Bed Bugs, Red 9

        I dreamed of bed bugs. Antlike creatures crawled under the covers over my arms and hands. I woke and pulled back the pillow.

        Nine red queens were lined up in a row. Each queen had about nine tiny dark attendants swarming around the square inch she was in. On the right side of the line (which stretched to the head of the bed away from me) there was a group of about five males for each queen. On the left side of the queen was an inch square block of soldier ants arranged in neat rows. It looked like a three by three block for each queen.  The soldiers looked like they were lined up for battle. Further to the left was a looser block of workers, about nine by nine. The soldier and worker ants were a dark cherry color, while the queens were the color of oak.

        One thing that weirds me out is crawling biting insects. To see them arrayed as if for battle was really unnerving. I yelped. The array broke formation and began to swarm in random directions. I thought I felt some crawling on my arms so tossed the pillow over the end of the bed.

        I realized that I now didn’t have anything in hand to sweep them out of the bed. I have another pillow there, but it was also covered with the randomly swarming bed bugs. As I reached back to slap the pillow (hoping to knock a significant number of invaders off the bed) I felt a warm raspy and slightly wet stroke on my nose.

        Ginger meowed in my face, I shook off the dream, resisting the urge to grab the flashlight and check the bed. I pulled out a half numb half pins and needles feeling hand and scratched Ginger between the ears. She calmed down, licked me a couple of more times, then settled in and started purring. Apparently my nightmare had caused her concern and she was just checking on me. This is the second time she’s awakened me from a nightmare, probably a good thing, as I doubt I would have remembered this particular dream.

        I did notice the Red 9 theme popping back up. I still haven’t worked out what that is supposed to signify.

Ad astra per technica,

FF