‘Whaaat I’ve doooone…’

He barely moved his eyelids as the ringtone kept playing. He barely moved at all. Just sat there. Silent. Motionless. Apathetic. As if nothing was happening.

‘I’ll face myseeelf…’

No response. No reaction. No sound except for the ringtone – and the furious storm, of course, on the other side of the window. He turned his ear toward it. Fat drops of water were pounding on the window ledge, beating it in.

He smirked. He knew that if it rained long enough, there would come a time when there would be nothing left of that ledge. Just an outline of where it had once stood.

‘I’ll face myseeelf…’

Nothing. No response. No movement.

Then silence – as if the ringtone had been severed with a scalpel… the umbilical connection to the outside no more.

He was on his own now. For a little while anyway.

‘ZANG…’

A flash of lightning tore the night, casting shadows in the dark room. He turned toward the window and smiled, waiting for the thunderclap.

            ‘CRRRACK-SHHhhh…’

He continued looking outside for a while with a grin on his face. The world behind the glass pattered along noisily, dripping away.

He turned away from the window and looked toward the phone on his desk. Black, smooth like obsidian, glimmering darkly on the side table. Funny how when the ringtone had stopped a moment ago, the whole world had stopped with it; the storm had been erased, even if for a brief moment; the rain had ceased, the wind had died down, and a lull had swept over the land like a silk sheet falling from the sky under the light of the moon.

ZANG…

The lightning bolt tore through the imaginary silk sheet and set it on fire. It burned instantly, in a silver-white blinding flash, shedding light upon the land. The lull was consumed, vanishing as fast as it had appeared, and the storm barged back stronger than before. The rain began to pound on the window ledge mercilessly. Clouds swept through the sky and collided with each other furiously. Thunderclaps latched onto the howling winds and rode them all the way to the horizon and beyond.

CRRRRRACK-SHHHHH…

This one hadn’t taken long to arrive. A couple of seconds only. ZANG… one one thousand… two one th-CRRRRRACK-SHHHHH…

‘I’ll face myseeelf…’

He did not respond. The ringtone was left to sing into the storm, falling flat with every verse. Flat on its polyphonic head.

He sighed, and his eyeballs twitched. They rebounded around in their sockets for a moment or two, firing off some fleeting thoughts, and then fell still once again. His breathing returned to its normal slow pace. His lips came together and settled into a slight smile. His face froze. His whole body solidified.

‘To cross out what I’ve… beee… coooome…’

He just sat there, in his chair, staring into thin air. The leather cushions had started sucking the sweat out of his skin, but he didn’t notice. He just sat there, amidst the lightning flashes that kept lighting up the room, smiling back at them. The flashes kept coming, in stroboscopic frenzy, as if God was taking pictures of him, but he remained still and unmoved, like a marble statue posing for the empty, gale ridden streets.

‘Erase myself…’

ZANG… CRACKSHHHHHH…

The ringtone stopped again. There was no silence this time. The storm was right on top of him now, thunder and lightning inseparable. The clouds were spewing out thunderbolts at will, zapping, blasting all around him relentlessly. The rain kept pounding on that window ledge harder and angrier.

‘Erase myself…’

The ringtone.

‘Erase myself…’

No response.

‘Erase myself…’

He’d let it ring. Just let it ring. On and on, until it choked on itself.

‘Erase myself… And let go of whaaaaat…… IIIII’ve…… dooooooone…’

His brow began to drop. His eyelids started tensing up. Wrinkles… a frown…

Then a glare! It began to appear out of the depths of his eyes, glistening and sharp. Something was brewing up inside him…

A gust of wind hit the window. The frame shook violently. Clusters of raindrops crashed into the glass pane, bursting like paintballs. His eyeballs dashed toward it. Through the liquid haze, he saw it coming, first as a flash, then as a spewing blaze… a thunderbolt bursting out of a cloud and shooting through the night sky, straight through the wall, blowing up the front part of the house. The partitions started falling apart in a short-circuit bonanza of sparks, setting the floor and furniture on fire. Another thunderbolt followed, striking the rear of the house, blowing it apart. A huge gaping hole replaced the bedrooms. The raging wind billowed its way in, through the crumbling walls, drilling through the crushed mortar, tearing the house apart, razing the whole building to the ground, inch by inch, brick by brick. The rain now pounded its way into the living room, striking him all over in a long merciless barrrage.

He didn’t move. He just sat there, in the middle of the storm, glaring right through it. Raindrops were pounding his bulged eyeballs but he wouldn’t blink. He just sat there, glaring into the wind and rain, nto the storm with searing eyes as the house came crumbling down around him.

‘Erase myself… Erase myself… Erase—’

Just like that, in the midst of chaos, the ringtone stopped. The storm seemed to stop with it. A fresh waft of tranquility blew its way across the ruin, and a soothing lull swept through the air again, like a silk sheet falling from the sky.

For a moment, everything was calm.

For a moment.

Then a voice emerged through the chaos, loud as an echo, drowning everything out.

‘I’m sorry… The person you called is not available. Please leave a message after the tone…’

Something snapped… his muscles tensed up and his face contorted; his upper lip rose and his teeth were revealed, a raging yell rising from his lungs, his eyes spewing sparks, buzzing menacingly…

CRRRRRACKSHHHH…

And just like that, he spontaneously combusted in a deafening explosion, leaving behind no traces of his existence.

***

The person who’d been calling him that night heard about the explosion the next day on the news. Frustrated and shocked, she called a bunch of people to ask if they knew what had happened. None of them answered her calls though. They didn’t even return them. Strange!

So she went to find them.

They all had the same story. Seven missed calls each, in total, over the past three days. None of them had called back for various reasons. They had just let their phones ring their way to voicemail, intending to get back to him sometime later in the day, or in the week, or soon anyway.

The question she asked was ‘Why?’ Why not answer him? Why not call him back? She… well, she’d been working hard all week and was unable to pick up personal calls during work hours – and by the time she was off, late in the evening, she didn’t really have the energy to talk to anyone. So she hadn’t been able to return his calls, not until late last night.

But what about the rest of them? Why did they not respond?

Did they all have a reason like hers?

Well, they did! Each had a reason of their own, a valid reason.

Or was it something else? Something equally reasonable but less truthful? Like a valid excuse, just like hers. She knew.

She knew.

But she kept quiet.

***

Forensics eventually concluded that there had been nobody in the house when it got struck by what they referred to as ‘freak lightning.’

The police issued a broadcast thereafter and notified their members to be on the lookout for a missing man.

A few days and not a single clue later, he was officially declared ‘missing.’

The search intensified. APBs were sent nationwide. Airport records were searched, credit card transactions were monitored, and notifications were made on radio and TV. But nothing came up. There was no sign of him. His face ended up on a milk carton. Missing—gone without a trace. Please call 1-800-VANISHD, the caption read underneath.

A few months later, not a single clue in sight and all hope vaporized, he was deemed dead. Officially he was still missing, but those who knew him considered him gone.

He was duly missed and reminisced.

In absentia.

At the water cooler and the margarita bar.

***

Three and a half months after his disappearance, his friends came together to bid him final and formal farewell during a pretty mundane ceremony under a grey stormy sky. It was time for closure. Time to bury the missing.

The occasion felt strange. It was not customary to lay a missing person to rest so soon after his disappearance. Nevertheless they all wanted to close that chapter for good and get on with their lives.

When the service was finally over they began greeting each other goodbye, ready to leave. They hadn’t seen each other in a while, and they weren’t keen on starting now. It had been too long since the times when they were all one big group. They exchanged a few short pleasantries, the kind one exchanges at a funeral, and slowly started dissipating towards their cars. Then their phones started ringing, all at once. They each reached for their device and answered mechanically, without thinking. All at once.

But the calls were dropped, all of them. All at once.

They all looked around perplexed, then looked at their screens, frowning. The calls were from numbers they did not recognize.

They immediately started calling these numbers back, to each their own, wondering why they had this sudden urge to find out who had called them. Signs of restlessness were now underwriting their busy faces. One by one, they put their phones to their ears and waited for an answer.

‘Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring…… I’m sorry, but the person you called is not available…’

Something inside their heads buzzed, tickling them.

Then, one by one, just like that, they burst into flames, vaporizing in a series of blinding flashes, vanishing without a trace..

***

Later that afternoon the caretaker was driving around in an electrical cart on his daily inspection of the burial grounds. He was fresh and jolly, whistling a tune he’d been hearing lately, a song so popular it had been made into a ringtone.

“I’ll face myself, to cross out what I’ve become, erase myself, and let go of what I’ve done…”

Upon coming to the grave, his eyes bulged and his breath became erratic, not sure what to make of what he saw. For all the bizarre things his eyes had witnessed during his many years on the cemetery park, he hadn’t been prepared for this one. There was an empty casket on the ground, next to a hollow tomb, surrounded by a bunch of black, silver and pink phones scattered on the lawn, blinking dimly, reflecting in their small shiny screens the white tombstones and the grey clouds above, spewing lightning every few seconds, singeing the grass around them. A voice was coming out of the speakers in between each zap, speaking softly…

‘…Erase myself… The person you called is not available… But you’re welcome to join him… ZANG…! Erase myself… The person you called is not available… But you’re welcome to join him…’

He pranced around the casket carefully, looking. For what he didn’t really know. His eyes fell on a black phone next to him, and he impulsively reached over to pick it up and examine it, but something inside him screamed no. He pulled his hand back with a gasp and, without second thought, he hopped back on the cart, driving away as fast as he could toward his quarters. He wanted to sit down on his bed and have some hard liquor and a cigarette before reporting anything. What was he going to say anyway? That aliens had abducted a corpse and its lamenters, leaving behind cellular laser phones? He needed to think it through before telling anyone anything because they’d presume he’d gone crazy and fire him. He’d have to think it through very carefully. Come to think of it, he shouldn’t have a drink because they’d think he was liquoring up on the job. Perhaps he should just wait, report this after hours, when no one would be in. He’d leave a message with head office, telling them that a dead man had gone missing. But that would stir up trouble. The police would start investigating things and perhaps discover his inclination to pinch the odd piece of jewelry from the odd stiff here and there.

Wouldn’t it just be best to keep quiet, bury the coffin and say nothing to no one about it? Who’d miss a dead person anyway? Who would ever know? 

Just then his phone rang.

He reached inside his raincoat pocket to answer it.

‘Hello…?’ 

ZANG… the empty cart careened off the cemetery path and came to a halt under a giant willow, little tufts of smoke rising from its leather seat.

It was found next morning by a passing priest. The priest, on his way to a memorial service, saw the coat lying on the seat and, in an inexplicable pang of mischief, lifted it and hid it by a marble crypt nearby, behind an angel statue. He would pick it up on his way back to the chapel. He would at least think about it. There was plenty of time to change his mind and not succumb to sin. But there was something about that coat that made him want it.

Inside the coat, zapping softly and burning little holes in the lining, sat the caretaker’s phone, waiting to be touched…