“This show is about a girl,” I say, “a teenager, who has these, well, these tendencies. What I mean is, she’s violent. She likes to hurt people and animals. She has a mother who loves her a lot, and the mother is always trying to protect her and stop her from killing. One day the mother injures her so that she can’t walk anymore. I mean, it’s an accident, the mother doesn’t mean to do it, but the girl hates her for it. She thinks her mother did it on purpose. Which is very unfair, in my opinion. Anyway the girl has to live at home because of her disability. And she keeps trying to kill her mother. The mother spends her life trying to cover up her daughter’s violence, and protect her while hiding her true nature.”

“Sounds complicated,” the bug man says.

“I was wondering—if this was happening in real life, could the mother do anything to make her daughter better? To stop her from being violent? Also, is it hereditary? I mean, did the mother make her angry? Or did it come from within?”

“Nature or nurture? These are big questions. I think I need to know a little more about the situation,” the bug man says. He’s watching me intently, now, with his round cricket eyes. I can almost see the antennae waving above his head.

“Well, I don’t know anything else. The show only just started, OK?”

“I understand,” he says. “Do you think it would help, at this point, to talk about your daughter?”

“No!”

He looks at me. His round eyes seem flat now, like bad coins. “There’s a monster inside each of us,” he says. “If you let yours out, Ted, it might not eat you.”

He looks like a completely different person, suddenly. A poisonous beetle, not a safe little bug. I can’t breathe properly. How does he know? I’ve been so careful.

“I’m not as stupid as you think I am,” he says quietly. “You depersonalize your daughter.”

“What does that mean?”

“Thinking of her as a person is overwhelming, so you deal with her feelings by attributing them to the cat.”

“If you can’t help me, just say that.” I am shouting, I realize. I take a deep breath. The bug man is looking at me steadily, head on one side.

“Sorry,” I say. “That was very rude. I’m in a bad mood. That stupid TV show has upset me.”

“This is a safe place in which you can express your anger,” he says. “Let’s continue.” He looks small and safe like always. I must have imagined the other thing. It’s just the bug man.