Even at rest on a glass globe that made up part of the structure of the living room light fixture, the little fly's heart raced along at nearly 300 beats per minute.
Brad took time to take stock of his tiny alien form and realized that his encounters with his gigantic family members had resulted in more damage than he had realized. The foreleg on his right side had snapped off! How did he lose an entire leg and not realize it? Shouldn't there have at least been pain?
His wings twitched involuntarily, but at least the spasm of movement reassured Brad that the wings remained intact and functional.
More alarming, though, a pale green liquid oozed from a laceration along his abdomen, which had taken the brunt of the force from the swipe with a magazine wielded by his own Papi! Was the fluid his blood? Did flies have blood? He wished he knew a little more about the form the Chronivac had allowed him to take.
His father and brother hadn't been inside his home five minutes and had already inflicted three life-threatening incidents on his tiny fly form.
And, thinking of minutes, he hoped Mark would return soon, as promised, and save him.
"He'll be back soon," he told himself. "I just have to hold out a few more minutes until..."
His father stomped back into the room after a successful search of the kitchen. "Found some," he declared, waving a towering aerosol canister with a black and yellow label.
Sal grunted a response from the couch, his attention glued to a sports competition playing out on the television screen.
His family's preoccupation with sports gave the transformed scientist a brief respite. "What game's that?" Jim asked, taking a seat on the sofa, his quest to eliminate one specific household pest forgotten for the moment. The can of bug spray ended up on the coffee table as Jim joined his youngest son in viewing the game.
Where did Papi find that? Brad thought hard and remembered that Mark had suggested picking up some when flies kept swarming his home office whenever he kept his window open. Brad remembered purchasing the spray can himself during a shopping trip earlier in the summer.
"Oh hell!" Brad thought.
He looked down on the giant figures seated on the mammoth sofa. They looked completely focused on the TV. Should he try to get out of the room? Or wait for Mark?
His compound eyes rotated and fastened on the towering canister. From a distance, the can looked like a blurry tower of alternating dark and light sections represented by the black and yellow of the label. With the toxins held inside the canister within easy reach of either of the giants, Brad knew he wasn't safe even on his lofty perch.
Some action onscreen drew a heated debate between his father and brother. This was the distraction he needed...