No-See-Um

Quite suddenly, one day at the office, there are tiny insects in the air. Everywhere: copy room, lunchroom, conference room, shipping department, personnel. We see them when we walk into the breakroom or go to the bathroom. Wherever we look up, there suspended against a nimbus of humming fluorescent white is a shadowy funnel of tiny flies, bobbing in the air.

No-see-ums. This is what one employee calls them. This is true. Although we often cannot see them, we feel them, floating around our ears, flitting through our regulation-length hair, pelting the skin on our throats with their invisible bodies, as if trying to collapse bones and meat with their infinitesimal insect blows.

Soon it is all we employees talk about. The bugs. Where did they come from? Why are there so many? Is that one in your latte? It is strange to see us so preoccupied because we are usually such a happy bunch. We always celebrate each other’s birthdays with pudding cake and little pointy hats. Once a week, we all chip in a dollar for Donut Day, which is Wednesday. (Nothing like a choco-custard breakfast stick to get you over the hump.) We are all astonished that something like this has been allowed to happen. Our company is usually so efficient in most matters. But in this case, it is days before they even acknowledge the problem. By that time, the no-see-ums have multiplied exponentially. 

Corporate action is in the form of an all-company e-mail. This is a surprise since, in our office, we still get paper memos. The equivalent of eight Yellowstone National Parks is leveled annually for our memos alone. These are issued by our neo-Luddite boss, who never e-mails and is, in fact, still reserving judgment on whether this whole internet thing is going to catch on. His memos are always reminding us of something—the more trivial the matter, the better. Re: the issue of mens shoes with big tassals; Offically, no mens shoes with big tassals are permitable by the company within the confines of the office. 

The no-see-um e-mail is not like this. The spelling is correct, and there are uncharacteristic phrases such as sudden proliferation, the health factor, and descending like locusts. The fact that this missive is articulate is some cause for concern. 

The no-see-um e-mail further states that workstations must now be kept clean: no more half-eaten sandwiches left out, no more half-drunk cups of Starbucks or Dr. Pepper left sitting on conference room tables for days at a time. According to the e-mail, it is in these places, especially the liquids, that the insects lay their eggs. Since their gestation period is about twenty-four hours (the e-mail is also suspiciously rich in factual detail), this accounts for the extraordinarily high number of insects in our humble office.

Knowledge is power, so thinks our company. Right. 

Soon, employees begin to cover all things comestible—coasters atop shaky cups of coffee, Kleenex wrapped round a nutty donut, white bond over a Snickers bar. After a single sip of Cherry Vanilla Coke, a piece of foil is clamped over the top of the can. Anything to keep the insects from spilling their terrible seed. 

Before long, covering our food and drink is not enough. After reading the e-mail, one secretary (one we all suspect to be the boss’s paramour) starts holding a tissue over her face wherever she goes. When one of the other employees asks her if she has a cold, she says What if they fly in my mouth and lay their eggs there? 

The other employee does not laugh. In fact, he says nothing. You can see the wheels turning. It had not occurred to him that the insects might lay their eggs in such places. We all start to wonder what grotesque maladies these teeny arthropods might introduce into our bodies via mucus membranes or the old cakehole. Rocky Mountain fever? Legionnaires’ disease? Elephantiasis? Or will we just rot like a melon left too long on top of the refrigerator, starting at the bung and spreading rapidly from there?

The next day, there are many surgical masks worn around the office. Soon, our dress code (All employees must wear suits of dark blue or dark gray, black or brown shoes, white shirts/blouses and subdued blue or maroon ties with designs that do not exceed one half-inch in diameter) is completely disregarded. When the secretaries start showing up in goggles and netted pith helmets, no one even questions it. Among the employees, there is talk of how to seal other orifices. It seems likely that the local hardware store is experiencing a run on caulking guns. 

It is as if everyone in the office has suddenly become aware of some indiscernible otherworld, where the air is not simply something that we breathe, pure fodder for lungs, but a place where things happen. We employees are like the drunkard comedian who believes water is unhealthy to drink because fish go to the bathroom in it. 

Donut Day is cancelled indefinitely.

So many insects now that when we walk into a room, we see pieces of darkness in the air, ragged shapes that hang like rents in the spatial fabric. The bugs are no longer “no-see-ums.” We can indeed see-um. One employee, caught up in work, inadvertently walks into one of these dark spaces and immediately begins slapping himself. While jabbering, crazy-like, he starts slapping the air around him, including the person next to him, which happens to be our boss. This continues for quite some time. 

After what us spectators deem a sufficient interval, the slapping man is restrained and taken away. Our swollen boss hastily retreats to his office while the snickering dies down. The slapping man is currently under observation. The company continues to pay his salary for the duration of his stay at the hospital. 

We notice the days slowing. This is something that never happens in office life. Of course, there are many bad, boring days, but in an office, there is always a sense of the blur—weeks, months, the company anniversaries that pass and pass. Employees are always talking about how time flies, yet now we are living on fly time. We are conscious of the days. They crumble slowly behind us, as if we are sleepwalking away from an ever-widening ravine.

The company continues to do nothing about the insects. We begin to wonder if they think the e-mail was enough when something happens in the coffee room. One employee, hungry enough to risk disease, tries to find some well-sealed item in the honor system snack box. The no-see-ums light on his head as if it were roadkill. In a fit of pique and panic, he knocks the whole box of snacks onto the floor.

 Word quickly gets back to another employee, whose brother-in-law works for the snack supplier. He rushes into the coffee room and accuses the hungry employee of stealing, of breaking the sacred code of honor of the snack box. A scuffle ensues. People leave their desks and mill around the coffee room to watch the action. Two men under a halo of flies, rolling around on a floor strewn with Zagnuts, Cheez-Its, Mallo Cups and Bar-B-Q Fritos. Then one of them falls backward onto a stale Charleston Chew and lets out a horrible animal shriek. 

The boss comes in, and a group of employees, feeling a collective vicarious blood rush, ask him, in ways that one would not normally speak to their boss, When is the company going to do something about the bugs? What is wrong with you people? A few employees start working out an impromptu chant when one of the female reps walks in ashen faced. She announces that the secretary who has been holding a tissue over her face for the past three days is dead in the ladies’ room. The two men stop beating each other. The boss faints. 

Upon investigation, a spray can of Off! is discovered near the woman’s body. We surmise that she has been surreptitiously inhaling it to keep her nose and mouth from becoming a breeding ground for larvae. Ironically, it is not long before there is a higher concentration of flies in the bathroom. Swarms of them.

After the police arrive, one employee stands outside the ladies’ room ranting to all of us. Spray can nothing, it’s what I’ve suspected all along. Killer insects! Rare poisonous FLESH-EATING no-see-ums sent here by the company to downsize our staff so they save money on unemployment insurance. Much easier and cheaper than layoffs. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

Others of us know the truth. She is dead and they are flies. Nature.

A paper memo is issued. It is addressed directly to the bugs. It is to be under stood that all insects will discontinue mateing and leave the office at once. Or security will be noteified. 

Soon, our boss has a visitor from Corporate. The man behind the original e-mail, we suspect. The door is closed for a long time. No one sees our boss after he leaves work that day. 

On Friday morning, another e-mail. Fumigation is to take place on the premises over the weekend. We are told to cover objects in our offices, those with which we have everyday contact—computers, cell phones, calculators—everything not already sheathed. 

Doing it, we are reminded of all the things we touch each day with our hands and ears and mouths—keyboards ingrained with communal grime, greasy earpieces of telephones, the teaspoon with a dull patina of artificial coffee whitener that carries the thumbprint of the last person who stirred. We are reminded of everything that the flies touch. 

That evening, we look back at our office before getting on the elevator. It is as if we are exiting a quarantine room from a science-fiction film. There is a baffled, bandaged silence. One of us sneezes on the way down, and everybody jumps. Then we move away.

Our habits from work carry over into our weekend lives. We are afraid to touch our loved ones for fear we are somehow infested, afraid to leave beverages out (cringe as we watch our children do it but dare not say anything so not to look foolish or crazy). We look toward a light and check the air before entering a room. We are seeing much more these days. 

Our families ask us what’s wrong. We give them hollow smiles and say nothing.

On Monday, when we return to work, the flies are once again invisible. There are tens of thousands fallen dead on lunch tables, translucent mounds on the various laminates that cover our communal workspaces. There are still a few in the air, but they are difficult to see. They weave around, flying the logy half-flight of the toxemic. When you spot them against the light, they are easy to trap in your palm, but no one does so, at least at first. After a short while, rage catches up with us, and we do start killing them manually, snatching them out of the air when we can spot them and crushing them between the heels of our hands. Once we see that victory is ours, we realize the ludicrousness of our fears. They’re only tiny insects. We are humans! How could we have been so scared?

By Wednesday, things are normal. A few employees have become sick from the insecticide, but they are the weak ones. Friday arrives quickly—a blur. By then, sandwiches are left out unprotected, half-filled mugs of coffee sit on desktops for an hour then are topped off with more warm liquid and consumed. Donut Day will be resumed next week. 

The company seems pleased with itself. Our boss comes back after a few weeks as if from vacation. He holds no grudges toward anyone. A new secretary has been assigned to him, and she is quite attractive. We are getting memos again most every day.