The Insects

Melvin's transformation began with the drosophila melanogasters in his kitchen. The fruit flies burst from an apple he'd let sit too long on his counter, but ignored the traps he set for them of Manischewitz wine, and followed him damnably wherever he went. They clung to his face as he slept, and woke him up by crawling into his nostrils and ears. He killed hundreds of them with the palm of his hand before calling an exterminator, who doused the house in gas. Neither man could say where they'd come from. Since the apple, Melvin had purged the house of fruit.

Melvin worked in an office building, on the seventeenth floor, in a shitty data entry job for a private census company. He worked on an open concept floor, and shared a single window with two other men. The musca domesticas began to dot its surface by 10am, and by noon the flies had so completely covered the window that they effectively blocked out the sun. People began to point with alarm. Melvin tried his best to ignore it, but the constant faint buzzing and tapping on the glass seemed especially directed at him. He left work early.

On the way home, big, juicy euphoria inda began to crash down on the sidewalk near him, exploding their chitin and splattering Melvin with insect organs. An army of periplaneta americana started coming out of the sewers and following him. He had to duck as Schistocerca americana began to leap from the grass into his hair, and when the Polistes dominula began to swarm he set off into a run.

Fortunately, he lived close to home, and was able to barricade himself inside. After dispatching the few wasps that had followed him in, he plugged all the vents and openings he could find with pillows, blankets, and duct tape. Despite his efforts, though, tiny writhing Forficula auricularia kept pouring through cracks he hadn't seen, and a swath of Scutigera coleoptrata began to mill around his feet. Breathing hard, he swatted and crushed and kicked as many of them away as possible, and redoubled his efforts at sealing the house. But whenever he stopped his brushing and battings to layer on some tape, the insects would surge up and onto him, covering his body. In a panic he rushed upstairs to his room and threw a blanket under the door, but they were soon upon him. Chirping Acheta domestica, fluttering Hemaris sp., a whole army of long-legged Pholcus phalangioides burst from the interstices of his house to ensconce him.

With a cry he collapsed on his bed, as the insects swarmed him. They covered every inch of his body, and slithered into his mouth and nose so that he could barely breathe. He thrashed and writhed and groaned, but he could not dislodge them from him. They piled on top of him in the hundreds of thousands, and the room was filled with a near deafening buzz. Hundreds of critters worked their way up his pants, and Melvin discovered a new horror as they began to probe, poke, and eventually surround his genitals. He shrieked and sobbed and batted pathetically at his groin, but he was powerless to control them. He whimpered as something small, maybe an ixodes scapularis, inspected the entrance of his urethra. Other things, he knew not what, but possessing scruffy antennae, crawled around his ass and began preliminary investigations of his rectum.

But for all their business, not a single wasp, spider, or gnat so much as broke the outer layer of his skin. Though he felt close to suffocation a few times, he found that if he stopped his desperate spitting, and began to breathe more calmly, he could draw in just enough air. He also quickly discovered that, by lying still, the constant march across the surface of his skin was not so intolerable, and he didn't really even feel ticklish. So for a while he lay in his bed, trying not to move, and let the insects seem to take possession of his body. It was a profound experience of letting go, as he had never known before. All the tension and resistance he had accumulated over thirty-seven years of life flowed out of him in a massive suppuration of insect bodies. Remarkably, reassured that the insects meant him no harm, he soon fell asleep.

He awoke to a blinding light. He raised a bug-covered hand to cover his eyes. "Oh, sorry," said a voice, and the light was diverted. As his eyes adjusted, he came to see that he was in a television studio, the kind used for daytime talk shows like Oprah, and in front of him was a massive studio audience staring in absolute silence at the writhing mass of his body. To his left was a man with a chiseled jaw and an artificial orange tan, who wore an immaculate white suit and an unwavering smile. Technicians and camera operators were running back and forth across the stage, carrying boom mics and wires, and someone shouted, "On the air in 5, 4, 3...." The host, without looking away from Melvin, or changing his terrifying expression, said, "You are a disgusting horror. You are the symbol of the death of my career, and I won't stop until you're defeated."

Bewildered, Melvin tried to speak but was cut off by the sudden burst of applause and an upswell of cheesy talkshow music. "Welcome back. We're here with our guest, Melvin the Insect Man, who was found in his house yesterday in a state of utmost depravity." The audience booed. "Thanks so much for joining us. How are you?"

"I'm..."

"Wonderful! So, how did you decide to become the love object of the insect hordes?"

"Listen, it's not what you think..."

"Sure it isn't. Do you think just anyone can rise to a national spectacle overnight? It requires a rare talent, an uncommon perversity, a total disregard for the expectations of decent society."

"I think you misunderstand. I didn't choose..."

"We all know that line. Don't fault the criminal, blame society. It's not your fault, it's your genetic predisposition to being the cozened impromptu deity of a thousand species of domestic insects. You're disgusting." The audience applauded.

"I don't like these insinuations. I'm just living my life. I haven't intended to do any harm..." A sudden hiss and boo from the crowd. "What is this, the whole world is against me?"

"Of course they are! You stand at the limit of what society can tolerate. You aren't supposed to embrace the hordes. The despicable writer Antonin Artaud beckons us to the pursuit of fecality, but we will not go! We won't give up our materialism by becoming hedonists, slaves to brutish impulses and the psychology of primates. All for what? So that we can run around and claim to have found freedom? To have liberated ourselves from some theoretical yolk? You are the essence of what must be purged from society to keep it clean and healthy. Even though I can't see you under all those bugs, I can definitely discern a foul smell." More applause.

"This is a set up! I've done nothing to incur your stupidity! All I've done is let go, stopped fighting the primal demiurges. You talk about Artaud, but do you know he said, in the same poem, that our debasement comes from the unformed quality of the world? Man stopped everything just as we began our ascension to multiplicity; he substituted for infinity the great illusion of the Internal Regulatory System. We know it well: it is an elaborate maze that begins with the pursuit of happiness..."

The interviewer was red in the face, "You are a lying dog! No, not even that, you're worse than a dog. You lack even faithfulness to an ideal. You will go whichever way the wind takes you. We should murder you now, to avoid having complications down the road." A "here here" from the crowd.

"Fine. Kill me. I am not opposed to it. I really see things more clearly now. The insects are not the enemy. We are the enemy; each and every one of us who loathes the world, who clings to petty notions of power and organization, who crushes the insects that come up from the earth and the ones that live under our skin. We are the enemies when we cower under the storm of shit that is poured on us from the great, billowing sphincters we created. Don't you see them, on Parliament Hill, and on every bank and corporate tower? On every television station, every fast food restaurant, every elementary school? They are drowning us even as we speak...," but the crowd was no longer listening. They were all shuddering under a mass of insects, which had sprung up through the cracks in the floor to embrace them.

"You see," Melvin said. "Even now, we are choosing everything."