Ears

 by P.A. Baines

“Look at their ears.”

Carl stares down at the words on the page for a moment and chuckles quietly to himself. He glances around as if to share the joke with someone but he is alone. The shop is deserted apart from the severe-looking cashier pretending not to keep an eye on him over her horn-rimmed glasses. Dusty shelves crammed to overflowing lean towards him as if to share a secret. Outside, the rain is persisting and the alley is as empty as it was when he stumbled in a quarter of an hour earlier.

He flips to the book’s cover. “The Path to Self Discovery”. A man’s head is looking up towards some invisible star, his face obscured by a silver blue aura. The author’s name sounds Indian. It hints at some deep, mystical knowledge.

“Look at people’s ears and imagine how they would appear to someone who has never seen ears before. Soon you will only see ears.”

Carl shrugs and replaces the book, in a gap between “Find Your True Being” and “Live the Blessed Life”. It is a tight fit and he has to wriggle it a little. He feels the cashier’s eyes in the back of his head.

He checks his watch and realizes he only has a few minutes left before the end of his lunch break. The rain has let up but is still driving rivulets down the window. Someone scuttles past the door--raincoat collar pulled up high over ears.

“Look. . .”

Carl strolls along the aisle, his eyes roaming the sea of titles. Many have similar themes. The words “self”, “love”, “power” and “life” repeat more often than most. Some are new. Many look ancient. A vaguely musty smell teases his nostrils. At the back wall he comes to a section filled with titles about healing using everything from crystals and visualisation, to sounds and even colors. This leads into books about relationships, friendship, marriage, and one or two that make him look away with embarrassment. He hurries a little here, until he comes to a shelf with books on unsolved mysteries: the Yeti, the Loch Ness, pyramids, UFOs and aliens.

He reaches up, allowing his hand to touch the spines, and hesitates. He feels suddenly foolish.

As an actuary for a large insurance company he has little time for flights of fancy. His world revolves around numbers and formulas, odds and statistics, tables and charts. His days are filled with histograms, standard deviations, and risk assessments. Ordinarily he has no interest in such things as UFOs or aliens. It is a revelation to him that so much time and energy has been spent on things which are, to use a term he understands, outside his sample population.

He becomes aware that the rain has stopped and also that his break finished three minutes ago. The woman watches him leave. His polite smile is not returned.

Back at the office his mind returns to the real world, but his normally solid concentration is as slippery as an eel and he catches himself gazing out of the window more than once.

* * *

The next day at lunchtime Carl is the first out of the office. He has been distracted all morning and decides he needs fresh air. He heads to the park and takes the first available bench.

The sun bathes him in gentle warmth and he breathes deeply. Out on the lake, a family of swans probes the dark water for food. Beyond that a dog chases a ball as if it were the last thing on Earth. A slow but steady trickle of office workers invades the grass in a casual land-grab.

The soft pounding of rubber on gravel approaches and he turns to watch a young woman in a tracksuit and headband jog breathlessly past. Her ponytail and headphone wire bounce in unison to a barely-audible back-beat. He hair is pulled up high on her head, revealing her . . .

“. . . ears”

Suddenly he becomes aware of just how strange her ears really are. Like fleshy pipes adorned with blobs of skin stuck onto the sides of her head. He stares at them--fascinated. They remind him of absurd pink mushrooms. Everything else about her is perfectly normal--except for those weird attachments.

He laughs out loud, which is something he never does. It is a snorty kind of laugh, bordering on a sneeze. It is the kind of sound you make when you something is both funny and ridiculous at the same time.

He looks around to see if anyone else has noticed. Surely someone. . . An elderly couple approach--walking their dog--in the same direction as the jogger. He looks at them to see if they have noticed, but they are engrossed in their walk. They are both watching their dog sniffing at the verge. They watch it the way a young couple watches a toddler. Suddenly he notices the man’s ears. They are bigger than the jogger’s with more flesh at the end of the tube. The man's white hair and bald patch emphasise their pinkness and Carl lets out a small snicker.

They turn and glare at him and he looks away, all red in the face. As they stalk off he cannot help but stare some more. They are truly grotesque.

At the next bench a serious-looking man is reading the newspaper. Immaculately dressed in suit and tie--his hair freshly cut. His leather suitcase sits at his feet, reflecting off his polished shoes. The paper rustles in his hands--a broadsheet--as he turns the page. It is the Financial Times. Must be a banker. Or a stockbroker. Looks like he drives a big executive car. Probably lives in an up-market part of the city. Possibly a house in the country.

In his mind’s eye Carl plots this man on a distribution curve. Expensive house and car. Secure neighbourhood. State of the art burglar alarm . . .

The man turns away, placing the newspaper sideways on the bench, looking down as he shifts his weight onto one buttock.

They are small, with narrow pipes and skinny lobules. Skin pale against his black hair. . .

“No!”

Carl forces himself to look away. This is ridiculous. He returns to his office, not stopping off for his usual sandwich. He avoids looking at people, and closes the blinds in his room.

* * *

In Carl's dream, he is in a crowd. Rain is tumbling onto his shoulders from the umbrellas of those around him. He turns to find a way out but he is hemmed in. He looks around but cannot see their faces. All are dressed the same. Black raincoats. Black umbrellas. He looks up. He has no umbrella; the only one who has no umbrella. The rain spatters his face and he blinks at he dark sky. He wipes his face with the back of his hand.

He looks around but they all have their backs turned. His muffled calls go unnoticed. They cannot hear him even though they have such big. . .

. . . ears as big as his hand. Huge fleshy mounds that dominate the side of their heads, hanging down onto their shoulders. Ears as big as buckets, pushing back and around until the stalks touch and he cannot see their heads anymore. Until the two are joined into one enormous ear.

He screams at them but they cannot hear. He screams until he finds himself upright, awake in his bed, the sweat trickling down his back.

* * *

“It’s their ears,” he says. He sits with his head turned and his eyes averted. “It’s all I can see.”

“So, when did you start noticing . . . ears?”
The voice is calm. The voice is patient. The voice comes from years of practice. It is designed to soothe raw and exposed nerves. It belongs to a face Carl only dared to look at for the briefest of moments as he came in. In case he should see. . .

“Two days ago. I read something in a book. It started out as a joke.”

The wall is adorned with certificates. Diplomas. Degrees. A doctorate in psychiatry. A photograph of a happy family. All smiles in front of a cloudy, blue background. No mental health problems in that picture. Just ears.

Carl whimpers and forces himself to look away.

“It seems to me you have developed a fixation. You say you are an actuary?”

“Yes.”

“And you describe yourself as something of a perfectionist?”

“Yes. I guess I would.”

The office is filled plants and ornaments. It looks like an office you might find in someone’s home. There is a lot of wood. The colours are warm.

“Would you say you are a stickler for detail?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you get upset over small things?”

“Well yes, I suppose I do. But I’m not obsessive if that’s what you’re driving at. At least I don’t think I am.”

The shapes in the office are soft and smooth. The ornaments are tasteful. No sharp edges anywhere. The one on the table under the window is a mahogany carving. It is a stylised rendition of a woman and child. The shapes are vague, the curves exaggerated. Yet it is still possible--if you look closely enough--to make out what looks like . . .

"Please, no!"

“I’m going to prescribe some medication. Take this slip to the receptionist. She will give you the relevant forms. I want to see you again next week.”

Carl leans towards the doctor to take the slip. He keeps his head lowered to avoid looking. He forces himself to stare at the polished oak coffee table that separates them--so polished he can see his own reflection as clearly as if he were looking into a mirror. His and that of the doctor. The doctor who has the biggest ears he has ever seen.

He lets out a short, sharp scream and jumps back into the chair. The doctors ears are enormous. Even from the front they stick out like slabs of beef.

“Now calm down,” the doctor says, leaning closer. “There’s no need to get upset.”

“No.” Carl stares at the doctor with wide eyes. “Don’t come near me.”

But it is not just the ears. It is also the nose that now fills Carl with repulsion. The thing just sits on the man’s face, pointing at Carl like a fleshy accuser, above lips. Lips like rotten hamburgers smacking open and closed as he makes that awful sound. All the time watching him with bulbous, bug eyes.

“Assistance please,” the doctor calls into an intercom.

“No. Don’t come near me,” Carl cries, crawling backwards as the doctor approaches with fat, puffy fingers clawing towards him.

Then the door opens and three orderlies appear. They too have the same horrendous features. Hamburger lips smack in unison as they approach. One has a syringe.

“Please stay calm. We just need to give something to help you relax.”

* * *

In his dream, Carl is in a crowd. It is the same crowd as in his last dream. Same umbrellas. Same coats. He is alone without his umbrella and the rain pours onto his shoulders. He blinks into the rain and feels the cool water against his skin.

He wipes his eyes dry and looks around. This time they are looking at him. Their ears, nose, lips and eyes are monstrous caricatures and he no longer recognises them as human. They shuffle towards him, squawking and screeching in some maddening alien tongue, their hamburger lips slapping open and closed.

He pulls back, but they are too solid. They close in on him, crushing the breath from his lungs.

Their fingers touch his face. Spindly claws grope his cheeks and pull his hair.

He tries to scream but he cannot. He tries to breathe in but his chest will not expand. The world swims before his eyes.

* * *

Carl wakes slowly, rising through the haze like a swimmer towards the sun. There are shapes and sounds all around him. He recognises voices. Normal voices.

“He’s coming around, look.”

There are only vague shapes in front of his eyes. Colours blurred into each other.

“Hello? Are you all right?”

The shape becomes a pinkish oval with smaller black objects inside. The black objects move in time to the voice.

“Don’t worry friend. You’ll be fine.”

The shapes become eyes and lips. Carl is relieved to see that they look like normal lips and eyes.

“Here he comes. Back to the real world, eh?”

A face comes into focus. It peers closely, like a child examining a bug. The eyes are blue and clear. The lips normal. The nose looks like a nose. And the ears. . .
. . .the ears are normal! They don’t stand out, or stick out, or look even remotely odd.

“Hi there. You back with us now?”

“What. . . what happened? I remember a needle.”

“You’re with friends now. I'm Luke”

“Where am I? And how did I get here?”

Carl tries to move but he feels restricted and it is still hard to breathe. For a second the nightmare sensation of being trapped returns. He realises that he is wearing a coat of some sort, but his arms are tied to his sides.

“A straight-jacket? Why am I wearing a straight-jacket?”

“We all get them here,” Luke says. “Part of the uniform I’m afraid.”

Carl notices that Luke is also wearing a straight-jacket. There are other people in the room. All are wearing the same. One or two smile at him from where they are sitting. Some are watching a television high up on the wall. Some are just sitting, staring at the windows. The windows all have bars.

“What’s going on? Where am I? Where’s my doctor.”

“He probably put you in here mate.”

“You don’t understand. I’m not insane. I just had . . .”

“A fixation?”

There is a noise outside the door. The rattle of keys in the lock. The others in the room become agitated and they all turn to look.

Two men dressed in doctors' uniforms enter, pushing a trolley loaded with cups and bottle of pills. They make the same screeching noise from his nightmare. And they have the same dreadful features. Ears, nose, eyes and lips. Hamburger lips.

“What are those things?” Carl whimpers, recoiling in horror.

“Who are they?”

Luke leans closer, as if to share a secret.

“Their ears. Just look at their ears.”

THE END

Final Word

How great was that? Be sure to catch the interview with Paul. And if you missed any of our other special features, including works by Ted Dekker, Bill Myers and Tosca Lee, you can find them here.