I can see the little beasts, there in the light fixture on the ceiling. They fly chaotically around the lamp, no order, no meaning to their flight. They’re drawn to the white of the fitted sheet on the bed in the guest room of my parents house… the bed where I’ll be sleeping.
I pick them off one by one, trapping them in wads of toilet paper which are eventually flushed down the toilet or stuffed into an empty, nearby cigarette package. Sometimes I ignore them completely and allow them a minute to crawl around the bed before I snuff out their lives forever.
The absurdity of the situation was not lost on me as I wasted who knows how much time trapping the bugs in my tissues, waiting for the next one to drop from the ceiling. Or how long I scrutinized their movement within the lamp above me, watched them writhe their limbs together as though conversing among themselves, plotting the next drop.
I am reminded of Freck. Poor Freck took so much Substance D, he saw bugs everywhere, spent hours, days picking them out of his carpet, his clothing, the fur of his dog and his hair. I smile at thought and begin to count the ones with life. There are four, five… no seven. The rest silhouetted against the light do not move. Surely they are dead. I kill seven and four more appear. What tricky little bastards, they must have been playing dead.
So I wait. I wait and I write. I began this little piece twenty minutes ago, thinking it was so amusing a scene, I should record it so I can laugh at myself later. I pause only to catch the bugs and to run to the toilet to send them swirling down the abyss. It’s been three minutes now and I have not seen one. Victory is mine, I think to myself and glance up to the ceiling to observe my triumph.
The light fixture is full of them again!
Fuck it. I’m sleeping on the couch.
