Brad tried to take a pause and think rationally about the completely irrational situation of finding himself trapped as housefly by considering the pros and cons of seeking help from Mark or Russ. Any stranger would have no reason to doubt he was anything other than he appeared to be, a lowly pest. But Russ and Mark were not strangers.
Russ, despite Brad's soft, squishy infatuation for his big, burly next-door neighbor, presented too many variables, not the least being that, as a gardener Russ held a stubborn bias against all forms of insect pests. Brad's tiny insect form shivered thinking of the earlier close calls when Russ had attempted to swat him.
It would have to be Mark, despite all the hours Brad had already squandered trying to communicate his dilemma to his big spouse.
With a twitch of his wing muscles, he rose into the air, hovering briefly over Russ's prized tomatoes, and flew back toward his home. Upon arrival, unfortunately, he found both the front door and back door closed. He buzzed about, landing on the door handle at the front entrance to the house for a rest.
After his brief rest, an undaunted Brad buzzed around his colossal home, hoping to discover another means of entry. Fortune seemed to smile at him as he soon found an open window. Thank god for Mark's habit of opening windows during their mild San Francisco weather.
He buzzed over the sill and entered a huge room that he gradually recognized as Mark's cramped home office where he did all his paperwork for his job at the local high school. Only the room didn't look at all small now. The desk and shelves looked bigger than the tallest office buildings as the tiny fly flew across the room, intent on only one objective — getting help from his spouse.
Almost on cue, a distant door opened and Mark entered the room. Brad hovered midair, momentarily astonished by the sheer size of his colossal husband as he strode into the room. He watched as Mark settled into the chair behind his desk and reached for a stack of papers. He flew toward him, buzzing, trying to shout for help.
"Mark ! Mark!" Brad could only scream wordlessly, of course, but his wings buzzed loudly. "It's me!"
"Fuck! It's back," Mark muttered with anger as he rolled up sheets of the paper and scanned for the source of the irritating buzz.
Brad watched in horror as the papers rolled into a long white rod held in Mark's tight grasp. His spouse's colossal head tilted and Mark's dark eyes focused on him. His own husband raised an enormous hand and swung hard at the poor little insect with the rolled up papers.
The contact, only glancing, still stung and propelled the tiny fly back toward the window, across the sill, and into the hedge along the house's exterior wall. By the time the fly recovered and tried to regain entry, Mark had stood and walked to the window, slamming it closed. "I guess that's how the pest got inside," he said.
Brad banged into the transparent pane of glass. "Mark! No! Let me in!" The little fly buzzed.
Mark returned to his work and never noticed one tiny fly battering against the window pane. Once Mark finished, he began a new search of the house for his missing husband. The search eventually took him downstairs for another check of Brad's lab. He had just opened the door when he detected a brief flash of light from a strange device atop Brad's work station.
He walked over to the device. He saw a booklet next to the device with a title "Instructions for Chronivac."
"What the hell?" He thumbed through the book while he also studied the device's interactive view screen, which provided at least as much room as an average phone.