Help, I’m a Fly Trapped in a Belair Apartment and This Is My Final Buzz
At first, it was bliss. A dream. A buffet of semi-digested shawarma and week-old pizza crusts thanks to Charles’ heroic refusal to ever take out the recycling
Greetings from the other side of the triple-glazed fortress of solitude that is Charles’ apartment in Belair. If anyone can hear me, please: send help, break a window, stage a wellness check, release the flies. Anything. I’ve been stuck in this sterile Scandi-purgatory ever since Charles' date cracked open the balcony door for a cheeky Whit Monday cigarette and forgot to close it before resuming their awkward wine-fuelled flirtation over a lactose-free cheese board.
That was eleven days ago. Which, in fly years, is basically a decade.
At first, it was bliss. A dream. A buffet of semi-digested shawarma and week-old pizza crusts thanks to Charles’ heroic refusal to ever take out the recycling. The flat, a 50m² tribute to mid-range IKEA ambition, felt like Versailles. Entertainment was abundant—Charles brought home a new Tinder experiment every couple of nights, and let me tell you, some of them were barely even pretending to like him.
I was living large: dive-bombing Prosecco glasses, eavesdropping on overshared childhood traumas, and indulging in the kind of hedonism that makes dung beetles look like monks.
But like all empires, my reign began to crumble.
The kebab juice dried up. The bin was finally tied shut (probably by one of the more competent dates). And Charles, who initially seemed like a benevolent slob, revealed himself as a terrifying mix of tech bro and self-help junkie. His bookshelf is a shrine to hustling: “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***”, and—tragically not satire— “The Art of the Deal”. I read them all while walking upside down across his ceiling and, honestly, I think I came out dumber.
I tried to distract myself. Explored the wardrobe (he owns five electric blue suits, all in slightly different shades of regret), took reflective swims in the ceramic sink lagoon, even experimented with religion after landing on a leftover communion wafer. But the truth gnawed at me like Charles on a cold croissant: I was born to fly. And I’ve been grounded by a man who thinks “networking” is a personality.
My dreams are dying here. I once imagined a future: travelling, tasting exotic cuisines, fathering hundreds of maggots with a sexy bin-fly from Gasperich. Maybe even writing my memoirs— “Wings of Regret: The Autobiography of a Housefly Who Saw Too Much”.
Instead, I will die in this glorified shoebox, my brittle corpse sucked into the gaping mouth of Charles’ emotionally vacant Roomba, lost to history like so many before me.
Wait. Hold on. Charles—he’s opening the window. It’s real. It’s happening.
THIS IS MY MOMENT.
I can feel the breeze! I can see the outside! There's a pigeon flipping me off from the balcony railing—freedom!
Tell my maggot children I loved them, even though they never existed.
Goodbye, cruel Belair. Hello, sky. I’m coming home.