Brad burrowed through more of the putrid slab of meatloaf, wiggling his tubular body, working his strange mouthpart hooks to dig into the rotten meat and propel himself forward, consuming food every inch of his progress.
The comforting sensation of filling his elongated gut kept down his stress and practically lulled him into a state shorn of any conscious thought. He became a tiny eating machine, having little other purpose in his current form.
He fed all through the night, unaware in his eyeless existence whether it was day or night. His only clue might have been the less intense temperatures inside the voluminous trash receptacle. He plowed through a section of the rancid slab and dropped without warning with a gentle plop into a smear of yogurt left inside a plastic cup.
That presented an unexpected dilemma. As he undulated his tiny maggot form through the puddle of yogurt, he bumped into the plastic wall. Frustrated, he turned his tiny maggot body in another direction only to bump against smooth plastic. The discarded cup held his tiny form prisoner in a smooth pit. The plastic walls offered no hope of purchase that would have allowed him to climb or crawl out.
His little gut, after awhile deprived of what had been a dependable source of food, ached in protest. His circular, hook-rimmed mouth gaped and he plowed through some of the yogurt, but the gloppy substance lacked the appeal of the foul meat.
Brad's worries rose above the maggot's primitive instincts. He still didn't understand what had gone wrong with the intended transformation. He should have a buoyant little body and tiny fly wings.
He flashed onto an image of his husband. Perhaps Mark could figure it all out and rescue him...
He had nothing else to hope for...
Morning dawned with another blazing sun that soon began to heat up the interior of the trash can. By mid-day, and no forthcoming rescue, he began to writhe in discomfort as the yogurt and plastic walls warmed. Outside, the temperature spiked to the mid-eighties. Within the plastic prison, temperatures rose, too, reaching about 115 degrees, barely avoiding the lethal threshold of 120.
The maggot rolled and writhed in pain, its body slowly cooking with no relief in sight. The agony was suddenly disrupted by a truck and two employees of San Francisco Public Works. A burly man picked up the trash can and tipped out the contents into the back of the collection truck.
Inside the collected trash, the helpless little maggot was tossed about. Brad's street was one of the last ones on the route, so the transformed scientist didn't have to endure many more stops before the enormous truck rumbled its way through city streets on its way to a waste transfer station for trash, recyclables and other debris, including one tiny maggot, to be sorted and processed.