He walked into his little apartment. He dropped the stack of bills he had just plucked from the mailbox on to the flimsy faux oak table by the door. The usual chorus of voices calling for blood.
It was hot in the apartment and he was tired and numb after another long day at work–working as a paralegal downtown, drafting depositions in another convoluted lawsuit.
Immediately he went about preparing, getting naked, shedding his Ralph Lauren slacks, his striped shirt and black tie. His sweaty bikini briefs also. All dropped in a careless pile at the foot of the faux oak table.
Completely nude now, he walked into the long, rectangular living room. He was tingling with excitement. It really HAD been a terrible day at work and he was glad to be home. So looking forward to some quality time with his newfound playmates.
It really was very very hot in his place, but he did not go to open any of the windows in the room or switch on the central air-conditioning. No. Instinctively he knew that his new friends liked his place to be a little on the warm side, that they thrived under such conditions. So be it…
He went and sat on the gray couch that flanked one wall of his cluttered living room. The flat-screen TV in the opposite corner stared back at him with a dead rectangular eye, like some relic from a long vanquished and buried civilization. Outside he could hear the klaxons of what sounded, literally, like a thousand-and-one emergency vehicles, their insistent screams going up and down the scale of all possible sounds as if they were seeking some kind of egress from the world of violence, hate, and death they were forced to bear.
He knew that feeling well…
He lay his head against the overstuffed cushions, and spread his arms and legs out as far as he could get them. An invitation. He closed his eyes and let the court of chaos that ruled outside of his tiny bubble of an apartment slip slip away, vanish like a mirage. All of the impossible legalese that he stared at all day long with only shards of comprehension. The twisted streets of his city, streets that now seemed to resemble some Arabian bazaar of cul-de-sacs and dead ends. The klaxons in his ears faded and became cool, blessed silence.
It would be SOON…
He was trembling all over.
This little waiting game, the prelude to the act, was almost (but not quite) as pleasurable as the experience itself. A lull, a meditation.
A summoning…
He waited that way, spread eagled on the couch, for several minutes.
And then, and then, he felt the first ticklings against his right foot.
The tentative, frantic brushings of antennae…
He opened his eyes just enough to allow blurry light to reach his retinas. He looked down. This was how the little blissful game was played, had been played for the last three weeks or so. He had to pretend to be asleep. (Or actually in Slumberland.) If not, they would not come and attach themselves.
There, now mounting his right foot, was one of his new friends, its six (almost transparent) legs moving frantically like uncoordinated spindly machines. It seemed to take quite a while for the first visitor to find its footing, but finally it managed to climb up on to his naked foot, where it paused. The bug was almost six or seven inches long, rust-colored. A parallel series of black bands ran across the top of its oval body. It had a small, prong-shaped head, almost blood-red in color. From this head two small antennae wriggled and writhed, taking in the landscape of his right foot.
It was a bed bug, of course…
As the bug continued to deliberate, procrastinate there on his bony foot, various facts about bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) drifted through his distracted mind like errant flakes of ash. They preferred warm houses and nested inside beds or sleeping areas. (Check) They were mainly active at night, but were not exclusively nocturnal. (Check) Adults grew to be four or five millimeters long…
Hmmm…
The bug, as if it were reading his thoughts and wished to obliterate them, was on the move now.
Very quickly, it mounted his ankle and climbed his naked shin. He watched it in expectation as it made an erratic beeline toward his calf muscles.
It would be SOON. SOON. He knew it…
There, the bug stopped once again. Its short antennae wormed against his skin, making him shiver.
One more random…
Bed bugs subsist entirely on blood…
CHECK…
Suddenly, the bug plunged its bristled, dagger-like mouth (proboscis?) down, down, without any resistance, into the plump skin of his calf.
He shivered all over. There was no pain at all. On the contrary. It felt as if some conduit, some pure nerve of pleasure had been established between the point of the bite and his skull. A sharp, blissful tickling sensation ran up and down up and down his leg, his torso, exploded behind his eyes as the bug began to feed on him.
He could barely maintain the necessary illusion that he was sleeping. It felt so good, so good, SO FUCKING GOOD…
This was what he had been thinking about all day long, as he had bent over the stupid copy machine in the office, churning out one dry document after another.
Orgasm by bed bug.
The bug seemed to be in heaven too as it sucked and sucked at him. Its oval body quivered and its head seemed to expand like a balloon, becoming redder and more translucent with each passing second.
So good, so good, SO FUCKING GOOD…
He was dimly aware, as he surrendered to this pleasure, that about five or six more bed bugs had now appeared, and were climbing up his left and right foot, all set on joining their brother/sister explorer. One of the lovely bugs was almost the same size as his hand. Its black eyes looked just like tiny chocolate chips, popping out on either side of its shiny head.
“The more the merrier…” he thought. Imperceptibly, so as not to scare the host away, he stretched his arms and legs out just a tad bit farther.
“So good…so good…SO FUCKING GOOD…” he almost murmured.
Another waiting game. This one seemed to take forever, as the bugs took their sweet sweet time climbing up his body. (Mt. Paralegal—ha ha) The first bug was still at it, still dining on him, still sending salvos of unalloyed pleasure through his nervous system.
But he was greedy prey. He wanted more more MORE.
Finally, as if some silent signal had been communicated between the rest of the pack, they plunged their mouths, almost in tandem, into his waiting skin.
He almost cried out from the extreme pleasure that surged through his body. Like a million goosebumps in heaven. He felt his body, his mind, his ego crumble and dissolve blissfully like some sand castle, its ramparts being battered away by ocean wave after ocean wave. He had read that bed bugs, when they feed, inject saliva into their prey, full of anticoagulants and painkillers. Was that what was going on here? Or were they, maybe, injecting pure heroin into his bloodstream?
He did not know. AND he did not care…
All he knew was that it felt GOOD…
He watched the bugs feed on him through fluttering eyelids. There were nine or ten of them now, attached to him like seed pods on some exotic tree. He wondered, for a little under a second, what his dry coworkers in the law firm would think if they could see him now.
So right and so free…
They would probably run (jabbering all sorts of legalese) out of his apartment, out into the dead ends and cul-de-sacs of his broken city.
So be it. He thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
For several minutes the bugs supped on him like that, their mouths plunged into his skin like so many junkie needles. He continued to watch them surreptitiously, through almost hooded eyes. Their heads seemed to expand, much as the first explorer’s had, becoming fat and translucent.
Red on his blood…
Ghosts of pure color started to drift across his blurry vision. Red green black. Back to red again. A symphony of color. A kaleidoscope. He began to feel dizzy, light headed. Should he be concerned? This was the first time in several fantastic weeks that he had ever felt this sensation, along with the torturous pleasure that kept him coming back for MORE MORE MORE… Perhaps his friends were over greedy now? Perhaps they were taking too much blood from him?
Was that what this was?
And then he thought, through his addled mind, so be it. Let them drain the last lost drop. Let them have every bit of it. He just wanted this pleasure to continue, forever and forever. He did not want to come back down anymore, deal with the long, lonely night ahead of him. Deciding what frozen entrée to pop into his microwave. Cleaning up several days’ worth of dirty dishes. Thumbing through canned laughter and cloying ads on his TV eye.
Suicide by bed bugs…
And, really, would that be such a terrible way to go?
He did not relish life at all. His job. Staring at screens of nothing day after day, his sight fading, his hands buzzing with carpal-tunnel. He did not relish his shithole of an apartment, the linoleum floor in the kitchen a yellow bloom of wax buildup. No one ever seemed to come walking out of the dead ends and cul-de-sacs. No lovely face to put an end to that frustrating maze…
This, this alone was the only thing he had to look forward to…
For the third time, he stretched his arms and legs out out…
The kaleidoscope changed with greater frequency now. Redgreenblack. Redgreenblack. Redgreenblack. The bed bugs siphoned his blood with gluttonous abandon, and he let them. He felt himself fading. Being snuffed out. Passing into some other, delightful, dimension.
It was then that there was a small, tentative knock at his front door.
Immediately the bed bugs scattered, disappeared. To where it was they nested in his apartment.
NO NO NO…GO AWAY! GO AWAY!
He sat there motionless, his eyes open fully now, scouring his empty place.
Come back. Come back.
PLEASE.
They weren’t coming back. At least, not today…
There was another more insistent knock on the apartment door.
Another klaxon surged somewhere in the streets, as the world crashed back down around him.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
He got to his feet, almost falling over in the process. Ghosts of redgreenblack skirted across his field of vision one final time and then flew off to heaven.
He sighed instead of screaming.
“I’m coming,” he tried to yell. But his voice came out a strange, strangled cough. Something barely recognizable to him.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
Apparently, the interloper had not heard that he was doing his best.
To come.
He walked across the living room toward the door, the faux oak table, and his little pile of clothes. His eyes continued to scour the room, the tan carpet, the peeling baseboards, for any sign of his playmates.
His only friends.
His redeemers.
There was nothing…
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
WHO’S THERE?
BROKEN PENCIL.
BROKEN PENCIL WHO?
UMMM NEVER MIND. IT’S POINTLESS.
Haha
This person was not going to go away. Not ever.
With difficulty, he managed to get his Ralph Lauren slacks back over his skinny legs. His skin was already beginning to itch, and later he knew there would be red weals up and down, up and down his feet and legs, each of them about the size of a quarter.
The price he had to pay…
He flung open the door.
“Oh…hi…”
It was his landlady out there. Kate Something Or Other. He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember her last name, even though he wrote it on a rent check and had for the last five years.
She was standing there in the hallway, her delicate hand raised, ready to strike at his door again. A thin strawberry blond, dressed in a red polo shirt, Levis, and caramel-colored hiking boots.
“Hi,” he said, a touch of irritation peppering his voice. What could Kate Something Or Other possibly want? Couldn’t be the rent. He had mailed the check just a few days ago. What fresh hell was this? His landlady was a talker and her conversational tangents were often as annoying and confusing as the dead-ends and cul-de-sacs that swamped his city.
“Oh, hi…” she repeated. “Hope I didn’t catch you in the middle of anything important? I was just down at the Farmers’ Market and running some errands in your neck of the woods, and I thought I might see if you were home and…”
And? And? And? Get on with it, bitch…
“Yes?” he replied, politely, holding on to the edge of the white door for dear life. He was dimly aware that Kate Something Or Other was staring at his bare chest as if she had never in her three decades on the planet seen a half-naked man child. He was also dimly aware that at one point, in the ancient past, he had thought about her in similar stages of undress. She was reasonably attractive.
“Well here’s the thing… Allison Wren in apartment G? Do you know her…?”
He knew none of his neighbors…
He shook his head. They came and went continuously here. Like the complex was some bad restaurant that couldn’t keep a steady wait staff.
“Well she is a really great girl…Getting a Master’s at OSU in Art Therapy…Surprised you don’t know her…?”
He didn’t. He could not tell Allison Wren from a bed bug
BED BUG
His eyes skirted, involuntarily, toward the top of the faux oak table. There was nothing there but bills and clutter.
“Well, Allison…she had a problem here recently with some critters…and we had to have an exterminator come in and spray…”
She would not stop staring at his bare chest…
“Ok?” he replied. Critters? Raccoons? Rats? Cockroaches?
BED BUG
His eyes skirted, once again, to the faux oak table…
Dead as the moon…
“So anyways…” she replied, stirring a wisp of strawberry-blond hair with one index finger, and smiling apologetically at his chest. “Anyways…we thought…we thought we should be on the safe side and have ALL the units in here sprayed too. Allison says she hasn’t seen any more ummm critters. But this place is old and these things can travel so…just to be on the safe side.”
He stared back at her with the same shards of comprehension he reserved for tricky documents at the law firm. What was she saying? Exterminator? Spray? His apartment? Was she…was she talking, really talking, about killing his playmates? His friends?
His redeemers?
He wanted to reach out, then and there, and strangle her. Dispose of her dead body in some gruesome way. Perhaps feed it to his friends? But he didn’t. He just stood there in the doorway, nodding stupidly, his legs itching like mad, as his landlady went on and on about things he needed to do to prepare for this pending visit.
Visit of the exterminator/executioner…
Destroyers of his bliss…
“And I know, I know this is going to be a big hassle and everything, but could you…would it be possible…could you put your clothes, all cloth items you own into trash bags and put them in the middle of your living room? Before they spray?” his landlady asked, stirring her hair like mad.
He was not listening. At all. Ghosts of redgreenblack were back, blooming behind his eyeballs. Lovely ghosts. And then, he found himself staring at his landlady’s pale neck, at the blush of a green vein that coursed there like some secret, underground river. He wondered what it would be like, as his landlady continued to ramble, what it would be like to sink his teeth into that neck, bring that green river to the surface, and feed.
Like his friends did on him every day…
He found himself starting to drool.
The End.
[bctt tweet=”OCTOBER TERROR 2018 Short Story Award Entry #10 ‘Sleep Tight’ by Michael S. Walker @intents2000 – Enjoy all this terrific, disturbing material you have in your hands, lots of horror stories at your disposal for your dark delight and vote!” username=”theboldmom”]
On October 23rd we’ll close submissions and open a poll for the readers to choose their favourite one! You’ll have a week to make your choice and on October 31st we’ll announce the winner!!!
Mar Garcia
Founder of TBM - Horror Experts
Horror Promoter.
mar@tbmmarketing.link
