“Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!” Remember when that expression used to be quaint? You were all: “bed-bugs? are those a real thing?” and your dear, loving mother would be all: “haha, no, honey, it’s just a silly old expression from the days before penicillin was invented. There are no bedbugs anymore, that’s like saying ‘don’t get scurvy’, bedbugs arn’t real, just like there is no monster under your bed. Goodnight, honey, the world isn’t as scary as you think!”
She was a fucking liar.
Bedbugs are back with a vengeance born of decades of hatred from being made nearly extinct, and the failed genocide of their species has given them a naturally-selected immunity to all mankind’s best poisons. If you let anyone from the outside world into your bed or spend any time sleeping outside your own bed, you will get them eventually; they are the HPV of bug infestations. But unlike HPV, bedbugs don’t just go away on their own. You have to fight them yourself, and not with your immune system, but with actual work and thought. Such is the nightmare world we now live in. Having gone through this myself (the bedbugs I mean, ladies) and surviving, I can only pity the rest of you poor souls and offer up my own advice.
Step 1: Heat
These blood sucking fiends have evolved beyond our most benign insecticides but they still have one very big weakness: heat. In order to make your body as uncomfortable to bedbugs as possible, try to stay at a temperature above 98 degrees fahrenheit while sleeping. Heat is lethal to bedbugs after a small amount of time, and every 7 degrees increase kills them 10 minutes faster. So, try and catch a fever I guess. I managed to keep my body heat at around 98.6 degrees all night, as monitored by the video of my rectal thermometer that I swear to God I did not mean to go out on the internet, you guys, I swear.
Step 2: Diatomaceous earth
Turns out your body temperature drops by a small percentage when you fall into a deep enough sleep, and that’s when they strike. They have super-powered vision that can let them see infrared, and they watch you. All night. Watching and waiting until you’ve been motionless for some time and your body heat drops. So you get this stuff called Diatomaceous Earth that is basically harmless to most forms of life but lethal to like, all kinds of bugs. It’s just this powder you put on the floor around your bed and near the walls, and then it’s “So long, suckers!”
(Get it? “Suckers?” Like, because they literally suck blood? Damn, I’m clever and not just easily amused because of suspicious quaaludes I bought online from South Africa!)
Step 3: Fuck it; poison
So, remember how I mentioned earlier that bedbugs have evolved to resist most insecticides? Well, evolution is a bitch, now I know how Kirk Cameron feels! Fun fact: Some people’s immune systems don’t react to poison ivy, some people don’t react to mosquito bites. My body does not react to bedbug bites, it turns out. I have probably had them for much longer than I have noticed, allowing them to grow in numbers before any action was taken. So I’ll / you’ll have to take drastic measures, which in this case means spraying your mattress in just the right amount of poison to kill your bedbugs, but not enough to kill you or your cats. This is best accomplished by using what I call the “whatever doesn’t kill me just makes me stronger” method.
Step 4: Heat again but just, like, more of it this time.
It turns out that whatever doesn’t kill bedbugs makes them stronger, too. While typing this on my bed, I noticed 3 bedbugs and sprayed all of them directly with bedbug poison. They reacted by momentarily slowing down. (Now it’s 4, for fuck’s sake!)
But did you know that the magnetron that powers a common microwave oven can be used to create a non-lethal heat ray or “pain gun” that only penetrates about a millimeter? And that, to bedbugs, even momentary exposure to that kind of heat is instantly lethal? Did you know that building one of these weapons is very simple, extremely dangerous, and is considered a war crime in most countries? Now you know!
Step 5: Just call an exterminator already
Really, this should have been step one. But it won’t be, I know you. Yes, you. You’re thinking you can take this on by yourself, go DIY and use brains and hard work and get rid of the bedbugs yourself, but you have failed and now you sleep in poison and have to get a new microwave. It is time to turn to the experts, just call one now.
Step 6: Alcohol
Rubbing alcohol is said to help keep bedbugs away, so while you wait for freaking ever for the exterminator to show up you will have plenty of time to try out more options like these. When a friend of mine suggested putting rubbing alcohol into a spray bottle and spraying down my mattress I thought it was a brilliant idea. Take an empty spray bottle, or just dump out the last tiny portion of watered-down windex you know you were never going to use anyway, and fill it up with rubbing alcohol. Now, spray the heck out of your mattress, your box springs, pillows, and everything. Just, everything, every day. Then spend a painful amount of money on zip-up mattress covers and pillow covers and enjoy the sweet, relaxing sensation of bathing in hand sanitizer as you attempt to sleep.
Step 6: Alcohol
After days and days of research and studying these little ugly creatures I have come to a revelation; every single time they come out, I have been sober! Eureka! It was staring me in the face the whole time; bedbugs don’t like alcohol, so clearly they won’t bite you if you have a high enough blood-alcohol content!
I ran to the store just in time to buy a fifth of vodka before they closed. Brimming with excitement and eager to test my new scientific theory, I rushed home and started to imbibe as fast as I could, laughing maniacally, taunting my unseen nemeses as they watched like cowards from the darkness. “Let’s see how you like my blood NOW, assholes!” I screamed and laughed in between gulps of the room-temperature bottom-shelf Walgreens vodka.
Step 7: Denial
For the record, I want to state that I do not recall the rest of the events of that night. I know what has been said by my neighbors, my landlord, the local and state police, but just to be perfectly clear: I have no recollection of the events of that night or any crimes or disturbances that I may or may not have been involved in.
Step 8: Anger / Finally the goddamn exterminator shows up
After a day lost to your hangover, it will come as a relief to you when that exterminator you called like, forever ago, finally gets off his lazy ass and comes to your shitty apartment. He will ask you all kinds of stupid questions that you don’t know the answers to, because you have this thing where you don’t react to bedbug bites so how the hell are you supposed to know how many bites you get a night? Huh? Oh, and then he’ll suggest everything you have already tried. You will hate him and his stupid face for giving you false hope and then cruelly yanking it out from under you, probably because he likes to hurt people just to see the look on their faces when they fall into new depths of despair. Asshole.
Step 9: Bargaining
You will find that exterminators don’t know of a secret bedbug-killing method that they keep from all of us until we offer them more money. Also, if they are anything like my guy, you will find they will not accept handjobs as payment and also are stupid jerks. It is then that you will find yourself praying to God for help.
God will deafen you with His silence. You will pray to every god and goddess you ever heard of and only Satan will return your calls, because they all know what you did that night. All know but you.
(to the extent that it gives me you plausible deniability.)
Step 10: Acceptance
It was then that it dawned on me: I was going about this all wrong. Bedbugs are not like mosquitoes; there has never been a recorded incidence of them transmitting disease. So why, of all people, was I the one with the massive bedbug infestation when my body does not react to their harmless bites?
Clearly, it is because I was chosen.
As Peter Parker’s uncle once said: “…something about power.” whatever. The point is: I am impervious to bedbugs, just like Superman is impervious to bullets. This is not a curse, it is a superpower! I am Lord of the Bedbugs, the Chosen One, the Messiah of the once near-extinct race of insects.
You will come to fear us, humans, my People are with me everywhere now, harmless to me, but odds are: not to you. I keep them with me and hurl them at my enemies by the handfull, creating more and more infestations, broadening my kingdom, bringing my People back from near-annihilation with a righteous anger that only genocide can fuel. I am one with the bedbugs now, and we will rule this planet, taking our rightful place from you pathetic bloodsacks. Your days are numbered, humans, so cherish what you can now, for soon, you will know what extermination truly means. To the last, we grapple with thee; from hell’s heart, we stab at thee!
Step 11: Psychosis due to blood loss, sleep depravation, alcohol abuse, & black-market quaaludes
Sorry about that. Turns out that there are a lot of people who don’t react to bedbug bites. Like, one in four. I’m not really all that special I guess. Hell, that’s more than the amount of people who’re immune to poison ivy.
Also, letting bedbugs drink your blood all day and running around throwing them at people while calling yourself “The Bedbug Messiah” is not healthy, and I don’t recommend you try it yourself at home. Actually, I don’t recommend you try it outside of your home either.
By using a heating pad, wrapping your mattress and bedsprings in airtight plastic, cleaning religiously and using your clothes drier’s highest heat settings on your pillows and blankets, you can beat these things. In time. Time that will feel like an eternity and drive you to madness. Time that you will wish you had to edit that video for your friend, learn Korean, go to your friends’ parties and get some much-needed sleep. Time is precious, you guys. I hope you never have to sacrifice so damn much of it to fighting off a maddening infestation. I now have confidence that they are under control and going away. Soon I hope to know for sure.
Just as soon as I hear back from my exterminator, Sisyphus.
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