The Bug Catcher
When a Child’s Passion Reaches Apocalyptic Heights
It was a Saturday morning, and the cheerful, bright packaging arrived at last. A yellow cardboard box hid a shoebox-sized plastic container with a magnifying lid. Beside it lay tiny tweezers shaped like forceps, and a bug net. The words on the cardboard shouted:
SCIENCE BUG CATCHER KIT! FUN!
Jake’s mum dropped it in the Amazon cart the day before while buying dish soap and other household objects. She thought it was a nice addition to her son’s activities.
“Now you can keep your beetles in here,” she said. “Instead of stuffing them in your pockets or keeping them in matchboxes.”
Jake didn’t answer. He just stared at the box, his thin fingers already curling in anticipation. He loved bugs. They were often creepy but fascinating, and that sparked the boy’s restless mind.
***
That afternoon, in the backyard, he caught his first subject: a fat black beetle dragging itself across the patio bricks. He pinched it gently with the tweezers, plopped it inside, and snapped the lid shut.
Click.
The beetle wriggled and tried to fly away, but it was trapped.
With his first subject in, Jake thought about putting some twigs in and making an environment for his bug buddy. He found a few autumn leaves, some tree sticks and layered them into the box.
Jake pressed his face close against the magnifier, but found it rather difficult to spot the little guy. His breath fogged the glass, and he had to wipe it clean. He could’ve sworn the bug was under the little humidity tank. But it wasn’t there. He tapped the plastic. The inside looked empty, as if the beetle had never been.
Annoyed, Jake opened the box and scattered the habitat onto the bricks. Nothing. Not even a leg or a smear of shell.
He thought the beetle must have flown out through the tiny ventilation holes. But how? He’d been watching the whole time. Something didn’t add up. A beetle that size couldn’t squeeze through.
He tilted his head, puzzled.
***
At lunch, Mum ladled soup into bowls. Steam from the crockpot fogged the kitchen windows; the smell was everywhere. Delicious, she thought.
She glanced at Jake outside through the living room window and smiled. Her boy finally had something to do, and it was pleasant to see him occupied with his bug-catching passion. She even considered he might become a biologist one day—a decent man, unlike his dad, serving his time in Walton prison. Sometimes she imagined Jake’s father watching them from his cell, bitter and useless, while she alone raised a boy who would turn out better. The thought gave her a sharp, guilty satisfaction.
Outside, Jake meticulously prowled through the grass. Ants crawled in lines, but they were too small to serve any purpose, so he ignored them—they’d escape through the vent holes.
Finally, something caught his attention. A green stinkbug sat under a large weed by the rotten edge of the wooden fence. He swept it with the net before it flew off and fed it into the bug catcher with a grin.
Happy, he came in to show his catch to his mum, holding the plastic container up with pride.
“Look, Mum—”
“Get your hands washed,” Mum said, stacking bread on a plate. “We’re eating.”
“But Mum, I wanted to show you something.”
“After lunch. Go on—hands, then soup.”
Jake nodded and put the container on a coffee table in the living room.
They sat peacefully in silence at the lunch table, with only the sound of a washing machine rumbling. The soup tasted good.
Neither of them noticed the slight vibration on the coffee table.
***
The smell of hot cotton filled the house. Mum hummed a song while folding socks.
Jake sat slumped by the coffee table, staring at the bug catcher, now wide open.
Seeing that something troubled him, she put the clothes down and approached.
“What happened, love?”
“That bug I wanted to show you… It’s gone. It’s the second one today that’s gone.”
“I’m sorry, Jake. These things take time. There are plenty more bugs out there.”
Her own voice surprised her. Why did she sound relieved? But the words didn’t reassure Jake. He worried and wondered about the bug trouble.
***
The waters of the bay bulged outward, churning ships like bath toys. The army thought they’d buried it, but it rose again from the depths. After a devastating run in the harbour, it emerged, crushing buildings like sandcastles. A huge insect towered, its carapace gleaming with rainbow iridescence and its mandibles the size of subway carriages. Its roar rattled everything on the ground and the skyline itself. On the expressway, drivers abandoned their cars and ran for their lives.
The military units were all over it. Helicopters buzzed around its huge head like gnats, their spotlights skittering across armoured plates. Tanks swarmed the perimeter, and sirens screamed, ordering evacuation instructions.
It had appeared out of nowhere, roughly an hour ago, in the middle of the old Fukushima reactor wreckage. No one had seen it coming.
***
The boy sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor, chewing a chocolate bar, while Mum hung shirts on wire hangers. She grabbed the remote and turned Sky News on.
On the television in the corner, a live report flickered.
Japan: Shinjuku blazes in flames, skyscrapers torn apart. A stinkbug the size of a cathedral climbs between glass towers, shoving office workers into dripping fangs. A helicopter swoops in, firing, but the bug swats it with a mandible like a bat, and it spins away, exploding, killing the entire squad.
Jake’s mum stood there frozen, looking at the screen. It was horrific… yet oddly satisfying. A sensation rose in her chest, the one she hadn’t felt in years. She pushed it aside, but the thrill clung to her. She remembered her dad, a huge Godzilla fan, renting stacks of kaiju films she’d devoured as a kid. But back then, it was pretend. Now it was real.
At once, the reporter stormed into the news frame on the telly screen. With a trembling voice, he stammered clumsily:
“Unprecedented… multiple incidents… of unknown origin… the Japanese government urges—”
“Ma, look, those are my bugs!” fired Jake.
Mum turned to him, then back to the screen. With wavering disbelief, her gaze eventually settled on Jake, and the vivid memories of childhood imagination flooded her mind. She’d been like him, too, once upon a time, and she missed it.
As she passed back to the kitchen, she stroked her boy’s hair and kissed him on top of his forehead.
On the news feed, a massive beetle corpse flashed past. Its carapace was bent and broken, and through the cracks, fluids flooded the flats and power lines beneath. The Japanese army finally had the upper hand.
Jake licked chocolate from his lips and giggled.
***
In the afternoon, Jake tried to persuade his mum that those were the bugs he had caught earlier. He insisted, but Mum couldn’t take it at face value, as it was a wild explanation. But what was happening in Tokyo wasn’t an ordinary day either. She hovered between the rational and the impossible, and she couldn’t decide what to believe.
“Okay… So you’re saying you put a bug in there, it disappears and appears there, in Tokyo?”
“Yeah. We can test it, Mum!”
“It’s hard to believe… Let me try it,” she said, giving him the benefit of the doubt.
“Do it, Mum. You’ll see.”
They searched the garden, but the late afternoon had fallen quiet and the insects were hidden away.
Inside the house, there wasn’t much either. She moved a small oak wardrobe in her bedroom, and a sudden scuttle caught her eye. A big wolf spider crouched in the corner of the wall, legs spread wide. Jake hated spiders; they were giving him the chills.
“Perfect,” she whispered.
Mum shuddered and took the net from Jake. She crept in with exaggerated care, keeping her bare feet silent. The spider twitched, as if sensing them, and climbed a few inches higher.
Jake hissed, “Quick, before it runs!”
With a snap, she dropped the net over the eight-legged fellow. The legs drummed against the mesh, trying to get out, but she pinched the handle tight and carried it down. Her son beamed at her bravery.
They decided to put him in the catcher together. Mum slowly opened the net, and Jake slammed the lid shut.
Click.
The spider landed almost without a sound, scrabbling at the plastic before disappearing under the leaves. For a moment, the box vibrated in Jake’s hands with a hum. He rattled it to see if the spider was there, but there was nothing under the leaf it had just hidden beneath. It was nowhere to be found.
They exchanged a long look. Jake’s eyes were bright with triumph and excitement, but Mum’s eyes radiated with something closer to fear and suspicion.
“Come on, Mum. Let’s see it on the telly.”
They headed back to the living room.
***
Live from Tokyo:
A helmet-cam shows ground troops engaging a wolf spider the size of a skyscraper. A volley of gunfire skitters off its chitin armour as the creature vaults over an intersection. Tactical squads scramble for high ground to get a better shot.
Shaky smartphone footage plays next: civilians scream as the spider’s legs smash through a subway entrance, with pavement collapsing into dust and concrete. A soldier’s radio crackles on the feed, speaking something in Japanese, before static swallows his voice.
On wobbling legs, the correspondent appears near the kerbside with the mic, covering a quarter of the screen. He is sweaty, panicked, and his tie is askew.
“Caution advised across the entire country. A Kaiju-scale attack is destroying Tokyo. There may be incidents elsewhere. Repeat, elsewhere—”
It was evening already, and Jake’s mum was flabbergasted by all of this. That spider she’d just caught had materialised in Tokyo.
Pop—just like that!
How could that even be? Was she going mad? Was it all a dream?
***
That night, after bathtime, Mum tucked Jake into bed and kissed his cheek. The bug catcher rested on the nightstand, its plastic sides shining under the lamp.
“Don’t catch any in here,” she said softly. “Not for now. Okay?”
He nodded, but her eyes didn’t leave the box.
She suddenly realised that today something strange had drawn them closer. It was a secret only they shared, and nobody else knew about. It was both dangerous and… intimate.
And, somehow, it thrilled her to catch a bug and see the turmoil somewhere else in the world. It felt like tugging invisible strings, or unravelling events elsewhere. Like the computer games she’d never cared for. But no. This was better. Much, much better—
“Mum…” Jake whispered, interrupting her thoughts.
“Yeah, love?”
“We made the world burn,” he said, coldly.
“Yeah, we did. And that was fun…” She checked herself, but couldn’t quite stop. “Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to catch some bugs tomorrow with me?”
“Yeah. Why not!”
She kissed his forehead and switched off the light.
Third Eye Horror
© Mac Sitko, 2025
All rights reserved.
Wow, love the twist!
I love this. This is my third read-through, and I rarely do that.