Bed of a Thousand Corpses

A Dark Humor Piece About Marriage

The Bed Of A Thousand Corpses

 

    At night I sleep on a bed of a thousand corpses. No, not human corpses. That would be gross and weird.  I sleep on a thousand tiny corpses�"the corpses of bed bugs. Yeah, now that I think about it is still pretty gross and weird. But the truth is we all sleep on a layer of dead skin and dust mites, and nobody wants to think about that while they are trying to rest.  The bed bugs, on the other hand, are way worse and are not as common thankfully.

     The bed was a California King that my husband Jude and I purchased a few years ago. We were excited to get a new fancy memory foam bed. At first, it was pure heaven to sleep on. My back stopped hurting and I slept so much better on that foam bed than the old thin mattress we had before. 

     But then there was trouble in paradise. Jude spent more time on the couch than bed after a while.  When I became pregnant with our second child he told me that my snoring kept him up, so he moved downstairs to the couch. After our son Preston was born, he used the excuse that he needed to get a full night’s sleep for work the next day. Since I was exclusively breastfeeding and was the only one who could get up and nurse him, he didn’t see the need to get up with us. Eventually, he slept in the bed now and again, but mostly he stuck to the couch.

     I hoped that things would get better once I stopped nursing, but Jude remained on the couch. With great hope decided to move from our apartment and buy a house. It had been Jude’s dream since we’d met to buy a house.

      We spent months looking for just the right one. Well, I spent months figuring it out. Jude would have been happy with pretty much anything we looked at. He was just desperate to call some place his own. I, on the other hand, was the one who would have to spend the most time in it. If I couldn’t see myself comfortable or happy, then I moved on. 

      Many houses that were in our price range were fixer-uppers, but I didn’t trust Jude to actually complete all the work that needed done. Oh, he was handy enough, but not nearly motivated enough. Not to mention the possibility of running out of money before we completed the tasks. I vetoed any houses that needed work because I simply didn’t want to spend years in a construction zone. 

      We looked at houses that were musty and dirty with refrigerators that still had spoiled food in them. We looked at houses with cracked foundations. We looked ranch houses, split level houses and standard two story houses. I was amazed how many houses felt awkward, asymmetrical and downright oppressive.

      Finally, we agreed on a nice new home in on the outskirts of town. It was a new development, but already several houses had been foreclosed on. The housing bubble had burst and much of the construction had halted. It was a buyer’s market and we took advantage of that and got the house for a discount.

     I was excited to move into it. And, for a few weeks, we lived in joy. We lived with the hope of a great future in that house. The kids would have many firsts there and could grow up in a decent neighborhood.

     Then we were invaded. Well, infested. But it felt like an all out invasion into our suburban summer dream. I noticed them on the couch first. Of course they showed up where Jude slept.  We figured that they must have been in the carpet and in the walls just waiting for new victims to arrive. If our real estate broker knew about the pest problem, he never mentioned them. There were days I cursed our broker’s name, wondering if he knew the hell he’d consigned us to.

     I looked up the bugs and found out they were none other than the dreaded bed bug.  We called an exterminator immediately and set up a time to have the house sprayed with poison. It was our house and we’d be damned if we were going to share it with the bed bugs.

     So, a short time after I’d unpacked everything, I had to repack it into bags and stuff it in the garage. All the clothes had to be out of the drawers and out of the closets. The sheets and bedding had to removed and washed with vinegar and hot water. Everything had to move from the wall, etc. It was a Herculean Task, but we managed to get it done in time for the exterminator. Jude and I took the kids and left the house, praying our pest problems would be over by the end of the day.

      Little did I know that they’d just begun!

      The first spraying did remove many of them from the couch, bed, closets and dressers. Months went by without a single sighting. And then, they crept back into our lives like tiny little ninjas�"vampire ninjas.

      I started noticing bites on my feet and legs in the morning. After a few days, I had to conceded that they probably weren’t mosquito, spider or flea bites. Nope, they were bed bug bites and they itched like hell. It was as bad as the chicken pox, worse perhaps because there was no end to the misery in sight.

      We gathered up the cash and worked hard to be able to afford the second attempt at extermination.  Once again, all the clothes were washed and bagged along with the bedding.  I labored hard to prepare and prayed that this time would do the trick.

       And for several months there was no sign of the little b******s. I breathed a sigh of relief and went about my daily life. Then I noticed the small brown stains on the bed�"not more than streaks or dots really. I pulled off the sheets and flipped up the mattress and saw dozens of invaders scattering in the light of day. Angry, I took my vacuum cleaner attachment and sucked them all up.

       I took the internet to research natural ways of keeping my enemy at bay. They suggested sprinkling Diatomaceous Earth to Borax around the baseboards of the rooms. I didn’t have either of those, but I found baking soda worked pretty good. I read peppermint deters them, so I spread peppermint leaves around and stuck some between the mattress and box springs. I continued to vacuum the bed and couch every couple of days as well�"trying to kill what ones I could see and get to.

      And those things did minimize my exposure to them. However, they took up residence in my books and other places I had not defended so fiercely.  I had to wipe down all my books with a damp cloth soaked in vinegar to get the brown poop stains off and then store them away in air tight plastic totes. The bed bugs were literally shitting all over my life and I was tired of it.

      Then things got really bad. I had to sleep wearing a hazmat suit practically. I would tuck my PJ pants into my socks and tuck my shirt into my pants. But the little buggers began biting my arms and wrists. So, I wore socks over my hands at night. And they moved to my neck. Luckily, they hated hair, so I only ever had a couple of stray bites on my neck here and there.

       We were broke and had no money for a third spraying. Jude read that the only sure way to get rid of them was to super heat the house, which cost upwards of $1500. We couldn’t pay the Exterminator $300 to spray, let alone $1500 for a superheat treatment.  Some days I really wished I could set them damn house on fire.

       It didn’t help that Jude had decided that he wanted a divorce during that time. It really bugged me that after over ten years and two kids together, that he suddenly didn’t love me any longer. Why now? Why couldn’t he have figured this out before we moved in together or before we got married or before we had kids! Sometimes I thought perhaps the bed bugs were symbolic of my failing marriage. But damn it if the symbolism didn’t cause some real pain.

      I got fired from my job at a hotel when they spotted bed bugs at the front desk. They had not made it to any back rooms. And if my co-worker hadn’t of told on me, they would have had no idea it was me who probably brought them in. Of course, I didn’t do so knowingly. I had laid down to nap before my night shift and a couple crawled on me to dine. I got up and they went with me to work. When took off my sweater, they scurried out, looking for their next meal. The boss saw this as a very real threat to the hotel and she demanded that I get rid of the bed bugs or not come back to work ever again. I had no money saved up and so I was forced to never return to the hotel. I was angry at the invaders, whom I no control over. It was their fault I was fired, but because I was fired there was no hope of ever getting rid of the invaders.

       I found another job eventually. But then the kids took the hobo home hijackers to school with them. I was called into the principal’s office and she had a talk with me. I confessed to being aware of the issue, but unable to solve the problem at hand. She said she’d talk to some people around the school and see if they couldn’t figure something out. In the mean time, my children would be subject to a morning pat down and examination so as not to infect the school with bed bugs. I understood and was thankful they weren’t suspended or expelled for it. I felt bad they had to feel like criminals each morning, being searched for contraband creatures on them.

      The school nurse contacted Orkin and told them of our plague and our plight. They agreed to donate their time and resources to spray our house for free. I was overjoyed at their proposition. It took a month or more to contact Orkin and set up a time for them to come, but, eventually we got it all arranged. The Calvary was on its way.

      Orkin did a much better job. They sprayed in every single nook and cranny they could find. They sprayed inside the walls through the outlets (after removing the plate and everything). The teams took several hours and were extremely thorough.  Once they were done, I began moving all my possession from the garage back into the house. Weeks melted into months and we never saw the tiny tools of evil again.

      My bed bore the scars of the battle though. Orkin had placed a bed cover over the mattress. I thought of Edgar Allen Poe as I tried to remake my bed. Whatever bed bugs were left hiding inside the foam that had once been full of pleasant memories were now entombed forever. Their itty-bitty corpses were left to rot beneath me as I slept. Thus, my bed became the bed of a thousand Corpses

     And worst of all? Now my damn sheets always pull up at night. They refuse to stay in place and I wake up with my sheets half off the bed. It is as if the ghosts of the dead are laughing at me from the great beyond. Yes, I won the war, but in the end they had the last laugh.

    To this day I shutter when I hear the old rhyme, “Good night, don’t let the bed bugs bite. If they do, beat them with a shoe until they are black and blue.” It brings up such bad memories that I think I may have a Post Bed Bug Traumatic Syndrome.

    I will never again let them torture me and taunt me as they once did. Although I am a Buddhist and vow compassion to all living things, I will never have compassion for the bed bug. It is the undead in my eyes and therefore I have every right to destroy it and obliterate it from this earth. I dare another bed bug to cross my path. See what happens. I will gladly add another thousand corpses to my collection.

 

 

Author's Note

Experimental Piece

Reviews

[Rosalie Kempthorne]

Experimental, but it did work. It almost feels like it shouldn't have, but the details about living with bed bugs were interesting, and I found I could connect with the MC's feelings. I would have liked to hear a bit more about the marriage though, and in particular about how they grew apart, and more about what caused the marriage to fail.