Hear Horn

Standing by the old man's bedside it was clear by the shallowness of his breathing and by the near flatness of his bedsheets that there was not much left of him.

Leaning down to say my final goodbye into the horn protuding from his ear I heard a faint beating. I stopped frozen on the spot and listened there closely to the intermittent rhythm. If finally stopped and I placed my hand over his heart.

His heart was still faintly beating. If not his heart, then what? The beating resumed and it produced a steady although unpredictable rhythm. The sound seemed to have no origin.

It wasn't long before the old man expired. The attending doctor removed the earhorn and inspected it. "This is not a typical earhorn", he said. "I had been using this device to communicate with the deceased in his final weeks, he had developed remarkable control over spasms of the inner ear and could send morse code signals with his tympanic membrane - these are amplified by the horn".

It's been several years since that day and earhorns have now advanced to the point that synthesized speech can be performed through the ear. Even though it's been so long and much has happened I can still remember that beating perfectly. Maybe I'll get around to learning morse code one day.