Brad tore free of the swamp of oily cheese on the pizza slice. He zigzagged his flight, evading the all-too-predictable swipe from the man who had gone from unaware savior to an avatar of destruction.
His flight path suddenly veered right when he’d meant to fly straight ahead. He sent a command that caused a twitch in his knobby halteres that tried to steady the course, but his wings disobeyed and turned sharply to the right, toward an all-consuming bright glow.
He hadn’t expected that. He’d hit autopilot often enough so the fly could find food, and he’d relied on other insect instincts, but not when a giant man was in hot pursuit and trying to squash him!
“Stop!” Brad screamed mentally.
The bug brain listened not the least iota and flew on toward the brilliant light, which began to widen and brighten even more intensely.
BANG!
The fly hurled itself against the illusion of freedom.
BANG!
Wings buzzed frantically as the insect kept banging itself senseless.
“Fuck! Stop!” Brad begged and pleaded for the insect instinct to give him some control again. He knew the man was close. His acute albeit alien senses picked up the massive displacement of air current.
BANG!
He wobbled in mid-air, stunned by the most recent collision.
The man had stopped his pursuit, which had now given him opportunity to collect a rolled-up magazine retrieved from the coffee table during the chase. He watched as the pitiful insect hurled itself again and again at a pane of glass. A sun beam shining on the glass from outside had bathed the pane in brilliant light.
“What a stupid fucker!” The man exclaimed and laughed as he watched the stupid futility on display.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The fly, energized to the full by the earlier meal in the pizza box, felt perfectly willing to fling itself against the barrier until it yielded.
“It’s a window!” Brad’s screams echoed through his thoughts.
The insect saw only light and the confidence of freedom.
BANG!
“No!”
BANG!
It was an endless loop of protest and defiance.
BANG!
The latest stunning impact hurt like hell. The man’s laughter poured salt into the transformed scientist’s wounded ego.
The man laughed again and, instead of finishing off the world’s dumbest bug, walked off and left it to its own devices.
Hours later, when clouds mercifully obscured the brightness, an insect twitched feebly on the windowsill. All of the hard-gained reserves of energy had been spent in a futile mad gesture.
The countless impacts against the pane had dented its wings and damaged some of the components of the strange compound eyes.
The defeated insect surrendered control again to an exhausted Brad. As he examined his surroundings, he spied the dry husks of other flies, lured to the same demise, resting as hollow testaments to the completely preventable demise despite the obvious dead-end of the window pane.
Brad crawled closer to the nearest of the dead flies, a mirror substitute to remind him what he had become. He saw the brittle, desiccated proboscis of the other fly extending from beneath its grotesque head.
Home! Fly!
His wings buzzed weakly and produced an alarming resonance. Several gashes and tears in the stretched membrane of the wings had impaired the appendages.
The wings buzzed until the noise ground to a halt.
He couldn’t fly.
Not without food. Energy. Even then, he’d have to hope the structural damage hadn’t permanently grounded him.
But now he couldn’t even fly, not even to find food. He was marooned on a windowsill with the relics from the follies of other houseflies.
Transformed into an insect with all the benefits of a human brain hadn’t been enough to prevent his falling victim to one of the most common of traps to his kind.
Food. Home. Fly. His thoughts crawled.
Brad crawled. He had no choice. He crawled closer, threw up on his fallen compatriot and tried to sponge up some nutrients. The dehydrated carcass yielded nothing. He sucked up his own vomit and nothing more.
Food! His thoughts coalesced around one objective.
Why did everything seem to always narrow to a focus on simple primal needs?
He wouldn’t find food on the desert of the windowsill. He crept over to the edge, pondered the steep drop.