed unsatisfactory.

  Even in death, the little insect inconvenienced him, as the place of its demise left a little stain upon the corner of his report. It wasn’t a big deal, really. Other security officers turned in papers that were splattered with coffee or had ink that was smeared by rain and so on. But James prided himself upon trying to be better at his job than anyone else, even if that job was fairly pointless and unskilled. As such, he crumpled the stained report, tossed it in a nearby waste basket, took out a fresh form, and began to fill in the blanks with relevant information. He also made a single tally mark on the back of the report, his way of keeping score of how many kills he made each night.

  It was less than five minutes later when James got his second visitor of the night. Yet another little bug, this one only just slightly bigger than the first, maybe half the size of a common housefly. He heard it before he saw it, creeping into the cramped and poorly-sealed guard shack through a gap under the door. He looked up and around, trying to locate the gnat-fly-thing, and only caught flashing glimpses of it as it buzzed around the room. The sound of its flight would occasionally stop as it alighted upon some random surface, then resume again as it went about its mission of finding some way to annoy him. Soon, the little bug focused upon its target of choice, a choice that would cost the miniscule creature its life.

  James swatted the side of his head as the bug landed upon the top of his right ear. The slapping blow crushed the bug between his palm and the side of his head. It was a bit of a stupid move, slapping his palm against his ear like that and making his eardrum ring and ache in the process. Yet again, the remains of a dead bug inconvenienced him, getting tiny bits of bug in the strands of his close-cropped hair. He flicked them away with a few brushes of his hand, cursing under his breath, made a second tally mark on the back of his report, and then sat back in his chair to take another sip of coffee.

  Quite a bit of time passed before the next intruder came long. It was at the top of his second hour into the shift when he heard another buzzing insect, this one sounding like a typical housefly. It buzzed and gently bumped against the glass of the window, getting briefly trapped between the slats of the plastic window blind and the window pane as flies always did.

  Now things were going to get interesting. James reached for the beat-up old plastic fly swatter that hung from a push-pin shoved into the wood trim around the front door. Little gnats and mosquitoes were annoying enough, but flies were where the sport was really at. The idea wasn’t so much just to wait until a fly landed before swatting it, but rather to smack them right out of the air in mid-flight. To James, it was a more sporting and fair way to kill. It was also a bit more gratifying, perhaps even satisfying him on a somewhat sadistic level, as a fly would often get bounced off a nearby wall with enough force to stun but not kill it. In such an event, James would then either get to choose between allowing the fly to recover and take flight once more, or to simply deliver the coup de grace by killing it where it lay twitching upon its back.

  As with the others, this fly appeared to be a slow-mover. Bugs tended to be pretty sluggish this early in the season, especially at night, because the temperatures were still low enough that it made it difficult for them to move. Instead of quickly darting through the air with such speed and with random, sharp changes in its flight path, the fly made lazy circles and loops through the air of the shack as it sought out … whatever it was that it sought. James held the fly swatter firmly, studied its movements, and waited for a good chance to swing.

  He realized just how absurd and stupid this all probably sounded. He’d needed to sit through an eight-hour long class just to get his permit to be a security guard in the state of Arizona, had waited as a background check had been conducted on him, had needed to pee in a cup for a drug test, then had additionally been required to sit through no less than three days’ worth of safety training just for the privilege of working on a mine site, although he was never anywhere close to anything resembling actual mining activity. All of this training, preparation, and certification … just to sit around, drink coffee, and swat bugs all night. It was perhaps only once a month that he saw any form of human activity during any part but the very end of his shift when the mine workers would start to arrive. Once, just once, he had needed to chase off some angry Native Americans that were harassing him, angry about how the mining company had apparently screwed them out of some old land-sharing agreement. The rest of the time, this was as exciting as it ever got, so he had to make the most of it. After all, swatting bugs in the middle of nowhere sure beat the hell out of working in retail and dealing with rude idiots all day, every day.

  Whack-thump! He felt and heard the im
pact as the swatter scored a solid hit on the fly and sent it careening into a nearby wall. James couldn’t figure out where the fly had landed, though. He could hear it buzzing around on the floor somewhere. He got up from his chair, scooted it back, and began hunting for the fly. Like a Roman emperor determining the fate of a fallen gladiator, he needed to evaluate the fly’s condition before deciding to give it a thumbs-up (let it recover to fly again) or thumbs-down (kill it where it lay). As he peeked under his desk, the fly surprised him by recovering more quickly than he’d expected. The bug flew out from under the desk and zipped right by his face, causing him to jerk back with a cry of alarm.

  What