The Devil Lives in My Friend's Right Ear

The story behind The Devil Lives in My Friend's Right Ear

One afternoon, over snacks and coffee, my husband (Kevin) and I were talking about the different types of earwax (dry or wet) and how easy it is to clean your ears if you’ve got the dry (ours is the dry kind). If you have the wet kind, sometimes it could clog up your ears and affect your hearing. So, you’d need help from an ENT (ears, nose, and throat) doctor.  

Then Kevin told me a story about a classmate of his from high school (let's call him Berto) who had trouble hearing from one ear. The teacher paired up students for an assignment, and Kevin ended up being partners with this classmate.  

Berto told him that he had to sit on the other side, so Berto could hear him better. Curious, Kevin asked him if he was deaf in that one ear, and Berto explained that he could somewhat hear but everything sounded muffled. Kevin asked whether he had had this problem all his life, and Berto told him that he had just started having difficulty hearing for the past several months. He also admitted that he didn’t regularly clean his ears. Then Kevin had an inkling that perhaps that something was clogging the ear.  

Thinking this was the end of the story, I thought, ‘okay, so Berto would go home and finally clean his ears and tell Kevin that he was right.’ But the story didn’t end there. Berto’s ear got cleaned, but not by himself or an ENT doctor. Kevin cleaned it. He took out an earpick and went in Berto’s ear. There was a hard barrier.  

He tried to look in with a flashlight, but it was too dark. He poked it again a few times. Berto told him that it sounded loud, like someone was knocking hard on a door. Kevin poked again then the earpick hooked onto something, and he started to pull. It was like pulling out a cork from a wine bottle. Then pop! He got the earwax out and held it up for Berto to see. It was one of the thickest earwax that both had ever seen. Berto’s face lit up. He was happy. He could hear from that ear again! 

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“I only wanted to survive a boring class assignment. Not uncover a secret hiding inside someone’s ear.”

Jejomar was just trying to stay awake in Literature class when he got saddled with the last partner anyone wanted: Berto the Weirdo. Known for wild stories, unsettling behavior, and an eerie calm when chaos erupts, Berto isn’t exactly your average teenage misfit. But when a mysterious voice whispers from a place it shouldn’t, and long-buried folklore starts to feel more like fact than fiction, Jejomar begins to wonder if there’s more truth to Berto’s madness than he ever thought possible.

A darkly funny story that explores the blurry line between mental illness, myth, and the monsters we pretend not to see.

This story is just a glimpse into Quiet Night, Loud Nightmares, a collection of short horror stories. Each story is free to read for a limited time. When a new story is uploaded, the previous one will move behind a small paywall.

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