war

i've lived in a lot of shitholes in my day; most of them a lot worse than this, and i've battled many species of vermin. in LA i fought rats, mice, ants, and bees i once thought were of the killer-type that lodged in a rotting section of our roof (bill poon helped out with those while wearing his bear suit). Mission Records was probably the shittiest place i've lived—before i even moved in the place was a dump. i had to wear a face mask to keep from breathing in the rat shit and dust when i was cleaning the hallway out of trash, old mattresses, piss bottles, and pretty much every other form of debris you can think of. there were NASTY city rats that ran between my room and buzz's room and roaches that lived in our electronics (yeah, they can learn to eat the dust that forms inside your clock radios and monitors and tape players). i took care of those rats, though, and it only took me two days to get their number. and these were not friendly rats—these motherfuckers would chase each other right past us while we were playing GTA3, or run down the long hallway toward my room. i actually chased them once and one of them jumped at me like a tiger shark out of water.

i think i've met my match now, though. i'd almost prefer to be back in mission records. these bedbugs have got me by the balls. i haven't even found any bedbugs, or even any evidence of them. last week i spent hours spackling and caulking holes and cracks in my floor; i thought i beat them but no. i went several days without any bites, but over the last few days they'be been biting the shit out of me. i've barely slept in a week, plus i've been sick in a way that anything deeper than a several shallow breaths leaves me coughing and gasping for air. i wake up every night with the sheets soaking wet, screaming or completely out of breath, slapping and grabbing at anything that feels like it's crawling on me and i never find anything. new bites appear throughout the day and the welts grow in size over time. i'm a beaten man—they've run me ragged. my impotent defenses consist of a bottle of caulking, a small tin of spackle and an expired tube of cortaid. i need professional help, in exterminator form, before i set myself on fire. oh yeah, whoever brought these into my house is gonna pay something horrible.