And Then My Phone Died

I knew it was coming even though there had been no warning signs. “It’s not going to live forever,” I was told, but I didn’t believe it. But when Jodie’s phone died suddenly a few months ago—working one moment and then totally uncommunicative the next—I began making preparations. I was ready but I never expected it to happen so soon.

One day last week I checked my phone in the office to see if I had any new messages. The screen was black. Maybe the phone was turned off? Maybe a restart was needed? Nothing worked.

Luckily there is a phone repair shop just outside my building. The salesman/technician began a careful investigation into the source of my phone’s failure to respond. “It’s the motherboard,” he concluded, when I returned to the shop an hour later.

Everything was in my phone. Calls, contacts, codes. Camera, social media, messaging—the necessities of life. Not to mention Waze and Maps to navigate; a clock to wake me up in the mornings; an app to track my running. Music, podcasts, ordering taxis and coffee, and reading the news—I use my phone for everything.

Taxi Politics - short story

“So, what do you say about our country? Staging elections for the third time this year! Where else in the world do you have a country like this? And we call ourselves a democracy! Is it a democracy when we can’t elect a stable government? What do you say about that?”

The man in the backseat looked up from his phone, surprised that the driver had spoken to him.

“What?”

“Elections! They’re coming around the corner again and I wondered what is your opinion?”

“My opinion?”

“Yes, your opinion. Every citizen is entitled to have an opinion. I meet many people every day and let me tell you. Everyone has an opinion. What’s yours?”

The Cave - short story

They say the cave offers a passage to the underworld. In ancient Greek mythology, a musician, poet, and prophet named Orpheus, son of the god Apollo, descended through the cave into the subterranean kingdom of Hades in search of his beloved, Eurydice. There are many versions of this legend and none of them have happy endings.

They say that an outcrop of rock deep inside the cave’s interior resembles the face of the devil. This oddly shaped formation gives the cave its name. Devil’s Throat Cave. I don’t see the resemblance and I go into the cave six times a day, every day of the week. Except for the occasional Sunday.

It’s not all fun and games, this summer job of mine. My initial enthusiasm for working in nature and guiding tours of the cave has faded. The work is not hard, physically, but repeating the same talk over and over is tiring. Sometimes I wonder if anyone in my tours appreciates what they’re seeing. And sometimes I just can’t wait until the last person exits the cave so that I can lock the door soundly behind me.

Read the rest of the story on The Write Launch.