The legend of bugs (earwigs mainly) crawling in your ear and laying eggs in your brain is just that, a legend. But insects, including earwigs, finding their way into ones auditory orifice, or any opening of the body is something that does happen and can be quite traumatic.
Perhaps not as rare is when a bug man hears a traumatic story of a personal nature from a client. So & so cheating on such and such or family tales of dysfunction etc. Much like the legend of the hair dresser who gets all the gossip from the lady clients under the hair drying machines, we tend to get the nitty gritty as well. It makes sense since we are in clients homes and build relationships of trust. By the mere nature of our service it just seems we get all the family gossip. What is rare however, is when both of these scenarios happened to one client and it is the husband who has pinned the ‘bugman’ as the culprit for each. That bugman was me.
A Distant Relative?
In many of the homes I treat it’s not uncommon for me to do my service for years and rarely see the husband. I had one such account and for years I came by faithfully every other month and did my work. The family was nice enough and over many years I watched the kids grow up and I sort of became a regular fixture. I met the husband a few times and he made it known ‘he was in charge’ but he seemed alright. He was very protective like a good man should be. He had an alarm system installed and even put bars on the windows but his job was more than 2 hours from his house so it made more sense for him rent a place closer to work and only come home on the weekends so for the most part I only ever dealt with the Mrs.. That however, never stopped him from being totally in control.
Over the years the children grew up and enjoyed the freedom a drivers license brings so they were a rare sight and the wife was able to go back to work. By now I had earned everyones trust and was given a key which made all our lives easier. For a long time I’d go without seeing anyone and the only issues we ever had was an occasional bug and me setting off the alarm when they changed the code without telling me the new one. These were the only times when the man of the house would call and “set me in my place.” But once in a blue moon, usually after one of those calls, Ol hubby would be home unexpectedly and greeted me at the door when I was turning the lock.
A Cunning Way To Accuse
On one such occasion they had had a run in with some fleas that came with a new dog and sure enough there was Dad reading the paper
at the kitchen table as I let myself in. Like all the other times I figured I’d take my chastisement up to a point and then being satisfied, he’d switch gears and we’d be talking hunting or stock cars and all would be good. This time however there was definitely a different tone in the air.
He quickly led me to where the dogs bedding was but seemed hardly interested in my remedies or the explanations I usually had to give. Instead he beckoned me over as he carefully laid the paper out on the dining room table and began to talk about a particular story he had been reading about. I’m not sure if it was front page or even a current paper or not but the story took a half page with pictures and all and a large bold typed headline. “Affair Leads To Murder.”
Now I get in all kinds of crazy conversations with people in my line of work and hear some of the deepest confessions and conspiracies but this one was quickly taking a very dark turn. He read out load some of the gory details of how a jealous husband gunned down his wife and her new boyfriend and kept asking if I thought that was justified.
“Wouldn’t you do the same thing?” he asked with no quiver in his voice. “Would you put up with that?” His tenor was very direct and his eyes never strayed from burning a hole right through my pupils as he stared me down and never once seemed to blink.
At that point I knew I couldn’t show any sign of nervousness or dared to even gulp though my heart was in my stomach. It was clear he suspected I had something extracurricularly going on with his wife and even though that was so far from the truth, I had to calm this guy down and I had to get out of there.
At one point his inflections were getting pretty strong and I thought about how to escape should things go south. Glancing at the windows and thick black bars he had installed reminded me of this guys control and the kitchen door was 15 feet away and meant a bee line straight through him. “No way!” I quickly realized, and I began to feel just a bit panicked. As thoughts of my B&G as a battering ram or my system III being used like mace started to fill my head I knew I had to gather myself or this was going to get ugly quick. All I could think to do was nod my head and let this man ramble even though I wasn’t listening to a thing he said- I was hoping he’d just come to an end and his anger would be quenched like so many times before.
The Eye Of The Storm
I’m not really sure exactly what I said or what point it got to before everything quickly slowed down but I was extremely glad it did. It seemed as briskly as all was at a fervors pitch, suddenly everything became very calm. The finger that was in my chest was now down and folding up the paper, the eyes that seared right through me were looking at the new dog. That accusatory tone gave way to a somewhat unguarded laugh as he quickly said “I’ll take the trouble maker outside so you can spray”, and after all this I could finally swallow that lump in my throat away.
It took me several years to understand just why this happened as I understand it today, but that wasn’t my only run in this ‘man of the house.’ The next time I saw him was no less dramatic but this time, it wasn’t a lump in my throat I was holding back, it was laughter…. find out how this story concludes in part II.
