Old apartments carry invisible histories—not told through stories or photos, but embedded in walls, carpets, and fabric that have absorbed years of human presence.
I knew about these things in theory: bed bugs hiding in mattress seams, fleas in carpets, dust mites in pillows, mold in unseen corners, chemical residues lingering in furniture.
But reading about them is very different from feeling them on your own skin. In that apartment, my body noticed first. It reacted instinctively, before my mind fully accepted what was happening.
Some bumps faded quickly, disappearing by morning. Others lingered, itchy and stubborn. I scratched in my sleep and woke to find new clusters forming in different spots. Lying awake in the dim room, I kept wondering what else was sharing the space with me.
Bed bugs? Fleas? Dust mites? Something else entirely?
Not knowing was more unsettling than the itching itself. It felt as if my body had detected something my mind hadn’t caught up to yet.
That night, I became unusually cautious. I checked the mattress edges, traced the seams with my fingers, and examined the headboard closely. Every corner and shadow felt suspicious.