The Insect and His Wife

Brandon Scott Gorrell

The insect lied and said that he felt bad about digesting the fly partway with the fluid that dripped off the silk he spun around it; felt absurd, because he was talking to his wife—she ate the meal anyways; always; like she would; there was no other way.

The insect hummed for a minute and he was at the dinner table and his wife was there, eating the fly that had flown into one of the strands of his web earlier that evening. Their web, actually. The insect forgot that he was supposed to call it 'their web' now.

The fly lay part way digested and all the way wrapped in a plaster of silk, its insides running from its inside. The insect and his wife liked the smell of the part way digested fly.

'Flies have a life-span of around two and a half weeks,' the insect said, looking at the fork on which a bite of the fly was impaled. He looked satisfied; he felt satisfied. He had just said something important. That was good.

'That's if you don't count the fly as a larvae,' said his wife.

The insect looked at his plate with a blank expression on his face.

His wife said, 'It's 4 a.m. and this is my life with you.'

The insect said, 'I knew we were fucked after a month.'

'I'm attached to you,' his wife said.

He said, 'Attached just means that you need me to validate your existence, and you can't handle the fact that you have a meaningless existence. It means both of those things at the same time.'

He said, 'I'm tired of sex with you and right after I get off I think that our sex was bad and that I want something better.'

His wife looked sad and said 'I need you.'

'No you don't, you're just attached.'

She said, 'What's the difference?'

'I can't be myself when I'm around you,' the insect said, looking at the ceiling.

'What's that supposed to mean?' his wife asked.

'I don't know.'

She said: 'I want to rebrain your brain.'

The insect ate the fly.

The insect said, 'It's four in the morning.'

Brandon Scott Gorrell has been published or is forthcoming in 3:AM, NANO Fiction, Dogmatika, Pineapple War, and others. He has poetry and stories on his blog.
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