The Colonel and the Fly

Colonel Archibald Roddick was a tough old man. He’d been the veteran of many a war, and had fought in many a country. He was past his prime however, and felt that sooner or later he could no longer be useful to his nation in the event of a war. Now that the Great War had just come to an end, and he had led his men to triumph on the battlefield, he saw it fitting to take his leave from the military spotlight on a high note. And so he hung up his uniform, polished his medals one last time, and had his service revolver sealed in a glass case and proudly put on display atop his cabinet. His transition to civilian life however, was a matter far less simple than stowing or saving his belongings. Having been a high-ranking official he demanded order, civility and above all else, respect. All these requirements made life in his niece’s home quite laborious and strenuous for him. His niece had a tendency to birth loud, obnoxious and ill-mannered offspring. With her husband having recently passed on in a terrible accident that needs little description suffisive to say it involved a tapestry, there was a severe lack of discipline in the house. So she was left alone to tend to a terrible trio of hellions, hell bent on misbehaving. Her three young boys, William, Donald and Filmore were the bane of the colonel’s existence, as they did whatever they pleased, and what they pleased was always contrary to his wishes.

Colonel Roddick had the second story of the townhouse all to himself, but there was little peace, privacy or silence there for him. The flight of creaky stairs with the locking door at the top proved to be a highly ineffective barrier against three rambunctious youths. If anything it was seen more as a challenge to them than a deterrent, and they made it their business to evade detection, until they breached his living quarters that is, then they would make their presence very well known. If they couldn’t get in through the door, then they’d promptly climb the laburnum tree in the back yard, and come in through the window. Their intrusions into the colonel’s space grew in frequency and vociferous inconvenience with every request, order or shout to the antipode. The incorrigible incongruous behavior of the boys was contradictory to everything the colonel had known and loved about the army, and it pained him each time they breached his second story sanctuary. The boys’ propensity to pry into the affairs and possessions of their great uncle was so intense and well honed, that he had to lock his medals and pistol away in his armoire, out of their reach, and sadly out of his proud sight. The armoire was the one secure place of solitude he had from the menacing ways of William, Donald, and especially Filmore, who as the youngest misbehaved the most, to prove his valor to his sibling compatriots. The colonel would often boom from atop the staircase his great dislike of the children’s insubordination and disregard for his privacy.

This hectic and stressful lifestyle for the colonel made Sunday evenings extra special, for every Sunday from precisely three o’clock to eight o’clock pm he had the house to himself. At that time, on that night of each week, his niece and her brood of unscrupulous brigands would be off to town to visit her brother and have a quaint family dinner. Ironically this very same time was the least favorite for her brother, who shared the colonel’s distaste for the children’s nature, especially Filmore, who insisted on mishandling his cat. So, every Sunday evening colonel Archibald Roddick could relax to his paper, his pipe, and a glass of vermouth before bed. It came to be ritualistic for him, and he’d count down with delight, the minutes until his niece and the boys would trot off to the bus stop to take the number 10 across town. Then alone at last, he could sit comfortably in his worn leather chair, and reflect with great fondness his years spent serving his country. Happily at rest he’d lean back and dream as wafts of smoke rose from his Peterson Dublin, perched in his mouth.

On one Sunday in particular, the colonel’s tranquility was riven with the presence of a persistent and annoying fly. He was adamant on Sunday evenings being his sabbatical from an otherwise unbearable week. It started out as a petty irritation as the fly would circle around the room, buzzing loudly and flying within the parameters of the colonel’s personal relaxation space. But with each passing minute it grew more and more frustrating for him, and the petty irritation quickly grew to an all consuming vexation. The colonel had gone from perturbed to enraged as the loud low buzzing grew within his ears. No the colonel being a man who required a hush ataraxia to get through his week, was not about to let some miniscule insect ruin his furlough , so he took after the fly as if it were the Kaiser himself. Calling upon the repository of his accumulated years of military training, he hunted the fly, employing a number of strategies and techniques that would inflict pain and fear on any rival army. But this was no ordinary fly; it was cunning and calculating, the volume of its buzzing surpassed only by its failure to die. Frantically the colonel executed a campaign of leaps and swipes, attempting with all his valor and military prestige to destroy his unrelenting foe. The fly would careen around the room, swerving with acrobatic grace, to avert every newspaper swing of the colonel’s offensive. To Mrs. Fenniman across the way squinting through her spectacles, the colonel’s leaps through the air, looked like some sort of spastic interpretive dance, as he flailed about trying to smite the elusive fly.

The colonel was certain that the fly had an evil agenda and was out to get him. He figured that this fly was in no doubt a tool of his sinisterly obstreperous nephews, whose primary target was to inflict chaos on his leisure time during their absence. The constant unignorable hindrance of the fly, bothered the colonel so greatly that he referred to it as Filmore, while he chased it about in an attempt to end its existence. Then, the fly did the unthinkable and flew into his locked armoire through the small keyhole. It had entered into his last line of defense, his one sanctuary, where his thoughts and possessions could be protected, had been trespassed by a small, hairy dung-feeding menace. In a fit the colonel fumbled to unlock the armoire, eager to stop the intense buzzing echoing through his thoughts that had been amplified through the acoustics of the armoire.

When eight o’clock came around, colonel Roddick’s niece expected to find a content old man sitting quietly in his chair, reliving his glorious days of military prestige. What she saw was quite the opposite. Colonel Archibald Roddick sat in his chair with a mighty scowl on his face, discharged service revolver in his hand, having taken his own life in an attempt to maintain his Sunday night ritual of peace and quiet.