I t was that terrifying summer in 2022 when London reached 40C. I was staying in a friend’s flat while she was away for a year, a former housing association property where the living room ceiling permanently had a hole in it. Each day, the air felt thicker and the leaves looked more limp. Dust clung to every surface. With no wind, the stench of the bins lingered.
I’d nicknamed the guy next door “Techno Guy” because his life’s great pleasure appeared to be sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked red convertible, stereo on full volume, revving the engine but going nowhere. Maybe it was to preserve his car battery, maybe it was to get away from his wife. His music genre of choice, Shazam told me, was Romanian techno (though he was also fond of the Cher megamix). He smoked constantly, each drag like a first breath. The sound of him hawking up phlegm in the morning became a kind of alarm clock.
One Sunday, I was working from home and the smell of the barbecue had been going since breakfast – long rows of sausages, chicken, chops. I popped on my noise-cancelling headphones, thinking the couple next door were settling in for a big party, but later in the afternoon I realised it was just the two of them, having a magnificent feast. “Good on them,” I thought.
A few days later, the heat became unbearable – then record-breaking. I wasn’t alone in taking an umbrella with me if I left the house. It was pressing and cloying. The bins, meanwhile, had reached a crisis state – the smell from next door’s in particular was so heinous I’d learned to hold my breath when I left the front door until I’d cleared them.
The day it happened was alarmingly quiet. No techno, no Cher, not a single rev of the engine. I looked out the window and saw Techno Guy, his torso hidden, elbows-deep in his wheelie bin, groaning like an animal in pain. There was a small but growing pile of bags next to him – all torn and mangled, a brownish sludge seeping out of them – the remnants of the barbecue. At first I thought the sacks were moving, before realising it was a swarm of bluebottles creating a halo. My neighbour disappeared briefly, and returned carrying a jet washer. There was splat, a yell and a blossom of what looked like rice grains were blasted into the air.
With steady horror, I realised what had been breeding in the depths of my neighbour’s bin, and what had compelled him to empty it and – for some incomprehensible reason – attack it with pressurised water. Maggots. Hundreds – maybe even thousands – of maggots, propelled into flight and falling on windows, walls, cars, gardens, hedges, pavements and bins all around. I thanked the universe I’d kept my window closed, as they landed on the windowsill, still wriggling their last wriggle. Some neighbours obviously thought that rain had finally come in the form of hail. They opened their doors to see. And then they too were hit by the unfolding horror.
I’m sure someone yelled, but we were all in a sort of stasis. There stood the neighbour, stray maggots in his hair and on his face, before he went inside to fetch the dustpan and brush.
