Broadcasting Live

It starts at the very fringe of your hearing, a sound so high and piercing it makes the back of your throat click and ache.

You stop on your way to the crosswalk.

The sound itself feels like a drill bit, creeping towards your inner ear, ready to rev.

You lean away from that sound but that changes nothing.

You look around to see where this noise is coming from.

There is no source to be seen, the sound is everywhere.

Strangely enough nobody around you seems to hear it, for you are the only one cringing and recoiling.

A man on the sidewalk raises his eyebrow. He pauses. For a moment you think he is going to ask if you are okay.

But then the moment is gone, his pause concluded.

He shakes his head and passes you by.

It's probably just tinnitus.

Just really, really loud tinnitus.

A couple presses past you.

The noise grows louder.

You blink.

Louder.

It sounds human-- unmistakably human.

But it is not a voice you have ever heard before.

This is louder than the loudest sound you have ever heard.

Louder than a jet engine.

Louder than a gunshot beside your skull.

Louder than a bomb whistling down towards a school.

Your ears are screaming now too-- from the pain.

You clasp your hands tightly, over the sides of your head to plug out that unbearable sound.

The noise is a shriek now, it grows to a chorus-- thousands of voices all crying out with a deafening loudness, thousands of human voices pouring out a raw prayer of pain.

There are no words in this multitude of screams, but you find you can understand them all to clearly. They are singing what can only be described as agony.

The sound vibrates in the center of your skull.

This sound is dangerous.

This sound will hurt you.

It will destroy your sense of hearing, it will shatter ever nerve in your cochlea.

You know it will.

It might destroy more than that.

It is too loud.

Soon you will faint.

You pull one hand away from an ear.

Your fingers are not wet, they are not red.

You cannot believe they are dry.

Where is the blood?

You ask a woman on the corner if your ears are bleeding.

She pulls away from you, as though you are some sort of freak.

She asks why you are yelling.

You try not to shout when you ask her, can't she hear that fucking noise?

But you cannot hear your own voice, not at all.

The chorus grows.

There are tens of thousands of voices there now, like sirens wailing in your ear.

They are begging you to do something.

But all you can do is fall to your knees.

You groan, there is drool falling from the corner of your mouth.

You feel it but you don't care.

You just want this noise to stop.

Before it kills you.

The noise is going to kill you.

More voices.

More.

Over forty thousand mouths screaming directly in your ear.

You know they will not stop, unless you help.

Sixty thousand.

But there is nothing you can do.

You cannot help.

It is beyond you.

There is nothing you can do, other than listen.

A policeman has noticed you from across the street.

You stagger to your feet, and try to act normal.

He's watching you.

You cannot let him know that you hear the screams.

You know that will go badly for you.

You're not sure how, but you can tell it's illegal to listen to those screams.

Maybe that's why nobody else seems to hear them.

Maybe they're just tuning out those suffering voices to protect themselves.

Maybe they're all ignoring you now too, to protect themselves.

You feel cast aside by the people around you.

Why can't they hear that scream?

Can't they hear that scream?

The way they ignore it, you think they must be deaf.

You feel ostracized and ignored by everyone in sight.

Except the policeman.

He is staring, still.

You ask an old woman if she can hear that terrible sound.

She tells you to go fuck yourself.

The policeman is approaching now.

He asks if there's a problem here.

But he's only looking at you.

His eyes look vacant and glassy, but they aren't empty, not really.

There's a threat there, behind his bird-like glare.

The woman points a finger at you.

She says you're a terrorist.

You promise you're not a terrorist.

You turn to the crowd that has gathered and ask, can't anybody hear that shrieking?

You say the people ignoring the sound are cowards.

A woman says there is no sound, as she shields the ears of her child.

A man in a red hat is plugging his ears. He calls you an antisemite.

He says only a terrorist would hear that sound, and that the sound does not exist.

You say the sound is real, you say it sounds like a whole country is being tortured.

You say it sounds like a whole generation being slaughtered.

You say it sounds like fathers and mothers mourning the loss of every good and innocent child they have ever known.

Somebody in the crowd is wearing an angry face. An indignant face.

He asks if you condemn Hamas.