By Kaylee Padilla
I remember a stench that summer creates under its hot sun. Something that was just as encapsulating of the skin, but not by warmth that every inch of flesh craved after the season’s long withdrawal, but it was fruit flies, fluttering specs that complied to their invasive nature and causing destruction, even for the most accidently unaware teenager who just wanted to enjoy some grapes to help suffice their summer desire’s (I should’ve stuck with water). I could not remember for how long the fruit was burrowed in my room; although laying in the same ceramic bowl, the scent had fermented for days within the small walls, being baked in an unconditioned room for its scent to expand and call upon the fruit flies, or however way fruit flies produce. I wish the fruit flies had forgiven me that day. For my negligence, for my improper discarding of grapes. What I thought was a simple mistake turned into a flock of chaos; while small and easily disregardable, the flies covered my space in packs that totaled to a large foreboding blackness that captured the previous life of my room, and overfilled with the growth of decay. Surrounding my trinkets as if more life could be gorged from their inanimacy, planting themselves on every inch of myself that could be personified through the girlhood perspective; every item, from stuffed animals that kept my woes buried at night as a child, to clothes that emulated a psyche that craved expression in forms that at times felt impenetrable, to books and journals that concealed myself up to that point of visceral destruction. No journal entry could be captured without having myself be ravaged in the process of trying to put pen to paper. 15 years felt sucked away by each insect that knew no boundaries, even in their malicious ravagings, even during their flocking and suffocation among others, even when each black dot felt amplified by the eyes of a horrified 15 year old. I spent several nights sleeping in a living room, but despite its romantic inspired themes that could cause any mind to drift onto a daydream, and perfect scenery with a skylight that could be the muse by night dwellings, all I could picture were the fruit flies taking away my essence that was left behind. The obsession of that thought came incessantly enough for me to believe that a fruit fly had been so vicious enough to crawl within me to populate my thoughts, as if my body were the same dying fruit that started this predicament, having skin with accentuated soft brown spots easy to crawl in and out of. Nothing felt safe. Nothing felt clean. After facing the fear of just even returning to my room and seeing the flies continuing their rummaging in their air, a spell of apple cider vinegar quickly made them relinquish their placement. I still cannot remember where or how the fruit flies died, but I take satisfaction in being slightly oblivious to the fact that their caracasses may or may not be embedded somewhere in my carpet, like lying amongst brethren after carnage. I take satisfaction that I reconquered a space once savaged by an unrelenting invasive species, and that I am the only life in there that knows peace at night, and that I was the one who made it through that summer where tar melted and eggs could be baked on the ground.
