By Felix Sefton

‘On that best portion of a good man’s life, / His little, nameless, unremembered, acts / Of kindness and of love.’
—William Wordsworth, ‘Tintern Abbey’

Nothing was any fun anymore. It was midsummer, hot and sunny, and anyone with any sense was up at the beach, not stuck in the sweltering city. In the old days he’d have driven up to the coast, but in the absence of the car he’d been obliged to sell, the rigours of bus and train were more than he could face.

Things went from bad to worse. He’d been through hard times before but this was something different altogether. Then, no matter how tough the going, he’d always had a girl at his side – not the perfect partner, perhaps, but someone who’d taken his mind off things, lightened the darkness. But not anymore. Even that had gone.

Still, it was Saturday morning and two whole days stretched out in front of him – ­time enough, he hoped, to complete the story he’d started but couldn’t finish. His world in ruins, he’d sought refuge in words, built for himself a shelter where, for a while, he succeeded in shutting out the mournful sound of the raven at his window croaking Nevermore.

Seating himself at his desk, he gazed again at the threadbare narrative staring up at him from the page. There it lay, his sorry tale, a tattered ragdoll, pleading with him to teach it to dance, to turn its rags to riches. But how? he asked himself despondently. Breathing life into words was akin to raising the dead, a miracle that, no matter how much he longed to perform it, lay well beyond his powers.

Distracted by a noise at his elbow, he glanced up in annoyance to see a fly buzzing frantically against the window pane. Not again! There’d been a plague of them that summer. What was the use of them? None at all that he could see, other than disturbing people when they were trying to work.

Determined to put a speedy end to such an unwelcome distraction, he rose to his feet, picked up a magazine from the table behind him and, rolling it up, strode to the window. Leaning forwards, poised to strike, he paused for a moment. Looking more closely at his intended victim, he saw beneath him not an insect but instead a little man with wings, and suddenly, he couldn’t say why, there swept over him the certainty that he had no right to end its existence.

Stepping back, he returned the weapon to the table. The fly, he decided, would be accorded the same mercy granted to spiders: he’d capture it and then set it free. After all, wasn’t its plight a little like his? The freedom it longed for lay before it, clearly visible, and yet some obstacle, whose true nature it could never divine, stood in its way.

Crossing the hallway to the kitchen, he extracted a tumbler from the cupboard above the sink. Returning to his study, he picked up a card from the windowsill and, glass in one hand, card in the other, bent over the small figure, motionless now, as if resigned to its fate.

Taking careful aim, he swooped deftly and, to his relief, there inside was the fly, unharmed. Raising the rim of the tumbler slightly, he slipped the card beneath it, sliding it forwards until it formed a roof, preventing escape. Within, the fly buzzed furiously, unaware that what appeared to spell doom was in fact salvation in disguise.

The card held firmly over the glass, he stepped out through the open balcony door and, removing it, watched as the creature flew off to pursue its existence; not a noble one, perhaps, but then who was he to boast?

It set him wondering. Would, one day, the buzzing of his own desperate thoughts awaken such compassion in some higher being, its power over him as great as his over a fly’s?

Imagine it! Captive, and then, suddenly, when you least expected it, that rush of air, that blinding light, that boundless freedom.

Returning to his desk, intent on finishing his story, he found to his surprise that something strange had come over him. His fingers, stiff and cramped only minutes before, now glided lithely over the keyboard so much so that, little by little, the sorry patchwork doll that was his story, limp and lifeless until then, began to dance and, dressed now in joyful colours, waltzed from the page, charming the hearts of those who’d once scorned it. At last, set free, it had found its rightful home.

About the Author

Felix Sefton is a British writer currently based in Hamburg. He studied English at Cambridge and has spent much of his life abroad, including several years in Brazil, before settling in Germany. He has worked for many years as an English teacher and, alongside his fiction, has written songs. His short stories have appeared in Crystal: The Magazine for Writers, and one of his stories was featured at a literary event in Cambridge. His work ranges from the comic to the reflective and lyrical, exploring relationships, time, loss and the absurdities of everyday life. He has completed The Ark, a collection of short stories, as well as two novels.