Prank Phone Calls to Gorgeous Women
by Jason Earls
author of Cocoon of Terror, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, & Red Zen
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Knock.
Knock knock.
Ian heard the knocks. He knew it was his father. He got off his makeshift bed. Looked at the walls and ceiling, they were covered with beetles and spiders and centipedes, thousands of them. Goddamn, Ian thought, I’ve gotta get some insecticide down here, this place is fucking infested. He walked slowly up the broken cement stairs, pushed off the boards that covered the entrance. He went up and out. His father was standing there, smiling and wearing his old green army fatigues that were faded and torn in places, plus a navy hat that did not match his clothes. His lips were red and chapped, mist came from them due to the excessive cold – it was freezing outside. Ian didn’t even know what month it was.
“Hello, Dad,” Ian said. “What’s going on.”
“Nothing much. I brought you a wood stove. Sure got cold around here fast, eh? Figured you might need a wood stove in that cellar to keep you warm.”
Ian looked at his father’s little blue pickup. A black wood stove made from barrels was setting in the back. “Where did you get it?”
“At the gettin’ place. Come on.”
His father went over to the truck, Ian followed him, they climbed into the bed, pulled the stove to the edge, Ian hopped down and they carried it over to the cellar and down the steps. They set it against the wall.
“Thanks for bringing it. I’ll get it set up and working tomorrow.”
His father was staring at the Mijnan in the corner. Ian’s weird musical instrument that he’d invented and spent his entire life so far building and improving, and for which most of his friends and musical acquaintances had blackballed him for. His father went over and plucked a string and poked a key on the keyboard, then he fondled one of the brass valves and turned a tuning peg. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped and turned around; he saw copies of Jason Earls’ books stacked in one corner: Cocoon of Terror, Red Zen, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, and How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell. His father went over and flipped through Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, Ian had obviously read it through several times, the cover was worn and even torn on one edge, he had underlined several passages throughout book in black pen. “You must really love this book,” his father said.
“Yeah, I do, everyone should own a copy of that novel. It changed my life. So what’s been going on with you lately, Dad? Any news I should know about?”
“Nothing much. I’ve just been making a few prank phone calls lately.”
“Wha-... what did you say?”
“I said I’ve been making prank phone calls. I got interested in telephone technology recently. I laid off the other inventions. Boy, a person can really get wrapped up in human body enhancement, remember when I was going to install that chip in my brain? Wow, let me tell ya, that shit is ultra-dangerous and the damage inflicted is permanent. Hey, I love technology, I love computers and I love imagining that I’m a cyborg, I like simple modes of communication too and I like secrecy, but ANONYMITY and telephones are my new thing.”
Ian went back up the stairs and inhaled some fresh air, his father followed him. “Prank phone
calls, huh? That sure is immature, Daddio. Who the hell have you been calling?”
“Gorgeous women that I like.”
“Who?”
“If I see any young women that I’m really attracted to around town, I find out their telephone numbers and give them a call and harrass them, or annoy them, or just make weird noises into the receiver, whatever I feel like doing really.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I know I can’t have them. You see, mainly I just call up and listen to their voices and record them talking – if they have a good voice. I have one of those in-line voice recorders from the radio shop and I keep all the tapes of the women’s voices and play them back at night whenever I feel lonely.”
Beelzebub interrupts and says,, listen to this,, look at the page,, pretend I am alive now,, in your face,, do you know I am here,, yes you do,, listen with every hair in both ear canals,, do you hear it,, I’m writing out of loneliness lust rebellion recalcitrance assinine terror in the face of sheer existence inside the turgid universe,, I need all your attention,, there is a stealth bomber breaking the metaphysical barriers of treason above that form immense clouds of stagnant smoke in a sociopath’s nightmare,, a midget in the computer code running this galaxy,, and we will all perish soon,, you and I,, every one of us,, on the back of an atomic bomb filled with pirhanas and rotten human teeth sunken in ravenous sucking mouths,, what can we do about it,, nothing,, maybe we should listen to the silence of John Cage for four minutes and thirty-three seconds,, or just ramble and mumble and rumble on with the deadly gangstas,, Beelzebub out...
Ian squinted. “Listening to unknown women’s voices at night, Dad? Alone? That you recorded? That’s fucking pathetic and creepy as hell. Does mom know about this?”
His father stuck his hands in his pockets, blew out some more cold white mist. He looked depressed. “Of course not. She’s a good woman. I don’t want to upset her with this crap. It’s just a passing phase. But I like telephones, I really do, and I love computers too, I’m going to get a new one soon and may put some sound files on my computer, I’ll store the women’s voices on my hard drive, that’s what I’ll do. I see beautiful women around town all the time, they’re everywhere. Gorgeous women with long legs and plump behinds and long black eyelashes and shiny hair and perfect bodies with huge boobs and erect nipples, their moist vaginas in those soft panties just waiting for me to get in there. I get up close to them and they smell so fucking good. I see them at the bank at the post office at cafes at the Tag office at city meetings at the grocery store and cable office and I am an old man now. I’m a really old man. And I’ll never have them, I’ll never enjoy the company of a young gorgeous female again, I mean REALLY ENJOY them in the way that I want to and the way that I fantasize about and THAT drives me crazy. I’m going nuts. I want one again. A gorgeous young woman. Just one. Or maybe two. But I’m old. They would laugh at me if I asked them out to dinner or for a drink or to see a movie, they would know I’m pathetic, most of them anyway, and it makes me angry. So fucking angry. To know I can’t get them or have them anymore. The way Ted Bundy must have felt, I imagine. So what I do is I find out their phone numbers and call them up and talk to them and try to seduce them or just give them a hard time and then I record their voices and the whole time I’m wondering what THEY think about when they are ALONE, what they CRAVE, what they really want next in LIFE, but it doesn’t really matter because when it is all over I still have their voices trapped on my recorder, and soon they’ll be inside my computer, living inside the motherboard and the CPU, I’ll trap a little piece of their soul in there and afterward they will be ALL MINE and never get that part of themselves back and they can think I am pathetic or old or weak or ugly or whatever they want but I will still have them TRAPPED and I’ll hold on to their electronic presence and enunciations for the rest of my life.”
“I think you’re really getting sick, Dad.” Ian said.
“No I’m not.” he staggered backward.
Beelzebub says,, write these words faster than the speed of a loud gong,, put all your heart and transcendental soul into them,, become a xenogenic bluesman from the great outer beyond,, rant away and become a green-death news junky inventing new forms of telepathy and psychocommunication while encompassing the reader’s body with cerebro-stimulants and hypnotic entities that have traveled past this uber-life,, send your transmissions out on a conveyor belt of shark skin,, make it past the guarding translyvanian wolfhound with one morass of somnambulance lodged in his outtake barrier,, smash their brick-teeth with soft energy squares of light & massive incisors in vortex clouds left behind by a soaring F-14 for edification,, never distraction with flesh contracts doomed to omit coma syndromes,, and by the way don’t ever call this number again,, do you hear me,, I don’t ever want to hear your voice again,, you got that? Okay Beelzebub out...
“You are, Dad. You’re getting ill.”
His father stumbled back again and grabbed his forehead.
“Sit down for a minute.”
His father sat down on a log. He was sweating. His eyes were shut, his mouth was open and he was breathing hard. “I haven’t been feeling too good lately, son. I feel like I’m losing it.”
“Just sit down and take it easy for awhile.”
“How long are you going to live in this cellar, son?”
“Just until I get famous with my Mijnan. Soon I will have lots of good musical opportunites. I’m sure plenty of cash will roll my way. I’ll get a house and become a normal person with a wife and kids instead of living in a cellar like a bum.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“Will you stop making these prank phone calls to gorgeous women and recording their voices?”
“I don’t know...”
“You’re going to get caught, Dad.”
“No... I won’t.”
“Yes, you will if you continue. I don’t know what they do to people who make harrassing phone calls, but whatever it is it can’t be good. Will you promise me you’ll quit calling these beautiful women you see around town?”
“All right. I guess I’ll quit.”
“Good. I’m proud of you.”
Beelzebub says,, I am not a writer now,, I quit,, I’m sick of words,, I hate them,, they are dead so completely dead,, except when the temptress rides black trolleys to Egypt,, lambasting pyramids with seduction,, I am so tired now,, I want to sleep and dream,, but the joker won’t let me,, he says he hates writers and that they deserve no rest,, once he asked if I was like Thomas Wolfe or Dostoevsky,, a born writer,, no way I said,, I am more like Sonny Sharrock with pencil and paper and a dull point,, but the joker was not satisfied with my answer,, he wanted to kill me,, I had to stop him,, he said he would bury me alive behind a crack house,, go inside and smoke crack until his eyes turned blue and he got higher than a stealth bomber on the edge of the stratosphere,, then he stared at me with his cold diligent face,, where will we go next,, to the place where maximum entropy and human emotion hides inside the Big Bang,, I quit,, no now I am a writer again,, no now I am a hypnotist,, no now I am a writer again no now I am a scribbler,, no now I am a ventriloquist no now I am a hack,, no now I am a masochist no now I am simply an unwelcome interloper so farewell,, Beelzebub out....
-end-
(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, or know of any magazines that would like to publish this piece, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/
Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.
