The Far Side
Buzzing through the bland air of the classroom the fly observed its surroundings intently, always looking out for the deadly hand or fly swatter that would end its already pathetic short life. Teenagers sat at their desks, heads propped on their hands, faces against the table tops, noses in a variety of books, all bored out of their mind and wishing they could escape from the torment of disinterest.
Zipping in tight circles around the mounds of hair the fly searched for food, crumbs, drops of liquid, sauces, any sort of edible substance that would allow it to continue its life. It started with the desks closest to the door, leaving a viable escape route available to itself. It landed on the first desk, scored the surface for any obstructions, but found nothing. It moved onto the next couple of desks, but found nothing on top of any of them. Reluctantly it moved to the tables occupied by the currently docile humans. It flew carefully through here, for though the flies reflexes were far quicker, the teenagers were much larger and had technology and intelligence to find ways to squash the fly.
It spied some crumbs on the desk of a sleeping boy, his cheek pressed to the desk like it had grown onto his face and intended to stay there. It landed as cautiously as it could, scurried over to the few crumbs and began to feed its yawning hunger in earnest. After it finished the fly checked to see if it was in any immediate danger, and took flight yet again in search of more substance. The fly then proceeded to the center of the classroom, an area of even more intense danger than the first few rows of students. Here the humans were more alert and awake, barely any were sleeping at all, most were reading books or drawing doodles, some were looking around for the fly due to its wings buzzing. Probing through all the teens the fly kept looking for food.
All of a sudden a hand reached out of nowhere to swat the fly. The fly avoided this narrowly and kept its vision on the girl who’d tried in annoyance to kill the tiny fly. Once out of the reach of the deadly girl, the fly returned to searching for food. It’d found a student intently drawing on paper and saw a half eaten sandwich by its hand. Deciding to take the risk, the fly dived towards the large sandwich, watching the boy to make sure he didn’t try to swat it out of the air. Luckily it landed atop the sandwich without much trouble and ate quickly, for the boy could notice any second that a bug was eating his food and attempt to obliterate the fly from life.
For a second the fly let down his guard and savored the food he was shoveling into his mouth. The bread was so very chewy and he loved every lick and chomp. Suddenly the fly realized the boy had spotted him and had flicked his hand towards the fly. Nimbly avoiding the colossal hand the fly took to the skies again and headed to the far side of the classroom, where very few students sat. For the third time it scrounged for food, hoping today would be a magnificent day and the fly would receive three different servings of food.
It finally spotted a girl eating a pop tart lazily. The fly considered not trying for the food, it had narrowly escaped its death by the boy with the sandwich and could walk away and say it had eaten enough, but why waste a perfectly good and rare food source? It zipped down to the gooey red center of the crumbly treat and began to feed. This time the fly became ensnared by the delicious taste, wallowing in the pleasure its taste buds were receiving. It was so wonderful, and the fly was so ecstatic that it didn’t notice the giant tool of death used by humans against it come crashing down on top of it until it had happened. “Ewww!!! Mrs. Hitchcock, there’s a fly on my desk,” said the student in a disgusted tone.
