Prompt: You come home one day and check your answering machine. You freeze after the third message.

So I come home and the phone was flashing a little red light. I had unanswered messages. I picked the phone up off the receiver and mashed a few buttons to start the playback functions. It didn't work. Instead, it just took me to a list of ringtones. I tried to leave the list, but instead, it just blasted me with the sounds of an 8-bit MIDI of the Star-Spangled Banner.

I hung up the phone on the receiver to try and fix it. Instead, it switched to a recording of the Tetris theme. As my patience ran short, I pressed a few more buttons. The phone began to blare a sound halfway between a siren and my alarm clock.

A series of grumbled expletives left my mouth and bounced off the loud, disinterested phone. Angrily, I chucked it at the closest wall. The phone changed its tune to some generic heavy metal song. I kicked it across the room. The batteries fell out and the cursed contraption finally switched off.

I recovered the battered phone and the two batteries and began to replace them. Once I did, the little red light began blinking again.

I pushed a few more buttons and found the unanswered messages. The first was about my sister's doctor's appointment.

Uninteresting.

The second was about an overdue library book.

Unimportant.

The third was a call from my mother about how she had left the house to buy a new phone, and that she forgot to leave me a note about it.

I froze, and glared at the phone with disbelief and anger.