The sound of buzzing filled the room as Robert entered, disturbing the silence. He quickly closed the door with a slam to ensure the flies remained in his cultivation room.
On the desk set in the room's center sat a rotting chicken carcass where the flies congregated. A small clear plastic container sat next to it holding several pins with red plastic tops. Robert took a single pin and stuck one of the flies currently eating at the neck of the chicken. It squirmed on the end of the pin still alive, but it wasn't about to fly away.
Robert lifted the stuck fly to his ear and slid it off, pushing it into the webbing within. With the pluck of a web strand he let his pet know that dinner was served. It was only a moment before he felt the comforting tingle of Charlotte climbing out from his inner ear to feed. With her she brought the drained refuse of the previous day's dinner, pushing it out to keep her home clean. She was a smart girl.
Robert was proud of the warm safe environment he could provide. He had taken care of her for nearly three years now. She had grown to a size that she now had nowhere else to go, but he was certain she had no interest in leaving anyway. It was where she was fed, where she was kept safe and where her children were born. She could ask for nothing more.
Robert could hear her gingerly wrapping up her dinner to consume later. Robert could hear everything she did. It kept him sane. As much as she needed him, he too needed her. The world was too cruel, but life with her was simple.
The door to the cultivation room closed as Robert returned to the dirty beige armchair that sat in front of his television.
The routine was the same every day. A simple, reliable, comforting routine. But all good things must come to an end.
A week later Robert was once again in the cultivation room for Charlotte's daily feeding. Once again he stuck a fly from the carcass on the desk. Once again he left the fly on the edge of his ear. Once again he plucked a strand of webbing to inform her that dinner was served.
A second passed without a response. He plucked again, but no response. In desperation he shook his head violently to wake her up, but he could only feel a lifeless rattle from within his inner ear. His pet was no more.
As tears ran down his face he curled his body under the desk for some sense of consolement, but the pain never left. He was frozen in his despair. He wished with all his might that his heart would just stop.
He wished in vein though. Yet despite the hunger pains and migraines from dehydration he refused to move from that spot. The flies he had cultivated slowly found a new home in the yet unused crevices of his body. As he breathed his last, they took up new residence in his lungs and throat. As his flesh rotted they fed and grew in number. So many emerged that the smell from Roberts corpse was kept at bay as the flies fed. Eventually it was the constant, growing buzz that alerted the neighbors that something was wrong. When the police arrived they found only a husk of what was once Robbert. Filled now with flies and one shell in his ear that was once known as Charlotte.
