Perclusio

Perclusio (per-clu’-si-o): A threat against someone, or something.

I yelled at my little brother: “Get out of here or I’ll turn you into a fly!” He scoffed at me and continued rummaging around in my laundry basket. I had seen the movie “The Fly” and it scared the shit out of me. Nevertheless, I’m a certified thrill-seeker by the “Junior Thrill-Seekers of America, Omaha, Nebraska.” They certified me after I sent them a photo of myself in a roller coaster, waiting for take-off. I was going to chase my brother around with a fly swatter pretending it was a kind of wand that could transform him into a fly. The chase was on,

After circling my laundry basket three of four times, I landed a swat on his head as I yelled “Fly!”

He disappeared.

Then, I heard this pitiful voice in the laundry basket say “Please don’t hurt me, I’m only a fly!” Oh my God—it was a line from “The Fly!” I was shitting bricks.

I looked down, and there, on the rim of the laundry basket, was a fly with my brother’s head on it! It was “The Fly” all over again. Only, I wasn’t going to crush my little brother/fly. I was going to let him be a free range fly in my bedroom. I would bring him table scraps and water.

Then there was rapid knocking on my door. I opened it and was filled dread and shock—it was my little brother with a fly’s head, I nearly shit my pants. He had written on a scrap of paper: “I want my head back!!!”

I told his fly self 1 to sit on his fly self 2’s head. When fly self 1 landed, fly self 2 instinctively swatted at him, but missed. Thank God. On take-2 fly self 1 landed unmolested. I picked up my apparently magical fly swatter and swatted fly self 2’s head, landing the blow squarely on fly self 1. As I brought the swatter down, I said, “Put the heads back where they belong.”

There was a puff of orange smoke that smelled like rotten banana, spoiled clams, and bean dip. When the smoke cleared everything was restored. Given that fly 1’s head had once been attached to a human head, it was smarter than average and became the world’s smartest fly. I named him Elvis. We travelled the world together amazing people with his tricks. One of his best tricks was dive bombing a piece of chocolate cake. He’d stay buried in the cake until the last minute, then, he’d burrow out the other side loudly buzzing and do 10 loop-de-loops around an audience member’s head. They loved it.

My brother wasn’t so fortunate. His “Fly” experience had inculcated the garbage gripping/eating sensibilities of a fly. He was like a raccoon at night—rummaging through our neighbors’ trash cans making an annoying buzzing sound.

The smell of excrement was like cocaine to him. He kept some in a zip lock bag and would pull the bag out for a sniff 10-20 times a day. As he got older, he was arrested several times for sniffing butts on the subway.

In order to publicly sniff butts, he would drop something on the floor and surreptitiously take a butt-sniff as a he bent to pick the object up. It was disgusting. He joined “Sniffers Anonymous” when he was 22, and has been sniff-free for the past 2 years. When he feels the urge to sniff a butt, he takes a snort of ground black pepper to kill the urge.

POSTSCRIPT

I am currently in a “rest” home, where I sit with my fly swatter Jim, saying over and over “It really did happen,” I am allowed visitors if I promise not to swat them.