Venatus and the Indoor Prison II

 

The darkness dissipated; his vision cleared. But what he saw made him wish his vision didn’t clear at all. There were other flies on the ground, unmoving. Lifeless. Dust clung to them. A shiver went down his spine. Was he in a graveyard?

But there was movement nearby, another bug. A fly was looking down at him. He seemed…impressed. “So you are alive.”

Venatus tried to get up, but he couldn’t. Not yet. His head still throbbed with pain. “W-where am I?”

“Relax. We’re underneath the couch. You’re safe. Well, safer. Not to mention very lucky.”

He tried to get up but winced. His whole body ached.

“It’ll take a while for the pain to wear off,” the fly said.

“Who are you?”

“Name’s Buster. And you are?”

“Venatus.”

“Venatus? What kind of name is that?”

Venatus wasn’t in the mood to answer. He slowly stood up. “What happened?”

“The human hit you with a fly swatter.”

“A what?”

“You know, that stick weapon with the big flat plastic at the end of it.”

His memory flooded back. He had been hit with the stick—fly swatter—and it nearly killed him. Fly swatter was an extremely accurate name for an extremely terrible weapon.

“They’ve got at least three of those,” Buster went on. “They use them more often now because it’s fly season. They love killing flies, especially when they’re at the windows. That was pretty dumb by the way. Going to the window. You basically cornered yourself. Not to mention you got Window Madness.”

Window Madness? “I didn’t know there was an invisible force field there.”

“Force field? That wasn’t—”

Bang!

Buster grimaced. “Sounds like he’s still at it.”

Bang bang bang!

“He sounds angry,” Venatus said.

“A fly must’ve landed in his food. When flies land on the food the humans are still eating, they get really mad. Really really mad. I guess it’s because they’re hungry.”

Venatus swallowed. He didn’t think that landing on a sandwich would cause the humans to go into a rage. Now he was killing flies left and right.

Buster must’ve read his mind. “Don’t blame yourself too harshly. It was bound to happen one way or another. It always happens. The humans may feel lazy and allow the flies to stick around for a day or two. But eventually the humans get impatient, and then—”

Bang!

“—they’re dead. Now, where was I? Oh yeah. The windows. They have this stuff called—” he stopped when he saw Venatus wobble. “You know what, I’ll explain later. You just rest for a while. There’s no hurry.” He gestured to the dead flies. “Humans aren’t coming here anytime soon.”