Torture

I hate the sound of phones ringing and no one answering them. I think that sound alone could drive me into madness.

I work in a giant room filled with cubicles. Lots and lots of cubicles. Today, someone's phone started ringing. No one answered it. I ignored it, because phones usually only ring four or five times before the voicemail picks up, right? Apparently this person doesn't have voicemail. I started to fear this after seven or eight rings. By 10 rings, I could no longer focus on my work. I'm sure it got to 15 rings before I started whining to Yellow who told me to go answer it and tell them that no one is answering. (Of course, I was not about to do this. I didn't even know where it was coming from, nor would I even know the person even if I did find the cubicle, and lastly, I'm a big, fat chicken.) At the same time Heartless Siren, who was sitting next to me, snapped as well. She pulled out her headphones and declared that someone needed to answer the phone. I pointed to my chat with Yellow and she laughed, then went exploring to find the phone. She couldn't have taken 10 steps out of our cubicle before the phone stopped ringing. She came back and we both enjoyed the blessed silence. Silence has never before been so beautiful.

In my writhing pain, I noticed that Heartless' ethernet cord was in danger of being run over by my chair, so in the beautiful silence, I crawled under the desk to move it to safety. While down there, the phone started again. It was an odd phenomenon. while under the desk, I could have sworn it was coming from the cubicle next to us. But as I came out from under the desk, the direction the torturous ring was coming from changed several times. I really had no idea where it was coming from this time. I sat back down and cringed, sending a few more whines out to the cyber world, then silence regained its dominion. It has been silent ever since.

I rejoice in silence.