Miriam van der Wyngard was the first to start humming. She didn't produce the noise from her throat, no sound held behind closed lips, but from every pore, every orifice, every blade of hair emitting a sound, like a struck tuning fork.

 

She sat in the ER, propped in bed, nurses attaching monitors and testing her. The doctor, when he came, struggled with the low humming. Though the nurses found it pleasant, a gentle white noise like a ceiling fan, the doctor's discomfort was visible in his wincing face. By the end of the day six more women, one older than Miriam's mother and one younger than her grandchild, filled the beds around Miriam, all humming like a choir about to open their mouths and sing an intro, all anticipation, no pay off.

 

After the x-rays, the MRIs and the blood tests they had to conclude there was nothing wrong with the women. Nothing other than the gentle insistent noise they emitted.

 

In the lunchroom there were sudden sounds of surprise, gasps and screams as Fatima, one of the ER nurses started to hum while chewing her sandwich. It was spreading.

 

At first it was thought the humming was a virus. Something passed through contact, possibly airborne. But as more and more people around the world started to hum, some in remote villages, some in penthouses, the WHO had to conclude that the pathogen may be biological rather than foreign. Afterall, the affliction only affected the women. Yet it was the men who suffered.

 

The first arrest related to the humming happened within a month. Orla Sanderson, a mother of six girls, was charged with murder after her husband was found dead in their home bleeding from the ears. Orla claimed in court that he had been beating her, a not unusual occurrence according to the defendant, when her daughters gathered in the room. Mrs Sanderson claimed it was only all seven of them in the room at once that caused it. Her husband had screamed shrilly and dropped to the floor holding his ears. It wasn't her fault, her lawyer said, after all she never touched him. Orla was put on good behaviour, a suspended sentence. But new laws were passed after the incident. Women were to congregate in groups of no more than three at any time, public or domestic, if a man was present.

 

Ear plugs and noise cancelling headphones were given away to men and boys for free as a health initiative. All women and girls were humming now and it was getting quite impossible to escape the racket. Female-dominated workplaces were equipped with courtesy headphones for male students and patients. But within months it became clear the humming was only increasing.

 

‘It's like every woman on the planet is hooked up to a battery system,' Jeremy Cross of Channel Eight News said, ‘Like an electric circuit is powering them all.'

 

‘Humming with power,' his co-host Penelope Lane said. But due to the noise cancelling loop plugs he was wearing Jeremy failed to hear her and continued talking.

 

The vigilante killings started before the first year was out. They weren't called that of course, and most people didn't even notice them at first. For Miriam it crept up slowly. It became normal to see less women out and about. More and more staying home as the restrictions on gatherings increased. Online booking systems were established for women to do the weekly shopping without breaking the congregation laws. Women Only gyms received a swathe of enrolments only to be closed down months later as neighbouring businesses made noise complaints, the sound likened to industrial factory vents. Foot traffic in the CBD reduced sales and slowly the shop windows became vacant. So, when the women started to disappear it was easy not to notice.

Miriam's husband and sons wore headphones; even when he slept her husband wore ear plugs. Miriam wondered if she screamed would they even notice?

 

Many men, particularly office workers, were granted special permissions to work from home. Unfortunately, this increased DV callouts. Mark Adams was the first man to be arrested and charged with his wife and daughters murders. He was caught after he attacked the female paramedic who responded to the neighbours triple zero call. Witnesses reported him yelling ‘Shut up!' at her before lurching at her with a fire poker. This incident also demonstrated that death did not stop the humming.

 

Women could not hide because of the involuntary noise emitted from their bodies, but neither could the men hide their bodies. Deep in the forests, the lakes, the meadows, the floorboards, bodies long buried started humming.

 

As panels of men appeared on TV to debate the issue and consider possible solutions groups of women hiked out into the countryside with audio-detecting equipment to find the lost. Soon morgues were overflowing along with women refuges as they were driven from their homes. Some chose to leave to ease the burden on their son's ears, but many said they just couldn't stand not being heard.

 

Instead of investigating the deaths of the humming corpses experimentation began. Ear-muffed men began attaching electrodes under the skin, in the brains. If they could just stop the humming, they thought, just silence the women again, get their bodies under control, everything could return to normal.

Women took to the streets, upset that their lives had become an obscurity, an annoyance, a problem to solve where they saw none. They poured from their homes, the refuges, daughters on shoulders holding placards demanding they not be silenced, demanding the men listen.

Police fought to disperse the women with tear-gas and water cannons, but they refused to go home. Hours turned into days. News stations reported them as The Cacophony. Miriam stood amongst them, the noise like a rising wave, pulling them up, filling them with energy, an angelic choir of bodies impossible to ignore. The humming rippled out over the land engulfing the world, getting louder, their body's tingling with energy as the humming increased radiating from them.

 

The men tried to run as the sound intensified, so loud they couldn't open their eyes. Hands clamped to their heads screaming. The Cacophony penetrated their skin, their muscles, their minds, unable to block it out any longer.

 

And then, silence.

 

The men opened their eyes, took their hands from their ears, removed their headphones and ear plugs and cotton wool. No humming, no sound at all, blood trickling from their ruptured ear drums. Deaf now.

 

The humming was gone. The women stood listening to the birds, the wind, their bodies warm and silent, and one by one they started laughing.