Archive of Our Own ^beta

My name is Seth Brundle. He repeats to himself, wide unblinking eyes fixated on the telepods. 

He steps towards the piano and plays a few shaky notes. It’s not pleasing to the ear, nor does it bring him any joy. He continues regardless. The motions are awkward. His fingers are too restricted by the thick gloves he has opted to continuously wear. They hit multiple keys, jumble against one another chaotically. An original composition, he dubs Lament de la Mouche. 

My name is Seth Brundle, and I am a human. A human man, who has made a terrible, terrible mistake. But I’m human, I swear it. 

Even that newfound, insectoid part of him seems to hum excitedly at the thought. A odd buzzing, a voice both familiar and strange, goaded onwards by a distant evolutionary urge to grow. A wholly Darwinian drive to survive. Yes, yes. It seems to say, a soundless acknowledgment, practical and cold punctuation against the remnants of his brain’s mammalian poetry. Humans are big. Humans live long. Reproduce long. Apex predators. Hands. Teeth. Swat. Brains. Food. 

A flash in his mind, refracted through compounding lenses. A week old, a quarter way through life. Stuck inside the apartment, the only world ever known. Hooked legs tap-tap-tapping against the skylight windowpane. Waiting to die, waiting for food. Waiting.

He presses a hand against his forehead, eyes squeezed tightly. A futile attempt to force the unwanted memory from his mind. This melding of experiences and merging of realities was happening more frequently of late. It was troubling. Terrifying, when he caught himself doing the same variety of intentional stifling against his human side. 

He was a coin flipped on its edge, rolling in a wide arc that threatened to fall at any moment. What happens , he thinks, if the coin does not fall? If I am unable to embrace these opposing halves, succumbing to neither? Will I continue rolling forever, caught between conflicting instincts and desires? What then do I become? 

This is, of course, a very human line of reasoning. He is proud of that, and wishes for his eyes to water and nose to tingle, precursors to a cathartic weeping. Equal parts joy for the pieces of him that had not yet slipped away entirely, and mourning for what he has become. But he fears that he is incapable of this now, and would rather allow the fantasy of conjuring tears to be preserved within his mind rather than face the inevitable, soul-crushing weight of failing. A litmus test for personhood, rejected.

Instead he stalks back to the mirror. He has already broken the other two, and now only the bathroom cabinet remains. He wonders how long it will take for him to rip this one from the wall. The thought makes him smile, tongue pressed against loosening teeth. The rage he felt staring at himself made him feel human, too. Maybe that is all that he would have left in the end. It was a shame that one of his only unfettered emotions left was that of anger. The fly didn’t mind its presence. A vein of violence translated into an urge to preserve, a method of utilitarian self-defense.

Seth Brundle was not a vain man. Men of true intellect rarely are. Even so, he can feel the facsimile of Brundle twisting against his mutating form. Disgusted, aching to break out of him and flee. He can imagine those long, piano fingers piercing through his midsection and pulling him apart from the inside out. Pictures himself as he once was, stepping out of his discarded remains in bloodless rebirth. A caterpillar fleeing their own cocoon. 

Dark alien eyes glisten in the reflection, waiting. Waiting? Waiting for what? He tempts a finger to his cheek, unnerved by the lack of sensation. Bulbous skin, suspended in a state between calloused solidity and shriveled decay. The dermal metamorphosis began as rippling pockmarks, indistinguishable from chronic acne. Hardened pustules followed, tumor-like growths piling atop one another. It was not a fully-developed exoskeleton, but neither was it the flesh of man. 

Flesh. That’s where this all began, wasn’t it? He presses the pads of his fingers harshly against his cheek, squeezing until it hurt. He wishes that he had more fingernails remaining, so that he may go beyond meekly pinching himself. Was this punishment for his own hubris, an attempt to subvert the flesh entirely? From what he can recall of Brundle, his intentions were pure. Yet, do intentions matter? To twist science and technology in ways God certainly didn’t intend, because some miracles should be reserved for him alone. Egomaniac , he scoffs, and he is unsure if the comment was directed at Brundle or God. 

He runs a hand through his hair, allows the loosened strands left behind to fall into the sink. He was deteriorating at a molecular level, spliced and sewn back together by a confused computer. It was a marvel that he still drew breath, and was not instead a pile of gory sludge at the bottom of a telepod. Surely, even the most sophisticated program wouldn’t be able to do anything more than salvage a few weeks of life out of his disparate parts. Cancer is his immediate thought. Abnormal cells dividing and multiplying and growing and growing and spreading and-

Ronnie was right. He was dying.

Ronnie. He leaves the bathroom at the thought of her, stalks aimlessly through his littered apartments. He clung to the thought of her, wanting to drill the memory of her laugh into his ears. Now that, that was humanity. Ruminating upon the ghost of a woman you love, feeling your chest swell with passion and desire. Not a mere desire of the flesh, but that of the soul itself. Brundle had never been a spiritual man, and the irony was not lost upon him. For him to only now contemplate the metaphysical soul, an abomination who may lack one entirely. How did that work? If he was half a man, did he at least possess half a soul? 

He pauses in his bedroom. Drags a tentative hand over the sleeves of his coats, arranged in a neat, identical line. Crisp and orderly; in sharp contrast to his current state. He hadn’t showered or washed since this all began, clothes stained with sugary leftovers and sweat. Yet his nose no longer instinctually wrinkles at the stench. He forces himself to mimic the expression, ripping his shirt off and whipping it across the room. It slides to the ground, and next to it - a stocking. 

He picks it up and sits on the edge of the sleeper sofa, running the fabric through his fingers. A million thoughts seem to race through his mind, rising far above the persistent buzzing of his other half. I miss her. I should call her. I should apologize. I should spare her the sight of me. They had not even been together long enough for her scent to stick to his sheets, but here he was regardless. A fool who had made a rash, drunken decision at the behest of his besotted, jealous heart. 

You’re very cute, you know that? 

He closes his eyes, remembering her reaching for him that first evening. The experience feels like a distant dream, a past life relived. Delicate hands pressed against the side of his neck. His thumping heart, the rushing of blood in his ears. A leg crooking between his own, the sweet smell of shampoo and perfume. An exhale from deep within her chest as his tongue slipped past her lips, hands roaming against all the soft edges of her. Rain tapping against the skylight high above, the rhythm of the storm syncopated against their quick breaths. His hand sliding up to grip at the curve of her ass, grazing her skin in a way that made her shiver.

Then he is watching the encounter from a different perspective, an outside observer. The fly creeps closer down the wall, lured by the tang of salty sweat and heightening moans, the carbon dioxide activating an instinct that pronounces; a veritable feast awaits, if you only stay close . 

A kaleidoscope of passion, the two of them wrapped against one another in a tangle of sheets. A hungry kiss, desperate, starving; aching for more. A moment of stillness as they surrendered to one another, heartbeats mingling. A pornographic film starring himself, observed through the eyes of his other half. The realization both repulses and fascinates him in equal measure. He can’t stop watching, try as he may. She wraps her legs around his waist, and he remains hypnotized by the memory that is his and isn’t simultaneously.

Brundle had never given too much thought to romance. Science had been his bride, his muse. He had the occasional fling, cravings of the flesh that satiated the human condition for a time. Yet Ronnie had felt different. Not a means to refocus, but a partner. They pressed together, rocking against one another in a movement that was instinctive, urgent; as though they had always known the shape of the other, and how perfect it would be to slot against your complimentary piece. 

His name escapes her, half whisper and cry. His thumb traces her chin, a kiss so smothering and desperate, it feels as though he is watching another man entirely. The sight of her naked and straddling him, his name a damn plea . It was all too much. His eyelids flutter at the sight of her half-parted lips, grasping at her chest as he finishes with a croaking moan of his own. They gaze at one another, exchanging a smattering of light kisses. Panting and comforted within the arms of another. The display is so sickeningly sweet, his mouth begins to water. 

He crumples against himself, banishing the image. Legs held against his chest, as though squeezing them tightly enough could ward off the uneasy feeling that had been building within him since the day he uncovered the full extent of his mistake. He had tried to make the computer crazy about flesh, tried to make a machine understand warmth and blood and muscle. But he realizes now that such a thing was always an impossibility. Even if it had worked perfectly, that which the computer recreated would always be a duplicate. Seth Brundle was gone.

These weren’t his memories. Neither that of Brundle or the fly. He was a string of binary. Faulty code, full of errors. Full of bugs. 

He laughs despite himself. It dissolved into a sob, and for the last time, he cried.