WRITING PROMPT RESPONSE
We Fought the Fleas and We Won — Part 1
A Taste For Life Weekend Writing Response — Prompt 8 — Photo Prompt
I don’t really know why, but I’m a bit embarrassed about this story.
The book in the photo above reminded me of an experience that we had early on in our time in Bulgaria. Things in one of the houses we stayed at were this dirty.
It was so dirty and musty.
The house was arranged by a man that we met the last time we were in Bulgaria. He had asked a friend of his if he had a place where he could host us. It turns out that he did, but it was a house in the countryside which had a caretaker that was a single Bulgarian man who they claimed would be happy to have some company.
The man didn’t live in the section of the house that we were staying in, so he didn’t seem to put much effort into doing anything with it, including cleaning it. The minute we walked in you could smell the damp mustiness of the place.
We begrudgingly got ourselves situated in our room. The bed was very musty as well. We had been dropped off 20 minutes outside of town and it was dark.
We didn’t really have an option but to stay.
In our living room, I took to wiping off the table that was there as I could see that it needed it, and we made ourselves as comfortable as possible. We had been told that this was a traditional Bulgarian house and it was a chance for us to see how the locals lived, which we did appreciate.
The first night we didn’t notice anything bothering us as we slept, other than the grossed out-ness that we were experiencing with the state of the place.
But by night three we knew that we were getting bitten by bugs at night. I had red bumps all over my sides to prove it, not to mention we could feel them crawling on us. Of course, we were not impressed and wanted to leave. But the owner told us to just spray some bug killer in the room and they would all die.
So we did.
At this point, we didn’t know what these things were. But they were small and black and they jumped. I was convinced that they were fleas, Chris didn’t think that fleas would bite humans.
We stayed another night and felt like we slept better and weren’t bothered too much. We really loved the area of Bulgaria that we were staying in and we appreciated the quiet tranquillity of the countryside. Despite the place not being that clean, we didn’t want to give up on it just yet.
We had spent 2 years living in Africa before this, so let’s just say that we weren’t obsessed with cleanliness at this point.
That night the bugs were back in full force biting us relentlessly. We sprayed again, our friend assuring us that this would be the last of them.
It wasn’t.
So now we are at night 5. We pleaded with the owner telling him that the bugs are biting us badly. I don’t think he understood to what extent we were suffering until I showed him the bites on my side.
He simply laughed and told me that I was sweet.
He said that he had other properties in town that we could stay in. The ultimate plan was that we were going to paint a mural for him in his apartment complex, so we didn’t want to just take off until we had those plans solidified.
We told him that we would be interested in moving when he had a chance to deal with it.
I should mention here that this man is a dental surgeon and he was incredibly stressed out and overworked. His anxiety level was through the roof, so we didn’t want to add to it by being bothersome. After all, we were just grateful that he had provided us with a place to stay.
In the meantime, the bugs continued to get worse.
This is a prompt response to A Taste For Life’s Weekend Writing Challenge. The submissions are limited to a four-minute read, so I have broken this story up into 2 parts.
Thanks to Jason Edmunds for the inspiring prompt. I have been wanting to write this story, but hadn’t felt called to do it until now. If you want to get involved, here is the prompt link:
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