Ears Become Eyes

[Paul de Denus]

A trickle of seepage invades my blue jeans and I shake a little from the chill that grips and cramps my lower spine, pulls me tight to the dank stench of cold concrete, the stink of mental institution and I wonder if that’s where this sewer leads. Flat on our bellies and sweating like hot-dogs in the narrowing tunnel, my nose brushes Mitchell’s rubber heels and my flashlight falters over his thin shoulder where the beam stops against dark solid air; quietly listening, I’m beginning to have second thoughts. It’s the sound of late after midnight when the house walks and shifts and settles old cracking beams and bones, when echoing rain rumbles high on the roof and everyone you love is wrapped in warm dreams, everyone but you, alone, twisted and fitful in the dark, clutching the damp crooked sheets. And it’s there in the dead of night when you are surprisingly aware, when every sense is heightened and every sound now dons some perverted face with a slanted shape and a writhing purpose, when imagination truly gives birth and your ears become eyes and for the first time you begin to see all the possibilities. Mitchell continues to babble on, something about how this was my idea in the first place and that I should now go first and I want him to shut up and listen, listen because I hear something and it sounds like it’s oozing - - as if you can hear something oozing - - a sticky clop, a detached sound and I notice my jeans are now soaked through. Mitchell’s still talking but all I hear is something coming and I’m thinking I might just back away, inch down quietly and leave Mitchell to do what he does best and that’s to talk this out on his own because he doesn’t have much of an imagination, not like me anyway and he doesn’t see it, not the way I see it.

[Jamie Hogan]

It is creepy and squirmy and yes, I'm trying to get it off of me (and it's sticky and won't come off). But holy moly is it well written. I was going to quote what Gita quoted. Damn, what a sentence. Take a bow, dude. 

[Angela]

This was surely one of your creepiest.  I felt trapped.

[Paul de Denus]

Gita & Bill- thanks for comments- when I was eleven, I actually went up a sewer -not far but far enough- and this came from that memory.

[Bill Floyd]

Fantastic!  I thought for a minute this might be a glimpse into the life of the ghosts in the walls of the haunted house, and perhaps it is.  Regardless, you achieved your aims: I squirmed.  

And that's a really apt description of the onset of panic: ears becoming eyes.  Bump in the night, indeed.

[Gita]

No one sees it like you see it, Paul.  I get clammy and claustrophobic just reading this.

It’s the sound of late after midnight when the house walks and shifts and settles old cracking beams and bones, when echoing rain rumbles high on the roof and everyone you love is wrapped in warm dreams, everyone but you, alone, twisted and fitful in the dark, clutching the damp crooked sheets. Excellent.