the exorcist

Mosquitoes are direct proof of intelligent design—when Satan sat down and tried to figure out how to screw over the human race, he created the mosquito. Mosquitoes are more prevalent on the outskirts of the city, where I’m living—my grandparents’ apartment doesn’t have space for me and my mom, so we’re living with my great-aunt-in-law. I think at this point, I have gotten around 30 bites. They are mainly on my legs and arms, the only parts of my body I leave exposed at night. I have also slain around 30 mosquitoes. Here is my mosquito journal:

Days 1-3: What the hell. I have at least 16 bites on my legs and feet. There is one on the fricken bottom of my foot. There is a mosquito flying around this very room. I tried to kill it, but it flew away. So I shall lie in wait and bide my time.

Day 4: My mosquito problem seems to have been solved. My great-aunt-in-law is a really awesome host and burnt this Chinese coal that’s designed to scare mosquitoes away. You buy these coils, and you just light it with a match and let it burn for a while. It smells exactly like hookah. Maybe the mosquitoes just get high and don’t feel like bothering you anymore.

Day 5: My great-aunt is amazing. She bought a mosquito net for us. It is pretty high-tech, with a dome and zippers. I haven’t really gotten any bites at night, but my grandparents’ apartment is another story. To my surprise, mosquitoes can fly 15 stories to bite you. In fact, a lot of them will. We even saw one on the elevator, but I chased it out onto the 12th floor.

Day 6: Over the last few days, I have been honing my mosquito-hunting skills to a tee. The first few days, I was smushing them between my hands in my great-aunt’s bathroom. The bathroom, I’ve found, is the best place to hunt—they flock to the bathroom in search of water, and more importantly, all of the surfaces are white, so they can’t hide (dark floors and furniture = mosquitoes’ best friend). My hunting reached its peak today; armed with a fly swatter, I killed around 15 mosquitoes in my grandparents’ bathroom. It is holy work. The way I see it, mosquitoes are clearly spawn of Satan, if not the devil himself, split into a million pieces. (Imagine that—all of the mosquitoes in the world uniting to form a body. That could totally be Satan.) So by killing them, I am exorcising bad spirits from this world.

Day 7: Ugh. We just went to my grandmother’s old village to look at potential tomb sites and have dinner at her sister’s house. The village is rural—mud roads and rice fields rural—and it is chock full of mosquitoes. During dinner, I kept fidgeting (it’s the best way to avoid bites) and tried to not think about the fact that I counted at least 40 different mosquitoes in the room. Yeah. Forty.