Brad emerged from the crevice between massive palm fronds, sluggish in the chill air of morning.
He remained a housefly. Why did that reality surprise him? His means of restoration into his 39-year-old human form existed behind a locked door in his home miles from the park. The moment his brain and strange compound eyes connected in their strange dance of neural circuitry, his reality crashed upon him like a ton of bricks.
He dithered for a few moments, caught up in a debate. His husband's studious rituals of charting out a plan for every action often grated against Brad's more impulsive nature. But it had been one of his more impetuous decisions that had led to the chain of events that found him stranded far from home as a pathetic bug.
His wings shivered, a kinetic action to warm and activate muscles needed for flight. Once accomplished, Brad lifted away from the palm fronds and flew toward the paved path that snaked its way through the park.
He hovered in place. "Which way's home?" Brad speculated, pivoting slowly to get an insect's view of the lay of the land.
Before he could do so, a large shadow caused the fly's instincts to go into immediate alarm mode.
A loud snap as a giant bird's bill tried to capture him and the turbulence from the passage of the huge wings left Brad spiraling out of control. The warm-blooded bird had the advantage over the cold-blooded insect, but it had given up the element of surprise.
In survival mode now, Brad's insect form zipped away at almost 15 miles per hour. The sparrow, capable of bursts of 28-miles-per-hour flight, decided on another attempt on its missed breakfast.
Brad evaded that fate by mere inches, diving into the same sheltering fronds where he'd spent the night, seconds before a second loud snap revealed that the giant bird had nearly succeeded.
For the next hour, he refused to risk emerging into the open again, fearful of a six-inch-long sparrow that had been a terrifying monster to the transformed man.
The fly, driven by hunger, wanted to leave sooner, but Brad resisted. He abandoned his resistance for the simple reason he couldn't accomplish his goal of returning home if he spent the entire day cowering from shadows real and imaginary. The day had advanced, and some people now wandered through the park.
Brad didn't even flinch as the fly's keen senses took it back to the dog droppings in a grassy margin. He had to eat to survive and he had to survive to get home.
"I'll tank up and fly home," he thought, providing a rationale for his actions that he could accept.
Other flies had already arrived, forcing Brad to push some of his fellow insects aside to find a choice spot. He had barely started to feed when a shadow interrupted and sent Brad and the other flies into a dark swarm.
Despite a pounding heart, Brad relaxed when he saw the shadow hadn't been cast by a hungry bird.
A gloved hand reached down and plucked the waste off the grass, dropping it into a large plastic bag. Brad hovered within arm's reach of the man dressed in a city sanitation worker's uniform. The insect watched as the man returned to the paved path and continued his rounds.
Most of the other flies, which had already gotten their morning fill before the man's work routine had deprived them of more, dispersed. A single little fly was left to hover forlornly over the spot, unable to accept how in one fell swoop it had been deprived of what it most needed to begin the epic journey to return home.
In the hour he had spent cowering from the bird, the park's sanitation crew had done an amazing job of emptying trash receptacles and removing untidy waste. A pristine park greeted early-morning guests. The cleanliness wouldn't last, and more garbage would fail to find its way into garbage cans and pet waste receptacles before the day ended.
Unfortunately, Brad needed food now to keep his tiny body functioning. All of yesterday's gorging on unsavory sources of nutrients might as well never have happened. His nine hours of sleep, a chilly morning that caused his tiny body to lose heat, and the burst of energy he had expended avoiding the predatory sparrow, had left his reserves dangerously depleted.
He'd been awake barely two hours, and Brad was already so preoccupied with simply surviving that his plans to get home had fallen by the wayside.
Desperate, Brad submerged his will to the fly's instincts, hoping they would lead him to food.
Instead, with a twitch of his wings, he headed back, once again, to the park bench.
On this occasion, the bench wasn't unoccupied...