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Be careful what you wish for...

FIZZ-POP

The first one appeared on his desk, with a sort of sucking, tearing noise. He looked at it for a moment, still dubious. When it didn’t vanish, he tried poking it, and was surprised to find that it was as solid as it looked.

A few clicks later and a new listing appeared on the auction site.

No price was too low for the buyers. Even the too-good-to-be-true deals were lapped up, even when his feedback started to drop as people’s phones vanished and ran up bills in far away places. It meant he had to change his handle quite frequently, to avoid the listings police, but that was a small matter.

Soon, he had to move his desk to an old warehouse. He’d fallen asleep by it one night, sometime during the second month, and woken to find himself struggling to breathe under the crushing weight of phones, the soft pop-pop-pop sounds of their arrival like popcorn in the still of his apartment.

And still they came.

They found him dead by the door of the warehouse. Buried under an avalanche of mobile phones.

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