A Very Bad Day

It was the very best kind of Friday.  It was summertime in Florida, and I lived just ten miles from the beach.  My classes at law school were done for the week, and I could do just about anything a young woman could wish.  And on this particular Friday evening, I wished to goof off on the internet, so that is what I did.  I reclined on my bed, my laptop opened, appropriately enough, on my lap.  I had a box of crackers at my right hip and cold green tea on the windowsill to my left.  I was more than ready for a day of doing absolutely nothing but be as lazy and gross as everyone is when no one is around. 

I started out slowly.  After all, one must not strain one’s self.  I decided to wear a grungy tee and some underwear with puffs, snarls, and loose elastic thread hanging from the waist.  Next, I pulled my shoulder-length hair into two pigtails that stuck out from the sides of my head like half lollipops.  I had washed my face and considered using a pore-minimizing mask, but decided that it was too much of an effort.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll take a hot bath and use a mask while drinking wine coolers, so I can at least pretend to be an adult.  After that horrifying thought, I just had to pick my nose.  Not just a simple scratch and rub, either.  I mean a deep-down mining for gold kind of picking.  It is amazing how much better I can breathe when I pull out a booger that is larger than the tip of my pinky.  And the feeling of joy when I roll it into a ball and flick it off my fingers is incomparable to anything else.  It did not even stick to my fingers they way some of them are wont to do. 

I had moved on to scratching inside my right ear when I heard a little scream.  Not little as in short, but little as in very, very small.  I paused and listened, but all I could hear was traffic.  Shrugging, I went back to trying to remove an irritating piece of dried and dead skin from my ear canal.  I felt the irritating thing finally move.  Sighing with relief, I dragged it out and looked at what had been bothering me for so long.  Oh gross, blood, I thought.  *I must have scratched a scab or something.  I probably should have trimmed my nails before I went digging.*  I was about to flick the flake away, when I noticed something in the smear of blood that seemed…unusual. 

For me, normal flakes are white, and if they are part of a scab, as I assumed this one to be, a dark spot of dried blood.  But on this particular flake, I noticed something blue.  I leaned over to flip on the reading lamp, nearly dumping my laptop in the process.  I closed the machine and set it safely at the foot of the bed.  Holding my finger under the light, I squinted at the smear.  Cursing the fact that I hadn’t had my glasses prescription updated for about five years, I strained to make out the little shape.  Were those tiny blue pants? * Why would there be tiny blue pants in my ear? And why do they look lumpy?*

At this point, I started to panic.  I jumped up, still holding my finger like it had just been bitten by a rattlesnake and I did not want the poison to spread, I ran for the bathroom.  The wax on my fingertip must have held the skin flake in place, because it was still there when I reached the sink.  Desperate to believe that the past minute never happened, I turned on the water and washed my hands over and over. 

Somehow, and believe me I don’t know how, but I must have fallen asleep sitting on the bathroom floor.  I woke up with my cheek pressed into the edge of the counter, my left hand gripping the sink, and the right dangling beside me.  I tried to stand, and promptly stumbled against the counter.  My legs were asleep, just wonderful.  I turned the tap off, mentally thanking both the Homeowners Association for not charging me for water usage, and my sink for not clogging.  I did not know how long I had been out; when I looked in the mirror, I saw a red scar-like crease running from the top of my cheek bone to the top of my lip.  I rubbed it, hoping that it would not turn into a bruise. 

I turned my face a little more to the side when I noticed a red smear under my ear.  No no no no no.  Not again!  I fought rising panic as I leaned toward the mirror to examine my ear.  Maybe I had been hallucinating before, maybe I had just scratched myself.

The streak was short, it ran out of my ear canal, down my earlobe, and just barely dripped onto my jaw line.  But there was something mixed in with the blood, it looked like tiny pink and white smears.  Did I pop a zit in my ear?  That would be gross, but I could live with it.  I reached into my ear to try and clean out the drying blood. *Gee, I must not have been passed out for too long if this stuff isn’t dry.*  But once again, I felt something that didn’t belong in any ear. 

I withdrew my finger and examined the tip once again, this time there was a tiny dark ball of something attached with wax and blood.  I rubbed my thumb and fingertip together to try and spread the ball out.  Once flattened, I discovered that I was right to freak out, because this time I had found a miniscule tee shirt in my ear that had been wrapped around an even tinier skull.          

I don’t know how long I stared at my hand, and I don’t know when I started screaming.  I do know that when the police broke into the apartment, I was already deaf in my right ear.  I had shoved a pair of tweezers into my ear canal and completely destroyed my eardrum.  Blood fountained over my hand and down my grungy tee but I continued to dig, screaming that I had to get all the tiny men, they are still in my head, and Oh God!  What if they are in my left ear?  Doctor?  Nurse?  I can feel them walking around in my ear!  Please untie my hands.  Please?  They’re in my ear!  I have to…I have to get them out!  Please!  Oh God, I can feel them moving in there.  Someone?  Anyone?  Help me!