Mark interrupted his search for clues to Brad’s absence when he began to feel hungry. He walked into the kitchen, a faint buzz from a small pair of wings following in his wake went unheard by the barely clothed man.
Mark pulled open the door to the fridge with one muscular arm and leaned forward to see what might interest him.
Brad flew past his enormous spouse, right into the refrigerator and landed on a sealed container of leftovers as Mark pondered the options. From Brad’s perspective, he was in a perfect position to get Mark’s attention.
“Babe!” Brad buzzed his wings with gusto. “It’s me!”
In the end, Mark chose a beer, grabbing a bottle, slamming the door closed after making his choice and plunging his surprised spouse into darkness.
Brad buzzed in panic to find that the light really does go out inside the fridge when the door is closed. “Mark! Come back!”
He flew and banged into one surface after another before he finally landed again on a smooth, cool expanse of plastic.
His tiny insect form quickly became aware of the cold. He was briefly aware of how the cold was incapicatating his new body, but he drifted off into a sort of insect coma before he could spend much time worrying about the situation.
In fact, the temperature inside a typical refrigerator is low enough to quickly produce lethal consequences for a housefly dumb enough to get itself shut inside one.
A half hour later Mark returned. He reached for a container of leftovers and noticed a dead fly.
He frowned and flicked the dead bug off the lid, not bothering to follow the fly’s trajectory.
The tiny fly landed on the kitchen tiles. The insect wasn’t dead, although if Brad had spent much more time in the chilly fridge he would have been a goner.
Now, if only his body could warm, he could resume the struggle to gain Mark’s assistance. But the cold floor tile didn’t offer much heat, and Mark continued to stomp around the kitchen in a pair of fuzzy slippers.