He rested on his back. If he’d still been human, he would have been trying to regain his breath after having it knocked out of him.
Six tiny fly legs twitched randomly as Brad sought to right himself and get himself airborne again.
His brother’s laughter and threat to finish him off spurred on the futile attempt, but he just didn’t have enough energy left. His reserves had hovered around empty and had been depleted further by his attempt to gain some benefit from Sal’s sandwich.
Even now crumbs that could have perhaps nourished a spark of energy in the exhausted insect rained down from above, but none of them fell close to his location.
He was past hunger. Not even the primal drive of survival exerted itself now. He had been panic-stricken at first, but as Sal continued eating, the fly imagined itself in flight over a peaceful meadow. Endless stretches of flowers and greenery beneath sunshine and blue skies carpeted the landscape below him.
He flew and flew, never losing his stamina. He was still flying when he saw a glow on the horizon that became brighter the closer he flew to it.
The glow felt warm and good and peaceful. The bright light soon enveloped him in its glow.
Sal finished his sandwich and looked for the fly. He found the tiny insect, shrivelled and motionless on the countertop. The spindly legs no longer twitched. Squinting close, he realised the insect’s tattered wings, the source of that exasperating buzz, would never buzz again.
Brad’s insect body had expired at the ripe old age of 22 days. Of course, he’d had no way of knowing the biological age of the insect that he had become thanks to the Chronivac. He could have continued, even if elderly in fly terms, if only he could have obtained some food. But, considering most houseflies don’t live more than 30 days, he hadn’t done so badly.
Of course, Mark eventually returned home, but long after his spouse’s brother had departed. Fruitless searches found not a trace of a buzzing insect anywhere within the house.
He didn’t think to look in the kitchen trash, but even if his search had led him there, it would have been unlikely he would have gone to the extreme of dissecting a crumpled napkin that Sal had used to dispose of the little pest, even commenting aloud to himself about the bug dropping dead.
“Maybe I scared it to death,” Sal had said with a wry chuckle after dropping the napkin into the trash and departing through the back door instead of the front one.