The Omen

So, I woke up the other morning around 3 a.m. and was startled to discover a swarm of black flies clinging to the wall beside the stairwell like a hideous, living curtain of filth.

One doesn't need to be a horror movie fan to picture all sorts of ominous meanings into the scene.

As you know, flies, like politicians, equal evil.


Mysterious swarms of flies signaled the malevolent presence in The Amityville Horror. As well as in Constantine, The Ring, Poltergeist, Drag Me To Hell, and See No Evil, among countless others.

Moreover, Beelzebub was the original Lord of The Flies.

Seth Brundle was just an honourable mention.

There were no open screens on the windows or doors that could've let such a massive number of flies in. Nor were there any visible corpses about that they could be swarming around. Instead, they just clung there, a black mass contrasting with the beige wall, while some of them buzzed around tentatively.

I grabbed a canister of Baygon and began chemical warfare on the foul creatures, watching them fall one by one from the wall.

Then I texted Nena.



"Good morning. Tell me I'm a paranoid,
 superstitious idiot."

"Good morning hahaha. Why? Did you

 walk under a ladder or a black gay cat

 crossed your high-heeled path?"

"Mmm. Early kanina I discovered a
 biblical swarm of flies in the stairwell.
 They weren't there when I crawled home
 at 2 and there are no open screens or
 rotting carcasses. At least none that I
 know of. Or will admit to."

"Ah, may dead and probably decayed

 rat somewhere in the house. For some

 reason the rat didn't smell while rotting

 but now the maggots are now flies and

 have found a way out. Obviously there

 is a hole near your staircase. Thus 

the flies.Other than that,

Vince must be sending you 

his warmest regards."

Then I remembered.

Thanks to some rat poison, we had finally gotten the best of the very smart, very aged, and very disgusting rat that had long been bedeviling our kitchen. But as his final act of vengeance, he had refused to crawl toward the light as the packaging had promised, and instead steadfastly met his doom in between the walls where we could not extricate him.

Thanks, Dora!

The kitchen smelled of that distinct odor of dead rat for a day or so, and after that I had given the matter no more thought.

I love it when Reason trumps Superstition.

Although Vincent is still the devil.