Car crashes have a smell. They don’t tell you that in driving school. There’s lots of things the world doesn’t tell you. They smell like burnt metal and petrol. The sickly sweet of metallic blood hangs in the air with an undernote of burning flesh that twists your stomach into knots. You smell it before you feel it. All your nerves go to sleep as the dread pools within you and the stink claws at you. Even now, years later, I can still smell it.
The stench isn’t the only thing I’m left with from that awful crash. A trauma lingers, from a friend who didn’t make it, twisted beyond recognition. That, and my hearing. As my friend’s car smashed with that red Vauxhall, I entered a world of silence. I could hear only slightly. Voices came like low brass drums and anything quieter than a shout I could not hear at all.
I was never very good at listening. I suppose this was some divine lesson. My girlfriends would speak to me and it would go in one ear and out the other. My mother said I was such a disobedient child. I never listened to instructions, to teachers or authority. There is humour in the world’s justice. Now I’d do anything to listen…
But there was a way out of the silent, unbecoming nothing. The doctor said I was a good candidate for a cochlear implant. While my hearing would never return to normal, he promised that I would soon be able to listen to my mother’s voice again. The price tag was high, yet I’d have paid double if they’d only asked.
Getting an implant is an out-patient procedure. They perform it under general anaesthesia and slip the implant in through a little cut behind your ear. Then they fit you with a device that goes around the ear and hey presto, you can hear again.
Except it’s not the same, not really.
The voices sound strange, like they’re echoing around in an empty copper tin. Sometimes they’re almost robotic, distorted and cold.
“You’ll get used to it.” The doctor had said. “It works better for some than others, yet it appears to have worked exceptionally well in your case based on the range of your hearing.”
In hindsight, it might have worked a little too well.
The novelty of my returned hearing lasted a good few months. My mum called me three times a day as I loved the sound of her voice. My dad’s brought me less pleasure. His voice was so deep it seemed to burrow into my soul. I couldn’t listen to music. It was hard to follow the lyrics. Google assured me this was perfectly normal.
Then I heard it. It was only faint. I was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and marvelling at the distant tooting of owls.
“There’s a knife in the cupboard.” The voice said. It was almost like a spoken-word poem, calm and whispered. This voice was neither tinny nor distorted. It was perfect and smooth. It would have been a pleasure to hear, were it not so terrifying. “Long and sharp.”
I called the doctor. He told me it was probably my neighbours. I live in an apartment with poor sound insulation. His suggestion made sense to me. The cochlear would also enhance noises I didn’t want to hear.
“Do not fear. I am your doctor. I will help you.” He said to me, “Anything you need, I am here.”
Then I heard it in my office.
“Father, they have gotten it all wrong.” It said in a voice tinged with arrogance. “They think this world was made, not born.”
Put it out of mind. I continued with my work. I ignored the standing hairs on the back of my neck. It was a conversation down the hall. Had to be. Then it came to me again, on the toilet of all places. It was hauntingly clear.
“Why must eyes shut to see? And ears close to hear?” It said, menacingly. “Countless years of mindless propagation…for what? The splendid fruits of your labour despise you and the rotten apples that have fallen to the ground adore you. To what end was this order formed? No wisdom can guess.”
Sleepless nights followed. The voice did not come again for three nights, and when it did it was different. Almost feminine.
“I waited at the sepulchre Rabboni, yet you did not come. Where have they taken him, I asked, but they did not say.” It said, etched with pain.
So it was that the voice became… voices. They grew more frequent, more terrifying.
“I am innocent of the blood. I have washed my hands of it. It is what they asked, not me.” It said, thick and heavy. “It was not me… not me…. I’m sorry… I am so sorry.”
And another, more confusing than the last.
“He is old. Too old, and alone by your own reckoning. Is he to lay with salt? Is it not by your design that he should have a wife? but instead he has only daughters.” A female voice said, indignant. “What are we to do… two daughters who love their father… with no mother to warm his bed…”
I went back to the doctor. He examined my implant. He told me it was working well. I told him that it was working too well. I told him about the voices and he told me to go to a psychiatrist.
“I’m not crazy.” I said to him, eyes wide with terror. “It’s the implant. Take it out… take it out!”
“I can remove it, if that is your true desire, but tell me, do you really want that?” He asked me. I thought back to the silence and how it had engulfed me in it’s great nothingness. No, I don’t want that. Never that.
So I lived with the voices and sometimes it felt like they drowned everything out. Work was getting harder, mum was getting worried. I didn’t answer the phone as much anymore. I jammed tinfoil in my ears when the voices came. They were quieter, but still they whispered to me.
“Ignorance is their happy state. The remaining proof of their obedience… their faith.” It said, low and ominous. “Inexplicable, your justice seems.”
I tried to ignore them, but it was hard. Would silence be better than this?
“I have paid with suffering. Engendered worms nibble on my nethers and rot spills out from within me. I ask, have I not paid? Am I due more? How much must I endure?” Another voice said, tinged with agony.
Then it came. Another voice, except familiar. I jolted upright, terror coiling like a snake within me.
“I am too young to die. I do not deserve this. I only wanted to get home for kick-off. I shouldn’t have driven so fast… I shouldn’t have… it’s dark…so dark. I want my mum.” The voice of my friend said. “There’s nothing here. It’s so cold. It hurts… this fire that I cannot see… it burns.”
I went back to the doctor, my mind was made up. The voices followed me from the car park into the waiting lobby and finally through to his office.
“There is a knife in the cupboard!” They shouted as one.
“The mortal taste brought death into the World, and all our woe.” Another said. “My world is black, and yours shall be quiet. They will speak to you even then. They are always speaking, all at once. Not to you… not to you… to him. To him!”
The doctor looked at me. He surveyed me. My eyes were thick with bags and my pupils had swelled to round black dots. He did not look surprised, merely bemused.
“I know who you are.” I said to him,
“You are weary and burdened. Come to me.” He said. The white of his coat almost glowed as the light caught it. He held his arms out for me, his stethoscope glinting. “I can give you rest.”
“Take it out.” I pointed at my ear.
“There is a knife in the cupboard. Do it for us, do it for father. For my salt mother!” A woman shouted.
“I did not ask for this… I did only as I was commanded. The injustice is his, not mine!” Another called.
“He cast me down, now you he!” The first voice that had ever spoken to me cried out.
“The tomb was empty.” A weeping woman cried.
“I am cold… so cold.” My friend said to me.
I looked behind the doctor, at the cupboard door that was slightly ajar. It glistened there, sharp and pointy. The knife.
“You don’t want me to take it out. You need help… salvation. You need me.” He said.
“I need quiet.” I said. I thought of that formless black nothing, that endless silence. I wanted it. I needed it. So did he.
I grabbed the knife. He stood up straight, his back arched upright. He smiled. He did not fear me. I was too little to fear. The knife slipped from my hand and the voices dimmed into nothing but their silence brought only terror. I was alone. So alone.
“All will be well.” The doctor said as a bright warm light engulfed me. “I am the same today as I was yesterday, the same in old as I was in new. I have given you ears to hear and eyes to see. I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.”