Several times, tossed by ripples that seemed more like crashing waves on a stormy sea, the tiny fly, formerly a human physicist, felt sure he would drown.
By the time he broke free of the strange elasticity of the water tension exerting itself on his weak body, Brad felt exhausted. He needed to restore and refuel his tiny new body.
He flew through the jungle of his own backyard, his fly sense tingling and closing in on something it had targeted. And then he recognized what the fly’s instincts were determined to make him do.
Brad, resisting with every fiber he could manage, landed on the top of the hill-sized dropping from a neighborhood canine whose owner had neglected to bag up the mess. The instant his six claw-tipped limbs made contact with the vile deposit, his mind fractured, overwhelmed, blasted into oblivion by an immediate sensory overload as his feet tasted and celebrated the find.
“No,” he cried only once as he felt his specialized proboscis pump like a piston, suctioning up nutrients to beat the band.
All other thoughts suspended, he fed gluttonously like a real honest-to-goodness fly. For hours!
Brad only became dimly aware of how much time had passed when he finally pulled himself together, took flight, landed on one of Russ’s gardening posts used to stake his prize tomatoes and noticed that the sun had started to set, casting everything in a soft gray gloom.
He had meant to get indoors long before this point, but his involuntary surrender to his fly instincts had prevented him from making any serious effort to regain entry to his home, the first step in getting access again to his lab and possible restoration.
The glow of light on the other side of the windows placed within the massive walls of his former home attracted the tiny housefly to make an earnest effort to find a way back inside.
He hovered on his tiny fly wings, at about the same height as the eaves of the home. He was concentrating on finding an entry point and almost failed to detect the weird sensation. It almost felt like the concussive wave of a heavy bass drum.
A second later when a pointy eared face and opened, fanged mouth emerged out of the gloom, the panicked transformed man dived toward the lawn. He heard the wings of the enormous bat and a strange clicking noise as the mammalian predator’s jaw snapped in a futile attempt at predation.
Down in the thick grass, the tiny fly’s heart beat fast as he worked to restore some calm after almost being devoured by a bat. He hadn’t even contemplated bats, although he had entertained several unsettling thoughts about the insectivorous nature of backyard birds.
“Bats! Fucking bats!” Brad buzzed in exasperation. He suspected, with a sinking feeling, that the list of perils to his tiny housefly existence was much longer than he could even imagine.
When he finally emerged, wings producing a low hum in the twilight, he headed back toward the house only to…