He was dead. He had been dead. Why wasn’t he still dead?
Brad Rivera remembered the glass coming down on top of his tiny insect form. There hadn’t even been time for a mental scream.
The next thing he remembered was waking up, wings twitching.
Damn. He still had wings. He was still a fly.
And Mark was back. He flew off the counter, zipping eagerly toward his spouse. He saw the device in Mark’s hand. Had he gotten the batteries replaced?
Mark raised his voice and called out Brad’s name again. “You home, babe?” Mark boomed as he stood in the kitchen.
Brad buzzed past Mark’s right ear.
“I’m right here!” Brad buzzed. “Did you get the batteries…Ahhh!”
Brad veered suddenly, trying to evade a slap from Mark’s hand.
Confused, Brad hovered and watched. Mark kept studying the Chronivac unit.
Mark started pushing buttons.
“What are you doing?” Brad wanted to scream. He saw a flash from the viewscreen, but then the entire screen went dark.
“Don’t turn it off!” Brad buzzed furiously, watching from a wary distance as Mark turned off the Chronivac and placed the device, face down, on the surface of the kitchen island.
“Mark! What are you doing?” Brad flew straight toward his immense husband. The tiny insect zigzagged in front of Mark’s face.
“Damn pest!” Mark exploded.
Brad screamed wordlessly and fled Mark’s hands as he flailed them through the air, trying to swipe at Brad’s teeny fly form.
Brad veered away from Mark, who yelled out Brad's name again. "Did you go out?" Mark shouted.
“Why is he yelling for me? He knows that I’m the fly and…”
Brad froze, almost forgetting to beat his wings. He remembered scanning a passage in the instruction booklet prior to his ill-advised experiment about the Chronivac’s quantum temporal failsafe.
Brad continued to buzz, hovering in front of Mark’s face, as he tried to analyze the new dilemma.
"That does it!" Mark thundered and took a few steps.
Brad watched his gigantic spouse reach between the wall and the fridge for an object hanging on a wall hook.
As the arm pulled back, Brad’s strange eyes fastened on a massive rod of green plastic, the handle of a flyswatter fashioned from white and yellow plastic mesh.
“No!” Brad veered away. “Mark! Don’t! Please don’t.”
"Not so fast," Mark grumbled aloud, tracking the fly with his hand wielding the flyswatter at the ready.
Before he could deal with the pest...