Fly (by Yonatan Ginzburg)
The fly rested motionless on the tea cosy. Thirty minutes buzzing around the room, flying previously unflown trajectories, had helped it elude being swatted, but it was now utterly exhausted. Its prospects at the grand old age of four days were dim: the vast nine-foot bay window had the uniquely British attribute of being permanently glued shut, whereas the door leading to the corridor was usually closed to prevent the kids from entering unsupervised and smashing Aunt Maud's tea set or playing with the computers. What to do? Avoiding unnecessary buzzing seemed the only reasonable survival strategy.
Bartholomew watched the resting fly with a mixture of annoyance and admiration. It had ruined any prospect of work in the 30 minutes since lunch. He had tried to peacefully shepherd it away by opening the door into the corridor but this plan was quickly abandoned when a horse-fly somehow stumbled into the room. Once this monster found its way out, he kept the door firmly shut.
Bartholomew put his right hand forward; inch by inch it approached the fly. Could he really justify this attack on a peaceful and presumably harmless creature. (It seemed to him the proboscis was too small for it to be a tsetse.) With three inches to go, the fly sprang up and soared two feet in the air.
[The second short short story series is announced and explained here.]
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