There is a fly in my house.

A mutant fly has been living in my house for the past month. He is unkillable. Both my husband and I have tried to kill him multiple times. MULTIPLE. Have, in fact, spent hours, perhaps a days worth of hours cumulatively over the course of a month, trying to kill this one damn fly. But the damn fly won't die. We can't kill the damn fly.

Flies are only supposed to live for several days, right? It's been well over a month. Perhaps even two.  The carcasses of his fallen brethren lie inside my window sill and in various ceiling fixtures and I'm worried that maybe, just maybe, this fly is the Michael Myers of flies and one morning I'm going to wake up and find my husband lying on the floor in a pool of blood, the fly slowly buzzing at me in plodding, measured paces, steak knife in wing. Or maybe this is the Emeric Belasco/Hell House of flies, turning my own home and insecurities and idiocies against me. All I know is Mutant Fly cannot be underestimated. It is only a fool who underestimates Mutant Fly.

My husband asked me to give him the febreeze. We'd made some omelettes for breakfast and the fly buzzed about us closely, brazenly. He landed on my omelette, as always, and I swung at him wildly and missed. Then the fly yelled what can only be described as an obscene series of expletives and flew off.

My husband wielded the can of Febreeze, and I snorted.

"And what do you think that's going to do?"

"We'll spray him to death like the others."

(Truth: we've Household Fragranced many, many a fly to death in our day. As a strategy, we've found it effective. Instead of Raid, which is super-toxic, you just Febreeze the fly into a fragrance induced fugue state, and then let it smell itself to death. As I type this I realize that might perhaps be violently enraging the other flies.)

(Which makes this war?)

My husband waited patiently with his weapon, a can of Apple cinnamon scented aerosol, for Mutant Fly to land on one of the walls. And, once it did, he proceeded to spray the shit out of --well, mostly the wall, not the fly-- and then the TV, and the couch, and the desk, and the dog; he shoved folding tables out of the way, kicked aside wires; he chased Mutant Fly from one end of the room to the other, me yelling out hysterical directions as he steered the nozzle, the two of us operating a tight tactical fly killing unit, creating what I'll just say was an unhealthy breathing situation, a sort of an Apple Cinnamon aerosol prison... and yet, AND YET--

"Where'd he go?"

"Fuck." I sighed. "He's gone. It's over."

"He has to die eventually."

"Does he?" I laid a hand against the wall, touching the space where the fly had once been. "Does he?"

"The room does smell awful."

"Yes," I said, eyes narrowed. "Yes, it does."

And that is how the fly lived. He lives still. And my apartment smells like the anus of a scented candle.

But hear me now: I will get Mutant Fly. I will find him and I will kill him. Not that this makes me Captain Ahab and the fly my giant whale because that would be ridiculous, but I will destroy this entire apartment and everyone in it if that's what I have to do to kill this fly.

Relaxation Sunday!