Bedbugs

I woke up with a string of red, itchy lumps down the back of my left hand, wrist and forearm. I don't know what could have possibly caused them and you don't remember seeing them the night before.

"Bedbugs!" you cried out over the phone some days later. "The bed is infested with bedbugs! I got up in the middle of the night to spray Baygon on the mattress."

"Baygon? Is there a special spray for bedbugs?"

"Baygon works. But there is a special spray, probabaly similar to the medicine to get rid of ticks in dogs."

The next weekend I realised you had removed the bedsheets and we would have to sleep directly on top of the mattress. There was a hint of insecticide in the air from the Baygon but it was bearable. Armed with a pair of tweezers and a can of Baygon, we examined the edges of the mattress and divan for any signs of the pest. I found a number which you quickly caught with your tweezer and squashed in a piece of tissue paper.

"There were quite a number on the right side of the bed," you said, matter-of-factly.

"My side?" My first response was to feel guilty that I might have been the medium that had introduced the bedbugs.

"Hey wait a minute," I retorted, after a while. "Do bedbugs avoid the light? Your side is nearer to the window so obviously they will want to hide on my side cause it's darker."

"Perhaps," you said.