Second Breath

Staring at nothing in particular, you sit in the recliner springs groaning under your weight. A dim light leaks into the room through the edges of the drawn curtain. The house smells of dust and the faint metallic tang of something left too long. But you know what the smell is, don’t you? You’ve known for weeks now.
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It’s her. She’s still on the floor where she fell, wrapped in the same faded nightgown she wore that fateful night. You’ve called no one. You don’t have to. There’s no one to call. No children. No brothers or sisters, not anymore. The two of you chose reclusion, and it suited you; you were two ageing shadows in an old house.

You look at her every day. And when the silence and loneliness become unbearable, you speak to her. She doesn’t answer, of course, and yet in the stillness of the house you feel her presence more than ever. What unsettles you, isn’t her. It’s the fly.

Flies came after she died. At first you cursed them. You swatted in vain as they buzzed around your head. They circled her body, but one kept landing on the rim of your water glass. It had a persistence unlike the others; always returning, hovering near your face, demanding attention.
You’ve become certain that this one was not similar to the rest.

You remember reading about cultures in Asia and Africa whose citizens never kill flies. Sacred carriers, they said. Souls travelling. A second chance, brief as a wingbeat. You’d scoffed back then. But now, with her silent body beside you and this insistent buzzing, the thought had grown.

Today, the fly lands on the armrest of your recliner. Its wings shimmer with a rainbow sheen, delicate and trembling. You lean closer, squinting. It doesn’t flinch, doesn’t dart away as most do. Instead, it walks toward you, slow and deliberate.

Your throat tightens. “It’s you, isn’t it?” you whisper.

The fly pauses, listening.

You smirk. She was your wife, your companion of fifty years, reduced to a creature most people kill without thinking. But you had planned her death. You told yourself it was mercy because she was suffering. The theory explains the fly’s persistence; your former wife is attempting to poison your water.

You start talking. You tell her about the neighbors you haven’t seen in years, about the growing pile of laundry. You confess you haven’t eaten properly since she died. That you love her. But the fly perches on the rim of your water glass, and dips its spindly legs in as if to scold you.
“I know,” you say. “The husband I was, seems unforgivable now.”

Days blur. You forget to wind the clock. You forget the world behind the curtains. But you don’t feel lonely anymore. She’s here, in a form that can’t embrace you, but still here. You imagine she’s watching, waiting, testing whether you’ll keep her alive by respecting what she’s become.

That evening you fall asleep in the recliner. When you wake, the fly is on your nose, wings folded like praying hands. You remember the stories she used to tell you about reincarnation. How every creature had once been a mother, a child, a lover in another life. She’d always spoken of it wistfully, as though she wanted it to be true.

“Is this what you wanted?” you ask her tiny dark body, your voice trembling. “To come back like this? To punish me?”

The fly lifts into the air, buzzing in a slow circle, then settles again on her prior body.

For the first time, you kneel beside her. The fly crawls across her knuckles. You pick up her hand, drop it, and then cover your mouth to keep from sobbing. You realize what she’s asking: not to keep her body, not to keep her here in this half-life of memory and dust. To let her go, to honor the passage.

The weight of the decision presses heavily upon you. You call the authorities.

The police arrive. You tell them the story. Most of it anyway. They glance at the body, then at you, then at each other; their faces masking pity and disgust. Then one of the officers, bothered by the fly, smacks their hands together.

You gasp.

Your wife drops to the floor. She spins in circles on her winged back. Your body moves before thought. The chair topples. As she comes to a halt, you watch intently for movement. Nothing. After tucking her into your pocket, you let the officers cuff you.

They push you through the doorway, past your wife’s previous body and the curtains that haven’t moved in weeks. The air outside tastes different. It’s too bright, too clean. You don’t deserve it. And so, you welcome your new cell. Then, reaching into your pocket, your fingers brush her tiny body. You close your hand around her.

She moves.

You exhale.