The Tell-Tale Cell Phone: Part 2

I will not trouble you with the labors I undertook. How the body was rent down into easily carried parts, how the blood was caught in a succession of Mountain Dew bottles. How I deposited him into the very couch upon which he died. There was no need to clean, as the living room was in so much disarray already, not even Gil Grisom of CSI could find a trace of wrong doing!

When I made the end of these labors, it was four o’clock, still dark as midnight. I was a bed, sleeping, my heart light, when there came a knocking upon my door. I rose, groggy, and answered, my feet safely ensconced in bunny slippers.

There were two constables. A shriek had been heard by a neighbor in the night and an alarm had been sent, foul play was suspected.

I smiled, for what had I to fear? I bade the officers welcome, saying that the shriek was my own in a dream, that Mario had set upon me with a wrench. I bade them search, nay, invited them to search. I opened every door, unlocked every latch. My roommate, I said with glee, had gone to an all night showing of the Extended Version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He would not return for many, many hours.

The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. They sat upon the couch, the very couch!, and chatted of familiar things. Of leveling in WoW and of the outcome of a battle betwixt a zombie and a robot. I chatted with ease, a smile upon my lips. Yet I began to grow nervous. I heard a ringing in my ears, the bale tune of an mp3, as if an ocarina were played through cotton. It was the cell phone of my victim, I had not removed it from his trousers, loathe as I was to touch the soiled fabric.

The noise grew, louder and louder still. I talked more quickly, more loudly. I at last found that the noise could not be within my own ears. It was so loud, yet the officers gave no notice. I talked more quickly, more vehemently. I argued, debated, whether Gordon Freeman could defeat Master Chief! And they still could not hear the infernal tones of the ocarina! I rose, began to pace, but the noise steadily increased! And still the men chatted pleasantly and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? They must hear it, they had to hear it! They must suspect! They must know! Yet they sat there, mocking me! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I felt I must scream, and still, louder! Louder! Louder!

Shit! I shrieked. I admit the deed. Up with the cushions! The nerd lies buried there! Here, here, it is the ringing of his hideous cell phone!

Cheers,
-Jason
(if you would like to read the original Tell-Tale Heart, here is the complete text online: http://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/thearta.htm)

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