( Enter the terrifying and incomprehensibly brutal world of the bedbug's sex life below the cut...  )Imagine. if you have the courage, if you are at home with your siblings, who you have lived with since you hatched from your common clutch of eggs (go with me here), each of you enjoying yourselves in whatever manner best suits you. All of the sudden, one of your brothers stands up and, without warning, whips out his tool. No mere shaft of soft and pliant flesh and blood, though, this phallus is a wicked hook of chitin with a curved, scimitar-like blade of a tip.
 
Without any evident regard for your desire, family relationship or the particulars of your anatomy, he thrusts it brutally into your belly, piercing your skin and organs alike before depositing his DNA directly into the bloody wound in your abdomen. He then climbs off of you and immediately repeats the process with your brother. And then the family dog. If you can imagine this, you can in some small way imagine what it is to be a bedbug.

One of the keys to understanding bedbugs is that there is literally not one thing about them which is not completely horrifying and disgusting. Seemingly conjured from the gleefull imaginings of a demented sadist, they seem to challenge with their very existence the idea that nature is not in some way guided by some malevolent and unseen hand. For example, the bedbug female has a perfectly serviceable vagina and it is not out of the realm of possibility that they might occasionally be in the mood for lovin'. Neither of these facts are of any interest whatsoever to the bedbug male, however: At some point in their dim evolutionary past, they abandoned the approach to sex which involved genitals actually touching one another, and adapted the approach of essentially fucking the bedbug equivalent of the ovaries themselves in a process which science knows (with an uncharacteristic lack of softening tones) as "Traumatic Insemination". 
 
 
This casual disregard for the presence or absence of a vagina seems to bring with it a certain sense of sexual liberation for the bedbug male; they can and will casually rape anything which is roughly bedbug sized that they can wrestle to the ground and maul with their sex organ, on the off chance that the thing they are screwing MIGHT be a bedbug female. Accuracy by volume, one supposes. Ants, silverfish, male bedbugs (and oh, more on THIS later), none are safe from the ravenous if indiscriminate ardour of the bedbug male. An incestuous, bisexual rapist with a taste for injury and bestiality... place on of these monsters in a pair of overalls, put a confederate flag in one of their  clawed hands and set them to muttering angrily about their second amendment rights, and there would be nothing out of place or incongruous about this image whatsoever.

One might be given to wonder how this is not fatal to prospective bedbug mothers. The simple answer is that it often is. Infection and crippling injuries are not uncommon. Evolution has, however, fashioned the bedbug female with a small measure of protection; they have developed a small, vagina-like opening on their underbellies in roughly the spot where males tend to make their incision. The effectiveness of this adaptation is, however, imperfect, in that the male of the species takes no more interest in this pseudo-poon than in the genuine article. He is indeed as apt to stab his member through the belly of his mate to the immediate left or right of the opening as to hit the target at all. 

And what of the males who fall victim to one another's advances? Here too, evolution has worked its cruel works. Since the sex organs of the male and female are located in roughly the same area of the body, the male who is raped will literally have his rapist's sperm injected into what amounts to his own balls, where they will join the sperm already present. As such, the next female the rape victim sexes up will get sperm from both her mate and the one who raped him. As such, natural selection favours those bedbug males most prone to frequent homosexual rape. 

Not that there is any preference show between one gender and another (nor yet one species and another; I have noticed since the bedbugs arrived in my place that the silverfishes are all gone. I cannot help but wonder if they have all been raped to death by the bedbugs); they are equal-opportunity rapists. And given their tendency to rape one female after another, they have become keenly economical in their use of sperm. When a male has his way with a female, his penis demonstrates one of its most mind-shattering and overwhelming traits: It tastes the inside of its victim's anatomy, and should it taste the distinctive flavour of bedbug sperm already present, it will deliver somewhat less of its own, since there's that much less of a chance that this will be a successful mating. 

Yes. In addition to everything else to boggle and offend the mind, the savage cock of the bedbug can taste the guts of its victim during the physical act of love. It is like unto a sword which is like unto a tongue which is like unto a penis. Imagine it. Imagine it. 

And do take care to remember: Every cell of a bedbug's body is composed entirely of stolen human blood, since that is literally all that they consume. This endless walking horror-show is made entirely of stolen bits of your own body, now crawling about on six legs and committing its crimes against human sanity. 

Just try to sleep soundly throughout the night knowing full well that this will surely be happening all around - and even upon - you while you slumber. 

And understand where comes my comprehensive dread of these unimaginable abominations.