Extend the Story - Add a Room

Forcing himself to accept what had just happened, Craig began to gather his thoughts about his next course of action.

“I need a plan that avoids getting crushed like a bug,” he decided.

He concentrated for a few moments and came up with nothing. He had a brilliant intellect, but he saw no potential avenues of escape. Caleb had thoroughly closed them all off by shutting down the device.

It was so unfair. Caleb wasn’t even supposed to be home. What had happened to his little brother’s plans of staying the night at a friend’s home? His wings buzzed. The sound dismayed him. He noticed that any time he felt upset or distressed, the buzzing kicked in automatically.

Craig felt numb. Through his kid brother’s blundering, he was stuck as a disgusting fly. Fearfully, he turned and stared again at his reflection in the curve of the shiny metal spoon. He really made a thorough examination this time of his new form.

In the bowl of the spoon, he saw his new self: bulging red eyes, a weird proboscis dropping from his face, and a pair of shimmering wings. His six limbs were thin and spiky while his puny body was insulated with a coat of dark hairs. He saw his reflection and his surroundings as if he was looking through a shattered kaleidoscope.

He should be irritated with Caleb, but he knew that he needed to get his brother’s attention. He could make Caleb pay for his careless actions later after he had restored himself to his human form.

“He’s a smart kid,” Craig thought to himself. It also didn’t hurt that Craig had shared the device with the boy, who now knew about the device's ability to transform things into all different kinds of species.

“All I’ve got to do is make him realize I’m a fly now.”

It sounded so easy… but the devil was in the details. How could he get Caleb to connect the dots?

He watched as Caleb stood in the center of the bedroom, scanning for some clue.

With a half-baked plan, Craig zoomed across the room and hovered in front of the boy's face.

Hearing the buzz of his wings, Caleb’s big blue eyes locked onto the hovering insect.

Craig flew in tight loops in the air and tried to spell out "help" in his flight.

“Fucking pest,” Caleb growled and reached for a magazine he saw incompletely stuffed beneath Craig’s mattress.

Pulling out the magazine, Caleb saw that the cover featured a shirtless muscled man in a pair of skimpy shorts curling a dumbbell back to show off rock-hard biceps, pecs, and abs.

“Interesting reading material, bro,” Caleb said with a snicker.

If he’d still been human, Craig would have blushed in shame at his little brother discovering the magazine he used for “inspiration” for his regular jerk-off sessions.

“What are you doing with that?” The little fly buzzed, refusing to surrender its ground in front of the enormous boy.

Caleb calmly rolled the magazine into a tube and kept his eyes locked onto the buzzing fly.

“Caleb! Please!” Craig buzzed. “It’s me! You’ve got to—“

Caleb listened to the maddening buzz of the little pest, locked onto the direction of the sound, and swung the massive rolled-up magazine at the pesky bug, which somehow managed to barely evade the oncoming missile.

Craig escaped the giant hand wielding the gigantic magazine, but he used his wings to put some distance between his brother and himself. “He could have killed me!”

“Fuck, I missed,” Caleb grunted and tried to re-locate the fly. He wanted to deal with the little pest before he returned to the problem of his missing brother.

“Oh shit!” Craig careened through the air in a panic. The door to his room was open and, faced with a sibling with murderous intent, he flew out of the room and into the hallway.

He obviously needed to re-think his approach. The hallway now resembled the interior of the huge medieval cathedral Craig had visited last summer on a school trip to Europe.

Why didn’t Caleb just think logically for a change? “Why would a fly just hover in your face!?” Craig buzzed in desperation.

The transformed teen flew to a credenza that held his mom’s antique vase. He landed at the base of the porcelain tower, which held fresh flowers that loomed over him like alien trees.

He felt faint, but not only from the fear of Caleb’s menacing swing. “I’m starving,” he realized and then wondered about the dietary requirements of a fly.

He was still wondering when Caleb left the bedroom and walked past the credenza on his way to the stairs. Craig cowered in his hiding place, wanting to wait to take flight until his brother departed the scene.

Flies to the kitchen where Caleb’s making a sandwich