Once upon a time there was a wicked dictator.
Wait. That doesn’t narrow it down much.
Many, many times upon all the time there were many, many wicked dictators, and one of them was this guy.
This guy was extremely powerful and had many tools at his disposal. His army was mighty; his voice echoed forth from millions of screens across the world; and his personal polling agency was much respected.
Nonetheless, all tyrants have enemies – and it was such a cabal of those that met one evening, cloistered in an awkward conference call.
“We should kill him,” said one of them.
“No, that would be sinking to his level,” retorted another. “We should make calm and clear statements about his evilness and he’ll just stop or something.”
“We should do nothing, or else it might get worse,” concluded a third.
“I have a completely different plan from all of yours,” said a fourth, “and yet it incorporates elements from all! It will not sink to his level, AND we will not have to do anything.”
“What about my idea?” demanded the first one.
“Oh right, it’ll probably kill him.”
“Thank you.”
“There is one – just one – something we must do before we do nothing,” said the fourth conspirator. “We must break into the lair of the dictator and steal his feces.”
The ensuring silence was long, and at least two conspirators hung up without saying anything.
“…why?” inquired the second one.
“All will be made clear,” intoned the fourth conspirator.
Everyone else hung up.
Luckily in the end it was very easy to bribe a janitor to retrieve a sample the next time the dictator’s toilet clogged, and so the fourth conspirator was saved from having to stage an enormous and elaborate plan with many intricate action sequences and a lot of unnecessary deaths of security personnel.
She had what she needed. She had the feces, and she had a single egg from a single fly.
So she put one inside the other, in a small room, and walked away.
For the next while very little was required. Every so often the fourth conspirator would re-enter the room, moisturize and feed the little maggot, and leave it to its joy in its tiny fecal dwelling. In time it grew fat and happy and in more time it grew through its own skin and sprouted wings and hideous little compound eyes and became that noblest of god’s creatures, the thing named for wings: the fly.
It began doing what it was named for in delirious little circles, and that was when the fourth conspirator re-entered the room and caught it in a little net.
On the television, the podium was ready. It was time.
It was a good day for speeching. The dictator was waiting for the applause to die and practicing his gesticulations, smiling and bobbing his head like a renegade sandpiper.
“My fellow” or something.
“It’s an honour to” etcetera?
“What a great crowd, what a” maybe.
In the great crowd the fourth conspirator pulled out a tiny little box and opened it and silently, carefully, inconspicuously started to leave.
The fly was alone. It was deprived of food, of moisture. It was in a place it did not understand, in a world it had never known. In its small fly soul it was filled with a great and heartbreaking homesickness, when into its acute fly senses came a smell that seemed….almost familiar. It reminded it of home and also feces.
It wanted both of those things very much.
The applause ceased. The mic was hot. The throat was cleared.
“Hello the-ACK.”
The fly was on the nose. It spun in wondrous loops, singing a song of joy with its wings.
“HEY GET OUT OF THERE SHOO AUGH!”
It took off, it landed, it took off, it landed, it dodged and swerved and all the other fly tricks and it did them all without a moment’s thought needed, all of its fly soul filled with endless joy in its place.
It had found Home again.
Many conventional remedies, sadly, were out of the question. The tyrant could not be swatted; refused the idea of spray (‘not my hair!’), and drank any sugary water placed near him.
Alternate solutions had to be found.
“Fetch me my grand pollster!” he shouted.
“Bring forth the grand pollster!” shouted the head of security.
“Summon the grand pollster!” called the communications team.
“I’m here,” said the grand pollster, who had been standing in a corner of the room fiddling with his laptop.
“Pollster, remove this fly from my person,” said the dictator.
The grand pollster leaned carefully forwards until he was eye to eye with the fly (currently on the tyrant’s forearm) and blew gently on it.
It took off, then landed again six times.
“Damn,” said the grand pollster. “That used to work. Here, let’s try a statistical analysis. I’ll write the whole thing up in five minutes.”
“Great!”
“It’ll just take a few weeks to collate all the data.”
“Get my grand pollster out of here.”
“Eject the grand pollster!” yelled the head of security.
“Remove the grand pollster!” screamed the communications team.
“I’ll uh just go now uhm okay bye,” said the grand pollster, who hastily stowed his laptop in its bag and left at a fast walk.
Perhaps it would go away if he ignored it.
Not so. The fly wanted not his attention, just his presence. It basked in the warmth of his body, it breathed in the scent of his hair, it rhapsodized in the sound of his blood squirting through his veins. No love had ever been so unconditional; no joy so all-consuming. The fly had died, seen hell, and now was dwelling in a little piece of heaven. Mere time would not erode this affection.
But maybe something else would.
“Get me my media!” shouted the tyrant.
“Acquire the media!” hollered the head of security.
“Yeah sure here they come now!” replied the communications team at the top of their lungs.
The media came in as a roving pack, but less like wolves than a deck of cards. Each was trying to shuffle behind the last.
“We were present,” sources said.
“Good goin’,” said the tyrant. “Listen up! I’m denouncing this fly!”
“The fly was denounced by the leader,” sources said.
“It’s terrible! It’s garbage! It’s vile, infiltrating filth! It’s seditious! It’s treasonous! It’s unhygienic and unpatriotic and noisome and obnoxious and nothing but a big fat waste of time! Away with it!”
“The fly was denounced in the strongest terms,” sources said. “It was made a matter of top policy.”
The room fell silent. Except for the fly, which was orbiting the dictator again.
“FUCK OFF!” he shouted at it.
“Strong language was used, showing the deep emotions involved,” sources said. “Some claim it undignified; others say it shows the depths of passion the leader shows for our country. Who can say? You decide.”
“GET OVER HERE AND SWAT THIS THING!” he screamed.
“The meeting ended abruptly, although no specific schedule had been arranged,” sources said. “All present were escorted from the premises.”
“No! Wait! Come back!”
But there was no one there.
Except the fly, which loved him so.
After that there was really only one logical place to go.
“Fetch me my defense minister!” he yelled.
“Acquire the defense minister!” roared the head of security.
“Where the hell’s the defense minister!” hooted the communications team.
The defense minister was in the toilet, but was persuaded to come out.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Bomb this thing,” ordered the tyrant, gesturing at the fly. It was lying on his shoulder, deceptively passive yet perfectly ready to take off and land on his eyelid, where it would try to drink his sweat. Yet again.
“Could be hard, chief,” she said. “Could be hard. Don’t know if we’ve got ordinance for that.”
“Execute her!” he yelled.
“Can’t do that, she’s got popular support in the army!” shouted the head of security.
“Politically inadvisable if you want to maintain power!” hollered the communications team.
“Fine! CENSURE her!”
“Naughty!” shouted the head of security.
“Shame!” shouted the communications team.
“Aw,” said the minister of defense.
“Get me my chief of defense staff instead!”
“That’s also me,” said the minister of defense, who was chief of defense staff.
“Piss!”
“I was doing that, but you wanted something.”
“Eradicate this insect!”
“Gonna collateral damage your face there a bit. You fond of that shoulder, or would you prefer we wait for it to switch sides?”
“Threat to the leader’s life!” shouted the head of security.
“Take cover!” shouted the communications staff.
Bang, went many guns.
“Piiiisssssss,” whispered the minister of defense, who was chief of defense staff. And she was silent and pissed no more.
They all stood there together in a moment of awkward acknowledge and potentially-brewing coups.
“I’m going to go to bed,” said the tyrant.
“Find the be-!”
“Shaddup.”
After a long, sleepless night filled with only an erratic and inescapably whining set of wings, the dictator got up, looked himself in the mirror, pretended he hadn’t, and decided to put some hot water to good use. His entire body felt filthy and soiled, and inch by inch, scrub by scrub, he determined himself to deny that.
Shampoo. Bar of soap. Loofah thingy. Bottle of mysterious thing whose label had come off. All were old friends, all eased away all the godawful mess the week had turned into.
In time, in his exertions, in the shower he felt calm. Serene. The water flowed, and he flowed with it. If he closed his eyes he could almost pretend he couldn’t feel the slight tingling in his scalp that was the result of the fly standing directly in the center of his forehead.
“YOU!” he screamed in raw anguish, and with that he struck himself a mighty blow, slipped, bashed his head on the faucet, and drowned in less than half an inch of water.
The fly would’ve been heartbroken, but as it was buzzing in sorrowful circles above the dictator’s corpse a stray fleck of water struck it, gumming its wings and sucking it down that great metaphor of inevitability: the drain.
But the dictator was dead and so the land rejoiced, or at least those parts of it that hadn’t enjoyed the fruits of the tyrant’s reign, and thus the underlying faults of the society that had permitted, nay, even encouraged a dictatorial seizure of power went unaddressed and unanswered because they were a feature not a bug.
Speaking of bugs, they made a little mausoleum for the fly. Very nice and classy, marble and everything. About three by eight inches. You can see it downtown for a dollar.