A Rude Awakening

The scene is set. It's 2:20 am on Tuesday. An unsuspecting, sound asleep Abby is woken up by a slap to the left arm. Who? What? Huh? The slap came from none other than Abby herself. Why? She knew there was something crawling on her. This wasn't a ghost creepy crawly. You know, the feeling that something is on you, but it's really not. This was the real deal. In fact, it was big enough to bring Abby out of her sleep.

Can I stop talking in 3rd person now? Thanks. So I wake up to my right arm slapping my left arm. I felt the bug. I hit it (note the good aim even during REM sleep mode), but it didn't die. I wanted to die, but my bug friend crawled down my arm. I sprang out of bed and because my light switch is across the room and I didn't want to let the little bugger get far away, I grabbed my cell phone and relied on the light of the screen to track him down. It felt like an investigative scene from CSI.

I assumed I was looking for a spider. Why? I don't know. I think it's because I could feel him crawling, so I figured there must have been a lot of legs involved. I looked under the bed, behind the bed, under the covers, on top of the covers, inside and on top of my pillow. Nothing. I find it necessary to mention that my husband, my protector was sound asleep this whole time AND my two cats, my hunters, were nowhere to be found. After a few minutes of searching, I was ready to give up the hunt and lie in fear for the rest of the night. What a horrible feeling. Getting back into bed knowing there is a creepy-crawly nearby, just waiting to crawl back under the covers with me. Why did I buy a bed so comfy and inviting?!?!

Just as I shut my phone, turning off the make-shift light, I felt something on my foot. I looked down and saw him. It was a beetle-like cockroachy thing. About an inch long. Ugh. Ew. Eeek... insert your own sound.

Instead of grabbing a book from the shelf behind me, I went into full survival mode and got down and started slapping the bug with my hand. The plushness of the carpet combined with the give of my palm made his death long and drawn-out. My husband finally woke up and I cried to him, "There was a bug on me!" and then I just said, "Finish the job." So he got up, grabbed some tissue and ushered the bug to its final resting place. As we got back into bed I just said to him, "This is why you need to sleep with your mouth shut."

- Abby