Free The Bug - Episode 1 by Barry J. Hutchison Page A

soft but urgent in my brain. It tells me my children are careless. Tells me they've forgotten something. Tells me I should bring it to them.
    The door beside me opens. Was that me? I try to fight, to resist, but then I'm standing on the sidewalk, and my feet are taking me to the back of the car. The trunk opens with a squeak . There's not much in there. A couple of scrunched up carrier bags, a pair of running shoes I bought in January and have only worn once.
    My eyes fall on the tire iron. I look at it for a long time, listening to the bug as it squirms and whispers, whispers and squirms.
    This is good, it says. These are the things a good daddy does .
    The iron is heavy in my hand, the pitted metal rough against my skin. There's a clunk as the trunk closes, although I don't remember doing it.
    Now bring it to them , the bug says, and its squirming makes my face go hot and my insides itch. Bring it to them, and show them what we do to careless little children .
    So I bring it. And I show them.
    God forgive me, I show them.
     

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND
24 th MAY, 7:42 PM
 
    There is a woman on television and she is looking at me and she is a whore. She says words I do not like to hear. They give me the bad feeling and make me itch on the inside until I cannot listen to them anymore. I press the button and the television goes dark and the room goes dark, but I know she is still there, inside the television, looking at me and speaking words I do not like to hear.
    I get up from the chair and do not look at the television and walk four steps to the window. The window is dirty on the outside but clean on the inside. Outside is the street. It is dark, like the television is dark.
    There is a woman on the street and she is laughing at me and she is a whore, like the woman on the television is a whore. Like all of them are whores.
    I shout at the woman on the street but she does not look up. I shout until she has walked all the way along the street, past the blue door and the red door and the door I do not like to look at. I shout until my throat burns, but the woman who was just right there on the street is not there anymore.
    I walk four steps to the chair and press the button and the television is no longer dark. The woman is back looking at me and smiling now, smiling now , smiling now . Her name is written on the screen in yellow letters on a dark blue background. Her name is written exactly like this: Lacey Crane.
    Lacey Crane is a whore.
    And whores must be punished.
     
    * * *
     
    Martin Marshall hovered just inside the yellow and black rectangle of DO NOT CROSS tape, doing his best to keep out of everyone's way. The cold was in about him, jabbing at his kidneys and grabbing at his balls. He was thinking about his old school careers advisor, wishing he would traipse round the corner now, so he could punch him right in the fucking face.
    Join the polis, Martin. You'll like the polis. Being in the polis is magic .
    Oh aye. Magic.
    “What a fucking night.”
    “ Christ ,” Marshall yelped, head whipping round. DCI Hoon stood on the other side of the tape, hands in his pockets, eyes on the guys in the white paper suits. The street light above him turned his pock-marked face into a landscape of shadowy craters. Big Boaby Hoon, wi' a face like the moon.
    “No' quite, son.” Hoon's eyes left the paper suits and went to the two sheets lying side by side, a few feet apart on the ground, two someone-sized lumps beneath them. “What we got?”
    “It's a belter, this one, sir. Way, way out of my league.” He blew out his cheeks. “Don't know where to start, really.”
    “Aye, well it’s been a night of belters for some of us, Detective Inspector. Half of Glasgow’s leathering seven shades of shite out of the other half. The whole city’s gone mental.”
    “Whole world. Hear about that business with the school in the States? Dad and his two kids.”
    Hoon nodded grimly. “Drugs. Bet it's drugs. But this is getting us nowhere.