BED BUGS:
Here's a tale from my short story collection, THE MAIDENS OF FEY AND OTHER DARK MATTER. It was one of the first short stories I wrote after I decided to do this thing for a living, and coincidentally, my dad's favourite. Be warned, it's not for the squeamish...

Bed Bugs

by Stacey Dighton

​

First came the bed bugs. Tiny foot soldiers of a thousand-strong, parasitic cimex army marching in dreadful unison, blood red exoskeleton torsos clambering over the dystopian landscape of her cotton bed linen. All shapes and sizes, male and female, young and old; they were determined nymphs, both indestructible and ravenous. Emitters of powerful pheromones, they guided each other with invisible and soundless communications, drawing one another to their unwitting prey in stealthily silent night raids. They crawled up Becca’s arms, in her ears, crept delicately over her closed eyelids, and worse still, slipped in between her partly opened lips and into the warm, breathy, moist cavern of her mouth.  They made house in her pillow case, in the creases of her sheets and in the folds of her duvet. They found solace in her nightgown and fortitude in her underwear. They dined out on a feast of her dried skin and warm life juice and fed their infants on crumbs of marmite toast and cheese and onion crisps, littered like morsels of delicious haute cuisine in the thick pile of her carpet.

    They expanded in numbers like rodents on caffeine, multiplying three and four-fold daily. They hid during sunlight hours, leaving no trace of the destruction they had wreaked in the dark and cold of the night, only to spring back to life when the lights were out and Becca’s head touched the scarce solace of her eiderdown. Even when they weren’t there, she sensed them, felt their many black, marble-like eyes gazing at her from beneath the skirting board or from under her dresser. She scratched incessantly.

    Then came the flies. The god awful flies, buzzing in the dark like Messerschmitt 109s in a dog fight, attacking her face and neck like X Wing Fighters dive bombing the Death Star. Becca would flap and flail her arms as if in the middle of one her epileptic episodes and sit up with a start, brushing malevolent bluebottles away from the flat, oily landing zones of her forehead and cheeks. Once or twice she would feel their hard bodies slap against her palm as she thrashed around in the gloom, falsely and temporarily shrieking in victory, only to be plunged back into despair when the dazed and confused winged beasts regained consciousness and renewed their unyielding onslaught.

​

    Flashback. Uncomfortable feelings of intense anger.

   

    God, she needed to sleep.

    Benjamin could help her. Benjamin would know what to do.

    But Benjamin wasn’t around.

    Benjamin was an artist. A painter. A tortured soul with a beautiful mind and a unique talent with canvas, oil, colour and brush. Her room was awash with his radiant imagery and fluorescent, episodic epiphanies. He was a hidden gem, an untapped resource of artistic ingenuity and originality, and like all geniuses, from time to time he needed his own space and solitude.

    Becca had met Benjamin when they were at art school together. He was struggling to find his own artistic voice whereas she was prospering in interior design. They had exchanged glances in the coffee queue. She had bought a vanilla latte and he an americano - no sugar - from the artisan coffee house where the waitress she admired had worked until recently. The blonde girl with the red freckles. Becca and Benjamin had started up a random and colourful conversation, and he had immediately struck her with his intensity and sense of benign hopelessness. She in turn had entranced him with her boundless energy, endless enthusiasm and tireless lust for living. They were opposites in the truest sense of the word and the attraction was inevitable.

    She had been deeply embarrassed when she'd had an episode on their first real date. They had been out at an Italian restaurant for the evening; he'd had the antipasti and she the spaghetti carbonara. They'd drunk some red wine and she'd felt a little tipsy, and on the walk home, after pausing to give the handsome homeless gentleman her last remnants of change, she'd felt bold enough to stop to kiss her date. Her heart had been pounding and her pulse racing, and moments later, she awoke in his arms, prone on the pavement and with no memory of her fainting. He had smiled down at her while she lay there, vulnerable like a small, abandoned puppy, and his genuine and touching fear and concern had stolen her heart.

   

    Flashback. Fuzzy and dizzy head.

   

    They'd moved in together almost instantly, deciding to relocate his things into her flat. His suitcases mainly contained easels, paint brushes, alcohol, and some personal effects: clothes, bathroom items and such. Benjamin wasn’t much of a hoarder.

    Things had been good for the most part. Her parents didn’t approve, believing him to be abrupt and ostentatious, but Becca saw through all of that and loved him for his intelligence, wit and creative brilliance. Sure, they had the occasional row, massive blow outs that usually ended in him throwing things in her general direction and punching fist sized holes in his canvas, but what young couple full of vivacious lust and raging hormones didn’t? She infuriated him from time to time with her affection and sense of protection for her friends, some of which were of the opposite sex, and he in turn could frustrate her with his bipolar and explosive mood swings and general, chaotic untidiness.

    But there was love. Deep love. He was her sociopathic soul mate and she his random and belligerent muse. And of course, there was passion. Ravenous and unsated passion that consumed them like the mother of all plagues, draining them of all thoughts and desires other than the unstoppable need to hold each other (and others) in a sweaty and breathless embrace.

    From time to time he would strike her, softly at first but then harder and more frequently. He said it turned him on. Mostly it turned her off.

    Jonah didn’t like Benjamin, but Jonah didn’t like anybody (except for Lola. He had liked Lola). Jonah preferred his own company, but he liked Becca, just a little too much to be comfortable around her when Benjamin was at home, but Becca didn’t mind. She didn’t see Jonah in that way, and he knew it. He was her best friend and confidante, she the prized possession that was just out of his desperate grasp. Their relationship suited them both.

    Jonah was a poet. He wrote about love, lust, life, death and loneliness. He typed with his left hand because he had lost his right arm in a boating accident when he was young, the barely grown limb ripped right out of the shoulder socket by a mooring rope that hadn’t been unravelled correctly from the dock. It never phased him, and the sense of loss simply added to the desperation in his prose.

    ‘You got a lot of bugs,’ he said.

    ‘I know, right? I can’t shift the bloody things.’

    ‘You need to get a guy.’

    ‘A guy?’

    ‘Yeah, you know? A bug guy.’

    ‘I can’t afford it, and besides, when Ben gets home, I’m sure he’ll fix it.’

    Jonah sniffed loudly. ‘He couldn’t fix a nosebleed, let alone a crustacean infestation.’

    Becca smiled. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’

    ‘Where is he anyways? I haven’t seen him around here in a while.’

    ‘Oh,’ Becca waved it off. ‘We had a shout off.’ She touched a hand to the dark, purple and yellow bruise under her shirt, ‘and he left.’ She glanced round the room and then laughed. ‘But he’ll be back. It normally takes him a few days to cool off.’

    ‘If you ask me, he needs to take a month. Take a good look at himself. You know, he’s not good for you, but I know you don’t want to hear it, and I’m just a jealous, lovesick guy, and he’s the love of your life and his art inspires you and blah, blah, blah.’

    She threw a pillow at him, tiny invertebrates scattering like dust mites and landing randomly on her carpet and duvet. ‘Jonah, you’re so funny.’

    The air felt thick and the room fell silent. Jonah looked down at his hand, turned it over and stared at his palm. ‘You’ve got to sort it out, Becca.’

    ‘I will. I’ll talk to him. When he gets back.’ Her cheeks were flushed. ‘I’ll sort it, I will. I’ll make him see sense. When he gets….back’. She gazed at the black dress hanging on her wardrobe door.

    Jonah looked up and peered at her through large, chocolate brown eyes filled of longing and trepidation. ‘I meant the bugs.’

    She glanced down at her lap, smiled to herself and nodded. ‘Yeah, I get it.’

   

    Flashback. Tears. Sobbing. Trauma.

   

    Two more days passed and still there was no sign of Benjamin. His paintbrushes lay on the easel like discarded weapons, red paint dabs on canvas like bloody teardrops. She missed him and wondered after him, imagining him to be desperately alone and yearning for her, like he might yearn for sustenance or nicotine. It would be dark in there, dark and soulless. Deep down, she knew that he would come out only when he was good and ready and when the time was right. Her time was right. She missed him.

    She was busy installing a UV lamp to kill the flies when her mother called to check on her.

    ‘Is he there?’

    Becca sensed the barely stifled disapproval. ‘No. Ben’s out?’

    ‘Out as in outside, or out as in gone?’

    She dug her nails into her palm. ‘As in not in, mother. As in he isn’t in the building.’

    There was a heavy sigh and a cold silence. ‘Well, you know what I think, but I won’t waste any time in repeating myself.’

    ‘No, please don’t.’

    ‘And what about you?’

    ‘About me?’

    ‘Yes, have you had any more?’ There was a slurp as Becca’s mother sipped what was most probably peppermint tea. ‘Any more instances?’

    ‘Instances of what?’

    ‘You know very well Rebecca. Any more fits.’

    Becca had suffered with epilepsy all her life, but since puberty the fits had subsided and had developed into random blackouts or syncope, a condition where the blood pressure drops suddenly and intermittently, starving the brain of oxygen and glucose and causing the sufferer to collapse. All very normal and only dangerous if standing somewhere precarious when the moment occurs, but consequently she couldn’t drive. That didn’t bother her, because as she always said, how could she miss something she'd never had? Some memory loss was normal but usually recoverable. It gave her….cravings, but in the most part she could control them.

    ‘No, not that I’m aware of. I got an infestation though.’ She swiped an insistent fly away and crushed two bed bugs between her fingers, blood trickling down her palm and wrist.

    ‘An infestation? Of what?’

    ‘Insects, all over my room.’

    ‘Oh dear, I have told you to stay on top of the cleaning. Those things are attracted to filth.’

    ‘Mother!’

    ‘Well….you take after your father. One swipe of a duster and you think the place is spotless. As I’ve said to you many times before,’ Becca mouthed the infamous line, ‘cleanliness keeps the soul pure.’

    ‘Well, then I guess I’m going straight to hell.’

    Her mother muttered something under her breath and then asked, ‘will we see you tonight?’

    ‘Tonight?’

    ‘At the gala. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Your father will be so disappointed.’

    ‘Shit. The gala!’ She smacked a palm on her forehead, inadvertently crushing one of the larger arthropods and smearing its broken shell and blood onto her brow.

‘Rebecca!’

    ‘Sorry mum, sorry…’ she reached for a tissue and scrubbed feverishly at the goo and gloop. ‘Of course I’ll be there. Er…eight o’ clock, right?’

    ‘Seven, dear. Dinner is served at seven.’ Another heavy sigh. ‘Will he be coming?’

   

    Flashback. Falling. Grabbing. Clutching.

   

    Becca shook her head and blinked twice. ‘No, no. I don’t think so. He’s…’ she thought fast on her feet. ‘He’s working on a commission for the library so…’ she looked at her mobile phone. No texts. No calls. No sound. ‘He’ll probably have to work through the night to get it finished.’

    ‘Pity,’ her mother could barely hide her delight. ‘Will you be coming alone?’

    Hardly, Becca thought to herself. She couldn’t bear to spend the whole evening by herself amongst her parent’s snobby friends. ‘Jonah!’ she paused for breath. ‘No, Jonah will be coming with me. You remember him? The poet?’

    ‘Ah yes,’ there was an amused chuckle. ‘The chap with one arm. Poor fellow.’

    Becca smiled through a grimace. ‘Yes, that’s him. The very talented poet who happens to have a disability. You really have a wonderful turn of phrase, Mother.’

    ‘So people tell me. Don’t forget, dress code is evening gowns and dinner suits. Don’t let us down dear.’

    ‘Perish the thought.’

    ‘Okay, that’s done then. See you at the King Charles Hotel at seven sharp. Don’t be late.’

    And with that, she hung up. There was a fizz and a pop and the UV lamp claimed its first victim. Becca shook her head and laughed. Jonah was going to kill her.

 

    Flashback. Breaking noises. Pain in her hand and shoulder.

 

    Jonah arrived at six-thirty, dressed in an oversized, black tuxedo, white shirt and dicky bow, one empty arm hanging loose and flaccid. His jet black hair was greased to one side.

    ‘Well?’ he smiled a juvenile yet maniacal grin. ‘How do I look?’

    Becca smiled lovingly back. ‘Like a superhero.’ She kissed him on the cheek and ushered him in.

    ‘This place smells funny.’

    ‘It’s the fly lamp. It’s claimed the lives of a dozen or so already.’

    Jonah took a closer look. ‘Sweet. I love these things.’

    ‘Don’t touch it though. You wouldn’t want to injure your good hand.’

    ‘Funny. I wasn’t going to touch it. Just wanted to take a look at the Kentucky fried insectoids. Ooh. Gross,’ he picked up a large housefly and waved it around. ‘You got this one good. Medium rare or well done m’lady?’

 

    Flashback. Blood. Lots of blood.

​

    ‘You’re disgusting. Don’t play with your food.’

    Jonah pretended to eat the fly and licked his lips. ‘Delicious.’

    Becca was in her dressing gown, her hair tied back in a bun and her make-up delicately applied. ‘I’ve just got to throw on my dress and shoes and then we’re good to go.’ She grabbed her dress from the wardrobe and ran her hand down the door, glancing anxiously back at Jonah.

    ‘Well, don’t be shy. I won’t look.’

    She slapped him on the shoulder. ‘I don’t think so buddy. I’ll be in the bathroom.’ She looked back and winked at him as he struggled to prevent the blood from rushing to his cheeks.

 

    *

 

    Jonah sat down on the small couch and looked around the room. Small but homely. Nicer than his place but it hummed like an abattoir. He picked up a magazine, some celebrity rag, and thumbed through a few pages. Pictures of wannabes and their latest significant others, all people he didn’t care about, all people who were dragging out nothing careers to rack up as much cash as humanly possible before their names and faces were retired to the cobwebbed annals of the museum of ‘no-one gives a shit.’ He threw the magazine back onto the sideboard.

    Another fly hit the lamp. He licked his palm and ran a hand through his hair, checking his face in the mirror as he did so. He didn’t look too bad. Not bad at all. If that gimp really didn’t come back, maybe he would stand a chance. Just maybe. He waved his hand in front of his ever so slightly crooked nose. Too bad her apartment smelled so rank.

    Becca’s phone was on her dresser, and it was unlocked. Jonah couldn’t resist, and he picked it up. Text messages from friends and family, some from him. None from Benjamin since last Saturday lunchtime.

 

    Baby, I really love you but you really have to get new friends.

    Baby, where have you been. I’ve been home for two hours and I have no idea where you are. Who are you with?

    Becca, honey, I want you to myself. All to myself. Does that make me bad?

    Maybe it’s time baby. I can’t wait any longer.

    That freak Jonah is an imbecile. Can’t you see he’s using you? Let’s just phase him out like the others.

​

    Jonah’s blood was boiling. As if Becca would ever agree to that. As if she would ever let that idiot come between them. He’d been around for what? Five minutes? And he thought he could drive a dagger into their friendship? Did he really think he could do that? What gave him the right to even try?

    Jonah tossed the phone back onto the dresser, but his aim was off, and it tumbled onto the floor with a clunk and a clatter.

    Suddenly there was a noise, a song. It sounded like…like the theme tune from Doctor Who. The sample played over and over repeatedly, the piercing theremin soundtrack cutting through the air waves like shards of shattered crystal. Jonah looked down at Becca’s phone and there was a picture of Benjamin glaring up at him, taunting him. He realised he must have accidentally hit dial when he’d tossed it aside. But that meant….

    He jumped up from the sofa and grabbed Becca’s phone, bashing the red ‘end call’ icon repeatedly. Only the ringing didn’t end, and Jonah reluctantly came to the realisation that his careless act of launching the phone onto the floor had caused the software to glitch, freezing the phone in ‘call’ mode. He couldn’t even turn the phone off. The screen just blinked mockingly, Benjamin’s smug face grinning up at him like he knew exactly what was going on and was loving every second of it.  Jonah clawed at the edge of the phone for the battery compartment, but to no avail. No battery access. He carefully placed it back on Becca’s dresser and searched frantically for the missing phone. That idiot Benjamin must have left without it. He guessed that there must have been some kind of altercation, but then that didn’t really surprise him. They were always at it, the pair of them. Odd though, he thought to himself. Odd that he hadn’t come back to collect it.

    Ooh wee ooooooh, weeeeeeeee oooooooooooooh​ 

    The song played over and over incessantly, like a child repeatedly calling for its mother. Jesus, hasn’t this guy heard of voicemail?

    He searched under the sofa, behind the dresser, in the wardrobe and behind the curtains, but the phone was nowhere to be seen. The sound seemed to be emanating from the bed, but Jonah really didn’t want to look…there. The whole duvet was riddled with those disgusting creatures. He was astounded that Becca actually still had it in her room, let alone slept in it.

    He gently peeled back the sheets and the volume grew louder. He put his hand to his mouth. There were little spatters of blood where Becca must have rolled onto the bugs during her sleep, crushing their little armadillo-like torsos under her naked back and buttocks. It looked like someone had loaded a paintball gun with the little critters and let loose all over the divan. Dead bug bodies lay scattered and lifeless like they were in the aftermath of some terrible battle.

    The phone kept ringing as the tune melded with the low humming vibration of the call receipt alert; a sub-woofer undercurrent that gave him the ice-cold willies. He wanted it to stop so bad. He didn’t want Becca to come out of the bathroom, pick up her phone, and ask him why he had been snooping around in her messages.

He glimpsed a handle tucked between Becca’s duvet and the foot of her bed, and realised that she had one of those flip-top beds, the ones where the mattress folds upwards on hinges and gas struts, providing access to a large storage space underneath. That’s it, he thought, the phone’s under the duvet! All he had to do was flip the bed, avoid contracting plague and pestilence from General Crusty and his creepy crawly friends, grab the phone, and turn it off.

    He reached down, grabbed the Velcro handle tightly and pulled.

    Suddenly the bathroom door opened and there was a simultaneous creak and a thud from behind him. He looked up and saw Becca in the doorway, her hair tied back with fluorescent scrunchies in shabby pigtails. She was wearing a stained yellow nightdress and brown, threadbare slippers, her eyes rolled back in her head like glassy white, slightly rippled marbles. She was smiling a lopsided, spittly smile, and was holding a rusty pair of nail scissors in her right hand while her left hand waved at him, her crooked fingers opening and closing one at a time as if she was manipulating the air holes of an imaginary flute. He felt a grip on his shoulder and he turned and saw Benjamin, wide eyed and excited, as if he had just found the world’s most exciting piece of art, the wardrobe behind him gaping open, the doors jutting outwards like the mandibles of a terrible praying mantis. Jonah suddenly wondered whether he had been in there all along.

    ‘Hi Jonah. Didn’t expect me to be here, did you? You know, I really didn’t appreciate what you were saying about me earlier.’ Benjamin nodded toward Becca. ‘She’s having an episode, old boy. It’s not looking good for you.’ He winked at Jonah as if they were sharing some illicit secret.

    Ooooooh eeeeeeeh ooooh, Weeeeeeeeeeee oooooooooooh.

    ‘What? I…I don’t understand?’ Jonah was struggling to comprehend what was going on. That bloody song was befuddling him. What was Becca doing? She looked crazy.

    ‘When she gets like this, my old mate, there’s really not a lot I can do.’ Benjamin laughed. ‘I try to talk her down, but there really is no stopping her. I mean, she’s wild!’

    Becca was shuffling towards him, her eyelids fluttering and her pigtails flapping up and down like the wings of a mortally wounded bird.

    ‘Becca, Becca! It’s me,’ he implored, ‘Jonah!’

    ‘Unfortunate but necessary. If she doesn’t get her kicks once in a while then she really is unbearable. Didn’t you realise that? I mean you’re supposed to be her best friend…’ Benjamin smiled with a faint hint of smug amusement.

    Jonah didn’t understand. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out.

    ‘You only have to look at what she did to them…’

    ‘What, who?’

    ‘The ones who came before’

    ‘The ones who came before what?’

    Benjamin let go of his shoulder and pointed a long, bony finger into Jonah’s chest.

    ‘Before you.’

    Jonah looked down at the yawing chasm of the bed and put his one remaining hand to his mouth. Three pairs of black, gelatinous eyeballs looked up at him from the sockets of waxy, decomposing faces, their arms and legs bent at crooked, unnatural angles, while bugs and slowly creeping magnolia-coloured maggots, spongy and tender like half-cooked rice pudding, slithered their way into mouths, ears, nostrils and other assorted orifices.

    Jonah saw the surprise in the face of his ex-girlfriend, Lola, the shock in the gaping mouth of the young freckly girl that used to serve them coffee and eggs in the café on the corner, anc the silent cry of the homeless man that would joyfully sell them their Big Issue every month with the toothless smile of a happy, hopeless soul.

    ‘What the hell is going…?'

    ‘What did you think had happened to these poor chums, my friend? Just vanished off the face of the earth like nothing had happened? Didn’t you even care?’ Benjamin grabbed Jonah firmly by the shoulders. ‘You must have realised that she was a little odd. Let’s face it, her room is a downright disaster zone. Didn’t you notice the smell? And the goddam bugs?’

    Becca lunged towards Jonah with the scissors and they nicked his cheek just under the right eye. He cried out and thrashed his upper torso, trying to shake off Benjamin’s grip, but the artist was way too strong.

    ‘It’s okay my darling.' Benjamin looked at the seemingly homicidal Becca and smiled grimly. ‘He’s a bit feisty, but he’ll hold still just a little longer, won’t you Jonah?’

    Jonah kicked out and struck Benjamin in the soft sacks between his legs. There was a crunch and a loud exhale as Benjamin released his grip and fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. He cried out in triumph just as Becca raised her arms, both hands gripping the scissors as if they were a medieval dagger, and plunged the jagged blades into his bulging jugular vein. Her eyes came back into focus, she uttered a distant and longing 'Jonah', shuddered from her toes, up through her legs, into her long, slim torso and out to the tips of her fingers, and fell limply to the floor.

    Jonah grabbed his severed vein, trying to keep the blood from spurting from his weakening body, but he tripped and fell backwards into the dark space, falling and flailing hopelessly. He landed softly between Lola and the homeless man, and they smiled as if to reassure him. Lola’s cold, fetid cheek rested silently on his forehead and he remembered when her cheek wasn’t so cold. The homeless man’s arm fell across him as if he was imploring Jonah to take his last Big Issue, ‘Just one more my friend, for old time’s sake.’ The coffee girl's one remaining eyeball stared at him through the black, her mouth upturned in a ghostly half-smile. He recalled her caramel latte and almond croissant and wished he had been a better tipper.

    The bug army, previously busily taking turns at nibbling on coffee girl's cheeks and tongue and homeless man's arms and chest, looked up in unison, changed direction and marched towards him, making ground faster than he would have thought possible for those with such miniscule limbs. They reached him swiftly and decisively and crawled up his neck and arms, slipped under his shirt and up his trouser legs, rappelled through his hair and clambered over his eyes, into his ears and onto his mouth. The quickest and fittest got to the gaping wound first and dived into the warm stream of liquid squelching through his fingers, his one hand proving useless as a tourniquet. He knew he was slipping away and quietly bid farewell to Becca. Whatever she had become, whatever she had been, he still loved her. A tear rolled down his cheek as tens of thousands of legs lightly caressed his skin as the light grew dim and the mouth of the bed closed. He was entombed in its hellish carcass as his many friends welcomed him.

​

Copyright asserted by Stacey Dighton 2019

​​​