Tinnitus
by Ross Showalter
When he leaves, I curl up, knees to my chest, under covers. Light dapples the ceiling, an easy gathering of ghosts.
I hear cars pass by my apartment building. I take out my hearing aids and leave them on my nightstand. There is still the audible rumble of an approaching vehicle, the growling, guttural chuckle of an idling engine. I take it in. It is good to be reminded there is a future beyond this, I think. I can summon myself upright and be of service to anyone, anyone. I can be alive to the world, I tell myself.
I notice that I hear car engines constantly. Their buzz is octaves lower than the squealing I live with, the tinnitus that persists. I bury my head under covers, underwater in the bath, under the shitty pillows that came with the loveseat my parents bought me. Nothing helps. It sounds like my world is being torn apart. My apartment sits in purgatory, blanketed in shades of grey, never direct shadow, never direct light. It is a constant reminder of the outside, and it feels cruel now. I haven’t worn my hearing aids since he left me, kissed me, told me with his mouth, good luck; we couldn’t communicate, but best of luck, beautiful. The spot where his guitar used to be is just another corner. I want to be left in peace, but I don’t want to be alone. Car engines are better than his voice, any voice, so many voices, so many voices lingering in this apartment.
I am in the bath when the first laugh comes. I feel it, spreading from my sternum upwards. It reverberates like the way my lover laughed when he was on top of me, spent inside me, kissing my nape and making me shiver. My hearing aids are in the other room.
I slide under the surface, wanting to block everything out. My ears flood. I pry my eyes open underwater, and the world wobbles and warps before me; I can almost see the body of my past standing by the bathtub, looking over me—a distortion of shadow. I have to surface. I don’t want to drown.
I touch myself, I cum; my cum floats in the bathwater, another pale apparition.
I towel off. The street outside is deserted, streetlights cutting through night. I still hear car engines, a static, a presence. My hearing aids gleam in the silvery bend of light. I put them on, and I don’t hear anything; the apartment is silent, no vibrations or laughter. It feels hollow, like the way I have felt for hours, days, more.
I think I see flickers of movement, a quick pass of grey through a swirl of dust. Floorboard creaks are the only thing my hearing aids pick up.
Please, I say to the shadows, to the movements. I feel as if I am about to fall off a cliff, and I don’t know what’s below. I will be swallowed. Please don’t do this to me, I say.
The bathroom door swings open, bumps against the wall—a familiar shadow stretches in the rectangle of light. The haunting is inevitable. The haunting is here. I take out my hearing aids. The clock declares this moment as 12:06 AM. I close my eyes. I wait.
Another laugh, vibrating against my back and in my ear. My past is back, his nose grazing my earlobe, his tongue swirling in the spot right below. For the first time since he walked out, I feel pain, a burning with nothing to extinguish it. I don’t want to be alone, but not like this. Not like this.
My hearing aids are gone. They’re not in my hands. I open my eyes and I can’t find them. I can’t find my escape. I will hear the past again and again, even if I don’t want to.
Please let me be, I sob, unheard to everyone, unheard to my past lover, unheard to myself. Please.
The apartment is still. No movement. No shadows. There is only sound, within me and around me; there is cold laughter and the buzzing from outside. There is the memory of it, the ache of it. There is always sound.
Ross Showalter's work has appeared in Electric Literature, Strange Horizons, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Seattle, Washington.
