Stories to Keep You Awake at Night

Earwig

Many years ago, in Borneo, there was an English man named Clifford Macy who was young, handsome and very vain. He fancied himself as God’s gift to women and often boasted about his success.

Macy was part owner of a tobacco plantation and his friend and business partner was another English man by the name of Leopold Warwick. Despite being old and fat, Warwick had a wife who was very young and very beautiful and she was the envy of every man who set eyes on her.

The three of them lived together in a big house on the plantation. Macy slept in the first bedroom, while Warwick and his wife slept in the second.

It was rainy season and there was precious little to do. Macy was bored and he could find nothing that would keep him entertained. As time went on, he developed a passion for Warwick’s wife and began to wish that he could have her for himself.

He tried flirting with her, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. One evening, when her husband was away, Macy made a pass at her, but she slapped his face.

However, Macy was the kind of man who didn’t take no for an answer. Every time she rebuffed him, he became more and more obsessed with her until he was determined to have her at any cost.

Although his heart was burning with a white hot passion, Macy had a devilish and cunning mind. He soon came up with a way to get Warwick out of the way.

In Borneo, there is a type of earwig that lives on waxy secretions. It has a special liking for the human ear. It’s so small and light that it could be crawling on your face and you’d barely even feel it. If it gets into a man’s ear, it creeps down the canal, unable to turn around, feeding as it goes and causing weeks of hellish torment until… well, I’m sure you can use your imagination.

Macy paid two native men a large sum of money and instructed them to creep into Warwick’s bedroom in the middle of the night and place an earwig on his pillow. He went to sleep that night with a smile on his face and dreamed about the horrible fate that was about to befall his friend.

The next morning, when Macy came down to breakfast, Warwick seemed bright and cheerful. He watched the old man closely, looking for any signs of discomfort.

Just then, Macy felt a strange tickling sensation in his own ear. When he poked his finger into his ear, he discovered that he was bleeding. Jumping up from the table with a look of horror on his face, he shrieked, “The damn thing is in my ear!”

It appeared that the men he paid had made a terrible mistake and during the night they had gone into the wrong room and placed the earwig in the wrong man’s ear.

That was the beginning of weeks of unimaginable pain and agony. There was nothing the doctor could do for him. He lay in his room, tied to the bed with his wrists lashed to the headboard to prevent him tearing his ears off.

Day and night, he writhed and screamed as the earwig crept and crawled and twisted through his head, slowly driving him insane. Occasionally, when the earwig was resting, Macy would get a break from his torment, but when it woke up, he would scream and scream and scream.

The pain was so unbearable that being flayed alive, burned at the stake, put on the rack or even hanged by the neck would have been an act of mercy. Every time the doctor came to see him, Macy begged him to put him out off his misery.

Then something very unexpected happened. Miraculously, the earwig crawled out his other ear. Macy had come close to the brink off death, but he had survived the torment.

When he was well enough to talk, the doctor came in to see him.

“I suppose they’re going to call the police and have me arrested now,” said Macy.

“No,” said the doctor. “They’re not calling the police.”

“Why not?” Macy demanded. “I suppose they’re trying to avoid a scandal.”

“No, they’re taking pity on you. They know about your condition…”

“What do you mean?”

“You see, the earwig was a female,” said the doctor, “and it laid eggs…”