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Cell Phone Hell — A New Millennium Canto
As I journeyed down into the lowest pit in Hell, I began to hear a cacophony of ringing — all different kinds of electronic ringing and beeping and digitized melodies. One loud voice carried over the rest of the din, repeating the phrase, "Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?" Descending lower, the sounds became almost unbearable and as I peered over the edge of the pit, I saw them: charred, crispy humans. Some had cell phones jammed in both ears, blood and gore leaking out around them. Others had cell phones crammed into their mouths and were choking on them. Still others had cell phones where their hands were supposed to be, the phones ringing incessantly, the tortured souls forced to answer one ringing phone and then the other. Each time they answered they beat their cell-phone hands against their heads, their ears and cheeks beaten to bloody pulps. I approached one of the afflicted, who had no cell phone stuffed in his mouth and asked him a question, "Of what sin are you guilty that you have cellular phones for hands?" He answered in a digitized voice, "The cellular customer you are calling is either out of range or unavailable. If you would like to page this person, please press five. To leave a voice message, wait for the tone." I could tell by the pleading look in his eyes that he was actually trying to say something else, but when he opened his mouth again, all that came out was another recorded message.
Beyond him, was a woman seated at a small table set for dinner. She looked like a Hollywood starlet, like Pam Anderson, with her over exaggerated features. This woman had no phone in her ears or mouth or in place of her hands. The ringing sounds that emanated from her table were quite intense, sounding like a hundred different phones simultaneously going off. "Hold on, let me get that," she said as she searched through her various different purses and handbags. "Just a sec, I'm expecting a very important phone call." The whole time she searched endlessly for the ringing phone, looking under the table, through her bags, in the pockets of her charred power suit, and under the plates and napkins on the surface of her table. Over and over she looked for a phone to answer as the incessant noise continued. "Where's my stupid phone?" she would ask herself, "Hold on, I gotta take this call." Across from her at the table was a man, dressed in a sooty business suit. He sat very still and a huge cell phone, like one from the eighties, was shoved halfway in his face. It was from this cell phone, the one in his mouth persistently ringing, that the digitized noises escaped through his ears. She never looked over or up at him, just continued her eternal search for the ringing phone, all the while wondering to herself where exactly it was. Her repeated phrases reminded me of a Stepford wife on the fritz.
Making my way through the crowd of tormented cell phone users, I came across a teenager. This was no ordinary teenager, it had two heads, one male and one female. It seemed that half the body was male and the other half female. Its arms were joined together at the hands, or where its hands should have been, but like the others, there was just a cell phone instead. "It's my turn to use it," the girl's head screamed, her face twisting and contorting in teenaged rage as she pulled the phone her way. Pulling it back toward his part of the body, the boy's acne covered face yelled, "You're using up all the anytime minutes, let me have it" "You idiot," she cried, "We have eternal minutes on our new calling plan." As I passed them, their tug of war persisted and the phone continued to ring without either one able to answer it.
Next, I came upon an old Mercedes, the paint peeling off from the heat and the tires flat. The wheels were turning, but the car stayed in place. I bent down and looked into the driver's side window. A harried looking man, with a stethoscope around his neck, was talking on a cell phone connected to an ear and mouthpiece; there was a set of golf clubs in the back seat. The digital speedometer read 666 miles per hour, and looking through the car and out the other window, Hell's landscape whizzed past. Suddenly, out of nowhere, bodies were hitting the front of the car, flying over it and disappearing into smoke behind it. Bicyclists and pedestrians, dogs and cats, deer, opossum and raccoons, men, woman, and children of all ages bounced off the hood and the spider-webbed windshield. The car, not moving a single inch, sped through construction sights, orange pylons flying everywhere, as people with hard hats and orange vests followed suit. The man at the wheel seemed not to notice any of this at all and kept muttering into the phone about tee times and dinner reservations. Then he said, "Is it an emergency? Because it has to be an emergency. I'm not on call this weekend."
As I came to the lowest point in this cell-phone Hell I came across a long strip mall that seemed to stretch for miles. All the businesses in the strip mall were cell phone vendors, AT&T, Verizon, Teleconnect, Sprint, they were all there. As I walked past these stores I peered in. The merchants working here seemed to be the worst off of all the people in Hell. They had cell phones for hands too, but also crammed into every orifice were ringing and vibrating phones. In their eyes sockets, there were no eyes, but digital cell phone screens. One woman, standing particularly close to the window, peered out with her vacant glowing cell phone screen eyes. A text message written in them flashed: "Help me, help me," over and over again.
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AUTHOR NOTES:
No biography supplied.
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