Bug

BUG

  Copyright 2011 James Pollard

  Copyrighted material. All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce in part or in whole without the express prior written consent of the author. All characters and events in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental

  BUG

  It was back. He could feel it. It weighed down the back of his head affecting its stability, making it harder to keep still. He looked in the rear vision mirror of his sedan but he knew he wouldn't see it. Since the first visitation when he was about fifteen he had come to realise that it was either invisible or not really there.

  He had never been able to see it but he could feel the grip of the 6 legs from the top of his skull down to the bottom. He had no doubt. It was real. It came and went, usually staying for a few hours and then disappearing at a time when he had become used to it being there. It seemed to be able to sense a moment when he was preoccupied with something else, more practical thoughts perhaps, and it would just go away without being noticed.

  He shook his head a little to adjust to the different weight distribution. He knew that violently shaking his head would achieve nothing. That time he was drunk at the graduation dinner when things got to him. This thing on the back of his head that no-one could see. "Stop it! What's the matter with you?" "The bug…the bug. I can't get it off." "Stop that! Stop, you'll hurt yourself. People are looking!" "Fuck them… BUG… Ahh…fucking BUUUGGG!"

  Green… Orange… Red…. Although absorbed by the tainted memory of this pivotal moment in his past, Blake applied the brake gently and coasted towards the white line at the red traffic light and stopped. His mind moved back to the present. "What do you want today?" he asked the bug. He laughed at himself for asking. Having never had a reply, he was used to these one way conversations. He touched the back of his head just to check that he was sane. Hair, skull, sense of touch - no bug! "Yep, sane", he pronounced to himself. But it WAS there!

  "To what do we owe the pleasure of your company today?" he mused. The silence reminded him of how lonely it was to exist in a secret world that no one else was apparently capable of perceiving. He had tried to tell people - like at the grad dinner. After the head shaking went nowhere and the other students started screaming at him and calling him a freak - when he started tearing out hair from the back of his head - like when he had confided in his long term buddy Noel.

  Noel had dragged him from the dinner table to the pre-drinks area off to the side of the main party. He had him in a bear grip from behind to stop his hands from getting to his hair. "CHILL, CHILL," Noel was yelling over and over as Blake struggled. Defeated and sobbing he had told Noel about the bug and how it appeared and how he could feel it but no one, not even he could see it. Blake cringed a little as he remembered how Noel had yelled, two centimetres away from his ear," You are so fucked up… fucking crazy man".

  That was pretty much the last time he had talked with anybody about the bug. It was now long ago that he had decided that it was his bug to bear; his alone and he was the one that had to deal with it. He now confided only with the bug about the bug.

  The light turned green and Blake slowly let off the brake and applied the accelerator gently. Today was a good day - sunny, blue skies and about 22 degrees Celsius with a slight chill to a gentle, light breeze - perfect weather. That was until the bug had come back. He flinched as he felt the bug change its grip a little. It must have been moving its head as the centre of gravity seemed to shift ever so slightly, forcing Blake to adjust the position of his head a little in order to compensate.

  He gently passed through the intersection, then on through the main street of Northbridge. In his peripheral vision he noticed people on the left side of the street - walking in the opposite direction as he drove slowly and carefully up William Street.

  He felt them staring and momentarily wondered if they could see the bug. As he reasoned in the negative he flicked his head visibly to snap his thoughts back into the reality that he now lived within. People couldn't see it - he knew that - but he dreamed of a world where people could see it - a world of people who could understand how it was to have it just clinging there - changing reality.

  He knew he wasn't crazy but he was starting to perceive something that he didn’t want to see. More people were staring at him as he drove slowly. They were walking at the same speed as they always did but at the same time they were walking in slow motion. His car was moving forward but it kept moving forward to the same place, over and over. He flicked his head violently to the side to try and snap himself into a reality that he could cope with. The bug compensated for the weight distribution change instantly, scuttling to the opposite side of Blake's skull and then back again.

  'It's you, isn't it?" he said to the bug. The bug shifted weight, causing Blake to tilt his head again to compensate. Reality however, didn't shift so Blake decided to pull over for the duration of the episode. He was travelling quite slowly so it was pretty easy to pull over to a road side parking space and kill the engine.

  He sat and nodded his head, playing with the uneven weight distribution as a result of the position of the bug on his skull. People still walked past in slow motion, accentuating the duration of time it took to stare at Blake. As he stared back at them, he could perceive the moment they realised he was staring back at them. At this moment he took delight in watching their facial expressions quickly changing from inquisitive to alarmed then to public neutral as their eyes moved away from his. The bug tightened its grip and for the first time in his life, the pressure created a moment of pain in Blake's head.

  The pain increased and time seemed to slow further as a feeling of concern turned to panic in Blake's mind. "Bug… bug," he shouted. But the bug didn’t' reply. It began shifting around randomly while maintaining its vice-like grip. Blake compensated by moving his head. "Bug - stop, it hurts," he yelled again. With an open palm, he slapped the back of his head in a vain attempt to stop the bug. He felt the slap but the bug's grip did not lessen although it did seem to move its body around more.

  Blake was tempted to just slap the back of his head with force in a desperate attempt to stop the increasing level of pain but the horror of the grad flashed back, injecting a little sanity into his thought process. Blake stopped moving and sat still, deciding that this was the best way to reason this situation through.

  To his left, he noticed a group of about five gathered by his car bonnet. They stared with concern, not afraid to maintain eye contact anymore. Blake smiled. No-one smiled back and the two closest to the bonnet, a tall young man in office attire and a young woman in a colourful floral summer dress continued to talk to each other while they stared at Blake and appeared to frown with concern. Blake stopped smiling and stared with wide, sad eyes. He felt the bug shift but the pain seemed to have dulled.

  Although more than capable of perceiving his surrounding environment, Blake could still feel a time lag of sorts, placing him in a reality of time that continued at a normal pace, while the outside environment was a little unfocussed as it tried to catch up. The people continued to stare.

  Curiosity began to get the better of Blake as he contemplated approaching the people. Without actually thinking the words, he wondered why they were staring at him - talking - frowning - conversing. A decision entered his mind without a question actually having been put. Blake opened the driver side door. He heard something clink like glass then smash. He looked down and the bug shifted to adjust to the weight. His head nodding from side to side he scanned the roadside from the open door but saw nothing as the breeze created by the passing traffic created a refreshing sensation that awakened his mind a little.

  He opened the door fully, undid his seat belt and climbed out of the driver's seat. A little unsteady as the bug adjusted i
tself, Blake felt further twinges of pain as it dug its prickly, hairy feet into his skull. Although perfectly coordinated, Blake stumbled due to the weight changes as he closed the door and took his first step towards the small crowd. He paused for a moment as he steadied himself with one hand on the bonnet and looked towards the people as he did so. They had stopped talking and were slowly moving backwards.

  The man in the office attire looked angry now and Blake could see that he was attempting to say something. The man's mouth moved as shard-like streams of spit sprayed ferociously from his mouth but not a sound emerged as Blake continued around the front of the car bonnet towards the kerb. Blake tripped and fell in slow motion.

  He felt somehow unencumbered as he became aware that he was in free fall. The thought of hitting the ground was overridden by the sudden release of tension he could feel as the bug's grip on his skull lessened - the pain vanishing. There was time during the fall to turn his head to look at the small crowd but the momentum of the combined weight of his head and the bug's body caused a slight misalignment as the bug's body rotated to the direction of the kerb and Blake's face rotated past the crowd towards the sky. It was a dull thud as the bug's body hit the pavement first and Blake came to rest on the pavement facing the blue sky, the back of his scull cushioned by the bug. A gentle breeze carried a slight chill to his face as Blake realised that from the back of his head he could feel a warm sensation. Without paying the crowd any further attention, he reached for the back of his head. It was warm but somehow wet and he could feel some kind of crusty pieces. They were hard and sharp.

  He grabbed one of the pieces, a small piece that felt roughly circular like a lens. He held it in front of his eyes and marvelled at the beauty of the refraction of light as the sun pierced the brown material, glistening as the rays danced around the periphery. He paused his thoughts as his mind subconsciously appraised the object. He stared at it. Time seemed to hover before a thought began to gain momentum and moved to his conscious mind. "The bug… No, it couldn't be… crushed wing cover?" He felt the piece again and moved it closer to his eyes. "I killed the bug," he muttered under his breath in disbelief. "You fucker… you fuckin' dead fucker," he announced loudly to the world from the pavement.

  He threw the piece of crushed bug wing cover towards his feet and reached behind his head for another. There were more. He attempted to roll his head to the left in order to begin picking himself up from the pavement. He wanted to take a better look at the crushed bug wing cover on the pavement but he was distracted by a wet, warm sensation that stole the chill from his cheek. He turned his head back to its original position and was startled by a stranger's face staring down at him like some kind of benevolent urban angel. The man spoke but yet again, Blake couldn't hear words. "You think I'm dying or something," he joked as the man, ignoring Blake's comment, started to take off his jacket in slow motion.

  And then there was darkness and silence and then there was nothing. Time floated, hovering above Blake. And slowly the sound of the traffic passing by became audible and the voices of hysterical cries rose in volume and the din of construction work settled into the background and time resumed, moving forward again.

  The other four looked on as the stranger checked for a pulse. He shook his head as a panicky young woman began shouting out orders. "Brush away the glass. That’s it, pick up his head and brush it all aside. Don't cut yourself". "Wreaks of beer… stinks… check out his car," suggested the stranger to the girl as he rolled up his inexpensive jacket and placed it under Blake's head. "Pity to ruin it with the blood but at least I can give the poor fucker some dignity on his way out." The girl stared in disbelief as she looked through the car window and saw the empty brown beer bottles strewn across the passenger side floor of Blake's car.

  ###

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