![\"Drone](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Drone.jpg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1\")
<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nby Salvatore Difalco<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A fly flew into Diego\u2019s mouth. He spluttered and waved his arms around, disgusted. One hundred Fahrenheit in the shade and the flies buzzed undeterred. They were tough. He rolled down the car window and spat. Must have been a dead body nearby. Flies like dead bodies. Not even funny, what with the maggots and so forth. Was anything more disgusting? He had an hour to kill before his grandmother finished with her appointment. She was getting a perm. That took time. He\u2019d agreed to drive her to the salon on this one occasion. His sister, Marissa, who normally took her, had gout. She looked awful. Gout was an awful thing. She got it from eating too many peanuts or something, Diego wasn\u2019t sure. He didn\u2019t care for Marissa. Ever since their parents died in a car crash five years ago, she\u2019d become a sourpuss. Yes, she was older, but she had no right to boss him around and belittle him the way she did all the time. He could do nothing right in her eyes. He couldn\u2019t even lift a spoon without enraging her. Once their grandmother passed\u2014she\u2019d moved in with them after the car accident\u2014and they sold the family home, he\u2019d move away from Marissa and the city and do his own thing. His grandmother would be ninety in three years. Her clock was ticking. It would be sad, but it had to happen eventually\u2014it would. Flies buzzed around Deigo\u2019s head. He swatted at them but without much effect. He rolled up his window. He\u2019d read how flies lived in a slowed-down time frame. From their perspective, humans moved like giant sloths. Still, you could catch one now and then using misdirection. That was true of many things. Misdirection worked. Time seemed to pass as slowly as was possible. He shut his eyes and listened to the ambient street noise, soothing save for the dogged flies, humming away. He switched on the radio and tried to find a station not playing hip hop or annoying female pop singers. They all sounded the same. One fly in particular persisted, repeatedly landing on his cheek. After several of these contacts, Diego slapped at the fly but caught himself with a percussive wallop. His cheek smarted from the blow. All these damn flies. Had to be a dead body in the vicinity. No doubt about it. Maybe a squirrel, or a raccoon. He checked his watch and started. Geez, two hours had passed? He checked his watch again. He must have fallen asleep. Two hours? Where was his grandmother? She should have been done by now. What was she doing? An ambulance slowly pulled up to the beauty parlor, lights and sirens not engaged. Never a good sign. The flies swarmed around Diego\u2019s car. There were so many of them. They blackened his windshield. He couldn\u2019t see out. He could hear them massing. The sound grew deafening. They covered his car like a writhing black sheet.<\/p>\n
Salvatore Difalco writes from Toronto, Canada<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A fly flew into Diego\u2019s mouth. He spluttered and waved his arms around, disgusted. One hundred Fahrenheit in the shade and the flies buzzed undeterred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65896"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65971,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65896\/revisions\/65971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}