A tiny housefly, by all external appearances, cowered in a tossed aside plastic bottle, fearful of exiting after surviving a predatory attack by a common dragonfly.
Brad still hadn’t worked up the courage to leave the interior of the enormous plastic bottle when a shadow plunged everything into total darkness. A brittle crunch sounded as the transparent walls crumpled as a huge hoof crashed down on top of the flimsy plastic bottle.
When the hoof lifted, Brad finally buzzed free of the mangled plastic, thankful his frail fly form had been spared being crushed, although not by much.
Even as he gained elevation, an enormous hairy tail swished, slicing through the air in response to picking up the tell-tale buzzing of the wings of one of the pests that liked to make the animal’s waking hours a misery. The same horse that had stomped on the water bottle now flicked a hairy tail toward Brad’s puny form and sent him spiraling.
Finally winning in the struggle to regain his equilibrium, he hovered in place near a street lamp attached to the wall of the massive barn. His wings buzzed as he fought to regain composure, turning to fly away from the barn and nearly colliding with a network of criss-crossing silken cords anchored between the wall and the mounting of the lamp fixture.
His strange faceted eyes fixed on a small moth, which was bound up in a tight cocoon of silk. In another corner of the web, another housefly struggled but only managed to entangle itself more securely in the sticky webbing.
“Fuck,” Brad thought as he resisted an urge to panic. Although he felt a commiserating pang of sympathy for the other fly, there was absolutely nothing he could do to intervene.
Even as he hovered and stared, a truck-sized arachnid crawled along a single strand of silk toward the other fly. At least to Brad’s heightened perception, the trapped fly buzzed louder and more desperately as the spider drew closer.
Unwilling to witness the macabre encounter to its ultimate end, he veered off and flew away from the barn and its multitude of pungent, organic scents that kept his fly circuitry on an uneven keel.
On the verge of fully freaking out, Brad landed atop a post in a fence surrounding the barn and stable area. After one horror after another, he needed a moment to catch his breath and calm his thoughts.
A flat terrain of weather-worn wood stretched beneath his six thin legs. The dull surroundings lulled him into a calmer moment until he saw the troubling outline of something extremely angular and jagged that began to manifest itself seemingly almost out of thin air. A heart-shaped head equipped with ruby-red faceted eyes and blade-like mouthparts pivoted in his direction as the long, camouflaged form swayed without benefit of a breeze.
If he had landed any closer to the hidden ambush predator, he would surely have found himself grasped by the wickedly serrated forelimbs designed specifically for the task of seizing unsuspecting prey.
He sprang into flight when the larger mantis lunged at him despite having already lost the element of surprise.
Brad’s frantic mind slid into full panic mode as he began to realize his low status on the hierarchy of other bugs. Stealthy silk-weaving spiders, marauding mantids and dazzling and deadly dragonflies were only the tip of the iceberg.
At that moment, after flying closer to the monolithic barn, the man transformed into a fly saw some giants standing in the doorway of the barn. Although he could not truly claim any kinship to humans, who now overwhelmed him with their sheer monstrous size, a barely rational corner of his mind would rather trust his fate to them instead of surrendering to an army of arachnids and bigger insects.
As he flew closer, he surveyed the young men with their miles of denim and cotton attire covering fit, well-built forms. They were on a break from their work as stable hands.
A hint of sweat, the strong presence of a masculine musk, beguiled Brad into letting down his guard as he flew his tiny housefly body closer to them.