The Tell-Tale Cell Phone: Part 1

With all due apologies to Edgar Allen Poe

True!, nervous , very, very dreadfully nervous I have been, and am; but why will you say that I am mad? Playing games had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in GameStop. How, then, am I mad? Harken! and observe, how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it began to grow, to haunt my dreaming thought and waking mind. I did love him, as a brother might love his sibling, not in the way of homosexuality, though oft we did accuse each other of such proclivities. It was his way, yes, it was that! It was his way of mocking, of cruelly jesting at my expense, of defaming both my ancestry and manhood. Whenever I fell to him at Halo or Team Fortress, whenever my avatar did crumble to his did he unleash his taunts and churlish jibes. Noob, he would call me, pansy, often calling me by the name of a girl-child, such as Susie or Becky.

When the invectives would spew forth from his lips I would find my hands, inching, slowly, ever so slowly, as if by their own volition, towards his throat. He noticed not, entranced as he was, by his own wit, which did pour forth in mockery. A sloth might have bemoaned the slowness of my hand. The wise tortoise would grow impatient at my progress, so slow was I. So intent. A Holy-Speccd Priest in WoW could solo from 1 to 70 in the time it took for my hands to move a bare inch.

Yet – every night – his jibes would subside. His taunts would ebb as does the tide as his Cheetos found his lips, the unnatural orangeness staining his fingers, the couch, the controllers. I could smile then. Laugh even – how mirthful I was! Murder was replaced by fondness, for the joy of camaraderie. I hated him not! To think that I had – bare moments ago! – yearned to feel his neck beneath my hands, to crush that marvelous vessel down which many a Slim Jim and Red Bull had flowed – it could not be imagined.

Yet upon the eighth night, eight nights of taunts, eight nights of barking, dog-like laughter and cries of mirth at my expense, I could take no more! A pillow I seized, fouled by much passing of gas, and thrust it upon his face, even as a Jolly Rancher did pass his lips. A strangled scream was all he managed, a single scream of such a pitch and tone as to break glass.

There was flailing, yet his prowess at Halo availed him little, as the eons spent upon the couch had reduced his strength to that of a kitten, an anemic kitten at that! My weight pressed down upon him, his hands grasped at me, oh the jests that could have been made had there been someone to witness the act!

I smile, laughed even, as his muffled protestations grew weaker. When at long last his arms ceased their movement, when his body grew still, did I remove the pillow. He was dead. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there for many minutes. There was no pulsation. The nerd was stone dead. His taunts would trouble me no more.

Tomorrow: The conclusion of a tale most foul