May 12th, 2026

Flies in the Honey
by Kyle Walker

​A story about control, fear, and the inevitability of decay. When one man’s carefully ordered life begins to unravel, he discovers that some things can never be kept out.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.


Honey caught the first flies.
                                                                           ***
Reynold Valerie kept a jar of honey on his kitchen table. The real, raw, unfiltered kind - not the high-fructose corn syrup kind squeezed into bear-shaped bottles. Fake honey can go bad, but real honey does not spoil. 

“Everything spoils, but not you,” said Reynold, complimenting his jar of honey in the usual way. 

Each morning started like this. Next, he would unscrew the jar’s lid and spread its amber sweetness over his toast. However, today, when he looked down at the jar of honey, the black of his eyes swallowed the blue and he took a panicked step backward. Bile churned in his throat as the three black houseflies trapped inside the viscous prison stared back at him with their dead eyes. 

“This can’t happen. Honey is pure, honey is clean, honey is—”
He choked on his next words. Sweat greased his greying auburn hair. It was the smell. He could always find it, no matter how fresh – how hidden. The stench of decay. He had not smelled it in a long time. He should have known the fear would find him eventually. 

Fear came to define Reynold’s forty-four years of life. As with many things, perhaps his parents were to blame. Not his father, of course, having abandoned them before Reynold was born. It was his mother that instilled the importance of cleanliness and neatness. She taught him how to avoid crowds when he could, move swiftly and quickly when he couldn’t, and wash his hands afterward. However, he discovered the smell on his own when a truck driver failed to see his mother’s car pull out into a busy intersection. The smell found Reynold in his safe place in the backseat. When the paramedics and the police and the crowds came to pry his mother from the mangled car, they couldn’t smell it. Only he could. 

Maybe if his mother warned him about the smell, things would be different. Maybe he would have known how to explain it to the women he dated. Why it was important for them to always be vigilant for the smell of decay. Reynold never blamed his mother though. Reynold never thought to blame anyone. These were truths hidden in plain sight and Reynold never went looking for them. Instead, he went looking for things that never spoiled. Things like honey.

That was why a large stock of honey jars cluttered his pantry. He ordered the honey through a local farm’s website and they delivered it to his doorstep. Reynold was a computer programmer for a large corporation and worked out of his apartment. He found everything else he needed on the internet. He had no family or friends to visit, so visits were not made. The farthest he traveled was to the garbage chute down the hallway. The silver-mouthed, black-handled chute equalized and cleansed everything. For the first time, the chute dined on honey. Honey infused with flies. 

Reynold hadn’t always lived like this. He used to venture into the bowels of the city to go shopping or buy groceries. He would go at night when the subway and store aisles were less peopled. Less people meant the sea of faces could not find him. A sea of faces was all Reynold ever saw in a crowd. Waves of bodies and germs and infections threatening to crest upon him. However, at night, the tide receded and left only a few splashes of the diseased seafoam. About a year ago, everything changed.
                                                                           ***
            The subway car had been empty when Reynold climbed aboard, grocery bags in tow. Two stops later, one passenger joined him - a large man in a shabby business suit. His suitcase hung from a clenched fist, his face clenched to match. Reynold was wary of the man from the beginning. With the entire subway car at his disposal, the man decided to sit across from him. 
            The man shifted in his seat throughout the ride. He pulled his tie down and released his top collar button, but it did nothing to ease his restlessness. Reynold tried to look away from the man’s discomfort, but it beckoned him. Stains blotted a dirty handkerchief as the man sponged sweat from his pale white forehead. A loud belch issued underneath the wet rag, flapping under its new weight. The man’s cheeks flushed to match his bright red hair.
            “Excuse me,” said the man, looking ashamed. “Must have been something I ate.”
Reynold made no response but could not hide his disgust. The disgust stayed even as the man’s nervous chuckle choked on itself. Shame turned to pain then panic as the man grasped his chest and attempted to stand. He looked at Reynold and coughed two words.
            “Help... me...”
The man fell headfirst onto the floor of the subway car. Metal thrummed then went silent. The dead man swayed with the rhythm of the train, the nighttime lights of the tunnel wriggled over the corpse and left him untouched. That was when Reynold smelled it. The stench of death rose from the motionless heap of meat and bones. The smell of rot, of disease, of fear. Fear that the dead man would trap him in the sea of faces. That the sea of faces would rise from the corpse, seeping from the bodily fluids sloshing sluggishly through his empty flesh. And the sea of faces spoke. They spoke the words which sloshed inside his head.
            “Help... me...”
            Then the man spoke again.
            “Please...” croaked the man.
            “No. You’re dead,” replied Reynold.
            The dead man clutched to life, attempting to roll on his side. Was it life or decay that made his arm grasp for support? Reynold could smell the decay, so the man could not be alive. Yet the man looked up at Reynold and spoke through pained breaths. 
            “Please... help me...”
            Fear unraveled. 
The paramedics will come and the police will come and the crowds will come and I’ll be swallowed by the sea of faces.
“I’m sorry,” Reynold managed to say. 
            Reynold found himself on his feet, sweat soaking his clothes. The subway train came to a halt and the doors opened. Before the fear could find him, Reynold stepped through the doors. The decay inside the man lost its grip and he slumped back to the floor. The closing doors silenced the hollow thud. 
Reynold ran out of the train station, out into the streets, and back into his apartment. The fear still found him, but when it did, he was safely behind his own door. Scalding hot water welcomed his soiled flesh. 
He never learned what happened to the dead man. And he was dead. When Reynold remembered it, he remembered that the man did not move after he fell. The other memory was false. Decay playing tricks. Maybe the man had never been there at all. Or maybe he still rode around on the floor of the subway car. His fluids no longer sloshing. His body no longer swaying. The sea of faces replaced by a sea of flies, coming to feed on his death. 
                                                                           ​***
Reynold never had a problem with flies before. He was very fastidious about pest control. Pests brought germs. Germs bred infestation. Infestation warranted extermination. Extermination meant fumigation. Fumigation forced evacuation. And the sea of faces would find him again. 
“How did this happen?” Reynold asked his fly infested jar of honey. “I always close your lid.” 
Reynold scoured his apartment checking for any other signs of flies. Bleach accompanied his search, cleansing the bacteria he could not see. Once finished, only the antiseptic smell remained and his fears settled back into their forgotten places. He set another jar of honey on the kitchen table, confident in his cleansing. He made sure to fasten the jar’s lid, checking it twice. He returned to his morning routine that had been upset by the flies’ invasion. The hum started as he readied his toast. He followed the hum to the kitchen table. To the jar of honey. 
The honey had caught six flies.
The lid sat abandoned next to the exposed and defenseless honey jar. As he stared at the trapped black corpses inside, the hum returned. He looked for the source but it went silent. The seventh fly appeared on the rim of the jar, mocking him with hunger. Its wings lay silent as it balanced over the abyss. Hunger gave way to recklessness and the fly descended into the abyss, sealing its fate along with its compatriots. 
The fly flapped its wings inside the liquid quicksand. The solitary buzz sang a funeral march in quick staccato beats. Attempting to free its wings, the fly rolled to its side and the organic farm-fresh raw honey swallowed its head. 
“How did this happen,” Reynold asked the yawning jar of honey. “This is not possible.”
The jar answered only with the sound of the fly’s death throes – incessant, creeping, piercing.
“Why are you doing this to me!?”
Reynold snatched the jar with frenzied hands and his anger propelled it through the air. The artisan glass jar shattered on his pantry door and the honey wept slow, oozing tears. 
“You’re spoiling everything!” 
That was when he heard it.
“Please...”
Reynold’s voice caught in his throat as he turned to gape at his apartment. Heavy, warm morning sunlight cast a long beam through the window and slithered across the floor. A quiet, almost inaudible hum hung in the air. It collected at his bedroom door. It stirred and breathed and the pale brown wood color changed to black. He squinted at the blackness and understood the change. 
Houseflies blanketed his bedroom door. 
Clinging and buzzing and crawling and mating and spawning and infecting and infesting. 
***
Memory slipped as Reynold watched the door undulate and shimmer in the morning sunlight. He just cleaned his entire apartment. Hadn’t he? Nothing but darkness came back when he searched his memory. When was the last time he went into his bedroom? He had to have been in there this morning when he woke up but no memory of it accompanied his thoughts. He remembered going in there during the power outage last week. Yes, that’s right.
He just finished preparing dinner, drizzling honey over his roasted chicken, when the lights roared and went out. A lightning storm cut the power to the entire building. He stumbled toward his bedroom, groping in the darkness for the fuse box in his closet. His eyes tried to adapt, but the curtain of night remained in place. He had to restore the power. Or else fear would unravel. 
The contents of his refrigerator would spoil. The cool, filtered, conditioned air would turn stuffy, hot, and contaminated. Worst of all, the landlord would violate his apartment in an attempt to correct the problem. The landlord only ever came when there was a problem. He brought with him the infection. The stench. Everything would be spoiled. In darkness, the sea of faces waited.
He hadn’t even crossed his bed’s threshold when the power restored itself. The sea of faces vanquished. The stench of decay barred from entering. Yet somehow, the smell found its way inside - bringing flies along with it.
***
The heavy odor of decay welcomed him as he took a step toward the door. This decay was different. It was not the decay he knew - the decay only he could smell. This decay was thick and full of reality. He choked in revolt and brought his arm up to his face, burying his nose in the crook of his elbow.  
And again, it came.
­­“Please... help me...”
He knew the words. He remembered the words. He realized who the words belonged to. 
The man on the subway train came back and brought his disease of death with him. He festered inside Reynold’s bedroom. Waited for Reynold - waited to take his revenge. 
He should have run but something drew him forward. Truth. Or fear. Or both. He needed to clean the only safe place left.   Either that or run to the outside world - the infection, the disease. He must clean or surrender to a place that could not be cleaned. 
Reynold would not run away. Not this time. 
The flies swam around him as he gripped the doorknob. They parted and skittered away upon his approach but only momentarily. Their curiosity prodded his skin, buzzed into his ears, grasped at his hair, searched for a way inside. The taste of vomit touched his tongue as he swatted them away. Their hunger for vomit drew them back. 
As the seal of the door broke, a new taste followed. The stench caught in his nostrils, sliding down to touch his taste buds. He coughed, attempting to expel the fresh scent of rot. His vision blurred and the bedroom swam before him. The writhing form on his bed made itself known. 
Like a living curtain, the flies parted as he turned. The room drooped with them. They darkened the air. A shadow upon a shadow. The dark shape that lay in his bed shrouded itself under his bedsheets. It moved as he grew nearer and he could hear its rasping, moaning words.
­“Help... me...”
The flies gathered around him, soldiers ready for the breach. A terrified yelp escaped his lips, betraying his actions, as he tore away the bedsheets. 
He heard the movement before he saw it. 
The tired bedsprings groaned, shifting the weight that settled into motionlessness. Outside, the lightning storm returned. The flashes of light pulsed inside him like a heartbeat. A heartbeat full of clenching pain. A pain that struck him in the chest with grasping claws. Claws that held him in place, held him in hell, held him in unmoving terror. A second claw rested on his shoulder. It wore the shape of a hand but its touch was thick and sharp. The dark, lurching shape crept from the bed, the lightning shattered across its face.
Reynold opened his mouth to scream but air could not reach his lungs. The shape mirrored his silence and opened its mouth in feigned terror. Its pale white flesh writhed in the light and fell from its mouth as it spoke. 
“Help... me...”
The flesh fell to the floor, continuing to twist and struggle. But it wasn’t flesh. The thunder-filled lightning shined upon the darkness. And in the darkness, Reynold saw what covered the shape. 
Maggots. Hundreds. Thousands. Fighting for food in a wasteland of death. 
Like a liquid stain, the maggots streaked down the front of the shape’s shirt. The stain saturated his chest, darkened his heart, clasping it in feverish hunger. The shape opened his mouth to speak once again.
“Help me.”
This time, the voice did not come from the shape. It came from Reynold. 
The world went dark.
Reynold no longer stood. He felt the bedsprings under his body, supporting, caressing. All he saw was the darkness — a darkness that the lightning storm outside could not penetrate. The sea of faces scratched in the void. They would come for him. Intruders would come. His sanctuary defiled by those searching for light. The sea of faces would bring their diseases. His safe place torn apart, leaving him naked and exposed. Within darkness, the sea of faces clutched at his chest. 
Tightening.
Strangling.
Choking. 
The shape stood at the foot of his bed, staring at Reynold. Its hair hung in sweat-soaked strands of auburn grey. White film shaded the blue of its eyes into a milky haze. 
Reynold still had no air in his lungs, but he screamed at its lifeless face. He tried to move, to escape the bedsheets, but their weight held him down. The flies stuck to him like honey, thick and sweet. The white stain of maggots grew dark. Yet all of this could not tear him away from the lifeless face that stared down at him from the foot of his bed. 
It spoke. It spoke through familiar lips. With a familiar voice.
“Everything spoils.”
***
Complaints of the smell brought the first intruder into the apartment. The landlord discovered the corpse of Reynold Valerie in the bedroom, claimed by a heart-attack during the lightning storm that caused the power outage a week prior. On the kitchen table, an uneaten plate of roasted chicken rotted beside an opened jar of honey.
Flies filled the honey with their death.
But it had not been the honey.
Reynold Valerie’s corpse caught the first flies. 

                                                                     💀💀💀

Kyle Walker is a writer and playwright living in Valdez, Alaska. His short stories have appeared in Alien Dimensions, Scary Monsters Magazine, and the Prince William Sound Anthology Series. His theater work has been featured at the Civic Center Theater in Valdez, Alaska, Under St. Marks Theater in New York, NY, Dog Story Theater in Grand Rapids, MI, Hap Ryder Riverfront Theatre in Fairbanks, AK, and TBA Theater in Anchorage, AK. His non-musical stage adaptation, "Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera," was published by Next Stage Press in 2024. Follow him on Facebook and Instagram and at kylewalkerwriter.com.
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