Scraps & Chum (5 page)

I was sitting at my computer
marveling
at the
terrifying
news online
, fin
gers in my ears, teeth clenched
as the whine—now a raging siren—raked my mind, when I noticed one of my neig
hbors in the street fall over.

So loud and so high-pitched was the noise at that point, a thousand fingernails scraping a thousand chalkboards would not have come close to the agonizing frequency it put forth. My hairs stood on end and my eyes watered. I could not focus for too long on any one thing before the screaming
siren sent my vision wobbling.

And then, it rose again.

“
Jesus Christ,
”
I shouted as I stumble
d to my window,
“
it
’
s killing me
! Oh
,
God, make it stop!
  What
’
s happening
!
”

My eardrums shrieked with pain. My temples threatene
d to te
ar open.
I ran around my house, looking for a way to stop the pain, banging my head on the walls.
“
God, please!
”
Outside in the street, pandemonium had set in, and people ran fruitlessly in circles, hands over their ears, teeth grinding. Army trucks sped by, heli
copters flew over the horizon.

Peering out my front window, I watched as the people in the street stumbled and fell.
Blood burst from
their ears, running down their necks and shoulders. I could see them screaming but I could not hear them. In the distance, a car swerved into a tree and its occupant spilled into the road like dirty laundry. He rolled around holding hi
s head
, his hands stained bright red. Those who had remained in their homes came
running outside, blood spitting
from their ears onto the ground, long trails of red forming behind them
, turning the street into
some bad abstract
painting.

My brain felt like it was being stabbed with screwdrivers, the pressure in my head swelling until I thought my eyes would shoot out
of the sockets
and run down the window
pane
.  Still the sou
nd rose in pitch and intensity.

All of us
now. Dogs. H
owling. Begging for a reprieve.

“
Dear
,
God!
”
I pleaded repeatedly, as if
a
man who had shunned
the
church eons ago would suddenly get a personalized letter from the Almighty. Of course not; my yelling and wailing went unheard even to me.
“
Oh my God! Make it stop!
”
Outside people writhed on the ground. The sun began to set.

Finally
, the window exploded. 

And s
omething
in my head popped.

I felt hot, sticky liquid running down my fingers. Pulling my hands away
from my ears
, I saw blood flowing down my wrists
and dripping onto the carpet.
I grabbed the nearest whiskey bottle and drank until it was empty. At some point I landed f
ace first on the floor.  Waves of nausea rolled over me before I finally passed out.

VI

When I woke up, there was no more pain. People were walking in the streets, helping one another up. Everyone
’
s ears were coated in blood.

I have been scared of many things in life, most notably my own failure. My first novel was well received in the underground market, my second not so much, and the third largely ignored.
I
had spent many
years with writing groups. I read
as much classic literature as I could. I disciplined myself to turn out only the most quality narratives I could create. At every turn, the nation instead
emptied its pockets for stories that were written
f
or a dollar, not an aesthetic. What
wa
s worse, I
had
thought I could spread my love of the writ
ten word to my students, only to be
thwarted at every turn by a technological revolution that twisted language into an abomination of inhuman laziness; I wanted to scream the day I graded my f
irst paper written in Leet
.

When the world went deaf, I found myself with renewed hope that literature, once again, would take precedent as the most popular form of entertainment. What good was a sitcom or an action film without sound?  How interesting was a rock and rol
l band that couldn
’
t be heard?

While people ran in the streets,
bleeding from their ears,
crying an
d banging pots beside their heads
, while society
’
s dregs slipped in and out of
homes and businesses, taking advantage of this new opportunity
to move undetected and steal
whatever they wanted
, and while religious zealots everywhere sacrificed goats and cats to a new angry God
that wanted us to suffer eternal silence
, I
turned back to my stories. For weeks, I ignored the madness outside my window, and
wrote all day and all night, some of the best mater
ial I have ever produced. 

This
was
all
a few months ago.

The world has resumed
a sense of normalcy, if you can call the myriad sign language classes at every church, school, and community center normal. The
ground
’
s
bloodstains were washed away with weeks of street cleaning. There was a mad dash for televisions that offered closed-captioning, and the latest films are shipped with s
ubtitles. These are priorities.

The
nightly news
subtitles are garish, accurately transcribing slang and expletives, spelling
“
ask
”
with the last two letters reversed. I understand the romantic use of portraying society as it is, but I fear. I fear for a generation growing up reading such nonsense. I fear for the children who wil
l learn this as their language.

I fear we
’
ve been given a
chance to
once again embrace
true art,
true language as the Renaissance poets meant it to be,
and we
’
re snubbing it.

My books and stories still do not sell and I don
’
t know how to teach sign language because I am still learni
ng it myself. I am going broke.
As are many.

I wince at
the store, as I buy my whiskey
, and see people passing notes to each other, tiny communiqués rife with abbreviations: What u do 2nite? How R U doin?  Call L8R. I have made it a game to guess what they are saying, what the real words used to be. Sometimes I figure it out, sometimes I
’
m baffled. Always I
’
m annoyed.

As I walk by the park on the way home
, I watch the deaf children, those
original deaf children, play ball and flash signs to each other. Their hands are graceful and swift, bobbing and flexing with fluidity, each finger a tiny ballerina. I see them roll their eyes at strangers, the newly deaf, who destroy their art form by creating their own, more vulgar, variations of the lang
uage. I feel for the children.

Their art is being bastardized.

The source of the sound was never discovered. For all we know, it is louder
and shriller than ever before. 
Not one single human on Earth can hear anymore. But sound still exists. The animals will come if you call them. Just the human race was punished. No one has an answer why.
I suspect…because we took advantage of our gift.

I sit at my computer
, continuing to write,
hoping someone will read this or anything else I
’
ve labored over
,
hoping I can
re
vive the art of
our written word. As I type I
watch the captions on the television scroll by.
They are misspelled,
full
of slang I do not understand, and mixed with numbers
and symbols that supposedly
make them
easier
and faster to read by a world of morons.

I have no idea what they
’
re talking about.

I am in Hell.

THE PINCH

Nicky was walking out of the candy store with his best buddies, Greg and Willy, when a little boy with an eyepatch ran
up and pinched him on the arm.

“
Son of a—
”
shouted Nicky, rubbing his flesh, jerkin
g away from the strange boy. He watched
as the skin
on his bicep
turned pink before his eyes.
“
What did you do that for, jerk?
”

The little boy, a few years younger than Nicky and his friends, stood alone on the street, his messy hair blowing about like a miniature wheat field. He laughed the way little boys do when they don
’
t understand they
’
ve just done something wrong. Probably he had seen it on a cartoon or in a comic book, thought Nicky, and was imitating some character. Greg had a little brother who always did annoying things like that, which was why they never included him in their activities.

Nicky contemplated hitting the boy, at least shoving him, but knew that if his mother heard he was in a fight he
’
d be in a world of trouble. After all, he wasn
’
t even supposed to be at the candy store; it was on the main road and he was forbidden to ride his bike past the end of his residential street. If she knew he
’
d punched some kid on the main road, he
’
d be grounded for sure. And being grounded during the summer was a real bummer.