Bed Bug Blues [FICTOID]

“My dear, sweet, delicious little bed bug,” the physician said, gently kissing the squirming insect as it lay trapped on the sticky strip of fly paper, careful to keep his own lips from touching the glue.

Each love hotel in the city adhered to a specific theme, and the theme of this hotel was chocolate.  There was a white chocolate room for lovers into vanilla sex, a dark chocolate room for those seeking interracial activity, a milk chocolate room for those looking for something sweet and satisfying, a chocolate liquor room for those who liked to imbibe while fornicating, a baking chocolate room for those who enjoyed smoking cannabis with their partner/s, a cocoa powder room for those who liked snorting cocaine to enhance their performance, a hot chocolate room for those who liked it steamy, a bittersweet chocolate room for breakup sex, and a ruby chocolate room for those with rich, rarefied tastes.

From his magnifying glass, the physician could diagnose the poor, struggling bed bug with giardiasis, a parasitic infection that prompts severe bouts of explosive diarrhea in human beings.

Not the sort of thing one wants in a chocolate themed love hotel.

“You shall make my fortune, little bed bug,” said the physician, already deciding what color his new Ferrari would be.  “They will bribe me not to report this to the health department, to take care of the matter quietly so as not to alarm customers, and I shall rake a considerable kickback in hiring fumigators and pest control technicians.

“And all the while, I shall keep you and breed you, so that periodically your offspring can find their way back here, creating a new demand for my services.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, little bed bug.  You have made my day -- and my tax consultant’s day.”

The love hotel shared the same basic set up with all other love hotels.  A lobby with a menu board showing color photos of the different rooms available.  Couples (or threesomes, or foursomes, or moresomes) would select a room and pay in advance using a gift card available at kiosks across the city.

This would release a key to the selected room and open the elevator to take you straight to the selected floor.  Gentle chimes would alert you as you reached the final moments of your hour-long stay, and as you departed discreetly out the lobby, you dropped your key off with the mama-san sitting behind a glassed-in counter.

The physician took the elevator down to the lobby and showed the flypaper strip to the mama-san.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A bed bug,” said the physician.  He decided red would be the color for his new Ferrari. 

“And…?”

“It’s infected with giardiasis,” said the physician. 

“And…?”

“The health department will close you down.”  No response from the mama-san.  “If I report it,” he said.

The mama-san shrugged fatalistically.  “Do what you must,” she said.

The physician blinked in surprise.  “You don’t understand.  When I report this -- if I report this, the health department will shut you down.  For weeks, perhaps months. 

“Maybe even permanently.”

Again a shrug.  “If it happens, it happens,” said the mama-san.  She seemed remarkably sangfroid about her imminent loss of income.

The physician felt crestfallen, his brand-new Ferrari driving off.  “I am going to report this,” he said, hoping she might change her mind.

“Then you better hurry,” she said.  “Government offices close at five o’clock.”

Defeated, the physician slunk out the door.  As he left, she automatically locked the door behind him and turned on the “No Vacancy” sign.

The physician had been the last person in the love hotel other than herself and her husband, who was currently sleeping off a three-day binge in the chocolate liquor room.

It had been a bar marriage from the start, thank the gods they had no children.  He beat her and gambled and whored around.

The mama-san bought the love hotel in a last desperate attempt to provide herself with enough money to live out her latter years, but as fast as it came in, her husband spent it.  When his latest hooker girlfriend complained of bed bug bites, he called the physician, knowing him to be a worthless old quack he could easily bribe if needed.

But that was before he started his three-day binge.

The mama-san dismissed the young woman who actually cleaned the rooms after customers finished, apologizing to her that her severance pay would be so small.

“I’ll sue,” the young woman said.  “This is nowhere near enough.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s the best I can do,” said the mama-san.

The young woman stormed out.  The mama-san felt relieved, her last duty fulfilled.

She already turned off the water main in the basement so the automatic fire sprinkler system wouldn’t work.  Now she turned off the pilot light to the water heater and disconnected the gas line, twisting the flexible metal hose around to go through the hotel’s air vents.

The last thing she did was to return to her office and brew herself a cup of green tea over a small Sterno warmer to await the inevitable.

© Buzz Dixon