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answered
Genesis' Volkswagon rounded the corner, jumped the concrete edge on the driveway, and slid smoothly towards its accustomed parking spot. The engine died of its own accord, but the brakes failed to stop the car before it hit the bench at the back of the garage. He sank despairingly into the embrace of the steering wheel as the tinkling sound of smashed headlamps reached his ears. It had simply been one of those days. Everything had conspired against him, it seemed: from the very first, when he awoke that morning to the horrific sound of a garbage truck chewing up his rubbish bin ('sorry, mate, i've never seen it do that before...') up to the last five minutes in the office at work, when the network had failed completely and he had been obliged to stay back until eight pm desperately trying to convince the file-server that the coax cable was, indeed, still plugged into the transceiver. On the drive home, despite the evening gloom, it seemed that some birds had stayed awake merely to do him the honour of crapping on his windscreen. The first time this had happened, he made the mistake of trying to wipe it off with the windscreen wipers. He then discovered that a previous hit had covered the washer-nozzles, blocking them, and his wipers had become stuck in the middle of the windscreen. He had narrowly missed two bicyclists, and only the fact that his car would no longer go faster than sixty kilometres per hour had saved him from being pulled over by the police. He sat there, slumped against the steering wheel, wondering if he would feel better if he just broke down and had a good cry. Then, in the distance, he heard a familiar sound. His telephone was ringing. The possibility that someone actually wanted to talk to him snapped him out of his lethargy; he flung the door open (it swung out, bounced off a sheet of plywood, swung back in and almost fractured his shin), swore, and tried again. The plywood and a host of other assorted bits of building material had fallen down and blocked the door. He scrambled over the front seat, almost castrating himself on the gear stick, and tried to force open the passenger-side door, which had always been jammed shut, now being no exception. The phone kept ringing. He wound down the passenger-side window, and managed to lever himself through it. There was nothing to catch hold of, so he slid down the side of the car, landing on his head. His feet emerged from inside the car, and he collapsed in an untidy heap, squeezed between his car and the rusty refrigerator with no door handle. By frantically wiggling his legs, he managed to topple over on his side, and scramble to his feet. He ran out of the garage (clipping his leg on the rear bumper bar, which had previously never stuck out that far), and straight into the new council rubbish bin, which the friendly garbo had left that morning, after destroying the old one. He was only momentarily stunned. The phone was still ringing. He staggered to the front door, and spent a frantic thirty seconds figuring out which way up the key needed to be. The phone kept ringing ... hadn't Barry Humphries once put on a play which featured an empty stage with a telephone sitting on a table, ringing with no-one to answer it, purely for the annoyance value? Genesis could appreciate it now, as he all but kicked the door down. In the dim hallway, he saw the telephone cord leading from the telecom socket, under the door into the lounge-room. He lurched into the lounge-room, and followed the cord (and the insistent ringing) through the kitchen, a bedroom and into the bathroom, in the bath, where he had left the phone early that morning after a marathon six-hour reassurance call to Teresa. He leapt at the phone, and skidded backwards on the bath-mat, landing on his back, bashing his head against the sink. Only the plaintive ringing sound kept him conscious; he knew that he would answer that call or die in the attempt. He crawled to the bath, snatched wildly at the receiver, just as it stopped half-way through a ring. He jammed the receiver against his ear, eyes wide, and heard: A brief feminine giggle, and then a series of strange, mellifluous tones which fluttered through his head like a swarm of glittering insects; then there was a click as whoever it was hung up. He sat there for a few moments, stunned. The only sound he could compare it to was a sequence of heart-achingly beautiful synthesiser notes he had accidentally picked up on the car radio one night. This telephone call had lasted less than two seconds, yet the sounds remained stuck in his consciousness, as if they had been shards of ice jammed into his brain. He caught himself staring, open-mouthed, at the dumb handset, and then he slammed it down. And waited for whoever it was to call back. |
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