Larry & the Team

Ah, to see it the way ‘the team’ could see it. For this team of hardened gents, things had fallen into focus the moment their eyelids popped open for that first blinding taste. The rainbow of life took one look at these kids and, knowing it had met its masters, wasted no time sorting itself neatly into black and white.

For these guys, it all added up; there was no in-between; and the world made sense. They were the kings of the office, and those who didn’t share their endless glee slipped helplessly into an inhospitable wavelength on the light spectrum. Goodbye, downers! Nobody can see you now!

Larry the Housefly was an exceptionally old insect (he’d miraculously lived to be nearly a year old). He did his rounds in the same hall as ‘the team,’ whom he hated with all the hemolymph in his primitive heart.

The ill will flowing through Larry’s abdomen was one of the only unambiguous feelings that occupied his tiny body. Every day, he exited the comfort of his warm nest and loving family to carry out the duties of his job -- mainly buzzing around aimlessly, so as to invisibly extract small particles of his soul, which in turn floated down onto the ears of ‘the team,’ nourishing their empty heads. Larry naturally resented that the fruits of his labor in any way aided the work of his enemies, but there was larva on the way, and he did so love to fly.

And so Larry kept up his rounds, shedding pieces of himself and living for the evenings, when boys of a moral certitude ran off for booze and chuckles and practice at the shooting range. In those late night hours, Larry would try to rest peacefully with his wife and baby to be, haunted, however, by the distant bang of firearms and the baritone laughter of a faraway oaf.