TINNITUS

Burn after reading!

Preface

       For as long as I can remember, my ears have been filled with high-frequency noises. My poor mother spent all her savings to take me to the most famous hospitals in China, but the noise in my ears never ceased. To tell you the truth, I always believed that my disease is more likely to be a mental illness than just a common ENT problem (for those of you who don’t know what ENT stands for, I suggest that you use a search engine), so it's actually understandable that the prestigious ENT specialists couldn't do anything with my illness. Besides, I have never really trusted modern medication. If I have to choose, I will always prefer letting myself cut my own body with a scalpel than letting some random doctor cut me up with that thing and do some weird operation on me — if I cut myself, I’m pretty sure I would die due to my ignorance. And of course, on my fast, beautiful shortcut to death, the only thing needed will simply be my courage; but if I let someone else do it, for example a surgeon, then I have to wait patiently between death and life because everything depends on the surgeon’s skills and mental capacity. And it goes without saying that the burning anxiety that this waiting process brings is not something that courage can easily overcome. 

  So, after countless doctors' helplessness, I no longer expect any treatment. As I grew older, I gradually got used to the noise in my ears, and my life gradually became less troubled by it. I eat, fuck, consume, plunder, just like everyone else, there’s no difference at all. Yet, ever since I joined my ancestors in embracing greed and spreading fascism in its communist colors, the noise in my ears has grown more and more unbearable. You may ask why I joined such a disgusting group of people. To answer that question, I remain absolutely sincere to you: in order to always have the ability to hold that scalpel in my own hand instead of letting others threaten me with it. Only then will I not be burned by some uncontrollable anxiety. 

  These days, however, the increasing noise is starting to make me sweat my whole mattress in the middle of the night, and I can vividly feel my life silently evaporating into the air with the sweat. My skin is drying up, my blood is curdling, and unfortunately, the only thing that has been preventing me from dying in peace is the increasing noise. 

  So I decided, as my life is ending, to shut myself up in my small, dark bedroom and, with what little energy I have left, to record the last changes of the unbearable noise in my ears. For those who share my condition, these records may ward off some loneliness. For those in the medical profession, these records may offer some valuable help. But for myself, such a record does not really mean much. Of course, if future generations look at my notes and decide to name this new type of hearing disease (or mental illness) after me, I will be delighted — like all communist revolutionaries or fascist dictators, I also want to go down in history. 

Day one

       First of all, I want to apologize to those of you who are reading these texts, as I have not yet described the noise in my ears. Forgive me, I hadn’t been able to find the right words to describe this noise correctly. The art of literature has always taught me to remain permanently skeptical of the readers’ imagination while leaving plenty of room for their imagination at the same time. I agree, but my endless doubts on people's imaginations always stop me from leaving any room of imagination to my readers. To be honest, I prefer to trust artificial intelligence over real humans when it comes to this topic. 

  So, after a few minutes of deliberation (for you, my beautiful readers, a few minutes is a trivial amount of time in your lives, but for me, a dying man, a few minutes is the greatest sacrifice I can make), I decided to bid farewell to dry, robotic words and use various interesting phrases to show you the full range of what the noise in my ears feels like. If you think that my way of describing confuses you, or you think that I am showing off and grandstanding, I will assure you that I do so only because I do not at all believe that your imagination, nourished by the radiation of the electronic screen, can understand what I mean in those abstract, emotionless words. 

  So, my friends, I would describe the noise this way: the sound of expired amphetamines melting in the palms of one’s hands, the sound of probes rubbing against a woman's uterus during an abortion, the sound of students shouting and crying as tanks rolled through Tiananmen Square, the sound of Putin snoring as he fell asleep for the first time since the war broke out between Russia and Ukraine, the sound of Beauvoir spitting when she listens to the song ‘Women is the N****r of the world’ by John Lennon, the sound of the blood of revolutionaries turning into rivers……

Day two

  Since last night, the noise in my ears has gradually overwhelmed every sound that exists around me. I could not hear the building manager’s heart-pounding knock, nor the queasy pumping of the old-fashioned toilet in my bathroom, nor even the gut-wrenching cries of the upstairs neighbor, which were lost bit by bit in the lingering noise. It is a real pity that I’m no longer able to hear my neighbor crying. It has accompanied me through so many sleepless nights, I cannot live without it. I sat slumped on the polished floor of my bedroom, shouting and growling with all my strength, but I couldn't hear anything. But, my gleeful readers, in addition to my sense of hearing gradually being swallowed by the noise, there was something that sent chills down my spine more than anything else: as my roar grew louder and louder, the shapeless noise slowly jumped from my ears to the edge of my closet and slipped through the cracks like a nimble tadpole. By the time it opened the closet, it already had a human body about my size and had taken the liberty of wearing my most formal and gorgeous clothes. Before I could shake off the shock, he stepped in front of me, unzipped his pants, and pressed the penis-shaped noise into my throat, which had become as dry as the libido of Chinese people due to my roars before. If Bikini Kill could see its evil deeds, the band would surely shout: it’s hard to talk with your dick in my mouth!

  And when I became exhausted, he changed back into the shape of a tadpole, shed his splendid costume, and swam down my dry throat into my body. After that, the noise filled every organ of mine, and I could only lie down where I was, and let the evil noise occupy every corner of my body. The noise enslaved my heart, cut my blood vessels and robbed me of all oxygen, while my skin contracted and wilted like a plastic wrap being vacuumed until it embraced every bone in my body. 

  Only till that moment did the noise decide to let me go. It laughed hard with a laughter that sounded like a nail scratching on a wall, then finally left my body and changed back into the previous human form. He slowly put on my scattered clothes and sat elegantly on my bed, admiring the specimen he had made of me and couldn't help nodding his head. 

Day three

    I crawled back into bed and vowed that no matter what happened, my spine would never leave my mattress. The noise no longer had a concrete shape, but I could feel it in the air of the room. I know, he's just tired from playing yesterday. But by the time it regained its strength, death would still be my only ending. Imagine, readers, the most powerless and vulnerable moment in your life (the only reason for why I do not describe it directly to you is because I am now in a little delirium, plus, given the inaccuracy of language, I think I have to reluctantly trust your imagination for the time being); when a moment like this becomes a regular part of your life, then you  will be able to really understand how I feel right now. 

  I wanted to lie motionless in bed like a dead fish, waiting for the noise to wake up again. But when I accidentally saw an extra pair of eyes in the corner of the ceiling, my nerves were tense again. The eyes were cold as a dead body. Their dark upper lids slightly lowered while their black pupils were staring directly into my eyes. Unnerved by the stare, I simply closed my eyes and turned to face the wall. When I opened my eyes again, the pupils had followed me from the ceiling to the wall and continued to stare straight into my eyes. I wasn't scared, I was just surprised. The idea of being watched and supervised is not new to me, after all, I live in a land full of high-definition cameras like you do, and I have long been accustomed to the discomfort of being watched. But me being watched directly with a pair of eyes? That's the first time that's happened. Just as I was about to reach out and touch the eyes on the wall, the noise that had been resting beside me suddenly woke up and snatched the eyes from my eyes and placed them directly on his own face. I was quite angry, but before I could resist, the noise suddenly increased in volume and nearly pierced my eardrum. Suddenly, I realized how stupid I had been: if I wanted to stop the noise in my ears, I would only have to pierce my eardrum with a sharp object and completely lose my hearing. At this thought, I immediately rolled out of bed, crawled almost on all fours under the omnipresent pupil of the human noise into the kitchen and found a pair of chopsticks. I have nothing to hesitate about. Even if I had never been bothered by the noise, sooner or later I would have given up my hearing because I was tired of gunfire and cries for help. Thinking of this, I grabbed a chopstick in one hand and tried my best to pierce my eardrum. Blood mixed with tears trickled down the kitchen tiles, but unfortunately, the noise in my ears didn't seem to disappear. 

  Just as I was about to break down, the noise who had been sitting in the room sneered and came into the kitchen. There were black, cold pupils all over his body, each one amplifying and shrinking like a megaphone in response to the noise in my ears (or perhaps now I should say in my head). He walked slowly to my side, crouched down, and greedily sucked the blood from my ear. It was not long before he sucked all the blood out of me, and my body returned to the specimen it had been yesterday; While squatting next to me, the noise grew hard full skin little by little under the moisture of the blood and covered the pupils that were covering his whole body, and only the pupils on the position of his eyes were still exposed to the skin. Then a nose and a mouth grew on his face, until finally he had all the features that a normal human would have.

  I don't know how long it took for the noise to finally complete his metamorphosis. He straightened himself up, stretched himself, and then went back to my room without looking back. I lay on the ground looking at the back of the noise, feeling both strange and familiar. Driven by a strong sense of unease, I crawled back to my room with all my strength, while the noise was already sleeping soundly in my bed. I tugged at the curtain next to my bed and shuddered straight up. But when I finally saw its sleeping face, I immediately broke down on the ground:  

His face looked exactly like mine. 

Day four

There was only silence left...

I think I'm going to die...

The noise will become a new me...

Day five

  I had my left hand around his neck, and my right hand covering every inch of his skin with red paint. Next, I glued his legs together with strong glue, cut off his left arm with a machete, and inserted steel bars into his right arm to secure it. In this way, I made a hard hammer with the human being in front of me whose life and body I had taken away (it was almost like the hammer on our communist party flag!). As long as I have this hammer, I can spread fascism in communist colors as much as I want. 

This is a time for celebration……

Epilogue

Stand up, 

those who don’t want to be enslaved! 

Let’s use our blood and flesh 

To create a new Great Wall!

Huang Ning