It began with an earache and a nap on the couch. You know those sorts of days where you while away the hours in front of the television, not feeling quite yourself, and hoping that a quick nap around noon will cure what ails you? It was like that.

I awoke to a ringing in my left ear and a sharp pain. I could still hear but everything was muffled, and I attempted to flex my jaw and test the feel of it. This sent a lightning bolt down the side of my face and I recoiled onto the couch, wrapping my blanket around me as my eyes began to well up with tears. Then came the same feeling down the right side of my face and all the noise around me was underwater. My balance was thrown off and I was trapped in a dizzy spell.

When my boyfriend came in through the front door of our home, I didn't even realize initially that he was there at all. As he came into my field of vision, I jumped, startled. He gave me a strange, worried look and approached me, sitting on the cushion next to me and pushing the hair away from the left side of my face.

"What's that?" He asked me.

I put my hand to my ear, feeling a cool dampness there that I had not noticed before. As I examined the stuff on my fingers, I saw it was brown and thick and gooey. "I don't know." I said, exasperated.

We went to the hospital and I was sent to a specialist to examine my ears. All the while, I sat as they poked and prodded me, feeling the brown ick roll down my cheeks and neck. They would dab at the stuff coming from my ears, going through boxes of wipes.

The specialist was stumped. He told me that my eardrums had ruptured, but he couldn't point to a specific reason behind it. I had no buildup of fluids in my cavities and I told him I hadn't been prodding my ears with anything. He wrote me a prescription for pain medication and told me that he would conduct a minor exploratory surgery within the next few days. The doctor maintained his composure and did give me some hope that the pain I was suffering would not last forever.

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I slept that night in a heavy tossing sweat. When I awoke, I was surprised to find that my boyfriend had not already gotten out of bed. He'd be late for work. I attempted to prod him in the side. He was stiff. I rolled him over and he looked up into my face in frozen perpetual fear, eyes bulging from his skull. That was when I noticed the bruising around his throat. I panicked and immediately burst into spitting tears. I tried shaking him. I tried screaming. Obviously, that did not work.

The stuff began dribbling out of my ears violently and I tried plugging the sides of my head with our comforter. It wasn't quite as thick as it had been. It was watery and sprung like plumber’s leaks from my ears. I cupped my hands over them and ran to the bathroom, taking my phone with me in the midst of wild hysteria. I would call the police. That's what I had intended to do. I was going to call them and tell them. Tell them what? Tell them that someone had broken into our home and strangled him to death in his sleep and I just didn't wake up during the struggle because of my newly awful hearing. Sure. Makes sense.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, pulling my hair back into a ponytail and letting out a weak moan as the stuff wet the collar of my PJs. I could feel it soaking through the cloth. I took the roll of toilet paper and pulled off a yard of it, holding it around my head.

Then something happened. I heard a slippery sloshing sound. At least I think, as it has become exceedingly difficult to hear anything in the slightest. I felt something thicker. Something like ropes coiling in my head and I could feel blood vessels popping like mortar shells in my skull. As if on cue, I watched deep red liquid drip from my nostril and splatter perfectly onto a polished white tile.

I looked back into the mirror. Protruding from my head on both sides were thick pink, whipping things standing out. The things pulsated and seemed to enjoy dancing around like lively seaweed. I turned my head to the side. They were a piece of me. They had murdered my boyfriend. I sat in the bathroom floor with my chin resting on my knees. I stared at the tiles and watched the wriggling shadows. They came from my ears.