Something was slowly sinking into my chest. Finally, when my husband left for a business trip, I decided to open the mattress to find out what was really going on.
And at that very moment… My knees weakened and I fell to the floor. Because the thing inside the mattress wasn’t just horrifying — it also exposed a painful reality that I’d long dreaded to face.
Michael and I have been married for 8 years. We live in a small house in Quezon City, just outside of Manila, Philippines. Miguel is a sales manager at an electronics distribution company, so he often travels to different cities such as Cebu, Davao, and Makati.
Our marriage wasn’t perfect, but we lived a quiet and peaceful life. O… That’s what I thought at the time.
I change the bedsheet all the time. I washed the blanket with hot water. Once again, I took the mattress out of the balcony to dry under the intense Manila sun.
But it’s weird — every night when Michael goes to bed, the smell returns.
When I asked him, his brow furrowed.
“You’re just so sensitive, Anna. There is no smell.”
But I knew I wasn’t imagining.
Things got even weirder when I noticed that every time I tried to clean part of her bed, she suddenly became irritable. One night he even screamed.
“Don’t touch my stuff. Let the bed be like that!”
