Ben Winters - Bedbugs

He stumbled after her onto the landing, shouting, “Goddamn it, Susan, stop!” and then “Shit!” as his toe connected with the split in the floorboards. Susan halted, abruptly, stepping to one side just in time to let his big lumbering body chase itself past her, onto the top step. And then she was behind him, pushing him, hard, two hands in the middle of the back. Alex went tumbling down the steps, banging his head against the wall as he fell, and she chased after him, butcher’s knife clutched in two hands.

When he landed at the bottom, she was towering over him, straddling his body with her legs.

“Susan. Please. Think about what you’re doing. Please. ”

She took a deep breath, bared her teeth.

“I’m sorry, Alex.”

She brought the knife down, fast, like a missile whistling toward its target, right at Alex’s neck, but he rolled away, kicking at her shins. She got up and followed, and they paraded slowly down the hallway: he walking backward, facing her with his hands raised, she following, one big step forward for each of his steps backward. She slashed at him, big wild uneven swings of the knife.

“Susan!”

He ducked as the knife sang just under his nose.

“Susan! Jesus, Susan, stop!”

They were in the living room now, passing under the archway and the ornately beautiful old sconces. In the corner of her eye Susan saw bugs crawling in and out of the teardrop-shaped lightbulbs that adorned the fixtures, bugs like sports fans crowding the bleachers.

Now Alex had his back to the wall of the living room, just to the right of the small door that led to the bonus room. Susan stepped toward him with the knife raised, and Alex grabbed her wrists and spun her around. She had a lunatic flash of memory, dancing at their wedding, one-two-three, one-two-three . And then it was Susan’s back against the wall and he had her pinned, his chest against hers, smashing her breasts, constricting her breath, his full weight pressed across her body.

Alex flung open the door of the bonus room, grabbed Susan by the waist, and shoved her inside. He slammed the door and she grabbed at the handle, rattled it, screaming, but Alex was holding it closed. She could picture him, leaning backward with the handle in his hands, sealing her in. She banged on the door.

“Alex!”

There was a loud scraping noise — what — oh, God. The sofa. Still holding the door tightly shut with one hand, he had reached with the other for the giant heavy leather sofa, was dragging it in place to block the door, pen her in. She pounded on the door. “Alex! Don’t leave me here!” The adrenalin-fueled anger in her veins was cooling rapidly, freezing into fear. She hammered the door with her fists. “Let me out, Alex.”

“Susan, I’m going to take Emma somewhere safe, and I’ll be back soon.”

Emma — no —Alex wouldn’t know what to pack for her, wouldn’t know how to take care of her. Her girl, her daughter.

“Alex. Wait.”

“I’m sorry, Susan.”

“Let me out, Alex. Don’t leave me here.” The magnitude of what was occurring swelled up in her, like a balloon expanding in her gut. She pressed her palms against the door. “Please.”

His footsteps moved out of the living room, pounded up the stairs toward the bedrooms. She tried the door again, and then leaned her forehead against it, tears cascading down her cheeks.

“Please.”

Five minutes later, the footsteps were back on the stairs. She heard Alex grunt, shifting Emma’s sleeping weight in his arms. Abstract, disconnected worries floated helter-skelter through her mind: Was he bringing her heavy coat? What would she have for breakfast? Where would they go?

The front door closed, and after a few terrible minutes of silence, Susan rose shakily to her feet and turned to survey the room in which she was now imprisoned. The painting remained where she had left it, pinned to her easel in the corner, just beside the window. It was still covered in the bites and welts that Susan did not remember painting.

But it was no longer a painting of Jessica Spender.

It was a self-portrait.

It was her.

The first of the badbugs crawled in under the door about an hour later.

It might have been less than an hour, or it might have been more. Susan wore no watch, and the moon gave no clue, hanging mute and unmoving in the window.

It was just the one bug, and it was not a big one. A stage three, Susan thought, maybe even a stage two. An eighth of an inch. Someone who was not waiting for it would never have noticed. But Susan’s eyes were trained, and she was waiting. Now they were coming for her. Susan was sure of that.

She watched the little bug from where she sat in the far corner of the room, under the one big window, where she had first discovered the photograph of Jessica and Jack. It crawled toward her, and Susan watched it come. Her knees were drawn up in front of her, her hands laced across the kneecaps. No more hiding for Susan’s friends, no more darting out when others couldn’t or wouldn’t see.

Now she was awake and alive and in their time, and they were coming.

The little stage three, a dark brown oval, a tiny creeping shadow in the moonlight, took a winding course across the hardwood floor, making its roundabout way to where Susan sat, waiting for it, her stomach churning with dread. A single bug. It skittered forward a foot, paused, skittered forward another half foot. Doubled back, circled around, came closer still.

No reason to hurry , the bug was saying with its easy meandering pace. We’ve got you now .

She looked at the badbug, and the badbug looked back at her.

No eyes , she told herself. Cimex lectularius have no eyes. Six legs, two antennae, nonfunctional wing pads, and a dual tubelike proboscis … but no eyes .

“But you’re still looking at me, aren’t you?” Susan whispered, and jumped at the sound of her own voice in the tomblike silence of the room.

Her new friend was not startled. It kept moving forward.

It’s so small , Susan told herself, breathing deeply. So small. What was this thing, this tiny insect, going to do — what could it really do to her?

But she knew the answer. The answer she had never dared to contemplate, and now she had no choice. It was going to latch on to her and drink her blood. They had latched on to her soul, and now they had come for her body. This little bug would latch on and drink until it was full, and then another would come, and then another, as many as it took to drain her of her blood, every drop of it, until she was an empty shell, a dry rag, the empty husk of a person.

They were going to eat her alive .

The solitary badbug came within three feet, and then made a long, lazy U-turn to return to the door, and left the room.

Susan shook herself into action.

She stood up, flexing her arms and legs, cracking her knuckles and growling her throat clear. She walked across the room and tried the door again, rattling the handle and pushing as hard as she could, crouching down. Nothing. She backed up the eight or so paces to the far side of the bonus room and threw herself forward, slamming against the door, shoulder first, so that her whole body shook with the impact.

“Shit,” Susan muttered, massaging her bruised arm.

She looked at the crack beneath the door, but no more badbugs were crawling in — not yet. She moved her eyes along the baseboard, and her glance came to rest on the spot where poor Catastrophe the cat had left his desperate scratches. Susan crouched down to trace her fingernails in the ruts, imagining the poor cat scratching madly, slowly going crazy, slowly dying as she was dying now—