Sound

• Short story
• Horror

								
	I should never have gone to that doctor.
	Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose, but of course my sight has never been the issue. I could always see the other boys mocking me, telling their jokes, even if eventually I could no longer hear exactly what they were saying. Losing the sound of the human voice was one of the worst parts. Almost as horrible as losing the ability to play the piano.
	That’s where the rage originated — the moment I realized that I had no way of keeping up with my hands, no way of knowing whether or not I was playing the right notes. They say Beethoven was completely deaf and still composing, but I don’t know how. He must have had a lot more talent than I did.
	So the hearing went and the rage came. Of course I was angry. Who wouldn’t be, after having their life’s dream ripped away? Imagine a sculptor, halfway through his greatest statue, who loses his hands in a freak accident. Imagine an artist who paints with all the colors of the rainbow and has just had an idea for his most beautiful painting yet, only to lose his sight before he can begin.
	Imagine a teenage boy, having spent the better part of his childhood turning down invitations from friends because he wanted to practice his art, honing his skills year after year, accepted into Julliard and already touted as one of the best pianists in the country by the age of seventeen, only to have a disease that he didn’t know possessed him ravage his eardrums just a few months before he would have gotten on a plane to New York.
	I’m not excusing my tantrums, my destruction, the way I terrorized my family. But I think a little understanding is not too much to ask. I was young and didn’t know how else to get rid of the anger that kept swelling inside me. I thought then that my rage would quell with time, and indeed it has, but somehow the need to cope still exists. I suppose my coping mechanisms became a habit.
	Had I thought about what the consequences of regaining my hearing would be, I would have taken some precautions. But I had no idea what lay in store for me when I got back to my apartment, to this bedroom in particular. How could I have thought of anything else but the doctor’s words when he called me this morning? As soon as I heard the phrase “surgical cure,” there wasn’t room for anything else in my head. After all these years, to hear again — to play again!
	And yet I knew the second I stepped back into this room, head awash and brain abuzz with all of the sounds I’ve been missing for so long, that I should have waited. Even just a week more might have taken care of it. Now, you see, now I can hear everything. The cars outside. The wind in the trees. The house creaking. The scratching from inside the walls.
	How was I to know they would last so long? How was I to guess, during those fits of rage, that any of them would survive more than a few days? I believed my situation permanent, lifelong — if I had known differently, I would never have let my impulses get the better of me time and time again. I suppose they must have found water somehow; I refuse to think about what they’ve been eating. But I will stop now; I’m sure I’ll be able to. Habits are hard to break, I’ve heard, but surely now that my problem is solved, I won’t need to cope with the anguish it brought. There will be no new additions to my collection, I’m quite sure, so the problems in the walls will disappear eventually . . . although it seems it will take longer than I thought.
If only the scratching would stop! Surely fingernails can’t last very long?
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