A small twig stuck at a vertical slant allowed Brad to climb out of the debris collected at the bottom of the mesh plastic cage. Although occasional sloshes of chlorinated water still inundated the filtration system, Brad remained dry enough for his wings to recover.
For all the good it did him.
Brad weakly buzzed and hopped from one floating insect corpse to another, finding himself the smallest insect in the trap. The moth and big beetle had ceased their twitchy movements, expiring soon after Brad entered the trap.
In the ensuing time, however, the filter had sucked in two more beetles, another moth, and one wicked and still active wasp. The latter had convinced Brad to aim for the high ground, which was provided by the upturned twig. Perched there, Brad kept a wary eye on the irritated wasp and its long stinger as the enraged bug kept flying around the narrow confines of the plastic mesh trap, beating its wings uselessly on the plastic roof over their heads.
A loud thump from overhead startled him. Something, or more likely someone, had stomped on the lid of the filtration trap…something large, something heavy.
He buzzed into a tight circle, frightened into flight, and bumped the wasp.
The bigger wasp buzzed its larger wings. The noise sounded angry. Brad fled back to the twig, clinging to the sliver of wood like a man might a life raft after the ship has sunk.
Time slowly passed. Brad wasn’t sure how much time.
Very distant, he heard rumbling voices. Was it his husband? Or Russ?
He couldn’t really tell, and remained forlorn and dejected.
More time elapsed, and he heard voices, as well as the clanking of cutlery against plates, and the chink of glass on glass as two unseen diners toasted another lovely evening.
Brad felt abandoned to his fate, tormented by how the world went on around him without a care.
Other sounds crept through the plastic and concrete walls surrounding the entrapped fly. He heard a strange, strident and periodic sizzle, sort of like a flash on a grill when fresh meat is added. He also heard chirps, hisses, buzzes and other insect noises.
Brad added his own noise to the chorus, buzzing his wings, banging mindlessly against the lid that denied him a return to the outer world.
A sliver of light shone through the lid, giving him a moment of false hope.
“Light!” Brad buzzed excitedly.
He hadn’t noticed that earlier. Indeed, a thin ray of light managed to shine through a thin crack that had appeared in the roof of thick, impenetrable plastic. Had it formed when that large stomp had stepped on the lid earlier?
He tried, but the crack was a thin fracture, not an exit. Even his tiny body was too large to simply squeeze through the only chink in the trap.
He refused to give up hope.
He heard the voices of the neighbors Ivan and Paul. They discussed everything from Matteo’s ass (so, they’d noticed that fine asset, too, Brad realized) to the way inflation had been eating into their investment accounts.
With nothing else to do, Brad imagined that one of the men might step on the lid. The crack might widen. He would be able to free himself…
But the voices ceased, and no one responded to the faint buzz of a tiny fly’s wings buried in a tomb of plastic.
The filter sucked in more leaves, burying some of the beetles that had ceased their movements hours earlier.
The wasp had left him alone, concentrating obsessively on the sliver of light in the plastic roof. Every instinct told the wasp that light meant exit, but the reality was that it could not squeeze through the sliver of space any more than Brad.
Brad hoped the wasp would keep at it. As long as it kept its attention in that area, it would leave him alone. But each time he heard the “Thump! Thump!” of the flap, he worried what else might get sucked into the limited space.
He could have been home in bed, snuggled close to Mark’s huge, perfect form. Instead, he huddled alone, bedraggled, and defeated in the dark, nothing more than the sludge collected in the trap to keep the pool clean.
Dawn looked a long ways off.
If he had hoped for a peaceful night, Brad hoped in vain. The sounds of other insects grew louder and louder, perhaps amplified by the shape of the basket trap as they filtered through.
Periodically, he continued to hear that strange zapping, sizzling noise.
The sounds must have burrowed into his subconscious. He dreamed of all sorts of nasty things but the most awful was the brief dream of reunion with Mark. He actually felt aroused by the dream. He let the pleasant sensation stretch out, simply enjoying a strange inner warmth, until the dream detoured into nightmare territory when a crazed Mark chased him through the rooms of their house, his enormous hand wielding a heavy plastic flyswatter aimed right at him.
In the way of dreams, he was eventually cornered... he felt paralyzed and unable to move, even as his husband lifted the cheap plastic swatter.
He screamed as Mark aimed a lethal blow...
...and woke, still trapped, still alone. A new day was beginning outside the trap, but that hardly mattered to the defeated bug.