The lost boy gripped the handle bars of his bike. His
objective was to get home and he could feel an adrenaline rush throughout his
body. His eyes were shiny and with a smile, he pumped his legs up and down to
generate speed on his mountain bike.
It
was three in the morning that he left work and as he turned off the highway he
thought how wonderful it was now that he wouldn’t have to stare at the bright
headlights of incoming cars. It would be country roads all the way to his
house. He shook the anxiety of being hit by a car and biked faster down the
country road. He thought of himself as the Midnight Biker because he biked at
night and it made him feel like a gunslinger.
He
felt the wind hit his face and wiped the sweat from his cheeks. Suddenly,
something flew in his ear and he lost control. The kid fell off his bike and collapsed
onto the pavement. He looked around, realizing he was in the middle of the road
and felt pain in his knee as well as something moving in his ear canal. He
could hear chewing and the fluttering that sounded like wings. It was trying to
move even further down his ear canal and it hurt.
There
was a light at the end of the dark tunnel for the gunslinger. He walked to a
well-lit house that was about a hundred feet away, across the street. The
fluttering and chewing continued and he thought it was going to reach his
brain.
The biker knocked at the door, but
nobody answered. He became impatient and
scared as he knocked again, but harder.
“Come
on,” he cried.
Suddenly,
he saw the door bell, and hit it. He waited until two people came to the door
and they looked at him apprehensively. One was a man wearing his pajamas and
held a handgun. His wife was behind him
in her nightgown and they huddled behind the door.
“Can we help you?” asked the man.
The
Midnight Biker cried, “there’s something in my ear and I want to know if you
can see it?”
He
could see the man was determined not just to protect his house and
wife, but also to kill anyone who bothered him late at
night to look in someone’s ear.
“I don’t see anything,” answered the man.
“I’m not putting on a show, and have no
interest in robbing you. I have
something in my ear!”
Slowly
the man came out from his door to get a better look at the biker. He looked confused at him and thought he was
insane. He cocked his gun as though he was expecting anything.
“No I
don’t see anything,” he answered.
The
gunslinger felt anguish because there was no way to show what was in his ear.
He wished he had some way to prove it, but even he didn’t know what was in his
ear. It probably was a small bat and it was trying to squeeze into his ear to
create a nest. That’s all the lost boy needed,
a bat making a home in his brain.
“Where
do you live?” asked the man.
The young man cried in pain as he
pointed to the road, “I just live up the road from here!”
The
pain and fluttering of the insect living in his ear hurt. The lost boy could
not determine what it was like to experience the pain with any other specific
feeling. He gathered what strength he
had to get home.
“Will
you be all right?” asked the man.
The
lost boy let out a sigh as he touched his right ear with agony and lied, “I’ll
be fine.”
As he
left, he knew he made himself look like an ass by going to a stranger’s house
complaining that something was in his ear when they couldn’t see what was in
his ear in the first place.
He
could not bike the same as he did before the incident. He was unbalanced for what seemed like an
eternity of madness.
When
he got home, he cried, “mother, mother, I have something in my ear!”
His
mother woke up to see what her son was screaming about. It was five in the
morning and she was half asleep. Her warm tenderness calmed him down and tried
to figure out what was wrong.
“I
don’t see anything, try using the water in the faucet or Q-Tips,” she
suggested.
To be continued. . . .
Available on The Legacy Anthology, Blue Dragon Fantasy; Faded Memories and Short Stories" and on Kindle.
"The Insect Behind My Eye"
Red and Blue Dragon Fantasy LLC.
Ryan Keith Johnson
Copy Right 2012, 2015
All Rights Reserved.
