All twelve of his ears burned when the suns collided. It happened all too often, or so the boy thought. It was a rite of passage, they said, it wouldn’t be that bad. But it seemed as the suns had a different agenda. It was as if the suns found humor in his dismal state. For everyone else, the suns’ collisions were a sight to behold, a reason to celebrate. But while everyone was dancing and singing in merriment, John’s ears burned with incomparable fury.
It was now three weeks since the last collision. With his ears still healing from its last unfortunate singe, john took solace in the peaceful hours when the moons pranced in the sky. John feared the day when the moons would fall away and the suns would collide again. It was only a matter of days. No one knew when it’d happen, but everyone was eager to see the spectacular sight. All but John. The mere thought of his twelve beautiful ears burning as the sky had its festivities caused his bones to shake.
“There must be a way to end this!” he grumbled.
With his bandaged ears, he set off to end his suffering. While everyone else had plants sprout from their palms, or water ooze from their pores, or something cool like that, John got stuck with burning ears. Not just one burning ear, or even a burning finger because that could come in handy at times, no, John had all twelve of his ears burn when the suns collided. Every single time too. Even his sister had fishes come out of her with each collision.
Least that had some economic value, he angrily thought. But burning ears? His head was literally on fire!
The following day as the seven moons drifted off into the horizon, the suns began their funny little dance. Below them, john felt his ears begin to twitch…
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2 comments:
My favorite part of this is how angry John is about his burning ears in comparison to what other people experience. Plants sprouting from palms and water oozing from pores is way cooler than his damn burning ears. His sense of injustice made me laugh.
Jane Ann,
I like the way this absurdist premise functions as a metaphor for teenage humiliation and puts it into high relief. (Substitute "acne" for the burning of his twelve ears and you'd have a very realistic portrait.) And because you approach the material in such an off-hand way, the reader is much more willing to accept it. Nice work. My one suggestion is that the voice seems a bit inconsistent: personally, I prefer the slangy teenage diction ("John got stuck with burning ears") to the more formal, literary one ("John's ears burned with incomparable fury").
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