This had to be Brad’s craziest adventure yet.
Let’s back up and start at the beginning almost 24 hours ago.
That’s when the package from TransDem Labs arrived with its Chronivac 4.0. Brad assumed one of his professional physics colleagues had sent him the device.
Of course, he didn’t need the device to get tiny. He already had his shrink ray for that.
But one of the frustrations with getting tiny was how difficult it was to walk or climb anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. With wings, Brad could bypass that difficulty.
And now, he had.
The device had worked precisely as he had theorized they would.
All he needed now was to shift back.
He had programmed the device’s emitter to activate hourly, which gave him flexibility for extending his time as a tiny winged insect. He’d thought of almost everything…
It was his oversight that explained the little insect’s determination to get noticed by either its giant spouse or enormous neighbor.
Unfortunately for Brad, a return to normal rested behind a heavy, airtight basement door that served as the entrance to his home laboratory.
He should never have left the lab, but when Mark returned home unexpectedly early, Brad had been unable to resist the urge to slip upstairs and spend some time as the epitome of a voyeur… a literal fly on the wall.
Mark’s blundering attempts to locate his absent husband had resulted in him closing the door at the foot of the basement stairs before Brad even realized what his devoted spouse was doing.
Once he had realized what was about to happen, Brad had tried to zip past Mark’s hulking form in the doorway, but a random movement on Mark’s part caused the tiny fly to smack against his husband’s chest. By the time Brad recovered from the impact, the door had closed.
Brad had spent the last 24 hours trying in every manner he could think of to get back into his lab. The basement room had no windows or other entrances. The door didn’t have anything as old-fashioned as a keyhole and there was no space beneath the door and the floor.
He’d already expended a day trying to get back into the lab and regain access to the device.
Furthermore, thanks to some homework prior to his foolhardy use of the device, he knew a lot of trivial information about Musca domestica, or the common house fly.
First and foremost, a fly lived a brief lifespan of between 15 and 30 days. Brad knew nothing about the fly he had abducted for his experiment. For all the knew, it was already on Day 28 of its anticipated life cycle.
He had already tried telepathy and hoping Mark could put together non-existent clues to solve his disappearance. But every time he managed to attract his giant husband’s attention, Mark had regarded him as and treated him like a fly.
Fortunately, Mark’s inept swats with his large, powerful hands hadn’t been any more effective than Russ’s recent attempt to swat the flying pest out of the air.
Brad perched atop the tomato stake, forlorn as he recognized his dilemma. If everyone who saw him regarded him as nothing more than a pathetic insect, how could he ever get the help he needed?
One thing for certain… he didn’t want to remain outdoors in this too-giant world. He didn’t dare move too far from Mark but at the same time he didn’t want to make himself a target of accidental wrath by sticking too close.
“Fuck!!” Brad sighed mentally. He had truly fucked himself, but his never-say-die stubborn nature meant he’d keep trying until the bitter end.