He clutched the Samsung in his left hand and punched in his home number. He heard it ring upstairs. Extending his left arm, Ed held the phone as far away as possible. “Okay,” he said, wincing. “Go ahead.”
The machine answered. He could hear his recorded voice talking over the connection.
The Intruder device in his hand, George shook his head. “I can’t! What if I end up killing you?”
“For God’s sake, press the button!” Ed yelled. His hand was shaking. He wondered if this was the last time he’d have all his fingers. “Go ahead! Do it!”
His answering machine greeting was still going.
George grimaced. “Here goes…”
Nothing happened.
“Did you press the button?” Ed asked.
“Yeah…”
Ed went back to the drawing board.
A week later, he and George tried again. The experiment was another failure. Ed took him out for pizza anyway.
Five weeks and five pizzas later, Ed gave up. Not that he blamed George, but his friend had hardly been encouraging. He’d said again and again, it was a lousy idea that would end up getting him into trouble. And he was probably right.
Ed had no rational reason for taking the Intruder with him when he went shopping that Saturday afternoon in late April. The damn thing didn’t work, but he thought he’d engage in a bit of whimsy, pressing it whenever he saw a rude texter or someone texting and driving. Maybe pressing the Intruder button would be good therapy for him—like squeezing one of those stress-relief balls.
He ambled down Broadway, the main drag of Capitol Hill, with the Intruder in his pocket. He kept passing so many Intruder-worthy candidates—most of them texters not looking where they were going. With each idiot he passed, Ed pressed the button on the device, but of course, nothing happened. And it was no fun merely pretending to screw up their phones.
Just ahead of him, Ed spotted a skinny young woman with corkscrew black hair wandering across the street—against the light. She wore earphones and worked her thumbs over her phone screen. A car with the right of way screeched to a halt as she mindlessly stepped in front of it. The driver honked. The girl didn’t even look up or quicken her pace. She casually flipped off the driver and went back to texting.
It reminded Ed so much of Rude Jason, flipping him the bird. This woman probably gave people the finger all the time. Could she possibly be any more of a jerk? He wanted to yell at her, but of course, she wouldn’t hear him.
Instead, Ed took the Intruder out of his pocket, aimed it at her and pressed it three times in a row.
The girl suddenly stopped dead and shrieked. The phone flew out of her hand, sailing up over her head. With a clatter, it landed behind her in the middle of the street.
The driver of the car revved his engine and zoomed past her, running over the mobile device. Ed heard it crunch under the tire.
Screaming hysterically, the young woman gaped down at the flattened, broken phone on the pavement. She acted like someone had mowed down her dog. At the same time, she kept wringing her hand and massaging it. Passersby looked at her as if she were crazy. Others didn’t even notice her, because they wore earphones or they were too busy on their own phones.
She held up traffic again, crying and cursing at cars swerving around her as she frantically gathered up the pieces of her shattered phone. She set the shards in her claw-like left hand.
Ed knew it was horrible, but he couldn’t help smiling.
He wondered what exactly had happened to make her throw the phone in the air like that.
He found out that evening, in his backyard with George during a final “test run.”
Rolling his eyes, his friend wondered out loud why Ed had resurrected his lame-brained “Intruder” invention. “You and your After-Midnight Specials,” he complained. “Nothing good is going to come from this…”
Ed hadn’t told him about the incident with the jaywalking texter.
Once again, he was the Guinea pig. With his friend standing by the garden on the other side of the yard, Ed called his home line. He’d instructed George to wait for his cue and then press the button on the Intruder three times in rapid succession.
Ed heard his voice on the answering machine. He was about to brace himself and nod at his friend. But George jumped the gun.
“Here goes,” George called out. He jabbed the button three times.
Ed wasn’t ready for the jolt of electricity that surged through his hand—like a hundred fiery needles. He let out a howl and dropped the phone. Stunned, he rubbed his throbbing, tingling hand. He was so rattled that he could hardly get a breath.
“What happened?” George asked. “Did you get a shock?”
“Um, a—a little one,” Ed lied. His heart was still racing. “Just a little one…”
He started to get the feeling back in his hand. With trepidation, he reached down and touched his phone. He didn’t get another shock. He picked it up off the lawn and listened. The line was dead. He switched it on and off again, but nothing happened. The phone had short-circuited.
“Well, it looks like I screwed the pooch again,” Ed heard himself say.
But it was another lie. Actually, he considered the experiment a major success. He just didn’t want his friend to know, because George would only try to talk him out of ever using the Intruder again.
So, when they went out for pizza and beer afterwards, Ed talked about how he would abandon the project. But all the while, he thought of Rude Jason in Nordstrom’s bathroom—and all the others like him. Armed with the Intruder, Ed wouldn’t have to put up with them anymore.
The following day, when he walked down Broadway, Ed felt like Charles Bronson in Death Wish. He was just looking for trouble. The Intruder in his pocket gave him an intoxicating sense of power. Broadway was like Cell Phone Central. It stood to reason, that for every ten phone users, at least one was rude about it. So, with all the techies and millennials on Broadway, Ed figured he’d come across at least three Intruder-worthy candidates on every block.
He passed one person after another on their phones—texting, talking or scrolling while they walked. Hardly any of them bothered to look where they were going. After a while, Ed didn’t even need to conceal the Intruder, because no one noticed him. He was over fifty. He may as well have been invisible. His thumb hovered over the Intruder button. He could have pressed it at any time. He must have seen at least a dozen idiots who deserved to get zapped. But none of them seemed quite rude enough. So he took mercy on them.
Or maybe he was just scared to use the device now that he knew what it could do.
Giving up, Ed felt deflated as he wandered into the QFC for some groceries. The supermarket was lousy with people on their phones blocking the aisles. As always, at least two or three morons had brought their dogs into the store—despite the signs saying pets weren’t allowed.
Ed ignored them as he picked up stuff for dinner. Then he went to the checkout line. He didn’t use the U-scan, because he wanted to keep the checkers employed. He got behind some nicely-dressed, forty-something guy who didn’t bother to unload his handcart. He just set it on the conveyer belt and let the cashier unload the cart for him. He was too busy talking on his phone.
A couple of shoppers got in line behind Ed.
With fascination and mounting contempt, he watched the man carry on his phone conversation while the cashier rang up his groceries. “Do you have a QFC card?” the young woman asked him. “Sir?”
He kept talking. Barely looking at her, he held up his index finger as if to indicate that he’d acknowledge her in a minute. She’d finished ringing up his items, but he hadn’t even reached for his wallet yet. Ed wondered what the guy was discussing on his phone that was so important. Did it really warrant holding up all the other customers in line behind him? Ed could see the cashier was getting exasperated with the guy. He wanted to tell him off. But he hated confrontations.
Then he remembered.
He had the Intruder.
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Taking it out of his pocket, Ed pressed the button three times.
“Shit!” the guy bellowed, suddenly pitching his phone behind the counter. He shook his hand over and over as if he’d burned his fingers. “Goddamn it!”
The cashier thought he’d thrown his phone at her, and she laid into the guy: “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”
He screamed back at her that his Smartphone had just given him a shock. He held up the checkout line even longer while he retrieved the phone and then threw a fit over the fact that it was now dead.
“That’s not my problem,” the cashier told him. “Are you going to pay for your items or what?”
The guy stormed out of the store without his groceries.
Ed couldn’t help smiling. It was a beautiful thing to see.
From then on, using the Intruder was easy—and so gratifying. It was like a triumph over rude, inconsiderate, self-important assholes everywhere.
It seemed the city was swarming with Intruder-worthy jerks. One of the sweetest victories for Ed was the encounter with a woman taking up the entire sidewalk with her Labrador retriever on a long leash. The dog crapped on the parkway. But the woman was too busy texting to stop and pick it up.
Ed even gave her a chance to redeem herself by politely inquiring: “Aren’t you going to clean up after your dog?”
She gave him a flutter of her hand as if to say “shoo,” and went back to texting.
Zapping her felt so good.
The phone seemed to leap from her grasp, and she let out a scream that sent her dog into a barking fit. Her phone landed in a pile of some other dog’s shit.
As Ed walked away, he heard her cursing furiously and the lab barking.
He also zapped four texters in a movie theater. The commotion he started was a lot more distracting than those glowing little screens in the darkened movie theater that always annoyed him. But in this case, the movie was only so-so; and it was utterly satisfying to watch each zapper-victim react. They jumped up from their seats. Drinks were spilled. Popcorn flew in the air.
Ed didn’t feel a bit sorry for them. They’d been told before the movie—during the previews—to turn off their cell phones. But did they pay attention? No.
The gym was a goldmine of Intruder-worthy self-involved creeps, especially those guys who remained on the weight machines like squatters, taking five or ten minute breaks while they texted or scrolled between reps. Ed really enjoyed zapping them. He got five people in a row—all lazily sitting or laying on the mats, focused on their phones. None of them had been stretching or exercising. Meanwhile, people like him were waiting for space to do their sit-ups. He zapped three more in the locker room—two texters and one fully-dressed clown who stood by his locker, talking on his phone, spitting distance from the sign that showed a cell phone inside a circle with a slash through it. They all had it coming. No one dared to shower at his gym anymore because of these cell phone jerks and guys taking selfies in the locker room. Ed felt like a freak every time he undressed to take a shower.
He returned to the gym two days later, and zapped sixteen more people.
Two days after that, on his next trip to the gym, Ed noticed someone on the staff had posted a hand-written sign at the check-in desk:
WARNING TO CELL PHONE USERS
Several members have reported getting shocked while using their phones in the workout areas and locker room. Phones have short-circuited. Management is investigating the problem & assumes no responsibility. USE YOUR PHONES AT YOUR OWN RISK! Use of electronic devices in the locker rooms is strictly prohibited.
But people didn’t pay attention to signs anymore. So there were still plenty of phone abusers in the gym—and two more in the locker room. Ed zapped them all.
The next time he went to the gym, the sign was printed up and laminated. The guy at the check-in desk was collecting phones, then tagging and bagging them. Too many gym members had complained or threatened to sue.
Ed noticed a similar sign posted at his neighborhood QFC—right by the one saying that pets weren’t allowed. He hadn’t realized just how many people he’d zapped in the supermarket, but apparently the number was significant. He noticed less people using their phones while shopping. People in the checkout lines were actually talking to each other—or to the cashiers.
After a while, at the gym, he found he didn’t have to wait to use the machines or the exercise mats.
Now he didn’t hesitate to zap the phone-abusers he encountered on the sidewalk—that included anyone not looking where they were going while texting; people on their phones walking their dogs; texting jaywalkers; and people texting while driving. He’d almost caused a few car accidents among the last group—or more accurately, the texting drivers almost caused the accidents. Didn’t they know it was against the law?
After two weeks, the local TV news reported on the “cell phone malfunctions” that plagued Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood—along with some isolated incidents downtown, in Queen Anne, Ballard and Fremont. Cell phones were recalled and phone towers were tested. An article about it even popped up on page one of The Seattle Times.
Ed felt compelled to write The Times an email:
To the Editor:
Regarding those cell phone malfunctions reported by your newspaper. If you’re looking for a common link to all the instances of phones short-circuiting and shocking their users, don’t look at the phone brand or models or the signal towers. Look at the phone users. Ask them what they were doing when their phones malfunctioned. Ask them if they were using their phones in movie theaters or locker rooms or bathrooms or while driving. Ask them if they were being rude or obnoxious when they were on their phones. Ask them if they were ignoring the people around them or their own children or their dogs, because they couldn’t tear themselves away from their precious phones for a few minutes. The common link among all the reported ‘malfunction’ cases is that these scumbags all deserved what happened to them and their stupid phones. As long as there are inconsiderate phone users here in Seattle, phones will keep ‘malfunctioning.’ I promise you.
Sincerely,
Ed
He sent the email from a computer in the Ballard Public Library so it couldn’t be traced to him.
But as soon as he sent the damn thing, Ed regretted it. He’d just admitted to The Seattle Times that he was behind all these people getting hurt and all that property damage. Were there cameras inside or outside the Ballard Public Library? Could the police track him down as the “Ed” who had written the email?
He suddenly felt like a hunted man—and they hadn’t even published the email yet. He wondered if they would. Maybe The Seattle Times would assume he was a crank and simply ignore the letter.
Two days later, his note was printed on the newspaper’s front page under the headline: “Anti-Phone Zealot ‘Ed’ Claims Responsibility for Series of Phone Malfunctions: Hero or Terrorist?”
Ed suddenly felt like the Zodiac Killer or the Unabomber. Portions of his email were read on TV—and not just the local news, but national news, too. He was all over the Internet. Some people thought he was absolutely nuts. But others spoke out against phone-abusers—or to quote Ed, “cell phone scum.” And to them, he was a hero, a crusader.
A follow-up article appeared a few days later. It cited the benefits to the “cell phone scare.” Movie attendance in Seattle had gone up by twelve percent. Washington State Highway Patrol reported accidents due to distracted drivers were down by twenty-one percent. The Seattle Humane Society issued a statement that dogs were “healthier and happier” now that less and less dog owners talked on their phone or texted while walking their pets.
Ed’s friend, George, was off the current events grid. He never turned on the TV or read a newspaper. So Ed didn’t have to worry about George finding out. But it was weird to have created such a stir and not talk with anyone about it. Nobody knew he was famous. He couldn’t help feeling lonely, but not quite as alone and isolated as he us
ed to feel walking down the Seattle streets full of phone-focused people.
He couldn’t use the Intruder quite so freely anymore. He found out the hard way—on the bus. The number of people texting or talking on their phones while riding had definitely decreased. It was quiet, except for one twenty-something guy talking loudly on his phone, laughing and casually cursing a lot too. His favorite modifier was “fucking.” He used the word in practically every other sentence. After a while, it became annoying as hell. Ed could see he wasn’t the only one. Other passengers on the bus were bothered by the guy, too.
So Ed subtly took out the Intruder and zapped him.
The guy howled and dropped his phone. “My fucking phone just fucking shocked me! Fuck!” The whole bus heard him.
A few people applauded. Ed suppressed a smile.
“Oh my God, Ed’s on the bus!” another passenger declared.
“Ed, where are you?” someone else called. “Stand up!”
A couple of people started chanting his name, like he was a football star or something.
“Shut up!” yelled one man near the back of the bus. “That guy’s nothing less than a criminal! He’s a self-appointed vigilante. He’s killed people!”
That was a boldface lie, but Ed wasn’t about to say anything.
The guy he’d zapped was seething and out for blood. “Where’s this Ed guy? He’s gonna fucking pay for my fucking phone!”
Ed quietly slinked off the bus at the next stop—even though it wasn’t his.
During the long walk home, he decided to retire the Intruder for a while. He’d become too famous to use it.
But then something happened, something he had no control over.
People started getting attacked while using their phones in public. It started out with texters and callers being doused with water, sodas or Slurpees—and in one noteworthy case, hot coffee. When the coffee-pitcher was arrested, he claimed, “The cell phone scum had it coming!” The victim, who suffered second degree burns, had merely been standing at a bus stop, texting a friend.
Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: A Suspense Magazine Anthology Page 7