When the aliens swarmed Earth, people had to be silent or communicate through ASMR. The aliens had sensitive hearing, and if you were too loud, they’d disembowel you—or decapitate you if you were lucky. Most people, including my family, didn’t figure that out fast enough. The aliens decimated the world in minutes. They say the most common, lethal last words were, what the fuck was that?
I was one of the survivors. I nodded and waved to the aliens who passed me. They were giant ears with legs: one ear shaped like a human’s, and two legs underneath. If you were too loud, a katana strapped in their ear flew out and got you.
“Morning,” I whispered, adding a nice pop with my mouth. I drummed my fingers against my skull, and the ears vibrated in pleasure. ASMR did wonders.
I worked an office job before the invasion and still do now, head bent, minding my business. The difference now is the lack of sounds. Gone are the conversations between co-workers and the oft-ignored Grindr notification chimes on my phone. Though I still watch videos on my break, with headphones, of course.
I watched a few ASMR videos before the invasion. They ended up giving me survival skills. I viewed them out of curiosity, and I thank my curiosity every day.
Your delivery is as important as your volume. Some said the aliens just hated loud noises, but I’d seen people have their limbs cut off for coarse whispers.
I brought my copy of Infinite Jest everywhere. Not because I wanted to show off how smart I was, but because the thick acoustics of its cover made the best taps and caresses. I tested dozens of books and nothing made the aliens vibrate as euphorically as this.
I was hungry, so I entered the closest KFC. One alien managed the humans working there and had them do everything the same as before but hiked the prices and lowered the wages. Probably just to annoy us. The alien manned the door, its ear surveying the area. I walked to the counter where a red-haired, freckled teen worked the cash.
“Hello.” I tapped my book. “I’d like a chicken sandwich, sandwich, sandwich.” The alien behind me seemed to enjoy my words. Hypnotic repetition was one of their favorite things. An alien once liked my sound so much that they coughed up a $100 bill from their ear for me.
“I heard you the first time,” said the teen, his face reddening.
“No need to be hostile, hostile, hostile.”
“Just whisper normally. Saves us time.”
“Okay, sorry.” Even the best survivors had days where they looked at the world and only saw shit—shit and suppression. I had one of those days last week when I screamed into a pillow.
“Thank you.” The teen sighed loudly. Too loud. His bulging eyes showed he knew he fucked up. The alien overseeing the store popped out its katana, which sliced the poor guy in half. I stifled a sob.
The katana flew back, retracting into the ear. The alien approached me as I regained my bearings. A paper emerged from the ear—TODAY’S YOUR LUCKY DAY. YOU ARE SELECTED TO BE MR./MRS./MX. ASMR.
Every day, the aliens selected a human with skills to give their leadership an ASMR show. The world’s most prominent ears sat around the best ASMRers in the nation who whispered, popped, and tapped to a rapt audience. I’d been selected a few times before. They paid you thousands of dollars and failure to comply resulted in death, so showing up was a no-brainer.
Being Mr. ASMR gave me a purpose I lacked pre-invasion. I was too fearful of authority figures to approach them. In this ASMR world, they’re coming to me.
I drove to the aliens’ national headquarters with only minutes to spare. The main room was expansive and bare, barring the chairs where the aliens sat in a circle. I wordlessly walked to the center.
“Hello, I am Mr. ASMR today,” I whispered. “So good to see you.” I tapped Infinite Jest. At first, I tapped randomly but shifted to the beat of “Billie Jean.” It was the alien’s favorite song. They often played it at low volume.
With the song finished, and the aliens vibrating like jackhammers, one spat out a piece of paper. FULL BODY SOUNDS.
I hoped they wouldn’t want that today, but their wish is my command. I disrobed to my underwear, showing off my flabby skin. In this new world, people desired fatness. Slapping and jiggling my large body made better sounds for the aliens than muscular ones.
I smacked my chest and rubbed my stomach. I brushed my legs against the floor. The aliens rewarded me by spitting money at my chest.
Before the invasion, I found ASMR body sounds videos to be a joke. Stripping down and tapping your chest on camera seemed demeaning. Who wanted to see losers flirting with softcore porn in bizarrely low volume? Now I’m doing it, and I’m not laughing. It’s not funny, and I’d die if I laughed anyway.
I made another pop. Some wondered if the world would end with a bang or a whimper. Turns out it was with a popopop.
But being here, on the floor in soft-spoken submission, feels familiar. It’s a disposition I had to inhabit for years. Years before the invasion. Post-invasion survival came naturally.
People in my proximity had felt distant—shouting in someone’s ear was like mouthing to a void. I felt such shame during sex with men that I gagged all my moans because I didn’t want anybody to hear, to know. Some things were loud before: police sirens, lawnmowers, airplanes. But I created silence by holding back my words.
Maybe the world ended long ago, and these aliens were just nuclear fallout in desolation.
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Sean Dowie is a slightly eccentric writer from Toronto, Canada. He’s a 2024 Tin House Winter Workshop Participant and a 2022 Lambda Literary Fellow. His fiction has appeared in HAD and Carousel Magazine. He mostly writes book reviews but is slowly pivoting to fiction.