It was the middle of the night when I suddenly jolted awake with the unmistakable feeling that something was biting into my skin.
At first, I couldn’t even tell what had woken me. I was lying in bed, half-asleep and disoriented, when I felt a strange, sharp pressure against my back. It wasn’t the ordinary discomfort of a twisted bedsheet or an awkward sleeping position. It felt as though something small, hard, and unpleasant was pressing into me—and possibly moving.
My heart began pounding.
I froze beneath the blanket, trying to understand what I was feeling. Had an insect crawled into my bed? Was something clinging to my clothes? Or had some tiny creature managed to get trapped between my skin and the bedding?
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that something was wrong.