EAR! EAR!

Sometimes little things can happen, so small and insignificant you'd thing I'd dismiss them, but they grow into a story. Like an itchy ear

It had been a cold night, though both Dolly and Greg had been warm enough in bed, snuggling up together like they always had over winter nights.

Dolly was a sprightly and some said ridiculously youthful septuagenarian and Greg was two years older but didn’t feel it. He sighed as he heard her breathing steadily in her sleep. It was a sound he loved hearing: it meant she was both alive and contented.

And his ear started itching. Suddenly, lie ears rarely do.

Deep inside where his probing little finger couldn’t quite reach however hard he twisted it and tried to push it.

“Can’t you keep still?” mumbled Dolly.

“It’s my ear,” he complained, “there’s an itch inside it that is starting to drive me nuts and I can’t reach it.”

“Then try to forget it. It’ll go away then, when your mind’s on something else,” she told him wearily. “I need a good hour’s sleep more before I return to being a human.”

“You look lovely from where I’m lying,” he said, doing his best to gouge ever deeper into his own ear with a seventy-odd year-old finger.

“You’ll poke a hole in your eardrum at that rate,” she told him, peering in his direction. “Now do as you’re told and forget about it before all this rocking and gyrating drives me round the twist.”

“It’s only my little finger,” he replied peevishly, “if you want to help, hand me one of your hair-clips.”

“You’re not to jam one of those down your lughole!” she said fiercely, “that’s guaranteed to puncture something vital and turn you deaf, and the last thing I want is a husband who can’t hear my best nags!”

“I’ll be careful,” he assured her, but she scowled in reply and closed her eyes.

“No hair-clip and I’m going back to sleep,” she said firmly, “and you can do the same. It’s only seven o’clock and it’s Sunday and we don’t have to do anything yet. It’s still pitch dark outside, and I’ll bet the world’s frosted over, with shivering brass monkeys wandering every which way looking for welders!”

“It’s my bloody ear!” he muttered, but he did his best to leave his ear alone and get back to sleep.

Meanwhile,

Captain Ziglot of the first arm of the Munkchin Invasion Fleet rang the red alert bell. He loved doing that because he knew just how much it infuriated his crew and infuriating them somehow made up for the fact that they’d just spent a dozen quarters asleep and he’d had to stay on watch as the first arm, in close formation, charged like demented araphods across the Mighty Void at almost twice the speed of light.

Gringle, his respected first officer, staggered into the Captain’s cabin and stared at him as he continued to press the red button, a maniacal glaze in his three eyes. Everywhere in the vessel the red bell sounded, a shrieking cacophony of sound that would reverberate for at least the beating of a heart once he released the button.

And, the same location,

“Now I’ve got tinnitus,” moaned Greg, rubbing his ear violently.

“Then keep still and let me sleep,” sighed Dolly.

“But it’s driving me mad,” complained Greg, “a single whistle just inside the range of hearing like a sonic nightmare!”

“Just go to sleep,” moaned Dolly.

And, simultaneosly

Captain Ziglot stared at Gringle and shook his head. Waves of mites flew out and he blew them away with his second mouth.

“We’re landing,” the Captain told his first officer. “We entered a fusion field ages ago and the computer navigated through a mixture of gases and solids until it had slowed down enough for a soft landing, and this is it.”

“Then you can stop ringing that blasted bell,” said Gringle, “it’s driving me mad and everyone’s awake now! Have you worked out what we’re to do? Is this a planet? Or something else?” He pointed at the control panel where a single dial was flashing puce. “Look: the gravity meter is going berserk!”

“We knew there might be other dimensions somewhere,” the Captain told him, “after all, the eggheads back home reckon that anything’s possible in the hugeness of everything, even things having a totally different scale to us.”

“I’ll fugitate the landing gear then,” said Gringle. “It’s something I was specially trained for at the fugitating school.”

“It’s just a single switch,” sighed the Captain. “You fugitators like to make a big deal of it.”

“Ah, but it’s all in the timing!” grinned Gringle, winking his three eyes in what amounted to a near-erotic order.

Meanwhile,

“It’s like there’s something crawling inside my ear, and shrieking to be let out,” moaned Greg, and his spat on the little finger of his right hand and probed as deeply into his ear as he could with it.

“What are you doing? Trying to drown something that isn’t there with your filthy spit?” smiled Dolly, realising that she was unlikely to get any more sleep that morning and accepting the fact with the virtuous patience displayed by all women everywhere.

“My spit isn’t dirty!” protested Greg, and: “hey! I think I nudged something deep inside my lug-hole! I wonder what it is?”

“A flea off the back of a bigger flea?” surmised Dolly with what, had she known, remarkable insight.

But, at the same moment,

“There’s something wrong!” shouted Gringle, “did you feel that?”

“We moved,” agreed the Captain, “I thought your one skill was excellence in fugitating, so what’s gone wrong?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way I fugitate!” barked Gringle, deeply offended. “I passed all my exams with the highest honours and I can out-fugitate anyone you care to name!”

“Then what’s going on?” demanded the Captain, and he jammed his thumb on the blue button and kept it there.

“An extreme emergency?” asked Gringle. “How did you came to that conclusion?”

“Well,” replied Captain Ziglot carefully, “we seem to be almost stuck in what appears to be a viscous mountain of something waxy. I’m going to operate emergency escape procedures and find somewhere else. We may need to effect repairs to the emergency systems!”

The humming of the alarm filled the air all around them, turning the windows a fascinating shade of emergency blue.

And, not a moment later,

“I’ve had enough of this!” decided Greg with uncharacteristic firmness, “I’ll go mad if I don’t get rid of my itch!”

“Don’t give yourself brain damage,” smiled Dolly, “not that anyone would be able to tell,” she added.

Greg spat on the palm of his own hand and looked at the little glob of spittle as it pooled, sparkling as the first light of a cloudless dawn found its way between a gap in their curtains.

Then he banged it with a strange fury against his ear.

And,

“It’s gone!” he announced, “just like that, it’s gone!”

But, surprisingly

“Hey! That’s not fair!” scolded Dolly, “suddenly, like a switch has been turned on, I’ve got an itch in my ear, and it just isn’t fair!”

Whilst, deafeningly,

“Abandon ship!” screamed Captain Ziglot, “I know what it is, and we’re doomed!”

“What is it then?” demanded First Officer Gringle.

“We’re in a dimension of giants!” shouted Ziglot, “Everything points to one thing: we’ve landed on a world where everything has been scaled up and according to the computer that gloopy stuff was … was … was….”

“Was what?” asked Gringle.

“Earwax,” moaned the Captain, “alien earwax.”

© Peter Rogerson 18.12.17