Ringtone

This incident happened several years ago. I was fourteen then, living with my parents in a rented apartment in a residential area of a hot southern city. The apartment was an old one-room apartment on the very top floor of a panel building, filled with Soviet-era furniture, photographs belonging to the elderly owner, and all sorts of bourgeois junk, intended to create a cozy home but effectively serving only as a dust collector.

I carefully examined the junk, after which I was finally convinced of its uselessness. The only thing that piqued my interest was a music box—painted, with a doll couple inside. The couple was probably supposed to be dancing to the music, if only the mechanism had worked.

My investigations were interrupted by a sharp bite to my tendon. I let out a shriek of indignation, and from the hallway came the sound of claws scrabbling on linoleum, followed by a dull thud on the kitchen door. Beria had missed the turn and slammed his nasty head into the door. Beria is a growing terrorist of the feline tribe, picked up by my kindhearted father, and now everyone has to endure him.

My parents still hadn't returned. The day was particularly muggy and hot, the sky was beginning to fill with heavy leaden clouds, and the first flashes of lightning flashed. After some thought, I turned off the television to prevent it from accidentally catching fire, rummaged around on the shelf, pulled out a book, and went to the sofa, where a distraught Beria attempted to gnaw off my hand. No, no malice – just a bad temper and teething.

 The rain was already pouring down in full force when a chest of drawers full of junk rattled unpleasantly and a hoarse, ancient melody began to play.

The darkened room with its austere sideboards, lace doilies, and humming chest of drawers was illuminated by flashes of lightning, instantly becoming hostile and terrifying. The smiling portrait of a girl on the wall subtly changed, beginning to smile somehow menacingly and solemnly.

Standing by the half-open balcony door, holding Beria in my arms and shivering from the cold splashes of rain, I thought that the girl in the photograph had probably died long ago. It was scary. And cold. The portrait continued to gaze silently at me from the wall, its lips parted in a wicked, snake-like grin, the antique music box creaking and playing its eternal melody...

Suddenly, something about this whole otherworldly spectacle struck me as odd. I took a closer look. I said a few words that would have surely earned me a slap on the wrist from my mother, had she been listening. I went to the dresser to make sure. Of course!

For ten minutes, my father's new cell phone, with its strange default ringtone, kept me on edge. I felt ashamed and annoyed. His healthy forehead trembled for ten minutes, clutching a warm, harmless cat to its chest, while the phone rang.

When my parents returned, I told them what had happened, and we laughed together at my sensitivity. I even checked my phone so they could hear the raspy, old-fashioned melody.

And I couldn't find that ringtone in my phone's memory. Phones have completely different default ringtones.