Brad soon discovered that he didn’t have the time he thought he did. He had been an insect less than a couple of hours and had already nearly been smushed by his own husband.
One of the titans on the living room sofa got to his feet. The fly’s faceted eyes stared up a confusing swirl of multiple Brett Walters as the muscular man made his way toward the kitchen.
The only problem with that, from Brad’s perspective, was that his tiny, stranded fly form was between the giant and his destination.
Brett now looked impossibly massive. His facial features looked like something carved from a craggy cliff, inspiring healthy terror and a twinge of arousal in the voyeuristic insect.
But the man’s massive footsteps soon sent seismic quakes through the floorboards that Brad felt to the core of his tiny insect form. He screamed as the man’s giant shoes thundered toward him.
And suddenly, like a switch was thrown, his wings activated and lifted him off the floor. Unfortunately, by that time Brett was almost upon him. He had to zigzag like mad to avoid the sole on the underside of Brett’s dropping shoe.
He felt definitely queasy to spy the pulverized remains of bugs deep in some of the tread. What were they? Ants? Beetles?
Did it matter? Brad flew away from the ghastly sight and began to gain altitude. His wings buzzed and helped him ascend higher and higher.
Brett, in the meantime, has continued to the kitchen. He had retrieved two beers and would have headed back to the living room if he hadn’t heard a faint, irritating buzz.
As cool as a cucumber, he didn’t fret. Even as the buzzy whine continued, Brett saw what he needed and reached for the plastic flyswatter dangling on a hook on the kitchen wall. He knew from experience that the little pest would soon be making a nuisance of itself again. With ninety-nice cents worth of cheap plastic, he was armed with all he needed when that filthy little pest dared to intrude in his personal space again.
As for Brad, his attention was focused for the moment on his husband, a mountainous figure seated on the enormous sofa, eyes glued to the high-def television screen.
He wanted nothing more than to zip right up to Mark’s face and beg for help, but without any ability to make a sound other than his raspy buzzing, he wisely nixed that impulse.
He settled on a wide blade of a ceiling fan, clinging there with his six wiry hooked limbs and found that he had a great view from above. Even the return of Mark’s huge uncle didn’t disturb Brad, at least not too much.
The fly watched Brett share the beers he had gotten out of the fridge. But what he saw next made his blood run cold.
Brett placed the flyswatter with its sleek white handle and pink-and-white plastic mesh on the surface of the coffee table within instant access should the need arise.
“What’s that?” Mark inquired, prompting some smug laughter from Brett.
"Something to keep that pest of a fly and any of its kind from making nuisances of themselves while we are trying to enjoy the game," Brett explained.
“No!” Brad thought to himself, realizing how Brett’s action put a crimp in his plans. “Oh no!”
His tiny forelimbs lifted and groomed nervously at his alien-looking ‘face.” As he groomed, he eased back from abandoning himself to panic and looked at the situation calmly, rationally. He couldn’t risk trying to communicate with either giant, not with a lethal but simple invention so close at hand.
But where did that leave him? Cowering like an insect, waiting passively for Brett to leave and hope his luck with his huge husband would be better man to bug?
That wasn’t at all to his liking. The sooner he could establish communication with Mark, get him to see what he had done, the better. He’d just have to use some extra caution.