Published August 30, 2010
William Coleman was jerked out of his silent reverie by the shrill ring of the telephone.
"Hello?" His voice cracked, rusty from disuse. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Hello?"
"Do you have stains on your carpet that just won't come out no matter how hard you scrub?" the voice on the other end ejaculated. "Are you embarrassed about the state of your carpet when you have company? Do you have to cover stains with area rugs?" The voice paused to breathe.
"Um," began Coleman before he was cut off.
"Well you no longer have to worry about that because now there's Stain-Be-Gone! Tell me, do you have stains on your carpet?"
"Well, yes, but I'm not sure your product would be able to-"
"Stain-Be-Gone can get rid of any stain," the telemarketer asserted, sensing the man take the bait.
"Does it remove...blood?"
"Blood and all other bodily fluids!"
"That's good, but...I have a lot of blood to clean up."
"Doesn't matter. Stain-Be-Gone works miracles!"
"Six to eight pints of blood?"
The telemarketer was so distracted he didn't hear the click of the front door.
"How-how did you-"
William Coleman swung the lead pipe in his hand as hard as he could against the telemarketer's skull. Then, he hung up his cellphone and smiled. "Damn telemarketers."[/size][/size][/size][/size]
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140,828 Literary Works • 673,694 Reviews
I too didn't understand how the man found the telemarketer, especially when he would be in a huge office with other people. This might work better with a door-to-door salesman. Otherwise, I think this was a great. A bit bare bones type of writing, but that's all that's needed. Great short story.
-Coral-
This was an interesting little read. I'm not really into stories like this, but I liked this one.
A few nit-picks:
Telemarketers. Telemarketers usually work in a huge call centre, so it's difficult to find one with their own room.
Description. You could expand the story by adding some more description throughout the piece.
Otherwise, this was a great little story to read. Good work.
Lol! What a fantastic little read
I think we all have this fantasy, and reading this short story was quite satisfying to the little murderer in me.
Is the only mistake I can find.
The only other things I could think of:
1) Telemarketers normally work together in a huge call centre full of people. I think you'd be hard pressed to find one on his own in a room or something.
2) You could greatly expand the story by describing Will getting out of his car, walking around etc. etc.
3) Generally telemarketers only call home land lines, so I don't see how Will is able to take a call from his home phone and kill this man whilst still talking having reception as house phones only have a range around 2 houses radius, and that's pushing it.
Otherwise, this story was awesome and fun to read. Thank you for writing something humorous and not serious. It's a nice change
- Jai