BigBug
Chapter XXI

The Bigbug arrived with a glass of water. “There we are my good man.” Moon swallowed the water. “Feeling better?” The Bigbug toasted Moons glass of water. “Chin Chin,” it said and drank its Bug juice. “Feeling better?”

“Oh yes,” replied Moon, “I am feeling on top of the world.” My world thought Moon, not whatever godforsaken black hole, on whichever poisonous planet, you crawled out from.

Seamus was watching Moon closely. He saw how Moon was delighted when the Bigbug drank its Bug juice. He knew what the distraction was for. Moon had spiked the alien with a GUSH tab.

The Bigbug looked at its empty glass. “Get me a refill,” it ordered the M&M.

“And leave you on your own, sir? With these two human criminals?”

“There are no secrets between friends,” says Moon.

“None whatever,” agreed Bigbug. “Leave us. I will replenish myself.”

“But, sir –

“Now! Leave now or I will feed you to the recruits. Get out.”

“May I remind the Professor we only eat females. When possible.” It flashed its murderous molars at Seamus and Moon. “However, in combat, we are allowed to eat the enemy and we do dispose of the condemned in a smart and soldier like way.” He pointed a finger at them. “Prison pie.” The M&M saluted and marched off.

“Jesus Christ they have made cannibals. Clones. Cannibal Cloggies ” Moon could scarcely believe the words he was uttering.

The Bigbug was unconcerned at what the M&M had just disclosed. It was fixated on other matters to hand. “If you don’t mind amigos I will replenish myself in the old-fashioned way.” The Bigbug took out its long silver tooting tube from its inside pocket and smeared it with a bit of sex lube. It then took out its massive, erect, wasp ringed stripped feeding organ, and inserted the tooting tube into the eye of it.

“What creatures, particularly humans, don’t understand is,” it said, while rapidly jerking the organ to bring it up to milking pressure, “ that this is not an organ of reproduction. It is just a rather complex feeding pipe. This is not sex. I am not masturbating. I am merely stirring up and bringing the juice to the fore and besides feeding I do have to periodically release the pressure, due to lingering human reproductive urge contamination. It’s a bit like milking a cow and this is a bit like churning butter. I hope you don’t replace it unpleasant or distasteful.”

“Not at all,” says Moon, “you cannot beat your own milk and eggs,” but he was thinking Bigbug was a disgusting perverted alien bastard. He tried to placate the weirdo. “Talent always bubbles to the top. I could book you as a novelty act in an Amsterdam sex show. You need an agent.”

“Please,” said Seamus. “do wonkle away, professor.”

The Bigbug began to suck out and swallow the Bug juice. It was goofed out, wheezing and whimpering, and shaking all over. It was now very vulnerable. Moon was delighted his fix, the wondrous GUSH, was working. Seamus was just plain old-fashioned flabbergasted. The GUSH was also working on Seamus.

He drifted off looking for a quiet peaceful place in his head to think things through. He had to rationalize this new reality. He needed to think. He needed to act. There was only one place he could go. The Mind Theatre. He closed his eyes and willed himself to travel deep into his head. Into the secret maze, a flowering forest of fresh thought and budding inspirational ideas. It was peaceful in there. It was warm and tranquil and cozy. He found the entrance immediately. The magic letters Cead Mile Failte glowed brightly above the portal. He entered the theatre and went backstage.

I am not Seamus.

Curtain up.

I am standing in the dock of the Special Criminal Crematorium in Green Street, in Dublin. In front of me is a tribunal made up of three judges. I don’t know who they are. I am certain, judging from their appearances, they are, and very obviously are aliens. They are Gloats, self-righteous creatures employed as judges by the government. They are off world legal sub-contractors, employed by the United Nations Security Council, who travel from planet to planet and their brief is to expose, in real time as it happened, the accused’s crimes. They suck up and live on, the sentences they hand down, the misery they create. They have a conviction rate of 100% and the legal aid bill is nothing more than burden from the past. I am arraigned before these three enormous maggot-like creatures, appointed by the current government of the night under emergency legislation. The creatures are blind and have no mouths. They are known in the criminal/political/press underworld as the Three Wise Maggots. They are wearing the regalia of Chandlers from the Catholic Church. The creatures’ voices come out of speakers hung up around the courtroom and their words are translated into text and displayed on monitors that hang adjacent to the speakers. Bigbug is up in the public gallery. It is fast asleep. A speaker crackles and a whining Gloat voice speaks.

“You are charged with the following count, that you, a human, are by default a serial species killer, a crime in this galaxy, and indictable under the Planet Earth’s, Man’s Inhumanity to Creatures Act. How do you plead?”

“This is a politically appointed tribunal and it has no jurisdiction. I refuse to recognize this crematorium.”

“A plea of not guilty will be entered on your behalf and legal counsel appointed to help you accept the inevitable.”

“I appear for the accused,” says my defence council as he walks onstage. He is a blonde curly haired boy, nine or ten years old, and he is dressed as a church choir boy. The boy turns to me and says,

“Do not say a word, sir. I warn you, not one word.” He addresses the Gloats. “My client, the accused, admits to being human, but he exercises his delight to remain silent.”

“This will be regarded as collaborative evidence of his guilt and he will be made to suffer further before he dies. If he is innocent what does he have to hide? If he is not guilty why doesn’t he answer a few questions? Why does he not want to co-operate? The court notes his refusal to be a good decent criminal.”

“My client being found guilty, by this tribunal, is inevitable. You have filmed and recorded his crimes as they occurred. I have watched the evidence. The camera does not lie. I will defend him and speak on his behalf.”

“A waste of time. A waste of taxpayers money ill spent, but, agreed. Political correct protocol states the evidence of his guilt must, and will, be shown in court, otherwise, we cannot cremate him. This evidence has been compiled, the foul deeds he has committed in his life have been recorded and made into a short film, as laid down by statute. It is a damning documentary, made with the grateful assistance of the Irish Film Board. Please take your seats.”

The lights are dimmed. The wall off to the right of the Three Wise Maggots is now a panoramic cinema screen. The boy comes across to me to escort me to my seat.

“Who are you?” I whisper.

“When you see me again, you must recognise me. This short film is comprised of all your past mistakes, mishaps, and innermost secret ill deeds. It is a new form, somewhat in the future, of presenting evidence under the Caught Red Handed Acts. This procedure is based partly on you yourself being able to access this quite extraordinary stage. This Mind Theatre. If it can be remembered it can, now, in this space, in this time, be recorded and as it actually took place. There can be no more hiding place, or space, for you humans. Not now with the reality trails. RT. A bright light from afar will search out and shine down illuminating man-kinds iniquities. Everyone. All. This evidence is irrefutable. One cannot argue with it. The accused is seen, on camera, doing what they did wrong, committing the crimes they committed, in real relevant time.” The boy takes my hand in his two small hands. They are stone cold. “There is no escape from this vengeance. There is no statute of limitations. Mind time has even been suspended to facilitate the Gloats in arresting certain notorious humans/criminals and bring them back from the grave to stand trial. There is no escape. Even in death.”

“Who are you? Why are you here?”

“I am Pieter and upon this case, you can save your world.” The boy is laughing at me. He smiles. “I am here for the performance of course. I am playing Cosmic Cameo. It took a great deal of intergalactic ingenuity, to get me here, so pay attention, and do exactly as I say. I do not have much time. And as Moon would say,’ without me we are up the Volga without a pouble. ”

The film began to roll.

“You must now face yourself in your past. You must face this ordeal with courage and understanding. You are needed for a higher purpose.”

The screen lights up. The camera rolls on. The film title is Guilty As Hell, or, A Poisonous Psychopathic Parasite. 3P.The producer is Sarah Whaling and the director is Tony Flair. It is a black and white movie. I see myself onscreen as a small boy, five or six years old, standing out in my backyard in our wee, two up two down house in Belfast. The camera zooms in on a spider making a web in a crack on the whitewashed wall of the outdoor loo. I sneak up on the spider and whack it with a piece of wood. The spider fall to the ground dead but I stamp and dance on it grinding its body into an unrecognisable nothingness. The camera zooms in on my face. I am absolutely thrilled and delighted with myself. PROGRAMMED PSYCHOPATH flashes up on the screen and BORN BAD AT BIRTH. I can see how this is going. There is a series of cluck cluck clucking and tut tut tutting from the Gloats. The Three Wise Maggots are aghast. I am now in this scene sitting at our kitchen table with my da. Ma serves da first and then she puts my plate in front of me. The camera zooms in on my plate as I cut off a piece of the succulent fried liver. As I put the liver into my mouth and chew the camera highlights the dripping juice and my bloody teeth. CARNIVORE flashes up on the screen.

Another scene rolls by. Our wee house is in shadow. The blinds are drawn. Ma has something to tell me. She sits beside me and gives me a glass of lemonade. “I have something to tell you, son. Something very bad has happened to your father.”

“Where is he? Why will you not tell me where he is?”

“I didn’t want you to worry. They sent him to Korea son because he was still in the army reserve. Your father is dead. He was killed by the Chinese. I am so sorry.” Ma hugs me but I break free.

The camera zooms in on me running along a cobble stone street. I climb over the gas works wall to my playground and run along the railway track. I am screaming and weeping. I smash up a few old railway carriages with a steel scaffold pole. I throw a couple of car tyres into one carriage, pour diesel oil from a lantern onto them and set fire to the carriage. It erupts into a blazing conflagration, and spreads to the other carriages, sending putrid black smoke up into the blue cloudless sky. I sit in the smoke coughing and weeping. I am overwhelmed with grief. POLLUTER flashes up on the screen and then MALADJUSTED VANDAL. The camera rolls relentless and shows me climbing into my own house through the back window. I know where ma hides the house keeping money and I steal a few shillings to buy cigarettes and chocolate. I climb back out the window and go back to school. SNEAK THIEF flashes up on the screen. The camera speeds up and my youthful boyhood and adolescent misdemeanours and indiscretions flash me by, too many to mention.

JUVENILE DELIQUENT flashes up on the screen. The camera slows down. I am in a safe house in the Ardoyne area of Belfast being sworn into the republican movement.

“All I can offer you, volunteer, is revenge, imprisonment or death,” says the recruiting officer.

I am shown on screen wearing my combat gear and carrying an AK47. I am so proud to be an IRA man. TERRORIST flashes up on the screen. The next rushes that flash by are horrific. There I am teaching people how to make bombs. Men are hanging from beams in barns and cowsheds and there am I reading out deaths sentences to kneeling men, hooded, bound and gagged. I fire again and again and again and bodies topple into unmarked graves. SERIAL KILLER flashes on the screen. Buildings explode and burst into flames. An armoured car is hurled into the air so ferocious is the blast from the landmine. Body parts, slivers of soldiers, are stuck in trees. MAD BOMBER flashes on the screen. I am petrified with fear and remorse. The boy squeezes my hand. His hand is ice.

“Courage,” the boy whispers.

I shake my head. I don’t have it. I am resigned to my death. The quicker the better. The scenes flicker by showing my marriage, our honeymoon, the birth of my children. Was I really that happy? An intolerable unanswerable cruel question. I am sitting on the sofa with my lovely wife Saoirse.

“I have to go away.”

“Don’t leave us.”

“I have to. There is a war on. It’s my duty.”

WARMONGER flashes up on the screen. VERDICT. A DERANGED DELUDED DANGEROUS LIFEFORM MASQUERADING AS A FREEDOM FIGHTER AND A DEMOCRAT. GUILTY AS PREDICTED. The accused is a SERIAL SPECIES KILLER.

THE END

A multitude of dead bodies walks and hobbles out from the screen to surround me. Did I kill or maim so many people? Am I responsible for all this carnage? The corpses look at me, shocked and hurt creatures, pointing accusing fingers at me. My da pushes his way through the crowd of corpses. There are bullet holes all over his body. I did not kill my da. This is too much for me. I am going to pass out.

“No, no, Jimmy son, stay with me. I am ok. Sometimes a man has to do what’s right even if it costs him the earth, as it did me, as it did you, but there is a big job ahead of you. This is your planet and your people need you. You have to stop the bugs. Destroy them. I know you can do it, son.” He smiled at me. That wonderful smile I missed so much. “You are made of the right stuff. Do not doubt yourself. He who hesitates is lost. Trust the boy. I love you.”

“I love you too, da.”

The lights are back on and the screen has disappeared. The Three Wise Maggots intone together. “You saw the movie. The accused is Guilty As Hell. ” They are oozing righteous satisfaction. They are gloating, gorging on the misery.

The boy addresses the Three Wise Maggots. “I must ask the court to release the prisoner into my custody.”

“You may have the prisoner. Directly after we cremate him. If you can replace his dissipated atoms, you are welcome to them.”

“I need the prisoner alive. He has a job to do, a job which involves planetary security, and it is much unlikely he will survive.”

“The court agrees to release the condemned into your custody with the proviso you bring his body back here that the sentence of cremation be duly carried out. Release the accused.”

“Get out of here,” urges the boy, “before they show your crimes to be. Go!” and he starts to sing in a glorious sweet voice, as he exits stage right, “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small …”

Bigbug has left the building.

Curtain Falls.

I leave the theatre and go back. I don’t know where the boy has gone. I can still hear him singing. His notes are the tears of God falling on a tortured soul. I open my eyes