The Walls Had No Ears

“Her husband is the murderer! I saw him! I saw everything!” The cheap Japanese-style partition shouted at investigators scraping bloodstains from the carpet. The motel manager recently placed the partition in this filthy old room in order to hide a hole punched in the drywall during the last domestic dispute.

“Oh, will you shut up? The humans can't hear you. And if they could they'd get shipped off to the loony bin.” The wall which held the bathroom door and sink harrumphed at the naive little partition.

“You can talk! Why didn't you say something sooner? I'm Partricia.”

“We're talking again?” Twittered the wall behind the bed. “My name is Bedladonna! So nice to meet you, dear.” Humans shined blacklights over her, occasionally scraping one thing or another onto glass specimen slides.

“Windowfred.” Sighed the front wall, her molding drooping a little.

“James. Honored to have you on top of me indefinitely.”

“Sinkley. Glad that's settled. Don't talk so much at once, we'll be here a long time. Let's try not to run out of words, shall we?” They stood silently a while and listened to the humans scuffle.

“How come we can hear them, but they can't hear us?” Whispered Partricia.

“What did I just say about rationing the conversation?”

Bedladonna spoke up. “Holeden, didn't you say you had a theory?”

“It's James, you insufferable heap of asbestos.” Bedladonna thought he ought to consider changing his name to something more descriptive.“I thought, perhaps, it had to do with the humans constantly changing places. They hardly sit long enough to listen to each other, imagine them waiting around to hear us!” He chuckled. “Really, though, I think we're on different frequencies. Like how dogs can hear pitches that humans can't.”

“Holeden thinks he knows everything about frequencies since he's closest to the TV.” Sinkley huffed. “Bedladonna clearly has the best view, though.”

“SoOoOooooOOOOo whAt IF we chANge pitchES someTImes?” Partricia warbled high and low, experimenting with vibrato. None of the humans seemed to notice any disturbance, they packed their bags.

“No luck.” Bemoaned Windowfred. “It's all hopeless. Our existence is pointless.”

“Winnie, every existence has the same point. Do you remember what that one human read? 1980's, bespectacled, gangly boy trying to impress a hooker?” James chimed in. “It was a John Updike quote 'Ancient religion and modern science agree: we are here to give praise. Or, to slightly tip the expression, to pay attention. Without us, the physicists who have espoused the anthropic principle tell us, the universe would be unwitnessed, and in a real sense not there at all. It exists, incredibly, for us.'”

“What do you mean? Like everything's just here to exist and be seen existing?” Partricia hadn't yet been sentient long enough to really consider the value of it.

“Oh, dear, pay them no mind.” Bedladonna's voice turned to hot tea and honey. “He rarely speaks coherently and she's spent 60 years watching strangers interact. She's heard about a thousand too many conversations about the weather.”

“Why do they always comment on it? They're standing outside! They know what the weather is like!”

“Yes, and we've heard about a thousand too many complaints from Windowfred about people's small talk.” Sinkley cut in, attempting to truncate the conversation.

After a few more reasonable questions from Partricia, the walls sat mostly silent for a couple years, gossiping about maids and indulging Windowfred in the occasional existential crisis. Initially, there weren't many guests after the murder, but people forget and soon the walls saw regular guests again. One guest in particular stayed for nearly a month, repeating the same ritual each night. Around 3am, he dragged in a cooler, turned up the TV, put a towel over it, turned out all the lights, opened the refrigerator (in which he had already taped over the light), and put a number of things inside. The walls couldn't see what, so naturally they speculated wildly.

“It's just drugs.” Said Bedladonna, straining to hear the distinct crinkle of a plastic bag while the man continued his ritual for the 18th night in a row.

“What drugs do you have to keep cold? Cocaine? Heroin? Marijuana? I've never seen a drug smuggler pay this much attention to temperature control.” Sinkley never quite argued for any point of view, he only ever aimed to argue against everyone else.

“Clearly a serial killer.” James said decisively, maintaining the position he held about almost every guest.

Bedladonna made a dismissive noise. “He'd have to be the tidiest serial killer in the world. Weeks of killing and never a drop of blood.”

“I still think it's a sex thing.” Over the past few months, Partricia's eyes have been opened to the seemingly infinite human capacity for sexual fetishism. They began discussing how serial killing and sexual deviance need not be mutually exclusive. Bedladonna called them all perverts-- though she listened with rapt attention. They continued debating what refrigerated products would be the most sensual for humans and would also require careful collection. James could only suggest various severed body parts.

In the midst of their bickering, the man started to laugh maniacally. He began taking things out of the refrigerator. James felt a sting in his facade, a thumbtack. James hissed, but stoically accepted the pain. Barely even pain, a mere pinprick. The man continued laughing, tacking things all over the walls, leaving only Windowfred mostly untouched.

He turned down the TV and flicked on the lights.

The walls froze. Well, as much as walls can freeze. They were covered in severed ears, lips, and tongues.

“I told you!” James cried, vindicated at last.

“Yes, yes you did, Holeden.” Said the man. “No mouths, but you still talk. No ears, but you still hear.” He held a knife to his ear, or what would've been an ear. He had only scars on either side of his head. “You all speak so callously. So constantly. How can you stand it? I can never tell anyone the things I learn from a wall. All the knowledge in the world with no proof, I may as well never learn it at all. Why do people have ears if they never hear the truth? Why do they have mouths if they only speak lies?”

Windowfred snorted. “Maybe because they want to talk about the weather.”

“Windowfred! The man is having a breakdown, it's no time for you to develop a sense of humor.” Bedladonna coos maternally to the man who just stabbed organs onto everyone's facades, trying to talk him out of slashing his wrists.

“Of course, the one human who hears us is an absolute nutter.” Sinkley brooded. “I don't see what use he'll be for us now seeing as he's gone around ripping apart all these faces, someone has to be looking for him. When he tells authorities 'I was angry at the walls' how do you think that will go over? You think he'll like sitting in prison, listening what those walls have to say? Or in a mental hospital?”

“What about the man who murdered his wife?” Partricia wasn't great at dropping issues. “This human could tell police all about it, he could set innocent people free!”

“Where is the proof? We don't know how to convict him. Do you know where the weapon is? Do you know where to find security footage? And, aside from that, he cut off several people's ears. I don't know of any credible sources who have cut off even one ear.” To be fair, Sinkley didn't know of any credible sources at all. Nor did he seem to consider Vincent van Gogh a credible source.

James cleared his throat. “Here are our options: convince this man to clean everything up, stop cutting off bits of other humans, convince authorities he is sane, and help him become some sort of wall-whisperer super-sleuth; help him write a series of historical fiction novels which happen to be entirely true; or we can let him kill himself and possibly never have this opportunity again.”

“Excuse me, my name is Richard. I'd rather you not talk about me as if I can't hear you and have no free will. I literally just told you I understand everything you say.”

“Apologies, Richard. What do you think?”

“Thank you, Holeden. I came here ready to die and I feel it would really be a horrible shame to waste this whole statement piece. An unsolved murder room with all these ears and tongues and everything.”

“Valid point. Strong point.” James said, knowing Sinkley can't resist refuting any and every valid argument.

“Not valid at all!” There it is. “What is the statement? People don't listen? People aren't honest? If you really want to make a statement then state it with actions, set an example. Be an honest, listening person.”

“How could I be honest and also not in prison? How can I listen to people when I cut out my ears? If no one listens, how would they notice I'm setting an example? Guys, this is the end. I can't deal with this anymore. You're all either heartlessly gossiping about horrific accidents and secrets, or begging me to tell people something no one could possibly know.” He paused for a moment. “Heartless...You think I should've kept their hearts? I thought it would be too cliché, hearts make for such heavy-handed metaphors.”

“No way, good call not using hearts. This is considerably more cryptic without them.” Windowfred could think of nothing more to say. The other walls were silent.

“Let's take a vote,” in spite of being made in a country without democracy, Partricia was passionate about it. “I vote wall-whisperer.”

“Seconded.” Bedladonna immediately spoke up.

“Nah, it'll be nice for him to not exist a while.” Windowfred may not be the best anthropomorphized object to consult about death.

“Third-ed.” James was curious.

“I object.” Sinkley, of course, just wanted to disagree with James.

“What about Ceceilinga? Doesn't she get a vote?” Bedladonna named the inanimate ceiling about 40 years ago and tried to throw her voice in order to get more votes.

Sinkley chortled. “Don't be daft, the wall-whisperer knows ceilings and floors don't speak.”

“My death isn't exactly a democratic process.” Richard walked around the room. “Should I write any notes? I never wrote a manifesto or anything.” He picked up the hotel notepad and scribbled something, setting it back on the desk face-down. Inhaling, feeling his lungs expand to their fullest, then exhaling as slowly as he can, he lay on the bed and pushed the blade up his arms.

“Goodbye, wall-whisperer.” Bedladonna sobbed.

“It's Richard. Can't you all keep quiet while I bleed to death?”

They respected his wishes. They kept quiet. Quiet when his heart stopped beating, quiet when the maid called 911, quiet when investigators puzzled over the scene and found the note which read “Find a way to listen to the walls.”

Obviously, detectives assumed this meant he hid bodies in the walls. There's no way for them to know the madman meant, literally, figure out how to hear walls talking. All the furniture was soon removed, Partricia included.

Windowfred shined on the day an excavation crew arrived with sledgehammers. Bedladonna sobbed. James stoically accepted his fate. Sinkley ran through all the emotional states he could conceive of, trying to find which would be the most contrary.

The walls were bashed to a pulp; drywall slashed apart, insulation gutted, every beam poked and prodded. And they never lost sentience.

Windowfred cackled manically and shouted over the drills. “Annemarie Roeper: 'We know we are alive because we feel ourselves as “I” I have never died, but I know it is the “I” that feels the dying. It is the “I” that stops existing in the form in which we are used to when we die.' Annemarie Roeper!”

“What are you on about? Are you saying we can't die?” The humans had finished examining Sinkley, he could see through himself into the bathroom and he was more emotionally uncomfortable than physically hurting.

“I think Winnie is saying that the “I” we experience is not drywall. It's not insulation, or even these skeletal support beams. Our “I” is more than an emergent property of our physical structure.” Winnie whimpered a noise of assent to tell James he got it right.

“Holeden...erm, James. Is it the same for humans?” Asked Bedladonna, thinking of the tortured wall-whisperer.

“How would I know?”

“Probably not.” Said Sinkley. “So what do we do now?”

“Observe the universe I guess.”

And they did. For about 20 more minutes until they were fully knocked down horizontally. Turns out the “I” that is a wall was really just the property of being vertical.