Trapped

September 13, 2007

A pile of unwashed dishes sat collecting flies in the sink in front of me.  Outside, a pile of fifty-one days worth of uncollected garbage dominated the front yard.  It too collected flies.  My head pounded from the night before.  I had just moved in, and everything about the house seemed dirty and out of place.  

 I brushed some flies away from my face, got a glass of water and sat at the kitchen table.  The Venus Fly Trap I had bought at the grocery store the day before sat watching my pitiful, decrepit state smugly from the counter as it perched contentedly in its robust, healthy greenness.  My stomach grumbled.  Mickey, the flytrap, had been feasting.  I had not. 

I had arrived in Vancouver the day before.  Stepping off the plane, I seemed to enter some chaotic parallel universe to my own.  I had arrived safely, without incident, but my luggage had gone a completely different direction and was, I was told, in the bowels of some other plane in Memphis.  I had never even been to Memphis.   

Hopping on the bus and standing with nothing to claim but the clothes I was wearing, I passed bag after bag of uncollected garbage.  Despite the rainy weather, the big menacing flies were still out in full force, attacking and devouring the multitudes of rotting goodness. 

The first place I headed was the liquor store.   I had nothing to unpack and nothing to do, so I did what seemed most sensible and bought a large bottle of wine and, for some cheap company, a Venus Fly Trap.  Safeway, geniuses that they are, had a neat display of Venus Fly Traps next to a newspaper stand, whose headline was, ‘Garbage Strike Reaches 50 Days.’  What’s more, the plants were even on special. 

I went home and lacking my phone, computer and clothes, placed Mickey on the counter and vowed to take a pull from the bottle every time it ate a fly.  It quickly became apparent that Mickey was trying to break me.  The little pods seemed to snap shut every few seconds as Mickey devoured fly after fly.   

The smaller fruit flies would land, unassuming on the pods and get stuck there, as the jaws of impending doom slowly clasped themselves around the frantic creature.  The big, hairy, greasy houseflies would land too, but their death was nasty and short.  The pod would quickly close, escape not even a remote possibility.  I toasted my new friend in his crusade against filth as he devoured upon the swarms. 

The various jaws of the many heads of the plant sumptuously feasted as I pulled back drink after drink. The dark storm clouds broke and pelted the city with fierce, horizontal driving rain as the plant continued its feast unabated.  I too felt like a fly heading towards the sinister jaws of Mickey as drunkenness enveloped around me. Eventually the bottle was finished and I stumbled towards my mattress, lacking both a bed frame and sheets, and collapsed.  Mickey, I think, kept eating. 

I woke up the next morning finally back in my bed in
Vancouver.  The sun peeped out from behind billowy white clouds.  Despite being without my luggage, jetlagged, surrounded by trash and nursing a bit of a hang over, serenity pervaded around me.  I was happy.   

I listened to the hums of buzzing flies as they were quickly extinguished as they met their demise. A smile crept across my face as I sat thinking about what a horrific job picking up fifty-one days, and counting, worth of garbage is going to end up being for all of those poor, poor garbage people.