“What the fuck?!” shouted a small, furious voice.

Coco spun in a slow circle, looking for the owner of the voice. There was no one to be seen.

A small black fly landed on the tip of Coco’s nose.

As she went to swat it away she heard the voice again. “That was my fucking house! What the fuck is wrong with you?! Where am I going to live?!”

Coco stared cross-eyed at the fly for a moment in disbelief as it vomited orange liquid all over the tip of her nose.

“Gross!” She squealed and swatted at the insect.

“Gross?!” the fly shouted, buzzing around her head. “I’ll tell you what’s gross! An inconsiderate bitch running around tormenting folks and squashing their homes with her giant barbarian feet!”

Coco was stunned. “My feet are not that… This fly isn’t really talking to me.” She shook her head vigorously, trying to empty it of the delusions of talking flies.

“The hell I’m not!” the fly spat angrily. He buzzed back and forth from the trampled can and orbited Coco’s head. “What a day! What a fucking day!” said the fly, obviously distressed. “First I find out that I only have a week to live. A week! Can you imagine?” he said, buzzing so close to Coco’s face that she found herself cross-eyed again trying to focus on him.

“That’s terrible,” Coco said. She suddenly felt bad for having crushed that can.

“And now,” the fly ranted, “now I’ve nowhere to live for that week! What am I going to do?”

The fly landed, and collapsed into the folds of a rotting orange. He began to cry squeaky little sobs, which were probably considered quite large for a creature its size.

Coco sat on a pile of Styrofoam containers beside the rotting orange and its sobbing, sniffling resident. “It can’t be too terribly hard for a fly to find a place to live in a dump? But I’m sorry.”

She picked up the crinkled can and peered into its mouth. Sure enough there was a mini smashed sofa, a television with a shattered screen and snapped-off antennas and a crumpled end table complete with a destroyed reading lamp and tiny tattered magazines. Some of which were pornographic.

Coco put the can down, blinked feverishly, and shook her head some more. She grabbed the can again and peered back inside. All of its contents were still there, but shaken up to resemble the bits in a kaleidoscope. She turned the can upside down, convinced that what she was seeing was an optical illusion. As an erotic dancer, she knew all about smoke and mirrors—lighting was key. The bits of furniture and miniature magazines rattled. Several articles tumbled out and fell into the trash at Coco’s feet.

The fly, nestled in the decaying fruit, had just started to calm down and breathe evenly. He looked up with sixteen teary lenses in time to see his crushed possessions poured out of his home like the god-awful swill it once held. He dropped his tiny, fuzzy face back into the orange, and began to sob again.

Coco sat atop the pile of to-go containers and put the can down carefully. Sticky bits of mashed French fries coated in thick, congealed remnants of ketchup and mustard stuck to her calves. She flicked it off quickly with her long, dirty acrylic nails. She couldn’t believe what was happening. She thought she must be unconscious.

Perhaps it was just that wavy-looking dream sequence like in the movies. The part where she would eventually awake in a hospital bed must be next. But upon thinking all of these things, Coco realized that she still wasn’t waking up. The fly was bawling his tiny, multi-lensed eyes out into a piece of rotting fruit. The smell of the dump was still absolutely vile and Coco was STILL hungry.