Photography © Shannon O’Connor
Disintegration
Arthur woke up one morning to discover he did not have a body anymore; his consciousness was buried in his cell phone. His avatar appeared on Placebook, a face that used to look like him.
“Help,” he yelled silently.
Nobody heard him.
His cell phone sat next to his bed, plugged in, where it always was while he slept, so he could hear it ringing or beeping if anyone contacted him.
He sent a text to his friend Aidan. “I’m trapped in my phone, and I can’t get out.”
“I don’t understand,” Aidan wrote back. “How could that be?”
“I don’t have a body anymore. I’m in my phone.”
“But how could you be typing if you don’t have hands?”
“I don’t, I’m in my phone. Why don’t you understand?”
Arthur looked around his room. He couldn’t move.
The phone rang.
Arthur answered.
“Why aren’t you in class, Arthur?” his mother asked. “The school called and wants to know where you are.”
“I’m in my phone,” he said. “I woke up this morning, and I found out that my mind is trapped.”
“I don’t know why you think I’m stupid,” his mother said. “We’re paying decent money for you to go to that school, and if you don’t show up, you’ll be kicked out. Do you want to go to public school with the peons?”
“No, don’t send me to school with peons! I can’t get out of my phone.”
“I know you look at your phone all the time, but could you please get dressed and go to class? I have to go now. I have charity work to do.”
Arthur called the school office.
“I can’t come today, because I’m otherwise indisposed,” he told the administrative assistant.
“That’s not really an excuse,” she said. “You need a better one than that.”
“I was kidnapped, and I don’t know where I am.”
“You’ll get written up for this.” She hung up the phone.
Arthur writhed and tried to move the phone. He made it jump a little bit on the dresser. He pushed a little more, and he fell onto the floor.
The phone cracked.
“What am I going to do?” Arthur wailed inside the phone. “I’m broken. I have to fix myself.”
He called his roommate.
“Will you pick my phone up off the floor?” he asked.
“I’m busy in chemistry class,” the roommate said. “Why aren’t you here?”
“I’m trapped inside my phone.”
“Like for real? You’re kidding. Everyone else is, too.”
“But I don’t have a body, I don’t exist anymore.”
“Nobody really exists anymore,” the roommate said. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
Arthur contemplated his dilemma. He couldn’t try to move the phone, or it might break even more. Now that he was under his bed, he could see things he didn’t remember. Old socks, books, and weights he never used were hidden. He didn’t have much going for him. As a student at a private boarding school, he wasn’t as fast or smart as the other boys. But he tried to make the kids laugh, and he thought people liked him, but he wasn’t sure.
He didn’t think he deserved to end up like this, trapped in his phone, just a picture on his Placebook to remind people of what he looked like.
Arthur decided there had never been any point to his life, he tried, but he thought he would go nowhere, even if he was not stuck in his phone.
He stayed under the bed until his roommate got back. The roommate looked for the phone, but didn’t find it. He ate Arthur’s stash of Snickers bars in his locker, then left the room.
“No, not my candy!” Arthur wailed. His candy was what gave him a reason. Snickers before bed, but now it was gone. He couldn’t eat without a body, but he thought there was a way he could be real again, and go back to normal.
He stayed under the bed, and nobody found the phone. Eventually, the battery wore out, and Arthur didn’t exist anymore.
He disintegrated, lost in oblivion.
Everyone looked for Arthur, but to no avail. He was released from school, and when his mother found the phone under the bed, she picked it up, and said, “Maybe we could refurbish this for his sister. She needs a new phone. I hope she won’t mind his old one.”
Someone else moved into the room, and soon everyone forgot about Arthur. He was somewhere, trapped in cyberspace, an anxious boy, who never did anything worthwhile or interesting, except become trapped in his phone and disappear.
Shannon O’Connor writes Halloween stories all year long. She has been published previously in Oddball Magazine, as well as Wordgathering, The Rye Whiskey Review, Alien Buddha Press and others. She holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College, where the ghost of Robert Frost haunts the dining hall and the barn where the lectures are held. She is the chairperson of the Boston Chapter of the National Writers Union.