Jim Ratfink steps into a phone booth in a public square to make a call to his accountant only for the door to swing shut behind him and he discovers he is locked in, thinking it would be cheaper than paying roaming charges and there is zero chance he would need to pay taxes on a €5 phone card
At first he finds it mildly amusing as he assumes it is a matter of time before somebody opens the door from outside and he'll soon be free. Before long a couple of burly workmen come along and try to free him, but the door is stuck fast, and in their attempt one of the workmen unwittingly rips the handle off the door, and at this point a crowd starts to form around the phone booth
Soon a local tough tries to ram the door down with his own body, only to bounce off the plexiglass as the assembled crowd laugh at him instead of Ratfink, so the local tough gives up and leaves in shame
Eventually a passing construction truck sees what is going on and one of the workers takes his pneumatic drill and is preparing to smash through the glass with the drill bit when a truck from the telephone company arrives and the phone box is carried away with Ratfink still inside, the assembled crowd assuming all will be well once he gets back to the depot
As the truck drives through Bilbao, mind, Ratfink sees another telephone company truck pull up next to it at the traffic lights, and on the flatbed is an identical phone booth with a man trapped inside, and in that moment their eyes meet and both come to the conclusion that this cannot be an unfortunate coincidence yet neither are able to escape, at which point the second truck takes a different route through the city
After driving through the city for some time the truck which Ratfink is on drives through the outskirts of the city, and soon afterwards is driving through the countryside as the sun slowly starts to settle in the sky, yet there is no indication of when or where the truck will reach the depot - that is until it enters a tunnel in the side of a mountain, a tunnel which seems to go on for longer than makes any sense, until finally the truck comes to a stop and the phone box is removed from the back of the flatbed, where it is placed on top of a pile of identical phone boxes in a cavern filled with dozens upon dozens of phone boxes
As he looks at his surrounding, Ratfink sees the phone box containing the man he saw on the other truck earlier, though the man has committed suicide by wrapping the corn of the telephone receiver around his neck and hung himself, and it does not take Ratfink long to discover why: inside the booths that surround him, stretching off into the distance, are the skeletons of people trapped inside months if not years before, a fate which is waiting Jim Ratfink, and all he can do is sink to his knees in despair knowing he will share their fate
