A Warning in My Cochlea

You had been deaf for three years, until this morning, when you suddenly heard the sizzling of oil in the pan as you fried an egg. The sound mingled with the smell of the egg burning, like a rusty needle stabbing straight into your eardrum. Your fingertips trembled with pain. In your panic, you turned off the heat, and hot oil splashed onto your finger, leaving red spots. The sensation jolted a memory loose: the morning your father died in a car accident three years ago, he had shielded you from splattering hot oil. The scar on the back of his hand had looked exactly like the red spots on your fingertip. You were about to turn and call to your mother, who was reading the newspaper in the living room, when a cold, hard voice suddenly exploded in your mind, chilling your scalp: "Don't let them know you can hear." Wind swept in from the balcony, rustling the newspaper in your mother's hands. She looked up and smiled at you, her lips moving as she said, "Slow down. Don't burn yourself." Before, you could only read her lips. But now, you could not only hear the tension hidden in her voice, you could also smell the acrid ink in the newspaper's "Missing Persons" column. And from downstairs came a faint scraping sound: Old Zhou, the man who always helped you repair your hearing aid, was scraping the lock on your door with the tip of a key, again and again. Each stroke felt like a scratch at your heart. The cold, hard voice sounded again, its warning tremor barely contained, overlapping with the lingering warmth of your father's last words before the accident, "Protect your hearing aid": "Especially him."