Warning: if you are accustomed to think of your bed as a happy wonderful place where you rest, on your own or accompanied by your significant other, and if you enjoy that vision of things, I prefer to warn you: this chapter will be terrifying and may change your approach to beds forever. Heed my words, this is a serious warning. Not a chapter for the faint-hearted.

10% of your pillow is not your pillow. What could that possibly mean? Well, I don't know how to tell you that without making your heartbeat stop, but be brave. If a tenth of your pillow is not itself, it is something else, and that something else, dear readers, is acarians. That's right, acarians. And to be more exact: acarians and their excrements. That is, 10% of the weight of your pillow is made of little ugly scary-looking bugs smaller than the naked eye can see and their horrible microscopic little turds. Try lifting your pillow with that in mind and see how tight you can sleep. Personally, last night was an effort for me.

Acarians are like the communists of yesterday, and the witches of the day before: they are everywhere, and yet we cannot see them. The only difference is that those do actually exist for certain. Imagine that, they shit in your bedsheets, pillow, and blanket. When you are sleeping, they are right below your ear, and if you had a sense of hearing strong enough, you would hear the stinkers joking on how your pillow is infested with their brothers and sisters and how much fecal matter has been mustered there for God knows how many months since you first used your pillow and other bedly equipment.

If this wasn't enough, there's another layer of invisible enemies: germs. Germs like humid places, and time. A study was recently made in France that showed that every time you shook hands with someone, you had 50% chances of ending up with fecal matter in your mouth. Think I'm kidding? I wish. Germs love toothbrushes because you put them in your mouth, infect your brush, then let it dwell in a cute tiny glass and come back a day later. Meanwhile, the germs will have reproduced and everything, and that's when you put it back in your mouth. Yes, it's deliciously appetising. Some people keep being sick; the idea is that they're perpetually infecting themselves with the very germs they let on various items, be it bed or toothbrush.

Sometimes I think that what the human eye was not designed to see should remain invisible. Honestly, google acarians, see what they look like, and imagine that creatures like these infest your bed, carpet, clothes, etc, and try to feel safe ever again. When you were a kid you were scared that monsters were under your bed, but you knew it was quite unlikely because monsters do not exist. Now you're an adult, and you know acarians do exist, and they're not so far as under your bed, they're right in it, with you.

Sleeping alone in my bed was always a very sad and painful thing to me, but now that I know that I am nightly accompanied by literally millions of those monster-looking creatures, I regret my loneliness.

©Nicolas