Bedbugs
Ben H. Winters
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 1594745234
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
FOR RENT: Top two floors of beautifully renovated brownstone, 1300 sq. ft., 2BR 2BA, eat-in kitchen, one block to parks and playgrounds. No broker’s fee.
Susan and Alex Wendt have found their dream apartment.
Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric. And the elderly handyman drops some cryptic remarks about the basement. But the rent is so low, it’s too good to pass up.
Big mistake. Susan soon discovers that her new home is crawling with bedbugs . . . or is it? She awakens every morning with fresh bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter Emma has a single welt. An exterminator searches the property and turns up nothing. The landlady insists her building is clean. Susan fears she’s going mad—until a more sinister explanation presents itself: she may literally be confronting the bedbug problem from Hell.
Analog Science Fiction and Fact (January-February 2015)
The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files Series, Book 6)
Bloody Parchments: The Root Cellar and Other Stories
snorts of derision, unrelated grievances dragged out to be aired and re-aired. When they fought this way, Susan imagined them as two mad and vicious dogs, tearing at each other’s throats, charged with pure animal hatred. Later, lying awake, her heart pounding and her chest trembling from the exertion, Susan thought that without question it was the worst fight in the history of their marriage, the worst since they had known each other. Beside her, Alex lay sleeping peacefully, his flesh gently
down the steps, layering a line of chalky soil along the joints and cracks as she went. Emma passed these hours in front of the television, enjoying the unimaginable treat of a Sesame Street marathon, lazing like a pasha in a nest of pillows—Susan having decided that the sofa was off-limits for the time being. At a little past 4:30 Susan was squatting in front of the kitchen sink. The bag, now half empty, dangled from one hand while she seized handfuls of earth with the other, patting them
went to sleep that night, Susan found a pair of his long underwear and pulled it up over her own. She dug out a long flannel nightgown from the bottom of a drawer and pulled it over her head, tugging the sleeves down as far as they could go, and then rolled on a pair of woolen socks up over the cuffs of the long underwear. Finally she tucked her hair under a shower cap and, after a moment’s hesitation, slipped on a pair of thick winter gloves. “Well,” she asked the mirror in the bathroom off the
flesh. Susan ducked her head and looked around furtively with hot, resentful eyes. Emma, slumped beside her in a hungry and exhausted daze, gazed up at her mom. “Mama? Are you worried about the buggies, Mama?” “A little bit, honey. Just a little bit.” Emma bit at her pretty red lips. “Are the buggies going to hurt me?” “No. No, no, no.” She squeezed the girl to her lap. “I promise.” The promise was like ash in her mouth. How could she promise that? She let go of Emma’s hand, thinking that
light flash brightly and go dim. There were active bites all over her body now—her legs, her ass, her crotch, her ear, above her eyelid and under her chin, points of pain throbbing red all over her skin. She hurled herself at the door of the bonus room, again and again, pounding the wooden door with her frail body, ignoring the shockwaves of pain that rocked her frame with each strike. Badbugs were pouring in under the door now, hundreds of them, a low tide welling in around her feet, snapping at
