Fly on the Wall: The Scheherazade Project

It was a powerful witch who created me. Oh, she thought of herself as an artist, although she never really did much of anything. She painted the inside of this house a lot. Odd and mostly bright-ish colors and strong lines. Sometimes every wall in the room would be a different color. Enough to give you a headache really.

Everything was like that except for me. She never changed me, she never painted over me, and she didn‘t make me a bunch of different colors the way she did her nudes. I suppose my style would be photographic realism. If she ever painted anything else like me, I don’t know about it.

I don’t think she really meant to create me but sometimes things take on a life of their own, unbidden. I must have been born from her sense of humor. What else besides a sense of humor would cause you to paint a fly on the corner of the kitchen cabinet, up high just above the hinged corner of the door? And then she would make jokes about being such a recluse that she couldn’t even draw flies. She would laugh and laugh and no one had any idea she’d drawn me. She must have liked the insect motif because at one time there were carved wooden bug magnets on the pie safe, and even painted rock beetles scattered about the house, but those were done by her children.

All that was ages ago.

The truth is, I go unnoticed almost all the time. Because I go unnoticed, I stayed here all those years. Every now and then some new owner would clean the kitchen really well and be surprised by me. Their first reaction was usually to get the swatter but they’d almost never try to scrub me off after they figured out I was a painting. They mostly just laughed when they had figured it out, wipe the greasy dust away, and go on cleaning. But other times those that knew I was here would look up at me and think, wonder if that fly on the wall heard that? Wonder what all else he has heard? What would it be like to really be a fly on the wall.

Maybe it was their thoughts through the years that gave me consciousness.

It is the only life I’ve ever known, being a fly on the wall.

Now, if I were really creative (which sometimes I think I am not), this story could go anywhere at all, couldn’t it? The things the fly has overheard, the characters, the dramas, the small private ways world events effect individuals. The fly’s house could even be up for demolition and thus he’d be facing an existential crisis of sorts. Who knows. Right now I don’t.

Although I do hope recognition factors (of her, of me) will make my friend Laura smile.