Surprised and happy that the forecasted rain hadn't started, Kathy readied herself to go run. The overcast skies put off a grayness that covered the trees, the road, the air itself in shadows. Still, since it wasn't raining, she must run, even if the urge to go outside and be physically active was not appealing.

Today, Kathy decided to run just a bit extra; she needed the exercise anyway. The first lap turned out not to be that hard, even when she ran all the way up the hill to the first apple tree. Now if she could just do the remaining laps as easily as the first one.

After six laps up and down the road, Kathy, covered in sweat, decided it was time to go back inside the house. She walked into the house that had felt so cool before she went out; now it felt hot and stuffy. Tired out, she fell into the wooden chair at her computer desk. After sitting down, sipping her iced tea, and taking her shoes off so she could wiggle her toes, she ran her hands down the sides of her face to wipe the sweat off. As her hand went down the right side of her face, one of her fingers slid just inside her ear. Oh, my God! She felt something move in her ear! She slid her finger out, then purposefully slid it just inside her ear to pull whatever that was out, but it crawled deep inside her ear.

Not one who normally panicked, she attempted to remain calm as she quickly walked to the bathroom and grabbed the peroxide. Whatever that was that had crawled inside her ear was going to come out. Once the cap was full of peroxide, she tilted her head to the side and poured it in. Half of it ran down her face and onto her clothing, but that was the least of her worries right now.

The bubbling inside her ear became so violent, so intense that she had to stop it. Surely nothing inside her ear could have stood those sensations, so she dumped the peroxide out onto some toilet paper. Nothing but wetness.

At a loss what to do next, Kathy picked up her cell and called her daughter. “Andrea, I kind of need you to come home.”

“What's the matter, Mom? You don't sound so good.”

“A bug crawled back inside my ear.”

“Oh, my God! Are you sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure! I felt it moving, I felt its legs!"

“Calm down. I'll be right home.”


“Mom,” said Andrea as she grabbed a flashlight, “I need to look inside your ear.”

“Look all you want, just get that bug out!”

Andrea shined the flashlight into her mom's ear. “I don't see anything in there, not even ear wax. Are you sure you weren't imagining things?”

“I didn't imagine it crawling back inside my ear. Nor am I imagining it fluttering around inside!” she yelled.

“OK. I'm sorry. Just thought that maybe. . . well, you do have a bit of an overactive imagination.”

“Not this time. And since there is a bug in my ear, I could really do without that imagination right now,” Kathy said as she thought about all of the sci-fi shows she had seen where bugs were placed in the ears of people for diabolical purposes. Had this particular bug been instructed to climb inside her ear by someone who held some grudge against her? Did the bug climb inside and refuse to emerge for some sinister reason of its own?

Kathy grabbed the book she was reading and sat down. Maybe reading would calm her down. She opened the pages of The Birth of Venus and began to read about Alessandro Cecchi's marriage. She mellowed as her mind relaxed and became wrapped around the story. As her body melted into the recliner, she leaned back and closed her eyes. Random thoughts floated through her mind, all of them centered on the bug in her ear and how to coax it out – use the vacuum cleaner hose to suck it out, float it out with peroxide, flush it out with warm water, have someone suck it out with a straw - surely it longed to be out of her ear and free once again. The bug spinning like a small tornado deep inside her ear canal brought her straight up out of the chair. “No!” she screamed in terrified frustration. This had to end.

After a couple of minutes, the creature calmed down and became still. Kathy decided not to pick up the book again, after all, that hadn't worked out exactly as she had planned and she really wanted to avoid stirring up whatever was in her ear. Might as well do something useful in the meantime, so she vacuumed the carpet. This evening, she would pour peroxide in her ear until whatever it was in there had no choice but to come out.


Find out what was in Kathy's ear in the conclusion of this story. The link to it is below.