My cousin, who had been spontaneously tossed out of her sublet in Manhattan and was crashing on my couch for the last couple of weeks, was finally, FINALLY cleaning up her crap that had spread across my livingroom both horizontally and vertically.
As she filtered through the sedimentary layers of her strewn clothing, she yelled "UH OH!" She ran to me with a section of shirt pulled taught between her hands, and we both observed as a full sized, recently fed bed bug dashed across the fabric.
"Fuck." I said, without emotion.
"Do you want me to save it for you?" she asked.
"No." I said. "Just kill it. I don't fucking care."
In hindsight, I should have said yes. Another specimen for my collection. But I just couldn't deal this time. I couldn't deal with the reality that her finding implied: that the itches and tickles I felt at night were not just my imagination; that they were still very here, and still very hungry; that all my clothes in plastic bags were going to have to stay that way for a while longer.
