“Up there, in the sky…”
“It’s not Superman, Ed. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“But up in the sky, Edna. Look up…”
They were on their back patio, a small, uneven area beyond the back porch, Ed’s failed attempt at brickwork.
There was nothing in the sky, although Ed pointed – no bird at all, no plane.
And it wasn’t the Man of Steel, either, although Superman occasionally zipped over the neighborhood northeast of Philadelphia.
Why not? It was Philadelphia. It needed his help.
Edna had to go over it again.
“Its not him. It’s your glasses, Ed. Without your glasses, you can’t see worth a damn.”
Squinting, Ed couldn’t gauge distances. He couldn’t differentiate a fly up close and bothersome from a plane moving from east to west in the heavens above.
“If you had ‘em on, Ed, you’d see it’s a fly.”
“Not Superman, huh?”
“No… It’s just a common fly.”
That was the end of it. They had little more to say to one another for the remainder of that Saturday morning.
Even when a dozen more flies joined them, she didn’t ask Ed to go into the kitchen to retrieve the flyswatter. Without his bifocals, what were the chances he’d come back with the dead insect-splattered tool rather than, say, a large plastic salad fork?
The patio was uneven, so they rocked back and forth in their chairs.
There’d be no aerial Superman antics to improve the day.
And the flies?
Most of them decided to go into the kitchen through the torn screen door, to check out the counter and sink with its unwashed breakfast dishes, before Edna and, later, Ed, went inside.
David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).