The Girl and the Flea

Oftentimes, the human subconscious will protect its host from the upsetting reality of what is unfolding before them. A shooting victim who asks the paramedic, “is it really that bad?”; a patient, conscious during brain surgery, who only remembers the cave-like atmosphere of the sterile cover surrounding her, not the discussions of the neurosurgeons talking about her tumor resection. A young woman, getting home from a short morning shift at her dead-end retail job, scratching the back of her thigh. The subconscious convinces this woman that the itch is just that, an itch, nothing more, definitely nothing concerning. Until, hours later, the itch becomes more than an itch, until it becomes a constant presence, and the young woman gains control over her subconscious and looks to find not an itch but seven inflamed insect bites on the back of her thigh.

In isolation, an insect bite is often an occurrence worthy of mild irritation and not a whole lot more. A few insect bites around the body after a campfire is at most worthy of a trip to the drugstore to pick up some topical anti-itch cream. Many insect bites in one area of the body, randomly popping up with no explanation, to many, screams of bedbugs.

Of course, Rosaline comes to this conclusion almost immediately after the discovery of the bites. What else could it even be? I’ve barely been outside and these are new bites. They must have got me in bed last night and I didn’t realize it until after work. Rosaline, being no expert in bedbugs, picks up her phone and frantically searches how to determine if one’s dwelling is in fact being shared by the most unwelcome of small house guests. The results are disheartening. One of the first signs of an infestation is random bites appearing on exposed areas of skin. Luckily, other sources say that there are often visible signs of the pests, so Rosaline is able to relieve some of the relentless adrenaline flooding her senses by tearing apart her entire bedroom.

Supposedly, one may be able to see evidence of bedbugs by removing any bedding and closely observing their mattress for any suspicious dark spots. Rosaline, determined to figure this out here and now, finds nothing on her mattress. I should be happy to have found nothing, she thinks, but that doesn’t mean they aren't here.

After wasting her efforts on thorough mattress observation, Rosaline turns back to her phone for her next steps. “Anywhere a credit card can fit, a bedbug can fit,” says the supposed “pest control expert” she is watching on YouTube. Rosaline slowly looks around her bedroom. She wants to sit down and assess her options, but now she feels the weight of hundreds of tiny eyes on her. She begins to feel phantom legs, crawling up her shins, her knees, returning to the scene of the feast they had the night before. I am under attack in my own home. Worse yet, she knows she cannot go and stay at her mother’s or sister’s home for fear of bringing them with her and inflicting this nightmare upon those she loves. They don’t deserve this. Maybe I do. She knows that she isn’t the best about vacuuming the place. She knows there are blankets she lets languish on the ground because she can’t muster the courage to just move them. And most of all, she knows she's been due for something just like this to happen to her. Things have been too uneventful. Too quiet.

In the midst of this rapidly developing anguish, Rosaline tries to overcome the weight sitting on her chest by looking into how to get rid of them. She reads on a local pest control website that they can bring out a bedbug sniffing dog to confirm their presence. That won’t be necessary, she thinks, they’ll just tell me what I already know. She looks into heat-based treatments, chemical-based treatments, and a variety of home-made methods with dubious results. Each one more expensive than she can comfortably afford.

Still standing in the middle of her bedroom, scrubbing at her legs, caught in one of those terrible moments where nothing seems like the right answer, Rosaline begins to feel tears slide down her cheeks. Perhaps she is putting on a show to let the bedbugs know how difficult they are about to make her life, and how upsetting their existence is. She stands and cries until crying no longer feels productive. She checks her bed again for any concrete evidence and still turns up with nothing. She begins to check the most obvious areas around her bed, so she can at least know which areas to definitely avoid. It doesn’t matter where she checks, she doesn’t find anything. Just because I can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

The human subconscious protects its host until the conscious takes over. The conscious, in unfortunate cases like Rosaline’s, can torture its host indefinitely. Rosaline would go on to call that pest control company then and there, before her tears had even dried. Luckily, they had availability that night. This partially settled Rosaline’s mind. She would sit out on her balcony until they got there and make feeble attempts at convincing herself that everything was going to be okay. When they finally got there, the technician would tell her that he didn’t see any signs of bedbugs, but that “you can’t ever be completely certain of anything when it comes to these guys”. Rosaline convinced them they didn’t have to bring the dog– “I’m allergic, and I think the evidence speaks for itself”. They quote her a staggering price for treatment, a price that would almost entirely deplete her small emergency fund. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be able to be back out for treatment for another week.

What am I supposed to do until then? Where am I supposed to sleep? Every option she comes up with seems to fall into one of three categories: too expensive (especially with her upcoming treatment), too unethical (on account of spreading potential), or too unsafe (sleeping in her car). It was getting late and she was either going to stay up all night standing around or she was just going to suck it up and pick a surface to fall asleep on. The former felt a bit dramatic, and after the day's emotions, she was exhausted. Eventually, finding a bit of grace in an awful situation, she remembers she has an old air mattress tucked away in her linen closet. She hauls that out, inflates it, and finds a blanket and pillow that have been equally tucked away. She inspects each item carefully, but as she becomes more tired, her ability to fear becomes dampened. Rosaline sleeps and dreams of her teeth falling out.

What I wish I could have told her is that she needed to check her shoes. Had she checked her shoes, the ones she took off right after she got home from work, she would have seen me. Or rather, she would have seen my tiny, lifeless corpse. Not a bedbug, but a flea, a flea who got lost in the pant leg of someone who walked over the blade of grass it was on. A flea who was scared, tried to find their way up and out, but after being met with a dead end, did what fleas do: bit. Seven times over. Because I was afraid. Like Rosaline has been. I wish that, in reparation for the bites that caused all of this mess, I could have given her peace of mind. I wish that my last act on earth could have been met with relief rather than irritation or fear. Unfortunately for both of us, the presence of my tiny corpse could have never won out over the relentless hostility of her own consciousness; after all, who checks their shoes after they take them off? And what kind of flea dies in a pant leg? Neither of us ever stood a chance. But tonight, we will rest together.