The Fat Man by Ken Harmon

stood like a statue in its own pool of light, and there must have been about fifty or sixty phones on shelves lining the walls. That made the middle of the room as dark as the inside of a cow, so that’s where I took a chair and decided which telephone was going to ring first.
    Raymond didn’t exactly wake with a clatter. There was a cuckoo-clock phone on one of the higher shelves, so I threw a little elf spell its way. The bell was just barely a chirp, but then a little bird popped out. “Cuckoo-Cuckoo,” it sang after each ring in a pitch not quite meant for any ear. In most of the homes in your world, I’m pretty sure this phone would have been the last noise someone heard before they started a killing spree with a dull ax. Next, I sent some hocus-pocus to a telephone that was as round as a stump with a ring like Judgment Day. It would rattle the teeth out of your head. Because something still seemed to be missing, and because I am a bitter stalk of rhubarb, I also got one more telephone going. This one replaced the ring with yodeling.
    The room sounded like Lucifer’s switchboard.
    Raymond Hall entered the room half-asleep. The half that was awake had a “what the?” look that was taxing Raymond’s medulla oblongata beyond its normal calculations. He turned his head between the different sounds as if they were trying to tell him something, but he didn’t speak their lingo.
    Ring-Cuckoo, Ring-Cuckoo!
    RINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!
    Odeleh-Hee-Whooo!
    Standing there in his King Kong boxer shorts, cocking his head back and forth, Raymond looked like he had just escaped his rubber room. Finally, Raymond got his wits and decided he was mad at the stump telephone. Inspired by his underwear, Raymond took his mighty paw and swiped the contraption into the floor. The crash sounded like an accident at a munitions factory. Then, with the typical Raymond Hall temper, he grabbed the poker from the fireplace and started to beat the stump telephone like it had just soiled the rug.
    I let Raymond think he killed the thing and stopped the ringer.
    Ring-Cuckoo, Ring-Cuckoo!
    Raymond threw the poker like a spear in the Bavarian phone’s general direction, and, again, I shushed the bell.
    Odeleh-Hee-Whooo!
    “I hate yodeling!” Raymond screamed and threw the nearest knickknack at the telephone. There was a crash and then quiet except for Raymond’s panting. Big boy needed to hit the gym.
    “Knock knock,” I said. I was still invisible.
    Raymond jumped a mile. All the color drained from his face and his eyes were as big as canned hams. He searched the dark room in a panic, but he was too scared to move, a statue in King Kong bloomers.
    “Knock knock,” I said with a little bit of a growl.
    “Who’s there?” Raymond said. He wasn’t playing around; he really wanted to know.
    “Little old lady,” I said.
    “Huh?”
    “I said, ‘Knock knock,’ you said, ‘Who’s there?’ Little Old Lady. Now it’s your turn,” I explained.
    Raymond took a step toward the direction of my voice, peering in the dark. “Little Old Lady Who?”
    “I thought you said you hated yodeling,” I said as I popped visible in front of him.
    At the sudden sight of me, Raymond gripped his chest as all breath leaped from his lungs. He stared at me with an open mouth and eyes filled with terror. I smacked him across the face, hard, and sent him to the floor. “Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” I said.
    Raymond spit out a tooth and a little blood. He looked like he was going to cry.
    “It’s not your night, Raymond Hall,” I said. I turned a flip in the air, landed behind him and gave him a tough kick in the rump. Raymond went to his belly with a splat and a groan. “You’ve needed a good belting since you were a kid, so tonight you’re going to take it and like it.”
    I picked Raymond up, spun him on his back and put a curled boot on his throat. He stared at me with bulging eyes, like I was a freight train with teeth. “Who are you?” he