by Jack Vondell

horror fiction 1700 word

I don’t know if any of you can hear me. But I have to tell you my story. I don’t really know where I am. It’s a strange, unworldly, and eerie place. Not really a place, actually, more like sort of another realm. It’s dry and hot here. Above me there is a sort of dull gray mist. Over one horizon, there is orange light like the end of a sunset. Over the other horizon, there is a bright slightly yellow light, like very early sunrise. Below me, it’s dark and there are short flames everywhere. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but it seems kind of new. There are many other people here. Well, not people, actually, more like disembodied souls floating around complaining about the heat and pain. I know a few, but most are strangers. Oh, there’s pain. It’s steady, then comes and goes, and them gets steady again. Other folks told me I’m dead and this is where they put you to wait until they decide where you go next. I sort of remember where I was before I got her.

My name is Marcia. I guess I had a pretty good earthly life. I grew up in America and won a beauty pageant once. Toured my region for a year and smiled a lot. Then I went to a prestigious music conservatory to try to become an opera singer. Finally made it and toured Europe with an opera company for a while. Around age forty, I got diabetes and began losing my hearing. Also I was a little less pretty than I used to be. That’s a serious problem in this business. So I went back to America and took a teaching job at a college guiding emerging school choir directors. Doctors treated my diabetes with daily pills, but told me I’d have to go to daily needles in a year. During that same dime, my audiologist—so she called herself—was less than pleasant. This Dr. Weezil Rubberton told me I needed a pair of eight thousand dollar hearing aids and my medical insurance would not pay for them. At my next appointment, she installed and adjusted these new devices and charged me another hundred and fifty dollars. It was awful. They shrieked and screeched. I could barely understand the distorted words.

“It’s too loud in the upper range,” I told her.

She said, “you just think it’s too loud because you’re not used to hearing high sounds. That’s normal at this time. Your brain needs to adapt to the way things sound now. Understand that your beauty won’t cause everything to be the way you want them.”In two months we’ll adjust them again.”

I thought, you stupid frequency juggler. I sing in that range, you scrawny scarecrow.

I couldn’t sing with these things. My voice sounded terrible to me, like grating pieces of rough metal. So I took them off to sing. At my next appointment, I told her that.

“You can’t do that,” she said. “You have to leave them on so your brain adapts properly.

“The upper range is way too loud and distorts every low sound,” I said.

She adjusted them. “That should take care of the feedback.”

“It’s not feedback. The upper and lower ranges are not in good balance. It’s all treble and no bass.”

“You’re hearing more upper frequencies now. That’s what makes it sound like too much treble. You have severe hearing loss. Just because you sing doesn’t mean that you hear any better than anyone else. It takes a long time to retrain your brain to learn to hear with hearing aids.”

I was weary of trying to get this fumble fanny to understand me and turn the high frequencies down more. But she kept preaching how wonderful it was that I could hear higher frequencies so much better than before. She was becoming maddeningly frustrating for yet another hundred and fifty dollars. I left in despair and tried to endure. So I complained and made another appointment.

“After this adjustment, you’ll have to give e eight weeks before you request another change,” she said as she turned down the middle high frequencies.”

“There’s a high squeak on every syllable,” I told her.

“That’ll just fade away. All my patients over twenty-five years have reported t hat those sounds just fade into the background.”

I didn’t believe her. But I didn’t know what else to say. So I left, willing to try it out. That night, when I took the hearing aids out, I heard a high note in my head. I went to my piano and discovered it was a high C6. It scared me. It took me a long time to go to sleep. In the morning it was still there. My days, nights, and work life were becoming a horror movie and I was the character. My dreams were taking on even more surreal psychological horror. It was like this frightening doctor was evil demon destroying my life before I was even forty-five years old.

Some time went by but the high note never resolved. I was under terrible stress. My diabetes doctor put me on the needle. I had to start each day with an insulin shot somewhere in my body. I couldn’t teach, I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t relax. Twice a week I’d think about dying and then pull out of it for a while. But my hearing and my life was spiraling downward.

My next audiology appointment turned out to be my last. She began by telling me my brain this and my brain that. I had to practice listening more. It won’t sound like natural speech for a log time yet. Music will definitely sound different. She said she couldn’t actually hear what I hear; she could only adjust based on what I told her. Well, I had been telling this damn stupid quack what to adjust for many sessions now and she had been deliberately trying to destroy my hearing. I was livid and terrified. Then she made an adjustment and I heard my hearing aids shriek like a two year old demon baby in a store.

She leaned into my face and said “I just set your channels way up. Your hearing aids are now perfect for your hearing condition. Now I don’t want to see y’all again for three months. Your brain has to adjust to this last setting.”

I exploded! “Go to hell, you vile deplorable ear cockroach!” I screamed. “You’re not gonna walk away from this unscathed.”

“I think you better leave,” she barked.

#

I got up, left the office and began heading down the hall toward the lobby. She followed behind me. There was no one else in sight. Suddenly, rage overtook me. I turned and jammed a ballpoint pen into her throat. She gasped, tried to talk but couldn’t. She staggered but did not fall. I swung down hard on the bridge of her nose. Blood spurted quickly and profusely. She was stunned and made no sound. There was an open door to an unoccupied room right next to us. I pushed her in and closed the door. She fell onto a chair. She looked unconscious. But she was breathing and had a pulse. Now was my moment for revenge.

Without hearing, my life was destroyed. She was not going to get away with this. I was going to damage her life as well. There was a sharp pencil on the table. I grabbed it and poked it all the way into her ear. Then I did the same with the other ear. Blood flowed from both ears and dripped onto her shoulders. I wiped the pencil on her lab coat and stuck it in my hair. My rage was not yet finished.

I saw her unconscious eyes still open. She’ll think about me for the rest of her life. I put my thumbs into the nose side corners of her eyes and quickly popped her eyeballs out of their sockets. Her eyeballs hung dangling on strings of tissue. There were scissors on the table. Within seconds, her eyeballs rolled down her body and dropped onto the floor. One was close to my foot so I stepped on it. It burst and its fluid squirted from under my shoe. Putting the scissors into my pocket, I felt an excited adrenaline rush. I opened the door and looked around. There was no one in sight. The doctor was groaning, just beginning to regain consciousness. I quickly made my way out of the building and into my car.

On my way through the streets, I saw a liquor store. I stopped and bought three bottles of wine and a large bottle of bourbon. I put them in the car and drove on until I came to a small grocery market. I quickly gathered up a box of sugar cubes, some boxes of Little Debby cakes, three bags of little powdered sugar donuts, a big handful of chocolate candy bars, two big bottles of cola, and a big bottle of ginger ale to mix with the bourbon. Rushing through the checkout, I dashed to the car and drove off. I figured police might be looking for me by then. So I didn’t go home. I went to the nearby national forest and disappeared off the dirt roads. I decided not take my insulin shot that night or the next day. My life was over. But I had taken vengeance on that wretched ear quack for what she did to me. I parked in a secluded place and began consuming my alcohol and sugar snacks. I ramped up my blood sugar and let my diabetes take me where it would.

I never expected to be where I am telling you my story. But now I se that Dr. Weezil Ruberton is here all dressed up in her demonic finery. She wasn’t really an audiologist after all.