On the pair of wings that had gotten him this far, Brad flew toward two men standing outside the main doorway of the large municipal barn used to house the SFPD’s horses.
His tiny form felt increasingly uneasy as he flew closer to the mountain-sized men. They both wore white t-shirts smudged with dirt and dust from their work. The man with a head of red curls, green eyes and a patterning of freckles over the bridge of his nose sucked on a cigarette held between his teeth. He exhaled a plume of hot smoke right in Brad’s path, although he hadn’t even noticed the tiny flying creature.
The twisting cloud of smoke repelled the fly for some reason not quite evident to Brad, who if he had had his own way, would have flown closer. The smell of sweat and musk was stronger this close, and beckoned him like a mindless moth to a flame.
The other man laughed at something said by his red-haired co-worker as the casual conversation inched forward. The sound of the laughter rumbled like the distant approach of a thunderstorm. Joining the buzz of Brad’s own wings came a shrill whine, but both giant men remained for the moment oblivious of the insects around them.
He hadn’t noticed another winged insect, thinner and smaller than a housefly, but equipped with a needle-sharp proboscis of a different design than that of a common housefly.
The mosquito, too, was drawn toward the men, attracted by chemical trails from their breath and sweat. The pest produced a shrill buzz as it drew closer to the red-haired man’s sweaty neck. The bloodsucker landed on the sweat-drenched flesh and had positioned its proboscis for a swift jab when the man’s hand slapped it.
When the hand withdrew, the only evidence left behind was a faint red blot on the man’s neck. Brad, hovering inches from the scene of sudden violence, had witnessed the incident from start to finish and now stared at the red dot that was the only evidence of the mosquito’s former existence.
“Fucking bugs,” the man complained to his friend.
The man’s irritable curse demolished both Brad’s arousal and his ego.
“Comes with the territory,” the other man replied.
The gulf between the fly and the men could not be navigated, at least not safely. With a twitch of a network of nerves and muscles, Brad directed his wings to turn him away from the men.
His immediate flight path took him between the men and the wall at their backs. He paused, just long enough to buzz closer, hovering for one lingering look at the gap between the neck hole of the vast t-shirt and the man’s wild mane of red curls. The shine of a layer of sweat and the enticing smell worked like some invisible magnet, making him want to land on the expanse of sweaty flesh and pump his little proboscis into the salty liquid.
“There’s another one,” said the red-headed man’s friend, slapping his hand toward the dark housefly zigzagging in flight away from them as Brad returned to his senses and wrested control back over his housefly form.
The red-haired titan exhaled a cloud of noxious smoke, choking and blinding the tiny fly enveloped by the caustic fog.