This fall marks the release of our final issue from volume 63 of PRISM, with our upcoming launch on Monday, October 20 (come say hi!). Featuring selections by our former Prose Editor, Sierra Louie, I wanted to share one of the issue’s most haunting and liminal pieces. Ears explores body dysmorphia through a deft blend of mental and body horror, building a slow, creeping unease that feels both unsettling and hyperreal. Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite.
Sincerely,
Zahra Mayeesha
Prose Editor
Ears by Liane Wimhurst
Sundays are when you have sex, Maya is at Tai Chi and the elderly neighbours crank up Songs of Praise, but you haven’t done it in so many weeks that you’ve lost count. And now Dave is plucking socks from the radiator, the extra thick ones he reserves for challenging times, and shoving them in a suitcase.
“Just a week,” he says, pulling a loose thread from a toe hole.
“Where will you go?”
“Holiday Inn.” He drags the suitcase over the bumpy carpet and down the stairs. “I need time to think. A week. One week, that’s all I ask.”
“What if I need a one-week lapse of my senses? Oh, I forgot, no one’s handing out voyages of self-discovery to women.”
“It’s not a—” He pauses on the bottom step and presses the switch for the hall timer light, it makes everything very bright, very briefly. You’re standing a few steps above him; his eyes meet yours before drifting across to your ear. As a scientist, you’re an observer of fine details, you notice microexpressions—the dilation of a pupil, tightening of the lips, throb of a temple vein. Every time you know what it means. His eyes land on your left ear; he grimaces.
• • •
You pity the kind of women who get work done, wearing their insecurities all over their stretched, startled faces. You check your ears in the mirror and they’re fine—a little fleshy perhaps, but hardly obnoxious.
Still, you’ve been up all night Googling. When experts say don’t Google your symptoms, they mean civvies, not other scientists. Scientists are quite capable of aggregating all the relevant material and sorting the facts. There are multiple tabs open because it’s important to be thorough; searches include overgrown ears and ears—how big is too big? and premature aging of the ears. Cosmetic surgery popups appear everywhere like runaway appendages. Luckily, you’re far too rational to fall for predatory advertising.
You text the lab: Can’t come in—food poisoning, along with a green vomit face emoji.
• • •
You’re standing by the swings, there are piles of autumn leaves everywhere and three mums drift by wearing boilersuits in burnt orange. You admire the way they blend in.
“Higher,” says Maya, kicking her legs out over your head. When she swings back you look at her ears, they’re perfect—scrunched and soft as a tissue, the pink of a rabbit’s nose.
Soph trundles along the footpath with her two boys in tow. Twins Wolf and Jagger have beanies on, which is strange because it’s October and October is the new September and you’ve got sunglasses on. Soph is wearing one of those woolly headbands, framing her face, covering her ears. Now that you think about it, you can’t remember ever having seen her ears. She couldn’t possibly have unruly ears, everything in her life is so perfect.
“Prit,” she hugs you. “You’re glowing, have you been drinking kefir?”
“Religiously.”
Soph gets her clothes secondhand or on loan. Her underwear is bio-degradable and when she’s done with them, she composts them in her healthy, worm-filled soil. Aside from the odd long-haul flight, she has the carbon footprint of a fetus and if the apocalypse doesn’t happen, her kids will have her to thank for it. She knows it’s rampant consumerism that got us here, so she doesn’t buy into impossible beauty standards. Conveniently, she’s also naturally beautiful.
“How come you guys missed Raven’s birthday party on Sunday?” she says as she pushes the twins simultaneously, one with each arm.
“Oh god, Soph, I’m having a nightmare. Out of nowhere, Dave—”
You fall silent because Maya has jumped off the swing and is hammering your leg, shouting Mummmmy. There’s an unspoken parenting rule around here—when a child speaks, you stop and turn to them like a sunflower. It doesn’t matter if you’re discussing your divorce, your parents’ deaths, or the discovery of a tumour. Children trump everything. It means two things—adults never finish a conversation, and their children are mini-dictators.
“What is it darling?”
“If you tread on snails then they’ll get dead.”
“That’s right.”
“When I’m a teenager, can I go out my bedroom window on a big slide?”
“Um, maybe.”
“When I’m a teenager, can you buy me a doll that walks and talks and bakes cupcakes?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Aww, she is just so precious,” Soph says when she’s sure Maya has finished talking.
• • •
The next morning, you message the lab again: Sorry, still got it, maybe it’s Noro. Feel so bad for leaving you in the lurch.
Prit, it’s fine, the intern can put out the samples.
You work for a lab that tests water, soil, and sludge for microplastics. It’s in everything, even babies in the womb are getting their nutrients through an umbilical cord that is basically a plastic straw. You’re responsible for looking after the samples, it’s a simple job but what’s the point of trying in this neo-feudal system? Nowadays, bettering yourself means trying less. No amount of striving will get you, Dave, and Maya out of your poky, gardenless top-floor flat, so why bother?
You check your ears again in the mirror and realise they’re worse than you thought. They may have even grown since you last looked. It’s times like these when your science background comes in handy. You take millimetre measurements from top to bottom, then across the diameter of the hole, so you can monitor the growth. As you’re measuring them with a ruler, and then a tape measure to be sure, you notice something is off with their colour. Where the cartilage is spreading, they seem to have reddened. You order a free Farrow & Ball colour chart. From the options you can see online, which you blow up and display on your hi-res screen, your face looks like it’s Mormon Clay, but your ears are Persimmon Squirt.
You eat a jar of kimchi, followed by sauerkraut straight from the tub. You eat so many fermented foods, you must have the mental health of a monk. You then do a ten-minute guided body scan meditation with your favourite Zen Master on YouTube, but as you become still and silent and check in with every part of your body, you feel a throb in your ears, you try to focus, look inwards. Then, they actually flap. You’re becoming Dumbo, you’re sure of it.
You can read the rest of this story in our new fall issue 63.3: SWAN SONG.
Liane Wimhurst is a former Middle East reporter who now lives in London and writes fiction and nonfiction. Her journalism and personal essays have been widely published. She is working on a nonfiction account of a year in Bethlehem, told through the personal narratives of ten locals.