Living Dead by J.W. Schnarr

there’s nothing to do but look for ways to get high and lay around in the dark fucking or sleeping, he has the entire thing mapped out. He’s even begun twisting the idea that flies are responsible for the plague of dead people.
    Denise knows the real reason flies behave the way they do. She finished her biology classes all the way up to academics in high school. She knows flies have taste receptors on their feet, for example, and the reason they are constantly cleaning themselves is so those receptors can stay clear of dust. The behavior is called preening, like what a duck does to spread oil on its feathers.
    When they land on people, they’re looking for food. And they’re looking for a place to shit, lay eggs and spit on something putrid or sweet so they can suck it up with their long, padded tongue. Look close enough at that tongue, and it kind of looks like a swollen vagina with black barbs of hair coming out of it. She told Cooper that, one time, and he asked if it could still be considered a blowjob if your vagina was on your face. At the time, Denise said no, but looking at the flies in the room, rubbing their robber-hands together and stamping their tongue on everything they can reach, she’s not so sure.
    The irony of the fly is that it spends its days denying who it really is. It spends its days trying to look like someone who wasn’t born in shit. Flies put on airs, like they’re better than other insects. And they land on people because they love the taste of the oils and salt a human body produces in miniscule quantities.
    The spray cans have been moved up into the bedroom, because Denise doesn’t like spiders and the basement is full of them. She takes a can of black paint and sprays it on a fly as it is coming out of the knothole. Tiny, aerosol droplets of night wash over the insect. Unable to draw breath through the chemical shield, it drops out of the hole, already dead.
    There’s no holding your breath if you’re a fly. You’re either taking in air or you’re dead. The paint is sticky, so the head of the fly becomes glued to the wood just below the knothole. It gets stuck headfirst. It falls upside down and its legs are curled and twitching, facing up toward the ceiling like how bugs die in cartoons.
    In the old world, Denise knew a lot of people who put on airs. Some of them were like flies. They had parents who drank or were poor or were dead. They had an image of the people they wanted to be, and they became them. And like the paint fly with its head glued to a board, she imagined they were all dead now, too. It all seemed pointless now, but at the time, they probably thought it meant something to be seen as big and important. The paint fly probably thought it was good to be clean, right up until it got a blast of black paint in the eyes and thick poison coated its fly lungs.
    As she’s looking at the dead paint fly, another fly lands on it, vagina-tongue padding the paint fly’s torso. Seeming to like what it tastes, the second fly ruts the corpse.
    Denise watches them for a moment longer than she thinks is appropriate, and then she blasts the second fly with paint as well. It manages to get airborne but lands on the floor a few feet away from the window. Its wings are stuck to the floor, and it buzzes in unfiltered insect rage.
    Then she grabs one of Cooper’s socks off the floor and tosses it into the bottom of a paint bag. She sprays a thick coat of black paint into the bottom of the bag, coating the sock until it’s dripping in paint. She puts the bag to her mouth and breathes deep, counting to 10 before she exhales.
    The second huff brings on a wave of drunken dizziness. She puts her eye up to the knothole and looks out at the yard, huffing paint, and staring at the multicolour wonderland beyond the barrier of the window. The yard disappears for an instant when a dead person shuffles past the window.
    She listens to it fall on its knees. She hears the soft, wet smack of meat being