Vibrations

• Ani Parry, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2016

The constant buzzing rang in his ears as he sat on his bedroom floor with the worn-out bass guitar on his lap. The built up frustration and anger was getting the better of him as he relentlessly plucked its strings with the small amplifier sitting on full volume at his feet, sending powerful vibrations through his legs and up into his body.
He couldn’t hear anything. And he wasn’t sure how much more he could take.
He’d been born this way. Since he was young he knew there was something that made him different from the other kids. He couldn’t hear the water running while he was showering, or the sound of the traffic outside his bedroom window before he drifted off to sleep. He couldn’t even hear the crash of cymbals echoing from the basement where his sister was having drum lessons – no matter how hard she slammed her drumsticks against them.
Despite being deaf, no one appreciated music as much as he did. He heard it differently to everybody else – through the vibrations that set his body alight. The way his cheeks blushed a bright shade of crimson as he pressed his back up against the bass drum that he had begged his music teacher to play for him, just to feel the beat in his bones. It wouldn’t be uncommon in his household for him to shyly sign to his mother halfway through a conversation, and ask if she could sing something for him. Just so he could touch his fingertips to her throat as she went through the adlibs and tunes, and feel the currents of sound run through his fingers and into his bloodstream.
But there was also another side to it.
There were nights he would spend curled up in his bed, wishing he was born different – or not at all to escape the harsh reality of his disorder.
And one of those nights was tonight.
As the harsh plucking intensified, the blistering on the tips of his fingers was growing more painful. But he didn’t care. His screaming thoughts and the vibrations under his feet were the only things keeping him sane, and everything else was blinded by his pure frustration.
Why can’t I be normal?
Tears were prickling his eyes as the vibrations under his feet were growing stronger. But he wanted them stronger. He wanted to not only feel them, but to hear them. He wanted to hear them with his whole body, louder and louder and louder.
But suddenly everything seemed to still when his mother appeared in the doorway after hearing the deep sounds of the bass echoing loudly downstairs. ‘Are you okay?’ She signed carefully while eyeing the teenage boy curled up around the stringed instrument on the floor, looking up at her with a mixture of pain and frustration glazed in his eyes.
‘Yeah,’ he responded as he bit down on his lip and stopped trying to fight the tears streaming out of his eyes. ‘I’m fine.’