FACTORY RINGTONE

A few emails from people looking for my FACTORY RINGTONE story - gone since the hacker. Reposted below - thanks for asking - I like that

FACTORY RINGTONE

I cant get
Any rest
People say
Im obsessed
Everything thats serious lasts
But to me theres no surprise
What I have, I knew was true
Things go wrong, they always do

She drives me crazy
Like no one else
She drives me crazy
And I cant help myself

Fine Young Cannibals

Intermittently he would pull out just one ear phone and hold his breath hoping, hoping against hope that today it would be an ugly fuck who no-one would miss, not like that pretty secretary type on Tuesday… or was it Monday… no, Monday was that old generic alcho who kept breathing in his face; or was that Sunday? Maybe Sunday was the guy talking in corporate acronyms… what day is it today anyway? Another mind storm, neck burning he put his head in his hands, silent sobbing. It doesn’t matter how pretty they are, rules are rules. There have been many papers written on ringtone psychology and what the choice of tune says about a person. That factory setting ringtone, you know the one, if you leave it unchanged and you get a call in public you may just get murdered by this man with his head in hands on the city bound line tonight.

Central station, time to change trains, no method to this madness just randomly he gets on a train, pushes gently through the crowds, no hostility. Garlic, disgusting but it won’t get you killed, not by this guy anyway. Newspaper, fresh off the press, cheap ink smells like decaying teeth. Someone’s ipod so loud it drowns out his own music, annoying, but that’s all. An awkwardly ugly and stinking man is filling 2 and a half seats and he’s not even fat. A woman who vaguely resembles the one whose photo was on the front page yesterday because she was randomly shot to death by the Ringtone Killer is eyeing the disgusting creature with much distaste as he keeps (purposely?) touching her knees with his own. Sitting down with measured aggression, just enough to give the stinking man the idea that half his 2 and a half seats was about to be taken, staring straight at him but with composure, only enough fire in the eye to indicate that any challenge will be met. What are the chances this guy is so ignorant and unthinking that he has never changed his factory ringtone? Statistically it has never been researched, but going by rule of thumb, his own variation, 2 in 10 people are so close to being robots that they in fact may as well be robots and this ‘person’ is so oblivious to the world he doesn’t know that he is fetid and should cut his fingernails and that it is repellent to pick your nose and wipe your fingers on the seat.

Flashback to the guy last week wearing the red cap who revealed his cell blaring the ringtone. No wait, the cap was white before his phone rang. Getting to your destination before you have departed is another art form altogether. Alison Dubois would understand, her phone rang on television the other evening and he shot the screen. In all honesty he should hold the whole props department responsible. Sitting there holding his breath, for more reasons than one having a fantasy about asking stinky to borrow his cell and changing the ringtone to factory setting and calling the number himself just so he got to put a couple bullets… no, no breaking the rules, it has to be free choice, you have to have made the conscious decision to leave your phone on factory setting ringtone because you like it and if you like it you are an idiot and if it rings anywhere near the wrong set of ears you are dead. Stinky stretches his legs out, suggestively putting his knee even closer to the poor woman who was trying to climb backwards through her seat. He leers at her, says something, a cloud of foul breath hangs in the aisle. It is probably not worth it but he pulls out an earplug anyway, to eavesdrop. The Fine Young Cannibals in one ear and a thick ignorant drawl in the other. This story has no direct narrative and be thankful as you have been spared the inane details of an idiot trying to pick up a woman 30 years younger and 500 thousand times more attractive than him on a crowded train at peakhour. She smiles stupidly because she has been conditioned to be nice to strangers and a bitch to everyone who actually knows her. She has a reputation for being a bitch, but we don’t know that, it is but conjecture in this instance.

Her phone rings, she looks relieved as she reaches for her handbag. But her hand doesn’t make it to her handbag as the guy sitting quietly next to the sleazy man who smells bad suddenly stands up, pulls a gun out of his jacket pocket and shoots her in the face. It all happens so fast and everyone is so busy looking at the loud man who had been trying to make conversation with the victim that they don’t even notice as the killer slips through the crowd, turns around and joins the throng looking shocked. He walks backwards as everyone is rushing forward and exits the door between the carriages throwing the pistol with agility off into the dark of the tunnel, screams and mayhem amplifying, the first screech of the wheels braking as news reaches the driver. Blood and horrified conversation. He enters the carriage again, pushes to the crowd around the dead woman, says he saw the guy and that he had a moustache and blue eyes, that he noticed him because of a foot that was accidentally stood on, that the guy gave him the creeps. A few people agree and start looking around, dialing for the police, confusion.

There are children in the carriage and they must be considered, they must be kept in the dark and given cell phones for emergencies. He won’t get caught – not this time, maybe not next time, but you don’t have anything to worry about if you just show a little individuality and change your ringtone.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 11:32 am and is filed under NEW TEXTS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.