One morning, Glen discovered a bump behind his right ear. He knew it didn’t belong there because when he touched it, his knees buckled from the pain. So, he did what any normal person would do under the circumstances. He touched it again.
Glen went to the washroom, folded back his ear, and looked at the bump in the mirror. It looked like a large blister, the size of the tip of his pinkie finger. He stared at it for a long time, wondering how it could have grown so large without him noticing.
He wasn’t worried about the bump, but he did think about it frequently. Probably a dozen times that morning, he played with it in front of the mirror. It seemed so…foreign. Like he had been abducted by aliens and been given an implant. He wondered where he might put such an external device if he were himself an alien. Behind the ear, probably. It was a perfect spot.
At first, Glen didn’t like the bump behind his ear. He briefly considered going to see a doctor, but it wasn’t like he was dying or anything. He’s had bumps and bruises, aches and pains, colds and flu, scrapes and gouges, but he’s always managed to heal without the help of a doctor. There isn’t much that disinfectant, Band-Aids, hot soup, a shot of brandy, and a warm bed can’t cure.
He considered just removing it himself. Maybe if he sterilized his pocketknife, he could just slice the bump right off. But the more he looked at it, the more he was convinced that something bad would happen if he removed it. The bump was shaped like a dome, but maybe its real shape was more like a capsule, so it was possible that the other half of it, an identical dome-like bump, was on the inside of his head. Maybe the bump wasn’t really a bump after all, but a plug instead, meant to hold everything inside. He imagined cutting it off and having his brain leak out onto his shoulder.
Glen observed the bump for several days, and although the bump itself hadn’t changed, he did notice that he was changing. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him that the bump would have any other role in his life except as an interesting scientific discovery, something intimate and personal that he could be curious about and study, like when he received a microscope as a boy and looked at close-ups of his saliva and nail clippings.
But he was wrong. He was changing. And although he should have been terrified and run screaming down to the emergency department, he actually welcomed the change.
He had always been a generally happy person, never getting upset about things, always seeming to see the good things in life, smiling often enough. But the happiness was growing, expanding rapidly like the birth of a universe, with seemingly infinite bliss potential. His days were no longer just filled with cheerfulness and contentment. They were euphoric. He knew it was because of the bump.
Living with the bump was like living in Disneyland – there was excitement in the air; sometimes Glen could even hear it, like the hum of overhead electrical wires. It was the feeling of first love, when the world becomes a better place just because the lover is in it; the bliss would never end and, like a fairytale, happiness would be forever after. And he liked touching the bump. The little jolt of pain he got had become addictive.
His friends noticed the change in him and commented. Glen, have you been getting laid lately? He laughed at all the comments and told everyone that, yes, he was in a particularly good mood lately. But he didn’t explain why. That would have been a mistake. He felt it was important to keep his secret.
When his friend Kim, who worked as a nurse at the hospital, noticed him fiddling with his ear, she asked to take a look. It looks like you’ve got yourself a little bump. How long have you had this thing? Three weeks? Why don’t you pop down to my office tomorrow and I’ll remove it for you?
Glen leapt up from his chair. DON’T YOU TOUCH IT!
After Kim left, dismayed, Glen sat on his couch sulking. Euphorically sulking. He felt bad about his outburst, of course; it wasn’t like him, but the thought of removing the bump was unnerving. Yet the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was for the best. He knew that the bump was unnatural and it had to go. He would go see Kim in the morning. He had made his decision.
When Glen woke up the next morning, he instinctively reached for the bump. But it was gone.
He looked in the mirror, tilting his head and folding back his ear. He ran a finger along the spot where the bump was hidden not even eight hours before. But there was nothing, not even a blemish. It was like it had never existed. The aliens have pulled the plug. He laughed.
The euphoria lasted another week, and then he was back to being plain old Glen. He could concentrate on his work again and be productive. The days of sitting at his desk in a blissful daze were over. He was free, his shackles unlocked.
A year later, Glen woke up feeling happier than usual. In the shower, he felt a shooting pain that buckled his knees. Something under his hair at the back of his head. Painful, but euphorically painful to the touch.