Who are these people that actually scream out their phone conversations on the train? The primary answer to that question is that they are usually “of a certain generation.” That is to say, the baby boomer and Gen X ones. For it would be a cold day in hell (barring the circumstances of global warming) if one were to see a millennial or Gen Zer talking on the phone in that way. Instead, they have the decency to keep their communication strictly textual. Not that they’re trying to be decent. It’s just a matter of how they were raised in a world where spoken conversation on their phone had gone the way of the dodo. Not only that, but it had become a decided source of annoyance. Playing into that “too busy to engage in anything that doesn’t make me money” philosophy. Though “philosophy” feels like too elegant a word for that so-called worldview. Yet those who didn’t have it seemed to either be elderly (therefore, presumably looking for anyone they could talk to in a bid to stave off their unique blend of loneliness and boredom) or middle-aged men radiating a kind of desperation even more palpable than a bona fide old person.

In other words, those who had the time and desire to talk on the phone at length appeared to have less concern about getting money (or work that led to money). With a combination of their generational position and station in life (“getting by” well enough), these were the people who were able to focus on “other things.” Things outside of money-making, hustling, etc. Things more related to realizing that, in the absence of work, their personal life was a complete void. Lacking any meaningful connections, save for those that might be forged with a pet. But these phone talkers on the train, Elodie suspected, did not have pets. If they did, they wouldn’t have so much pent-up “gabbing energy.” And then Elodie always had to wonder who the people on the other side of the line were. The people that also miraculously seemed to have endless hours to gab, gab, gab. Were they unemployed? Retired? Lacking family and friends in a way that would make them want to talk for this long? Elodie could never quite figure it out. And she knew, of course, that she wasn’t meant to.

Most people could just ride the train (or “rapid transit system”) without thinking about much of anything, let alone what kind of psycho you had to be to talk on the phone freely the entire time. And though other passengers were undoubtedly as vexed as Elodie by the constant blabbing—a blabbing that further dampened the entire transit-riding experience—they found a way to move past it, to ignore it in a manner that Elodie simply could not. She wanted to be more like these passengers, truly. It would save her a lot of agony. She wanted to be like the passengers who had probably never even heard of the word “misophonia,” and surely had no idea what it meant if they did. These were the passengers that couldn’t possibly fathom how irritating most sounds and noises were to Elodie—and at the top of that list of bothersome sounds and noises was the yammering of some asshole on the phone who seemed to love nothing more than hearing their own voice. Maybe they weren’t even talking to another person at all. More bizarre things had happened. Like Elodie ending up in London. That was a glitch in the matrix that probably never should have happened but somehow did. A series of “fortunate” events, she had once been fond of saying. Now, she wasn’t so convinced anymore.

Perhaps if she had settled in some quieter town of the UK, she wouldn’t be aging prematurely due to the stress caused by the irritation of hearing these phone talkers on the train. Thou talk’st (and talk’st and talk’st) of nothing. It would be one thing if Elodie had moved to a city where she didn’t speak the language, therefore couldn’t understand what any of them were blabbering about (though that still would have been irksome in its own right). But that wasn’t the case. By and large, all the phone talkers spoke her native English (whether the British or American form of it). Which meant that tuning out was all but impossible. For, even when she remembered to bring her headphones, she was only willing to turn the volume up so high because she didn’t want to totally destroy her hearing.

And so it became an internal battle. One that involved trying to choose between the lesser of two evils: going deaf from listening to her music loudly or going insane from hearing phone talkers on the train ramble on and on and on in an indefatigable manner. Unleashing a torrent of ostensibly one-sided dialogue that no one else around them could escape. Whereas whoever was on the other end of the line could probably put the phone down and walk away without the incessant talker being the wiser.

Elodie assumed that this phenomenon was present throughout every metro system in every major city in the world. But the Overground/Underground, the Docklands Light Railway, the Tramlink and, of course, the buses of London were all that Elodie knew when it came to the ear-raping ills of public transportation. Thus, this system was also all she knew in terms of where to take out her rage and aggression about the phone talkers that these spaces “accommodated.” Elodie felt that if these systems of transport were decently monitored (she preferred not to use the word “policed”), however, the city could be making loads on fining people who “disturbed the peace” in this uncouth fashion. And yet, they preferred to fine passengers for far less egregious offenses, like not paying for a ticket.

She was aware that she had no alternative when it came to “getting around” town. At least not if she wanted to do so while still expecting to be anywhere on time. Chiefly, work. Which was about an hour’s commute from her flat in Hackney. She was also aware that if she kept commuting, kept being subjected to all these phone talkers, that she was liable to blow a gasket in one mode or another. Whether that meant a reaction that was masochistic or sadistic remained to be seen. But whatever the case, she had a hunch she was going to be on the Tube when it happened. Unless, that is, she caved to the old cliché, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Which meant, in this scenario, that if she became a phone talker herself, drowning out the others with her own ceaseless chatter, she might at last be able to tune out all the other noise with her own. After all, if the other phone talkers seemed so “okay” with shouting their lopsided conversations over one another, why couldn’t Elodie be “okay” doing the same as well?

***

At first, becoming a phone talker felt illicit, unnatural. Particularly since she was 1) a millennial and 2) to her ephemeral chagrin, of the breed that merely pretended they were talking to someone. While others might have done it to seem important or loved, Elodie’s reasoning veered from “tune out” purposes into full-blown therapy-related ones. She started to confess things to the phone that she never would have to anyone else. It helped initially to imagine that she was talking to someone specific (for instance, her dead mother or her long-time boyfriend-turned-ex) on the other side of the call, but, over time, she didn’t need any inspiration whatsoever on that front. Discussing everything—and loudly—became no issue for her. And she finally understood the appeal of it that she hadn’t before, back when she wasn’t a phone talker-on-public transportation herself. It was a way to cleanse, to purge, to unwind, to feel as though someone was listening, even if only the government.

After months of being converted to the cause of talking on the phone with no filter while riding the various forms of London’s public transport, something happened that Elodie never would have expected. She became the target of another passenger’s ire. Someone who, like Elodie before her “transformation,” couldn’t handle the sound of loud-talking people carrying on an endless conversation via their phone. Found it the height of rudeness, the pinnacle of having no decorum. But more than anything, “offensively” “old-fashioned.” And, unfortunately for Elodie, that irritated passenger was more prone to acting on their thoughts of violence (as many of the “zoomer” generation are). Which is how, in the middle of telling her phone one morning, “I can’t believe what they’re charging for coffee now,” Elodie’s overpriced cup o’ joe spilled all over the floor, intermixing with the blood spatters that followed.

The aggravated passenger had seen fit to slit her throat, later telling the jury that it was the only way to “shut her the fuck up.” As it turned out, Elodie was the latest in a slew of throat slittings on the Tube, with all throats belonging to those who had been talking loudly on the phone at the moment of their death. Which perhaps proves that talk isn’t always cheap. Sometimes, a person must pay the high price of their life for it if they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though The Quieter (his inevitable serial killer nickname) would argue that London’s transit system always constituted the wrong place for anything other than riding in silence. Well, apart from the tap, tap, tap sound of texting or the white noise of some viral video.