Roger is the one who told me about the suicide flea in the first place. We were on the way to the outdoor café on Parker, the one with the awesome pimento cheese? And in the distance, we hear the screeching of tires. A few seconds later, there’s screaming.
We keep heading in that direction, not because I want to see some horrific accident, but because it’s the way to the café and both me and Roger have been looking forward to it. I’m actually dreading what we might see when we get closer, but in the end it’s nothing that gory or anything. Just a man, laying in front of a truck, a thin trickle blood coming from his nose. Other than that slow-dripping stream of scarlet, he might be sleeping. Just laying down in the road for a little nap.
As I drew closer, a handful of people clustered around, blocking my view as they burbled like a troubled spring.
“He ran out. Did you see it? He ran out and stood in front of the truck. Like he wanted it to hit him.”
“How horrible. Where’s the ambulance?”
“I don’t think it matters. Look at him. He’s gone.”
One of them, a young woman, tried to catch my eye. Reel me into their clutch of emergency. Their tragedy club, their adrenaline conspiracy. Didn’t I want to stand over the dead man and say useless things too? Didn’t I want to belong?
I looked away and met Roger’s gaze. No, we didn’t. We wanted meatloaf, thank you very much. Whatever sad or strange thing had happened to that man, I didn’t want to know any more about it. And by the time we’d reached the café, I’d largely forgotten about it. At least, that was, until Roger brought it up.
“It might have been the suicide flea.”
He said it around a mouthful of meatloaf, so I wasn’t sure if I’d misheard him. When I asked him to repeat it, he rolled his eyes a little, like I was the one to blame for his uncharacteristically bad manners.
“You know, the suicide flea.”
I frowned at him. I didn’t really want to go down this road of conversation—it was all too morbid. But once Roger got a bone he liked, he didn’t turn it loose until he was ready, and the sooner I indulged the conversation, the sooner it would be over.
“No, I don’t know. Why don’t you enlighten me.”
I could tell this made him happy, but he still took his time, chewing another bite of meatloaf thoughtfully before starting his tale.
It’s not uncommon, you know. Suicide clusters? It happens all the time. Sometimes it’s just an explainable psychological or social phenomena—terrible, but not unheard of. Other times, its something else. Groups of people kill themselves, not because of some shared trauma or mob mentality, but because of an outside force influencing them, making them do it for some unknown reason.
And sometimes, just sometimes, that outside force is the suicide flea.
The first that anyone noticed the suicide flea’s existence was in World War II during the Battle of Stalingrad. It was a terrible time, with so many people dying from so many things, including those that were taking their own lives. A few more here and there shouldn’t have been noticed at all, but a Romanian soldier that was part of the invasion kept a diary, and in that diary, he detailed the deaths of five of his comrades. Not by enemy fire or starvation or disease, but by their own hands.
There’s one account toward the end, of him watching his best friend slit his own throat with a dagger. He rushes forward, fruitlessly trying to stop the flow of blood streaming between his fingers, looking down into his friend’s face and telling him to not give up, that he would help him somehow.
It was then that he saw it. A little bulge at the bottom of his dying friend’s left eye. A shifting bead of flesh that crept up toward the edge of his twitching bottom lid before pushing past, revealing a tiny, crawling black speck no bigger than a flea. The soldier recoiled in horror, less at its appearance than where it had come from, but it was too late. It had leapt away and disappeared.
His last entry came a few hours later. It was disjointed and confused, talking about hearing voices and about an itch behind his eyes that he couldn’t quite reach. After that, the soldier was never heard from again. Perhaps he died in battle or disappeared into the fog of history…but I wonder.
I snickered at him. “Do you? Yeah, no. I’m sure an evil flea made him kill himself, right?”
Roger looked at me somberly. “I’m not trying to convince you of anything.”
Worried I’d hurt his feelings, I gave him a smile. “No, it’s a cool story. But I mean, it’s just an urban legend, right? One of those things that gets spread around by kids because it’s weird and creepy to think about, not because it’s true.”
“Maybe so. But then, how many kids are going to know about some soldier’s journal from nearly eighty years ago?”
I frowned as I gave a shrug. “I don’t know. How did you hear about it?”
Roger turned and looked away. “I just thought it was interesting given…what just transpired.”
I reached out and touched his face, bringing his gaze back to mine. “It was. Really.” When he looked unconvinced, I added, “Hey, tell you what. How about we go get some ice cream?”
Checking my phone, I saw the nearest ice cream shop was four blocks away, but that wasn’t a bad thing. We could use the exercise, and besides, it was a nice day. Cool, but not cold, with enough people passing by to not feel lonely but not too crowded either. Breathing in the fresh air and looking forward to trying a new ice cream place, we just walked along together, enjoying everything in companionable silence.
Reaching the store, I could see a line of people inside, but I could also see why. It was a nice place, with tons of flavors and a variety of toppings. I was going to get a big-ass waffle cone, and Roger…
“Hey. Hey, Miss? You can’t do that.”
I stopped in the doorway, staring at the guy behind the counter in confusion. “Do what?”
The man pointed at Roger. “The dog. You can’t bring a dog in here.”
I looked down at Roger and then back to the ice cream guy with a frown. “Why not? I assure you, he’s a perfect gentleman.”
He grimaced. “Well…good for him. But it’s the health code rules. And some people are afraid of ‘em. So leave him outside or come back later please.”
I rubbed my eye distractedly with one hand while waving the other in his direction. “I don’t think so. You’ve lost two customers today, good sir.” I felt the weight of the serrated steak knife I’d swiped from the café against my thigh and considered pulling it out, but no. That was for later, when I was alone and no one could stop me.
Instead, I turned on my heel and headed back outside, looking down at Roger as I spoke in a voice loud enough to carry back to the ice cream dictator behind the counter. “Come on, Roger. We’ll stop by the store on the way home.” I was messing with my eye again. It was really bugging me, and I couldn’t get at whatever was itching. “I bet this place sucks anyway. Crappy people make crappy ice cream.”
Roger met my gaze as he responded, though—polite as ever—he muttered his condemnation softly enough that it carried no further than the space between us two.
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