JimSoft Insanitarium -> Insane Stories -> A Rather Emotional Afternoon
By CrazyJim

I was bored. I had been sitting in my kitchen on the linoleum floor for seven hours. It was late afternoon. I had been trying in vain for half an hour to amuse myself by having a conversation with a knife I had found in my next-door neighbour’s laundry a year ago, when he first became my friend. He had stopped being my friend eleven months ago, which also coincided with my accidentally throwing a brick at him from my shed roof. I had tried explaining to him that I was trying to hit the people on the fence, but he wouldn’t believe me, telling me ‘there’s nobody there.’

What does he know, I thought. So I tried to prove they were there by throwing another brick at them, but they ducked and it hit my neighbour in the stomach, at which point he pulled out his gun and threatened me. I wasn’t scared of him, so I jumped off the roof and ran into the house.

The knife had been my friend since a few weeks afterwards during which I tried hitting people on other people’s fences with groceries, which strangely turned up in my car after I went shopping, when they, too, stopped being my friends. I hadn’t tried talking to it until now, and I found it was futile attempting it, as it didn’t respond.

Maybe it’s unconscious, I thought. I attempted CPR on it, but to no avail, so I gave up.

‘Why?’ I sobbed, ‘Why the knife? Why not me? Oh, God, take me!!! Spare the knife, TAKE ME!’

I stepped outside and gave my knife a funeral after cutting a cross out of my fence with the deceased, and sticking it into the ground. I buried the knife on the other side of the yard, crying as I did. I walked back inside and sat on the kitchen floor again. I was still bored, and was now mourning.

I jumped up suddenly.

‘The thing on the wall!’ I exclaimed, ‘It’ll talk to me!’

I walked around the kitchen counter and advanced toward the wall. Hanging there was a plastic device, which I had found on my wall when I moved in. I picked up a slightly curved piece that lay on the floor, attached to the main part by a coiled black string.

A sound was coming from it. Continuous high-pitched beeping. I dropped it and backed away, recalling the injuries I once received from a large steel box that also made the same sound.

Petrified, I jumped at it and started trampling on it. The sound continued. I began to cower on the floor, when I remembered something I saw on television yesterday involving a creature like this. I looked at the numbered clump of plastic on the wall and noticed a small grey button to the left in an indent shaped somewhat like the small piece on the floor.

I picked up the floor-piece and threw it at the wall. It missed the grey button, so I tried again. Outraged at my further failure, I picked it up and thrust myself at the wall with it. This time, I had succeeded, as the small piece now attached itself with a bang-click. The noise had stopped, as I noticed as I cautiously stepped back.

Less threatened, I now engaged in conversation with it. It didn’t respond. I yelled at it. No difference. Then a noise came from it. A high, loud, sustained bell-like tone, repeating twice and halting for a second.

‘Um… wall-thinggie?’ I muttered, ‘Are… are you Ok?’

It spoke again. But I couldn’t understand it, still the same tone as before. It was then I remembered the show I watched yesterday, and what happened some time before the person put the small bit hanging on the big bit by a black string to press the grey button to make it stop reversing like a big box.

I picked up the small bit. A voice came through one end of it.

‘Hello, is that Jeremy?’

I spoke back at the end that the voice came from, holding it close to my mouth.

‘Who's Jeremy?’

It didn’t respond. I repeated myself. Still no response. I noticed that on the other end there was a pattern of holes resembling the one the wall-thing was talking through. I tried talking through it. It seemed to work.

‘Sorry, I must have the wrong number,’ it responded.

I was perplexed by this. What did it mean by ‘the wrong number’? I looked at the grey buttons with numbers on them. They seemed all right to me. 1… 2… 3… aha! There was a star and a naughts-and-crosses picture.

‘I see… Do you want me to scrape them off? I’ll have to find a new knife, though, because my last one died before.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘The wrong numbers… the star and the naughts-and-crosses thing. I’ll get a knife and remove them’

‘What are you talking about? I called the wrong number.’

‘You never said any numbers.’ I said, confused.

The voice laughed. But not like a normal laugh. I hadn’t said anything funny and I hadn’t heard a laugh before that consisted of just one heh and trailed off. The voice didn’t sound very happy like a normal laughing voice, more impatient than anything.

‘Hey, Janet!’ It called, ‘Pick up the other phone! You have to listen to this weirdo!’

I heard a clattering sound and the sound of the wall-thing’s breathing altered. It seemed heavier.

‘My name’s not Janet!’ I objected, ‘What’s a phone? What weirdo?’

‘The thing you’re talking on…’ it responded dully.

It laughed again, but this time differently. It was higher, and it consisted of hee hee’s rather than ha ha ha’s like a normal laugh, but it sounded more like a funny laugh than the one which it emitted earlier.

‘O-h-h-h, so you’re called a phone.’ I discovered, ‘How come your voice just changed?’

It seemed to laugh twice at the same time. It consisted of a deep ha-ha-ha as well as high hee-hee’s. I tried to laugh along with it.

‘Would you like me to get that knife and fix those wrong numbers now?’ I asked.

‘What’s he talking about,’ said the phone in the higher voice.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Not you,’ it sighed.

‘I said earlier that I had the wrong number,’ said the deeper voice.

‘I know,’ I said, butting in.

‘I’m not talking to you.’

It kept telling me about what I had been saying earlier, and laughing in the same two tones as before. Because I already knew what I had been saying, I dropped it on the floor again and walked back around the counter to the cutlery drawer. I pulled out another knife, still mourning my previous one.

I went back to the phone and started scratching the star and naughts-and-crosses sign off. When I finished, I picked up the piece on the floor.

‘I did it. You don’t have any wrong numbers now. Except that zero under the nine… would you like me to move it in front of the–‘

I stopped. It had gone back to reversing like a big box. I jumped back in horror, cowering once again on the floor. Refusing to give in to its intimidation, I summoned as much courage as possible and leapt at it, launching it at the big piece with the numbers, but not the star and naughts-and-crosses sign, three times before it stopped.

This time it only just clicked and then fell to the ground, instead of staying attached like last time. It had come off its coiled black string and lay lifeless on the floor.

‘Not again!’ I wailed, ‘Why does everything close to me always have to die?’

I lay on the ground drowning in my own tears. Suddenly, I stopped.

‘NO!’ I shouted, still sobbing, ‘I’m going to carry on! I’m not going to give in and let this incident destroy my life! I’m going to carry on! I must find the courage to live on, even without my beloved phone, nor my beloved knife, bless their souls. DO YOU HEAR ME GOD! I’M GOING TO CARRY ON!!’

I knelt down sobbing and picked up the limp carcass from the floor and carried it outside. I dug it a grave near my knife’s and placed it in it. I covered it and began to hum The Last Post.

‘Doo-doo-dooooo , doo-doo… umm… Laa?’

The hum transformed into a performance of the Macarena. When I’d done it in all four directions, I went back inside. It now sounded different without the phone, without its voices to comfort me. I was now bored, depressed, mourning and lonely.

Exiting by the front door, I decided to go for a walk. I passed many houses. I saw one person who was obviously very happy, laughing hysterically at his garden and another who looked at me very grimly holstering a brick in his hand.

I stopped in horror. I was alongside a brick wall and from around the corner I heard a box—the same high-pitched, consistent pattern of beeps the phone had been impersonating. I cowered against the wall for some time before I decided I wasn’t going to let it intimidate me any more.

‘You have controlled me for too long, box thing! This is the last time! It ends here! NO MORE GIVING IN! TOO LONG, BOX, TOO LONG! EVER SINCE THE FIRST TIME YOU MET ME FACE TO FACE YOU HAVE CONTROLLED ME! THIS IS IT! IT ENDS RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. BOX, MY LIFE IS MY OWN!!’

Ignoring the angry shouts of nearby residents, I stepped boldly around the corner with a loud roar.

The next thing I knew I was looking up at a blurred face staring back down at me. Its mouth was moving but it wasn’t making any noise. I tried to yell. I could feel it in my throat but I couldn’t hear anything.

Slowly, as I yelled and yelled and yelled, the voice came to me.

‘…THE HELL UP!!! JUST SHUT UP AND STOP SCREAMING!!!’

‘What? Who? Where happened?’ I asked shakily.

The face became clearer as it explained.

‘You walked out behind my truck as I was reversing.’

‘Truck?’

‘Yes, truck. You know… that?’ It explained coarsely, as a hand below it pointed at the box to my right.’

‘Then it isn’t a beeping box thinggie which hurts people?’

It sighed and turned around to get back in the truck, revealing to me that it was attached to a body, then turned back and looked at me.

‘Will you please move? Go home. I need to move my truck.’

I stood up. I was shaking and dizzy. At least I wasn’t depressed, mourning, lonely and bored now. That changed when I got home. The depression, loneliness, mourning and boredom, among other things, began to set back in again. I was dizzy and tired and hungry and sore and shaking. I was still depressed and lonely and bored and mourning.

I looked at the clock. It began ticking. It said that the time was six o’clock. That was rather helpful, as I couldn’t tell time. For such a good deed I offered to replace its battery.

© 2003 JimSoft