A Chemical Spritz by Robert Pettus

A Chemical Spritz

fiction by Robert Pettus

13 A heavy autumn wind pushed inward the window screen, which flapped back and forth attached unstably to its home. A stink bug traversed the endless squares of the rippling grid.

The wind blew again, this time with too much force, causing within the tiny bug discomfort—in whatever way bugs can experience discomfort. It detached itself, flying into the sky, across the front yard and above McAlpin Ave. The writer on the other side of the screen, only momentarily noticing the soaring bug, got back to his story. It was a bad story; he had no business wasting his time writing it. He was aware of that, if only deep down.

The stinkbug flew chaotically across the road, the beating wind causing turbulence within its humming, robotic wings. It landed across the street onto the backpack of a middle-school kid walking home from school. One of the kid’s friends, running up from behind, shoved him into a nearby pile of leaves.

“Hey!” said the kid, pretending to be angry. He liked piles of leaves; he loved the fall. He flailed around in the pile, subconsciously savoring that thick scent of dead autumn leaves before jumping out back onto the sidewalk.

The stinkbug liked piles of leaves, too. It began instinctively chewing on a crunchy, dried brown leaf. Not quite as good as an apple, but it was close enough.

The stink bug then took again to the skies, flying further down the street, onto the front porch of a house. It flew unintentionally too close to a flickering flame, which burned a scented candle on a table atop the front porch of the slouching old house.

The stink bug felt pain.

It averted its course, onto the shoulder of a nearby humanoid figure. It was a life size mannequin of Pennywise the clown, a truly disturbing Halloween decoration. The

stink bug would have been terrified if it had read the book, or even known who Pennywise was. It didn’t, though—it couldn’t read. It landed on his painted face, instinctively spraying a chemical cocktail across his fat red nose. There was no reaction, which was strange. Usually people fall back in revulsion, sneezing and rushing off to the bathroom.

The stinkbug then flew through a crack in a nearby window screen into the house.

The place was dimly lit, but the stinkbug didn’t care about that. It cruised through the living room, spritzing its putrid scent everywhere like a reverse airfreshener. It then landed atop a Keurig coffee machine. It nibbled at the remnant grounds matted like an aromatic carpet into the bottom of the machine. This got the stink bug going—it now felt alive, though also somehow slower, somehow weakening. Caffeine, apparently, affects insects in different ways than it does people.

It flew off the coffee machine up the stairs, down the hallway and into the master bedroom, where a woman lay heaving, slobbering down her chin in the throes of REM sleep.

It landed on her cheek.

She was an elderly woman. The stinkbug crawled along the bumps of her wrinkly skin like an ATV off-roading on a mountainside.

It crawled to the bottom part of her eyelid, and she blinked.

The stinkbug again took to the air, spraying its odorous discharge all over the woman’s eyes and nose.

She sniffled, smelling the stink, feeling a strange chemical sensation in her eyes. She blinked rapidly and opened her eyes, the foreign chemical seeping into her moist eyeballs, creating almost instantly a bloodshot, pulsating involuntary quiver.

She jerked up in her bed, yanking open the curtains and looking out the window. The afternoon was bright; kids were walking home from school, as usual.

She got up and flipped on the light, which also activated the ceiling fan. As it

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began spinning, the stinkbug leaped from its comfortable place atop one of the blades back into the airspace.

The lady felt a singing, pulsating sensation building from her eyes into her head. She spun blindly around the room, screaming as a result of the exponentially intensifying, piercing pain drilling into her eyeballs. A comfortable breeze blew in through an open window adjacent to her bedside—she loved to feel the afternoon breeze as she napped so she always left it open. Sometimes she would even smell the smoky, seasoned scent of a nearby sizzling grill, which she believed comforted her dream world as she slept.

Not today, though.

Her mind was deteriorating. She followed the breeze, which was her only solace from the blinding pain. Like a fool she leapt into that breeze, falling out the window. Contacting the grated shingles of her front porch roof, she rolled, falling from the roof to the front yard.

Falling face first, her body pointed so perfectly straight it would make an Olympic diver jealous, she crashed into the concrete path leading to her front porch. Her teeth cracked, molars and incisors ejecting from her mouth. She lay dead in the yard, though the throbbing pulse of her bursting eyes continued.

The stinkbug flew through that same window out of the bedroom back into the street, joining with its now swarming brethren. Clouds floated peacefully in the sky, though not blocking the brightly shining sun. It was a beautiful afternoon.

This peaceful feeling was unfortunately interrupted by shouts and screams shooting out from the front-door-mouths of nearly every house on the street. People fell into their yards, flailing around like rabid animals. People dove into the piles of leaves. Cars—at least those whose driver’s had made the unfortunate choice of keeping their windows open to enjoy the afternoon air—crashed into other cars; stampeded through yards, colliding into houses, ran over those crazed individuals writhing around on the

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ground. A man rode a skateboard down the slight decline of the street, staring vacantly ahead before swerving and crashing with a thud into a telephone pole.

The stinkbug, responding to the chaos only by instinct, flew skyward toward the sun, as did the rest of the swarm. The swarm looked like a shifting, static cloud—a literal plague. They would move to a new neighborhood, a new street, which they would only briefly call home.

Stinkbugs, as you may well know, are an invasive species.

End