Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Maybe it was the thunder that
kept me awake, or the cheap coffee, or the glassy
fatigue that sits in after midnight when the city turns
to shadow. Either way, I was in the cusp of
signing off for the night at w CCX, half sprawled
in a crack final chair that squeaked every time I
adjusted the fader. The storm outside spat against the windows,
the kind of rain that slucked the streets with oil
and made even the knee and look wilted. Dead air
stretched between the late night Jaz sat to my last
call O, a woman wanting to complain about a barking dog.
My voice droned over the A, M hiss, this is
Sam Reynolds. You're listening to w CCX, your station for
the sleepless and strange signing off until to morrow. Somewhere overhead,
lightning made the lights blink up for a heartbeat before steading.
That's when a phone rang again. Not the line that
blinks with hopeful listeners and cranks, but the direct studio wire,
coldless and heavy, the one with the labor partly peel
from its base like a scab. A first I almost
didn't pick up, but it was one fifty eight a m.
And the only thing lonelier than a talk show host
after sign off is the one who can't resist chasing
Just one more voice. The line sounded brittle, closer to
a cold wind than a human presence. Then you're still there,
not a question. A man's voice scratchedy older. He sounded
as if every would cost a night a sleep. W
C c X. I said, this is Sam, you're on
the air. He hesitated. The car's engine murmured in the background.
I need to tell you what happened. I saw it,
I saw all of it. Something about his tone pinched
at me. Too clear for a prank, too desperate for
a story. Storms like this, berth accidents and stations like
I was collected the wreckage. Go ahead, I said, glancing
at the clock two zero way, And but what did
you see? He took two shallow breaths, the silence calling
around his words. There was a crash north y Duck
the bridge at Harbor and seven at Silverburick plate numbers
eight y yes seventy one. Jazz was playing something with
a trumpet, blue and green. I think paths of water
blurred the security glass. She was standing there, yellow coat,
blood on the garb rail. That happened at two three
a m. Not a sound of just this hush, like
the world stopped to watch. My hand tightened round the phone,
the weight of oppressing my palm. Sir, are you safe?
Have you called the police? I waited, he whispered, No sirens.
Nobody came. The street lights flickered, and everything was fixed
in place. I want someone to know. Don't let them
say it never happened. For a second, the signal flickered,
warping his words. She looked at me, he said, voice fraying.
And then there was this yellow hush, like a cut
through the rain. Remember that yellow coat, yellow cut, yellow hush.
Don't let them. The coal severed with a crunch. I sat,
breath stalled, foam sweating in my hand. I tried red aling,
but the number flashed all's errors, like most late night coals.
The air outside thickened, No sirens, just thunder rumbling low
behind the glass. I watched the needle twitch in the
signal meter, felt the smallest pulse deep in my ear,
and for a suspended moment, every routine that had kept
me afloat in nights, like the seam paper thin, the
tape still rolled, catching the static on the line, the
slide of my chair on terraza floor. When I finally
found my voice, it was just to close the show
with half a cent in, something about rainsaw halt, And
I never heard the end of it myself. When I
let the street swallowed my head lights and the station
faded behind me, stucco box nested between darkness and drizzle,
holding a voice, a vanish call, and a story I
couldn't shake, even as the city blinked out around me,
one sodium lamp at a time. A day later, mondane
routines held the ground by force. The next evening began
as every other, with my microwave pinging precisely at the
eight zero p m, summoning its polymer tray of chop
mystery meat and limp vegetables. I watched the box spinning
beneath the yellow kitchen light, the numbers taking down in soft,
familiar rhythm, and tried not to think about the voice
from the night before. Ten hours earlier had scribbled the
details on the back of a junk male envelope, yellow coat,
silverbuck Viduct two three. The pendug so hard it threatened
to split the paper. I left the envelope face down
on my counter, unable to decide if I was chasing
a story or symptom. The city outside my apartment building
shrank with each passing week, factories exhaling their lost workers,
and steel skeleton stripped for copper. I zipped my coat
and walked east, pass burnt at Stauffen's promising easy money,
past brook walls polka dotted with flyers for yard sails
and missing kats whose faces had faded into a legibility.
The air had a tan of wet concrete and tired diesel,
the kind that stuck to your clauds. It was the
same descated artery of streets I'd known for years, only empty.
A couple blocks from the station hadlets called by, making
greasy reflection shimmer and potholes. I kept walking beneath loose
power lines, wishing for a stiff drink. The radio station
squatted at the edge of a once busy boulevard, flat
roof and yellow stuck out forever one step from condonation.
Its sign that seed in w CCX clickering like an eyelid,
was taped at the edges with carboard to keep the
rain from shortening the bulbs. When I arrived, Lisa was
at the engineer's desk, her feet resting on a battered crate.
How lapt up a glow with digital chest pieces in
mid battle, she gave me a nod A sliding one
abodel here or late Reynolds. Frank's looking to get the
sports lot again, advertiser's pult you earn any of this?
I grunted and tossed her a leftover sandwich, which she ignored.
My routine fit around her as joke snack chick a
weather of void complaints from management. I scribbled my sign
on notes and took stock of the night's playlist. Farther
down the hall, Frank hollowed into the phone, his voice
too optus, louder than anyone demanded sell the slot. Doesn't
matter who feels it to just get a car dealership
at DANCARATEI school anyone. There was no producer for the
overnight shift at Bess. You got Frank's clip reminders to
read the p s A. At worst, you got his
noise about profit margins. So I stacked my playlist and
double checked the transmit readings, humming under my breath an
attempt to come to some muscle memory from my old life,
when nerves used to mean a story, not survival. I
had landed at w CCX four years earlier, spiraling out
of a headline staff reporter suspended to fabricated source alleged
in council scandal. I'd written too much for too long,
asked questions of kept's, circling back to the same deliberately
empty names until I used one that was never supposed
to be found. My editor through me under a bus
and told the press had made the source up. The
phone call started, so did the whisky. By the time
the courts had done their awkward tap dancing, my apot
was more empty bottles and furniture. All I could was
drift through the cracks and tell something anything stuck. WCCX
didn't ask about old enemies. They just needed someone who
could fill the space between ads for discount carpeting and
weather warnings. My callers kept me company, lonely pensioners in Zomiac,
security guards, the odd conspiracy crank with at effects machine
in a grudge, never truly dangerous, never truly strange. The
booth walls were covered with posters for concerts no one remembered,
and appeal notices for save the Station that had begun
yellowing before I arrived. The control board was slick with age,
but each button gave up only tacit resistance. The hum
of the transmitted became companionable noise. Sometimes, when Lisa got
bored of chess, she tapped out Morse code on the
studio table, grinning slyly, as if to remind me what
actual intrigue looked like. But as the clockhead eleven fifteen
nine p m. I found myself scanning the phone logs
for unfamiliar numbers, glancing at the silent studio door, waiting
for some hint that last night had been a misfire,
that my mind was so expert at sabotaging itself had
simply gone for a walk in the rain. The show
started with a long sigh and the static stitch segue
into open line Night Edition. My voice poured out, as
if from someone else, w cc X for the Sleepless
and the night Bound. This is Sam Reynauld. Fun lines
are open. The monotony reasserted itself, but the room felt colder,
slicker at the hum of old plastic, unable to drown
out a new peculius stillness. I tried to lose myself
in the ritual of it, but every cough of a transmitter,
every creek from the dump in the walls pressed on me.
The anissipation nestled just beneath my collar bone, like knowing
you've left stove on somewhere far behind you. By twelve forty,
I'd only taken two calls, an elderly woman disputing the
size of her property tax bill and a teenager half
heartedly confessing to fence hopping. My mind replayed the voice
from the night before, the trembling kiddence, the specificity that
cut through the fog of the ires, yellow coat, yellow cut,
yellow hush. I searched for a groove, for the old
comfort of a city half listening in the dark, But
the night, usually so forgiven in its dull lake, now
seemed pointalistic, every moment, paving the way for the one
where routine would surely shatter midship. I found myself pulling
up the police scamplug in on my weather station lapt
up fingers pecking past an apocalypse of pop ups. There
was nothing, no crash, no accident, just scattered reports of
down tree limbs and a traffic light out on Fourth.
A couple of minutes on the city's Live incident fee
confirmed the same. Not a whisper about the viaduct, the
buck or the woman in yellow. I replayed the previous
night's call. The tape hissed up close, the voice seemed
to bend, the words gliding between present and absent. Touches
of static were meanings should have been? He'd said it
so clearly, yellow coat, yellow cut, yellow hush, the phrase linger,
dragging a chill through the booth of a broad argand entangle.
My tongue found the words in my mouth, trying out
their taste, strange, clashing, oddly rhythmic. I appeared at the
load book cross referencing the coal time two three a m.
The number read withheld, which sometimes happened, but the lulks
showed a string of zero, untraceable, not standard for private numbers. Unsettled.
As called the city Council news fees on my phone,
looking for any mention of accidents, disruptions or public warnings nothing.
At one forty six a m. Another call came in
the line, buzzing, as if already reluctant. Here on w CCA,
I said, voice sounded thin with tightness. I paused. Then
a different voice, female, this time pitched high with nerves.
I need to report a fire. It just happened off
Summer Street, the old textile warehouse. Flames blue, almost purple.
So I car pulled away fast, gray hondacord placed done
jam in as eight hundred twenty six. Someone dropped something
at the gate of folder blue, singed on one corner.
It should still be there. My pen hovered, then scratched
down details, ma'am, have you called the fire department? Her
breath caught. They were already gone, but nobody's saying anything.
There was this hush. The fire went out like it
was sucked up, all quiet. I had to find a phone.
Remember the folder blue, Folder blue, flames, yellow hush. I froze.
Excuse me, can you repeat that? She spat out the
words almost angrily, yellow hush. It was so quiet it
happens at two three. I tried to untangle the contradiction
when exactly she didn't blink. I looked at the clock.
I always look two three, please you have to The
cold jerked, fizzled, ended. I hung up, feeling my pole
break its rhythm. There was no mention on the five scanner,
no chatter on the city's feeds. The building she described
was a few blocks from the viaduct, the one from
the night before, blue folder, GREYHANDA two three a M.
I bit the inside of my cheek. I replayed both
calls side by side, this time tuning into kittens overlapped
the unusual phrasing. Both had used yellow hush. Both described
hyperspecific details. No official source confirmed the license plate numbers
were precise, plausible, but I could not verify them. Both events,
minutes apart, occurred exactly at two three. My scalprickled coincidence
or design. After the show wrapped, I couldn't force attention loose.
I jotted everything into my battered notebook. Details crolled in
block letters. The hum of the gear never felt so fragile.
The city's static pressed at the glass with a new urgency.
I locked up streets empty and washed in sodium and rain. Later,
lying in bed while freight trains wailed in the distance,
I dreamt of yellow wrinkoats and broken headlights, just bleeding
through static blue folders, drifting in an eily puddle that
reflected nothing. The next night, something broke in my patience.
I found myself falling down harbor in my battered saturn
the stations, becky, sweating in my pocket. The viaduct was
slick with rain under a broken street lamp, but the
guard rail was a marred no glass, no blood, no
sign of a buke or yellow coat. Even the grit
on the rub was and disturbed puddles intact, as if
the world had rejected the caller's memory. I stood there
a while, as closed let in the street. Silence seep
in my nerves vibrated with something more above. Current arked
through the lines, and somewhere beneath it a phantom jazz
liquin through my memory. I checked my phone for the
hundred to time, no new incidents, no emergency alerts. Returning
to the station at twelve fifteen, I was jumpy, scanning
the street for any stray watcher. Inside, Lisa was battling
the end game against the grand Master. Bought cigarette tapped
behind her ear. She eyed the sweat on my brow,
looking for ghosts Reynolds. I shook my head, pulling up
the night's coal logs from the battered front desk PIECI.
The log stretched back decades, half dropped the co from
the night before flass opice, unknown duration time sum to
exactly two three eleven. The night before that, the male
call as was recorded for forty seven seconds, cutting sharply
at two three fifty nine. On a hunch, I pulled
up recordings for three nights earlier. No weird calls, just
normal static yet pinned around the same block of time.
A handful of minor complaints and prank calls reappeared, each
with some permutation of hush or quiet. It could be habited,
not a fact of fatigue mines. But now I was
certain the last two nights had been different, both calls
referring to something that didn't exist, and both callers dropping
the same phrase yellow hush, like actors working from the
same script. I pinned print tepster a thumbtact wal map
i'd once intended for signal strength studies, red pushpins for away.
Each event was described to the viaduct the warehouse, both
within a few blocks of the station. My hand trembled
as if drew a rough circle, tying the locations together
with w CC Exitus Center. The night show began, and
just as I queued the opening jingle, an anonymous email
landed in my in books, subject line free your files.
Attached a crumpled scan newspaper clipping from nineteen ninety seven,
headline unexplained blackout stones downtown midnight, panic as city goes
dark in faded highlighter phrases popped out a circle of light,
yellow hush, a cine folders, unusual radioactivity. The sender's address
was gibberish, an impossible string of zeros and ones. My
back prickle with sweat. I snapped the print up next
to the map thumbta, exploitting the words yellow, hush, my
chestnech like cold set concrete, one question, nod. Beneath every
action was the someone's elaborate prank, or as I finally
hearing the shape of something true, something I'd missed behind
all the static. It was after midnight when coal started
coming in, thick and fast. The first about a missing person,
last scene standing beneath the main street clock, her yellow scarf,
the last thing anyone remembered. The second and on air
argument about a building of evacuation. The sirens was so bright
it was like a blue cut through everything. A third
were reporting a city block blackout, A powdered hush, yellow hush.
These one friendly or random micius the same catchphrases as
the earlier anonymous calls. At the Adam settled over the
show like a mold. I changed tactics, interrogating the next
collar your name, They dodged. How do you know this
happened at two three? A nervous chuckle. Then I always
checked the clock. You know how it is. The next
call was cold and mirthless. I did what you said,
left the folder yellow hush. The circle is almost closed.
The cool practice certainty sent a cold dart through my spine.
Who are you? I threw up them, but the call
cut to static. My fingers punched the map with new pins.
Lisa watched me knitting brow Reynolds. You're muttering to yourself
that a new audience dema or are you losing it? She'dadpad,
looking over my shoulder. I loosened my grip in the shop,
just tracking some crank calls, nothing serious. But above her
head the map blazed with fresh color. News made of
red plastic, each event closing around the station's center. That
was when the anonymous email arrived, subject line, do you
remember no body? Only? In attached clipping newsprint from April
two thousand seven describing citywide relay failures and unexplained interference
in a municipal radio towers, more passages highlighted, a yellow hush,
a circle of signal, a blue folder, and in the
margins someone scrawl. The voice knows where you are. I
sat heavily, the frictionless tunnel of dread burrowing down my skull.
The night president choked of accent, mystery, now force and close.
Something was happening in my space, and someone or something
was listening too closely to what I didn't say. Toward morning,
I drive myself through the closing eye of stacking commercial
cuts to fill the silences left by my hesitation. The
storm had returned to flattening the city's night to tin
and whispers. At one thirty five came the worse coll
yet silence, A first, then a slow intake of breath,
almost mechanical, yellow hush. It's your turn. The circle closes
at chew three, then dead air. My mouth tasted like aluminum.
After sign off, hunching the green tinted hum by the
coffee machine, Lise approached, eyes unreadable. You are right, Reynolds,
your acting wired ye should take a night off. I
forced a smile, no rest for the wicked. But the
way she watched me, arms folded in the electric shadows,
I knew she'd been pinning the same dots in her mind.
Later that week, I set about reviewing hours of sure recordings,
savaging the arcous for links. I stripped the audio from
each of the odd calls and ran them for a
free respectragram analyzer, something ascent engineer at my old paper,
assuring me for picking out four number beeps. The phrase
is a yellow hush, singed blue folder circle of light
recurred at precisely the same pitch and duration, forming sinicoide
pulses on the track. It was crude, almost digital, some
kind of amateur code. Accidentally or deliberately looping back and
forth between collars, I stabbed them each way, from each
word overlaying the signal the pulses matched. I double checked
there was a signal bird here, but I couldn't decord it.
That night, the station felt especially still. Lisa and Francour
present at first, Frank shouting in his office, Lisa checking lines.
But around midnight I realized I hadn't seen either in
over an hour. Lisa's chest board was frozen midgame, his
seat spinning gently. The main office door was ajar. Frank
smoke still seened, half finished coffee, leaving a brown scab
on his desk. I called out, but nobody answered, no
response on my cell. A trickle of anxiety slid down
my roobs. I told myself they'd slipped up for a
smoke or an argument. The show must go on. It
always did. But as I sludged in the booth, cueing
my next track, the lights flickered, then slithered back to
faint life. Thunder shuddered the window. All full lines crackled,
then dropped, blinking out, one after the other except one.
The red phone, the private line nobody ever used, buried
beneath the paperweight and three unpaid electric bills. It wrung.
My hand hovered. The clock said two two way M.
I answered with a rasp w cc X, A voice
mangled with distortion, spoke with that same intricate cool rhythm.
Yellow coat, yellow cut, yellow hush. The circle of lights.
The time is two three. The war's scrape repeating, the
pitch stuttering in my crotones. I felt more than heard.
Then suddenly, Sam reynelds. The next words cut straight from
my past ones. I'd never uttered on air, the source
for city council, the check you cashed, the last story
you files, Sam, don't you want to finish the story?
My throat couldn't summon a reply. The voice shifted, warping
between male and female intonations, echoing callers from nights before.
Don't let them say it never happened. Something close to
a laugh burbled out, low and wrong, stitched from pieces
of different voices, including faintly my own. The coal dropped.
The silence felt swollen, not empty. I stepped into the hallway.
No footsteps, no leser, no frank. Their keys and things
left halfway through routine. They never finished. Every phone line
and light in station dead, except for a tremulous green
globe bleeding from the recording booth outside the sky crackle,
feral wind benged wires against the glass. The storm seemed
to focus on this spot. The squat stuck of tomb
at the middle of the city map, and then precisely
two three a m. Every device still a live cell, laptop,
mixing board went black, Radios cut to static, the transmitters
hump faded to the faint music, the ghost of my
own Joe looping back at me alone. I pressed my
palm against the studio windows, the city blocked by block.
The light winked out, as if memory itself was withdrawing,
taking the city with it. My own reflection stared back,
paler and more alarmed than I had ever looked on camera.
The storm pounded overhead, and in the bloom of darkness,
I felt something slip into place. A circle finally closed,
wrapping the city in an unfathomable hush. The hush was
absolute until I realized it was not silence, but a
deep bone tingle in poles, like the air itself had
been vacuumed out of the world. For a heartbeat, I
listened to my own blood pulse in my ears, then
whirled myself to move, picking my way into the corridor
that linked booth and back office. My shoes made a sticky,
sharp noise against the linoleum, each step echoing as though
I d entered a space much larger than our hunch
little building. I pressed my hand against the wall, half
expecting it to tremble with the city's normal power of
vibration through cheap shetrunk. It was dead. Even the fluorescent
emergency strips and the eggxsit signs were out. I couldn't
see my own hand clearly until I passed the window
at the end of the hole and caught a flash
of lightning that illuminated the parking lotter side. The rain
was sheeted running in rivers across the glass. My car
at the incomplete chess board, Lisa's batted orange back accosted
motionless in that weird silver glow. No voices the officers
should have resounded with frank swearing, Lisa's low music, the
thrumb of hard drives and their cycling system. Instead, I
heard nothing but myself. The static from the booths still
rattled out in faint snatches. Some odd fact left and
a board. Even with power gone, I approached where it
and stepped into the gloom, hand flat against the door frame.
Even the ancient exit sign hummed out a weak red flickering.
As though shamed, I called out Lisa. My voice fell
like a stone, A crack deep in the bones of
the building answered. I thought it might be thunder, but
it had weight, like a locking mechanism, or heavy studio
doors shoving themselves closed. My phone was dead, But in
this strobe of enterness, I wondered if I should try again,
pretend something had changed, a way to reach out breakthrough foolish.
I stared at my own reflection in the dark booth glass,
uncertain what I looked like any more. The careful creases,
the fevered shine in the eyes. For a second, my
reflection flickered. Its mirrored in glass could account for colors
pulsing out, the rim of shadow and effect of fatigue,
or the after image of lightning by reflex. I went
to the front lawby ancient switchboard, mail slots slightly tilted,
blacklisting the original station founders. I rattled the front door,
locked as always after midnight. The ring carried on its
own coat. A of the awning pressing streams under the door,
leaving a shallow paddle at the threshold. I thumbed through
the incoming mail, still jam tight in Lisa's CuPy flyers
and paid bills two postcards addressed to a night desk.
Both had only numbers and words, like fragments from the
recent calls. One listed two three yellow, hush blue folder.
The other a photo clip from an old newsletter, showed
a familiar street, a corner near the station marked with
the slashing yellow line. Everything everywhere circled back to two
three in colors and phrases. No one else used. A
slam behind me made me spin. It was simply a
mop handle tumbling from its closet, clattering across laminatee. I
let my breath out, slowly checking the back offices on
its steady legs. I flicked the light switch, knowing it
would do nothing. Nothing happened, nothing had For minutes there
felt like IROs in the supply closet, groping for a flasklight.
By the light of my phone screen, it still glowed dim,
only to shut her out. As a grasp for it,
I thought about what to do next. Part of me,
sundrilled muscle memory from the newsroom, wanted only to document everything,
stuck facts, capture, sound press record, but there was no
one left to share anything with. Instead, I forced myself
to move, shuffling past empty desks, feeling for warmth, the
smell of someone's day old foot or the familiar wedge
of Liz's perfume. Nothing, just a dry acritrace of burnt
dust and ozone. I moved deeper into the building, the
darkness fighting at my ankles, my breath hanging in the air.
The storm mastered overheads, thunder rolling with more purpose, now,
each pulse far too regular, like a distant machine. Was
it my imagination or did it seem to come every
sixty seconds? I counted one, two, hesitation, then a rumble
right on cue, as though the weather had agreed to
some hidden schedule. In file room, I opened a cabinet
inside rose of square labeled tapes was chopped with broadcast dates,
engineer initials sold the incab bled through stickers. I thumb
passed to local just first nineteen eighty five, the lost
pits call in and dozens marked only night seesanek. At
the very back tippany yellow case labeled back up Prullie
only too free sample. My finger tips tingled as if
I touched static? Why back up a really at a time?
So precise I checked the lock. The tip was schedule
for weekly recording, always around two zero to two ten
a m. I set it on the desk, staring at
the familiar careful handwriting Franks, I remembered an ancient piece
of advice from my journal as a mentor, left the
story instead of pushing it, and sat tip in hand,
trying to listen past my own heart through the window.
The block outside was a ghostly after im which nothing
moving except when blown trash. Just as I reached for
the door to leave, a hollow thump rattled the ceiling
like heavy built landing above me, though there was no
second story. I startled upright n scraping the chair. For
a brief second, I thought Lisa Frank had returned, playing
some elaboratrick, but there was nothing, only my own rugged nerves.
As I pressed back toward the main control room, I
tracked each step for sound, if there was some one
or something else in the station. They were more patient
than I was. In a production nook, the machinery blinked radically.
I popped the cover off the main riding box, expecting
a tangle of frey wires. Instead, I found a newborn
haze of dust and tucked inside. Atop the corsack. It
boared a length of yellow ribbon. I pulled it out,
the cut ends were sinched black as this scorched in
some faint fire, but the center was antonished. My thoughts
real yellow, always yellow. Down the hall way now, my
nerves sharpening, I opened the door to the satellite phone closet,
mostly unused. The hard were so out of date it
looked prehistoric, but the connectors, which should have shone with
decades of grime, were wipe clean. Whoever, whatever had been
in here knew the place as well as I did.
I reached Lisa's chair, her game so weighted, white Queen
May capture Black King, boxed in her coffee cup, cold,
her jacket missing from its usual spa. No sign of
a struggle, no debris, no spilled water should warn me
so many times not to leave, I shouted again, voice cracking,
Lisa frank, nothing but the echo battered around the cinder
block walls. I knew, then, truly new, across the scalp
and spine that I was alone, marooned by detail in absence,
surrounded by loops and pattents that refused to snap into logic.
But the building wasn't finished performing. The main breaker grunted
somewhere beneath my feet, and a pulse of greenish emergency
lighting swept on, flickering, as though the generator realized it
still had one last trick to play. A guest of
air churned around my ankles. Something ticked in the ductork,
carrying words I couldn't pass at first, but the cadence
was there. Of two O three yellow cut circle of signal,
blue folder close the hush. My own recorded voice cobbled
together from desperate broadcasts, whispering through the vents. I backed away,
hands cold and tingling breath hopped between my teeth. I
hammered on the studio window, trying to rouse the outside world.
The city's blocks were utterly black. Not even the high
sodium pink of the old street lamps remained, just smears
of wet light, all fixed on the station's perimeter. I
clunched the tape in my fist so tightly it hurt.
The green light guttered insteaded revealing graffiti carved into the
paint by the door. Do you remember the folder? It
glowed faintly phosphorescent in the emergency pallor a tiny blue
smere trail below its short dust, or a mocker or
something far older. I pressed a shaking hand to the
cold glass, focusing on the lines cut by age out.
In the lot beyond my car, a solitary figure stood
a moving just beyond the cun of light thrown by
the defective lamp. Shorter than Frank, taller than Lisa, another
neck collar. A prankster with the one who left the
tape notes the emails. I pressed the indo calm, an
old battered system that worked on a separate battery powert strip.
Who's at there? My voice cracked across the speaker. The
figure didn't move beneath the hood or coat, too dark
to tell what beneath the drizzle and haze, they simply waited,
as if to underline it. The power glitched again, plunging
the room into a near total dimness, where only the
indicator on the main transmit a flashed and the static
in the air leveled out to an unlivering had not
akosh I went to the window for a clearer view.
Another volley of lightning painted to parking off. The figure
was gone. Only the wet concrete remained glistening now and
the feige impression of sheprint impossible to make out, visible
only for the split second. A new message pulsed up
on the laptop, stark and screen flickering, then holding close
the circle two you are the signal. I almost dropped
the tape. I forced myself to replay the last call,
mentally holding the phrases in mine fighting panic. There was
method buried here. Each call had given excessive, impossible detail, colors, numbers,
evidence left behind but never found, objects described but not retrieved.
At every turn. The reality they described was perfectly situated
to never be confirmed, never be denied, only reforts, like
a bad memory that threatened to become true. Spoken aloud
enough times, my vision blurred, nors battered with the tide
of surreality. I gripped the desk, wheeling myself back to
the prisent. I was inside WCCX at its center. The
lines of the city raid like spokes from the building
squat hut, each detail taking a perimeter only as seemed
able to trace. A sudden scratching from beneath the door
yanked me to attention. Shifting for a makeshift weapon, I
found only a heady tape splicer, cold and greasy against
my palm. The scratching intensified a s almost deliberate rhythm.
I crouched and peered at the gap. Nothing visible, a
gust of wind, and as quickly as it began, the
sound ceased. I waited, blood roaring in my ears, heart
thudding unevenly, when nothing else happened, I forced open the
door and swept my flashlight in arcs empty floor, the
same puddle by the entry, a detailed new in its exactness,
suggesting someone or something had entered. After the rain started.
The green light on its dying breath flickered one last
time in that bloom. I caught a glimpse of a
new item on the mail shelf, off fold of blue
slightly singed on one edge. I snatched it, handshaking, and
ripped it open on the desk, inside a stack of
yellow index cards, each marked with the words remember the Hush,
and a photo of me at this very desk last week,
wearing the same shirt, the same shell sharked expression, the
time stamp neatly impossibly read two free a M. My
knees nearly buckled. I wanted to scream, but my throat
was a rusted hinge, forcing myself to flip through the
cars I found increasing the delirious crips you were listening
the signal flows from here and drop the hand rating
flash between block and careful looping scripton on one card,
scrolled in a childish trembling hand. Please tell them not
to forget me. My head pounded, my skin niched, as
though electricity danced along my nerves. I forced deep breaths,
tried focusing on the physical and the present. I pressed
my hand to the dismantled from my co willing myself
not to pass out. On impulse, I went to the
old rill to reel deck and with fearful reverence, slid
the back prelay only two three sample tip onto the player.
It word alive, battery companionably clicking in the silence. The
playback warble then filled the air with a symphony of
overlapping voices. Mine LIS's franks twisted and laid, reading the
same incantatory sequence. Yellow hush, blue, folder memory, closed, circle, opened,
the city weights punctuated every sixty sickond by the unmistakable
snare tap of a blue and green that jazz cut
the first collar had named. The building hummed. The power
flickuld back for a single heartbeat, and every device powered
back on, just long enough for every light every screen
to flash the phrase two free. Remember. Then, as if
a a few summer felt with finality, everything went dark again.
I stood in the after glow, trying desperately not to
sink into despair. The line between what was being reported
and what was happening was narrowing, collapsing. The phrases, the objects,
the times. It was all focused on the spot, this ire,
at this windling house, this finished staff. Thunder batted the roof,
the regular and human interval now impossible to ignore. I
pressed my palm heart against the cold glass. This time
it pulls faintly back alive, with the storm of the
building's nervous system or something older humming through each circuit outside.
The rain finally slackened. The streets the station, my own
ragged reflection were matted in shadow, the circle holding me
in its inescapable signal saturated grip. I had no choice
but to wait hell by the hush, as the hands
of the broken lobby coxsolate inexorably toward that terrible magnetic
I are two three. My hand was still displayed against
the glass, finger tips throbbing from the pressure. The hush
that full doubly CCC seemed to breathe around me, a
dense pulse inside my scallopose currents of vast it stretched
out every second until it threatened to spit me open.
My skin crawled with the six static of sleeplessness or
fear were both, and I was all but incurred by
the faint after image of the words flashing across every
power device in the station. To three Remember the old
emergency lighting strained and died, leaving me at the heart
of the building in a gray slub of semi dark.
Even the rain outside had lost its rhythm, shifting to
an irregular trickle. Up picked at the awning, reluctant probing
my chest burnt shop with the sensation that someone stood
centimeters behind me, but every quick glance revealed nothing. The glass,
the bank of dusty monitors, the silent chess boats still
bearing leases, unfinished campit a fumble for the flat slight
I'd found my hands d stady, a weak cone of
yellow sweat flanoleum snagging on footprints, my own, ferried in
by a drag of muddy water, and something else, a
faintmere slown across the studio floor toward the back corridor,
I followed, stepped careful but virgin, each breath catching on
some internal hook. In the passage behind the booths, the
musty air tinged with cigarette butts and ozone, I found
a door I had never attempted maintenance or archive, painted
over so many times, the molding had developed a brittle fringe.
The streak and the floor ended here. Lost into the threshold.
An old sticker two, faded for its message to make sense,
peeled away above the latch. I stood a myself, pressing
my ear against the painted metal, straining for any hind
of movement, preth a stack or step, anything that would
dispel the growing certainty that I was the only one inside.
No luck. I tried thenobbuce stubone resistant sticky as congealed glue.
I gave a careful shove of my shoulder. The door
relented half an inch, then creaked wider, admitting me to
a low watch chamber of shadows and fermenting boxes. My
flask light danced between stat demo cassettes, discarded office chairs,
several unopened boxes stamped with ancient government insignia as a
property of city. Till acommunication slash returned on demand and
a row of battowed lawn disconnected silver towers with hand
written cold tags really to slash seamen as servant. One
machine disturbingly modern among the debris, thrummed with an alien energy.
The humpk out across my nerves as clearly as the
jazz lick had haunted these knights. A top a plinth
of old manual sat a folder blue and scorch almost
blackened on its leftage, not unlike the one described so
breathlessly by my recent collar. My heart trept over itself.
I reached for it from grazing the curl corner. The
heat of the thing was wrong, as if manufactured minutes ago,
not fanstasted. In a closet inside I found sheets printed
with column logs, rows of time states, wavengths, all sorted
into two minute intervals, annotated in several different scripts, one
round and feminine, one harsh and vertical. One. A mistake
could be my own. In the margin a line written
in red sharp eye repeat keywords amplify response closely, But
two three a chill licked my scalp. There were recordings
to a stack of minique set tapes labeled with broadcast
dates that mapped almost precisely to the strange calls I'd
been fielding these past weeks. One marked with my own initials,
was threaded inside a battered portable, taped except side the folder.
Out of either habit or compulsion. A press play static
filled the closet at first. Then the unmistake will rise
and fall of my own voice, clipped from dozens of
past shows, stitch with uncanny precision, yellow co yellow hush
blue folder. The circle closes, my voice climbing and falling
in ways I did not remember, broken by sharp contacts
of skickles, in the distant scuffle of chairs, the slap
of a hand against old wood. A woman's voice leases
flashed in so garbled as to be unplaceable. Will the
lights flicker at two three? You must remember what you forgot?
As I listened, the loop grew denser, layering phrases so
neatly that it was clear this was not the random
uppet of anxious callers, but a choreography. The script revised
and reperformed and injected into the city's blood, strewed through
my show. My show, specifically, I shut off the tape
chest height and tucked everything folder tapes logs under my arm.
I stepped backward into the corridor, my flasklight flickering now
as if responding to the mounting static in the air.
Shuffling toward the main studio, I passed ways of empty desks,
wise trailing off of phones, as though some one had
yanked every hardline cord from behind its panel. The building
was neither cold nor warm temperature, itself seen to have
absented itself, leaving only the humming fob of the storm
skeleton's the atmosphere. Back at the booth, the only sound
was the click of my own swallowing. My reflection stretch
and bruised in the dark glass seemed ready to split
a shift in the low frequency sandscape. Some were deep
in the building low generator wheeze coughed into halting life.
Dim panels, blinked, devices stirred and sickly green. The emergency
lights along the ceiling poles awake with a fluorescence more
jownness than braid. Anna voice not outside, not on the phone,
but inside, loud, blaring out from every ancient speaker, as
if it was the natural combination of every buried whisper,
every anxious confession. W cc X this is the signal.
The circle closes. The pitch was wrong, A composite digital echo,
constructed of voices I recognized and couldn't, interwoven with my
own in the distorted textures of old nice shift guests
and callers. The words scraped across the frequencies in waves,
Sam Reynolds, It pronounced my name like a defect to
a fall in the mesh. You should have known, didn't
You always want the truth? The whole room vibrated. The
backup generator continued its death rattle, The lights swell in
with each utterance. I stumbled for the main board, nom
but active, no tape rolling, no open MIC's justice, parasitic
presence speaking through every circuit. You were the node before you,
with a host, every message seated, delivered, and Amplif you
never listened, you just broadcast. I jotted at every kill
switch and chords, tried to physically break the feedback, but
each movement only changed the color of the light, now green,
now amber, now shimmering like a moldslick. The voice pressed on,
do you remember the old building, Sam? The news van
marked for return to asset storage. You stood there, stores
pouring through your hands, never asking who was listening on
the far end. That's why to send you here, you asked, Sam,
but you never really listened. And then newly horrifyingly, other
voices layered above Lisa's clear as eyes. We tried to
warn you, Sam, the signal can be shut out. You
have to finish the broadcast. It was the sound of
a mind maraveling of identity, twisted through the mesh of
layered frequencies, a chime high in regular pulls from the
board at sixty one second intervals, too free, coming up
again and again. Desperate, I twisted from the booth and
bolted for the front door. The locked, stiff and resistant,
refused to yield. I braced and slam'ed, shoulder first, but
it held crony only a scance sentimeter in its frame.
At that moment, my flashlight beam caught on movement through
the glass down the street. Across the rain slick road,
people first appair, then three, then a dozen, walking quietly,
almost rustily, toward the corners near the station, their clothes
blurred in the night's distorted glow, faces half seen, but
turned all towards the building. No shouting, no running, no
headlights on the street, just silent encirclement, as if they
were marking out the edges of the map I drawn inside.
Some stood in doorways, some half shadowed behind parked cars
and moving patient. I shouted, pounding with my fists, but
none gave sign of hearing or caring. City peeble but
changed empty listening. In a sudden spasm of hope, I
ran for the alley exit at the back. The emergency
release barb bit my palm, but the door swung wide
and I lunged into cool, gritty air. The city's blackout
was complete, not merely low power, not an outers, nothing.
It was as if every traffic light, every bulb, every
heated store front had been vacuum of their ability to
illuminate or resist. The silence outside was rasping. It made
my ears rain. The city looked petrified. People at the
far end of each street standing were sitting with its
strange blank alignment. Each turned slightly toward the squad musted
color tuck of w CCX behind me. I called that again.
The echo caught in the wet break fell flap far off,
three blocks over a glimpse to figure in a yellow coat.
Was it? The shape was hard to fix, wavering at
the edge of visibility, a car stowed beside her, a
silver curve of hoodwinking in the black. But nothing else,
no movement, no urgency, just a tableau set in waiting.
My breath burned cold in my lungs. I sprinted into
the street, feeling the residual electricity in my limbs. Every
step of rebute to caution. I throdd between the boderspaced
in regular units, all eyes vacant, listening as if waiting
for a trigger or a cue. Their faces barely twitched
where brushed passed expression the safe for a tiny and
inspiratory flick of the eye, where never a fiend electronic
kiss issued from a near by darkened radio or foam.
I reached the end of the block, turned and looked back.
The entire station was illuminated from with him, with the
same near supernatural green. Each window was green, each wall
a transmitter. I was not only the station's hosed but
apparently also its lynchbin, the epicenter of something I did
not understand, Something that naw pulls out through old city
arteries and silent intersections, drawing the city's sleep workers inward
and concentric orbus. A pulsive drought pushed me to retreat,
to go back, but as I did, a slow wave
of noise rose across the city, from one hundred darkened speakers, payfuns,
car radios, all at once. The phrase echoed, a sonorous intonation,
lapping against the buildings and pulling at my feet. Don't
let them say it never happened. It was the warning
from the first co now multiplied, modulated since tid is
in use. A sprinted back through the alley, shees, skidding
on broken tile, and burst through the rear entrance into
the station's main room, my mind boiling with the need
to be anywhere but here, but where. The escape was
narrowing with every breath inside, The generator's output was fading,
the colored emergency lights collapsing into strobe on every speaker,
every radio. The voice came again, this time with the coherence,
more sinister for its calm. It's the host who completes
the signal. It's the host who carrers the confession. I
hammered at the main power block, anged arrestor plugs, mass
a stack of auxiliary signal taps against the counter plastic
show out spinning. Nothing stopped the sun to every brooken piece,
kept replaying each fragmant, carrying the signal's code in my
own voice and leases and to cut with others unfamiliar
half forgotten sphy so it might have come from anywhere
in my once long reporting career. One of the cupies
in the wall, usually stuffed with yellow traffic cetaceans and mail,
hung open, paper spilling out like a small cloth banner
folded inside the emergency transmittered a battered unit from the
city's old civil defense system, lights blinking with a frantic
animal urgency, its signal wires half clipped and then respliced
by some unknown hand, ran along the walls and into
the broadcast board, feeding every noise and interruption right back
into the loop. I ripped the rig free wires tearing,
but the backup transmitter was to life somewhere in the
wall sort of made it routined, grinding app message after
message city I test remembered the hush. The tapes I
smashed on refix kept spinning. Broadcast decks still let him.
Rolling from the window, I saw movement, people shifting. It
was not a friends at attack or riot, but a
calculated sequence groups of three and five, crossing at corners, stopping, wading,
moving in sudden synchrony. Distantly, a line of car started
to roll down the street, headlights black. Only the shimmer
of their body is reflecting occasional ocs of dying lightning.
Phone lines juttered with sudden blistering activity, one after another.
The phone ut my elbow lit up lines one for six,
then auxiliary desk lines, all flashing madly each time. I
picked up voices overlapped children's elderly accent from the cities,
every corner, each repeating some permutation of the phrases. The
circle closes. You have to finish it. The blue folder
is burning. It's time, yellow, Hush, do you remember Sam?
Don't forget the next line. The repetition ground my sense
of time to dust. I tried it, desperately, futilely, to
reason with collars. Who am I speaking to? What do
you want? But they never answered, never deviated, only leering
their words like a coil locked on a single, dreadful chant.
I smashed the board with a chair, plastic and metal splintering,
and beneath the debris a second hidden transmitter flicker to life.
I tore open wall panels, finding another old a piece
of hard worre slaughter behind dusty insulation labeled back PIMIRK.
Every device relayed the broad gas, each feeding and amplifying
the hush. I staggered from panel to panel, tools now
shaking in my grasp, every self a slicked with sweat
or rain or panic. All that did was make the
next tape play with the voice which to a new
speaker or a different speaker. Why vibrate with the coded phrase?
It was the city's nervous system, built into the veins
of the building, inseparable on the present. The only notion
that cut through the fob was that this was spontaneous.
This wasn't a city succumbing to simple accident or pranksters
mastering a hack. This was an architecture, a system constructed
over years, maybe decades, one that required the participation of
a host, a signal keeper nay. In a break from
the stuttering feedback, I turned to the offices for grounding
or escape. The admin office was silent to Lisa's game,
unfinished from a cold, everything fixed in place. On a hunch,
I rummaged through Frank's battered file drawer behind Teck's lips,
budget notes, and sheaves of unread listener mail. I found
a folder marked install of Release Lost Reynolds inside a
handful of photos me looking younger, thinner, folding a note
book at a city council meeting years before for my
disgrace lease at the station's old transmitter, grinning frank arguing
into an old ham radio at the bottom. Members consigned
by a series of anonymized bureaucratic entities of City Signal
Control SUBNIT three AID with dates stretching back nearly twenty years,
referencing broadcast tests, key phrase, dissemination trials, behavioral observation nodes.
Each document referenced two three, a M, and a block
printed phrase that matched the ones lettering, the tapes, the calls,
the clipped stories, trial housh slash coats, last circle, sight,
w CCX or vacuumed any last breath from my lungs.
I was implicated by designs swept up in a project
that spanned more than failing newspaper careers or bad debts.
My name dodded across trial logs, test notes, case stutters,
a network of names, shuffled identities, trial dates, and performances
of a night time emotional suggestion. I sank into the
battered desk chair, folder across my knees, my skinich with
the recognition these broadcasts, the voices one spontaneous interruptions. They
were seated messages, triggers embedded within the city's psychic architecture,
each one leveraging the susceptibility of old hosts, lonely listeners
and the role longitude of ours. After midnight heartbreak, shoving
the file away, I stared at the security monitors. Footage
played from the last several nights, each time stump flickering
to two free before spooling back a mantout of me
pacing the studio, sometimes muttering into the dead air, while
the von air at light was supposedly dark, but worse.
In several sequences, I watched myself sleepwalking hephons on reading
from scripts, newly familiar language clipp profectly from the code
of calls and messages, my own voice recorded as if
for a scrip read except I had no memory, no
reason to be at the mic, certainly no audience. Camera.
Angles caught me removing tapes from lockers, stashing folders and knicks,
riding on index cards, that appeared later in my own mailbox.
I was both target and vector. I realized with the
rush that my role was less that of investigator than
that of a living, breathing piece of the transmission circuit,
as sleep, a broadcaster talking my own mind into transmitting
every secret detail, every trigger phrase, without even knowing a final,
unbearable recognition. I'd been set up longer than I'd known.
Files referenced me as node slash host s Reynold's clear
and staged reactive for to stitch the broken time men together,
me shaking hands with a shadowy counselman from the scandal
that ruined me, Frank nodding just out of frame, Lisa
holding a blue folder that matched the ones described on air.
I slumped, nauseated, knowing now that the only thing I
had never broadcast was my own confession, my own real truth,
and filtered by suggestion or could The lights fluttered once more?
The green faded to a harsh, probing white behind my eyes.
The loop began again, this time with nowhere left run
a doub CCX. This is Sem Reynold's night host. The
signal flows from here. The volume swelled and split inside
my head, not from a speaker now, but from the
marrow of my bones. I moved again, not by instinct,
but as if compelled by corps, by ritual, heading for
the bat at master carte rack, the unseen point at
which the station's core ark I've converged. I tried to
pull the tapes, but my hands refused. Instead, my fingers
stwitched into the motions of loading reels, threading tape, setting volumes,
every axe, own grain from years of night shifts. It
happened even as I tried to resist. I blacked out.
Whether from terror, exhaustion of the mind, warping, ovlay of suggestion,
I don't know. I fell somewhere between sion's cream, a
moment's stretch across a thousand ears, filling with the throbbing, repetitive, pulsive.
Remember blue folder, yellow hush, do not interrupt a Wokhire's days,
I couldn't say. At the mic mout dry fingers flicking
instinctively at the old fashioned faders. The main clock was
stuck at two three. There was nobody else in the building,
no shuffle of shoes, no pressure of another body, just me,
my gear and the endless blind city beyond. Though on
air bull burned with a violet tinge. I fumbled from
my phone, but every system was locked, every app frozen,
every outlet dead, but won the broadcast system, which was
somehow impossibly still hot. The show's call lines blinked as usual,
line one, line three, and line five, But this time
when I picked up, the voices on the end were different,
Quieter but intimate, conversational in a way that cut directly
through my defenses. Hullo, Sam, A pause recognition in it
that sent shoals through me. Do you remember what you
told me about your first day here? A different line,
a different voice, no less personal, Sam, It's Lisa at
once that eve mfered the people who fell asleep listening
to nothing but static? Is this the silence you wanted?
Another line, an old, slowed voice, the buck, Sam. She
looked at you, didn't she? Each one pushed me gently
to peel back, disclose, admit not only facts but feelings, failures,
a whole suppressed planet of guilt and shame. Each new
voice responded to memories I'd thought belonged only on the
other side of the windshill, the night's divide. With each
ounce fished out of me, something in the air shifted.
I felt the building itself tense, awaiting a verdict and
impossible ask. Desperate, I realized the only possible escape might
be embracing it, rather than fleeing. To break the circuit,
I had to send something wholly alien to the codinonous message,
not predetermined, not falter, not formed by committee, but carrying
the unbearable actual truth. I made a decision, brought the
figure up, checked the mic, white blood from my bitten lap,
live again. This is Sam Reynolds w c c X.
If you can hear me, if any one can, I
want to set the record straight. I started with the scandal.
I confessed force breaking, how I'd never fated my sores
but had been caused by threats I didn't dare name.
How I'd run stores by voices in the phone, by
phases in late night meetings, people who kept pushing me
to deliver lines on cue. How my exile at w
CCX was not escape but sentence. That I'd ignored signals
hidden in the city's routine and lost myself inside patterns,
unable to tell memory from trigger, desire from compulsion. I
apologize genuinely for the ruins left behind, for every collar
I cut off or snubbed, for every friend or coaker
I'd pushed away in my fog of obsession, I spoke
the real phrases. I was lonely, ashamed, desperate for connection.
I hammered out the posts of me that had died
a little. Each time a night coal came in, and
I felt only the urge to jase, not to answer.
I recited every phrase from the loop at this time,
converting them, basking outward. What does the yellow hush mean?
Who are you really? If I listen without expectation? What
happens if I break the circle? The words were raw,
halting and plants, placed now not by an uncea manipulator,
but by me. Interocense, I finished breath, shuddering. I pressed
the scent key and the batter transmitter, flooding the boorb
of my words. A humbuilt in the walls, arising feverish crescendo,
and then complete silence, so complete a I thought the
world had ended. Outside, the city was black, but slowly
the lights over several blocks flickered, thence dead. It first
the main drag, then the residential ribbon, The lawned dover,
then the dots stretching out toward the north. I had
up to woke up, drawing a seam of light through
the night. I let out a saw, half relaf, half terror.
Within minutes, motion thudded back into the streets. Car started,
horns blared, someone threw up in a shop window, and
a dialect radio station blasted pocket maximum volume. People blinked
as a frousing from catalepsy voice of sharpening at automonic
of collective chants now absent on my signal meter. The
input line and output lime flattened a no more coated loop,
just leave direct sound. There was no e mail, no
congratulatory voice, no final admonition. It was overre if only
for a time. When the last redundant circuit sizzled and
died in my hands, I allowed myself to fall back
into the batted engineer's chair, head prop and the dusty boards.
I'd opened the circle, not closed it. The husher chattered
for now days. Possibly we exsploded together. In the aftermath.
The city's black up became just another entry in the
already crowded roll of Ober mysteries. The Night of the Circles,
as the morning news dubbed it. Residents claim flickers, odd dreams,
a sense of waiting for signals that never arrived. Most
shrugdom went back to work, confusions subsuming into memory. As
power and routine returned, w cc X became a room
at stop on Eben Legend podcasts. Strangers rang into ask
about to the circle Hoox, Lisa and Frank vanished into
the city side. Where's memory? No trace, no police note,
no dry cleaner bell. I could not bring myself back
to the station. Even walking past the old transmission mass
made my pulse jump into a tinney static rhythm. Now
I spend my mornings in a cafe halfway up the
block from my old apartment. The radio set over the
cake case runs a constant background to static, the AM
band refusing to quit its lowest no matter how f in.
The barrister rotunes it one cray dawn a jazz refreds
itself through the noise, blue and green a freeze, But
the moment passes. My hand pauses over the crossword. The
payphone at the back of the shop brings us on
that barely registers to regulars. The barister gives me a
sideways look as if to say it's always been ringing,
and perhaps it has. On the third burst, I answer some.
The voice is soft, draped a familiar deadban. It's she
returned to listen. Recognition stings Lisa or something using her
voice lets that silence linger a beat too long enough
for static to chew the edges. I want to ask,
but she hangs up. The city outside the windows is
a coloshe of old fred by routine, newly fragile in
the strip mall light. Every face passes behind a glass,
like a watermark on newsprint, indistinct but ever present. I
catch my reflection. A flicker of electronic blue plays across
my eyes, as if a signal is bouncing there, just
below the surface, beneath all the silence. The hush clings
to the corners for a moment. I almost answer, almost
hum the next line, but something blurs in my brain.
The circuit never fully closed. Some signals never die, They
just shift frequencies, waiting for the next whirling host. A
bus roll past the cafe window, scattering puddles. I look
down at the cross where each clear tangle might be
suppressing deep divats in the newsprint. Improvise network seven letters
somewhere behind me, the static from the cafe radio congealed.
Each pop in a regular poe was standing in for
the missing words I'd never say out loud. I caught
the faint shimmer of my own reflection, double exposed over
the bakery's shells. For a flicker. My eyes were lit
by blue again, Gone the instant I registered it, the
room felt close, stuffer than it should have, as if
the power outage had drained some layer of it. The
building couldn't quite replace chair scrape, Nakin's flutter, but every
human noise seemed damped. A young woman behind the counter,
softly humming along to the radio, turned the dial at intervals,
tracing the spectrum, pausing at moments where the static swiled,
not vanished. The hum of muted voices flickered in an
out under her melody laid so that sometimes she sounded
as if she was echoing herself. I tried not to listen,
but found my ear worming towards those patches in the noise,
hunting from messages layer beneath. Once out have dismissed it
as furredolia. My old neck for seeing patherns and clouds
can shuffled note in the open ended fery that made
stores stick. Now, I caught myself counting the intervals between
unexplained pauses, matching them to the old tape in my mind.
Two beats, a hiss, then a modul delated phrase half
eaten biaus, always at those minute lawn marks. The payphone
round twice more that morning, both times a letter bring
chest thumping, each burst, driving my attention back to the radio,
to the city flickering behind the window. I noticed what
I hadn't before, the patrons all pausing for just a
second when the statu bloomed, a hand stilt over a spoon,
a gaze fixed on a crumbling pastry, a shoe tapping
midstep in perfect synchrony with this, I thought my paranoid
was spent. But in these tiny freeze frames I saw
the echo of that night waiting were framed for daylight.
At lunch time, I stepped out into the street. The
light was clearer, the ruins of the black out more
visible now, shops closed for days, CRIDs still flickering, traffic
signals on its certain schedules. As I crossed the avenue,
a woman in a rain spatted yellow jacket pass me
our shoulders brushed. She looked up, meeting my eyes with
a gaze so direct and familiar that the world tolded
for Breatha's moment, as if I were falling back into
a call, a broadcast, a loop. You dropped this, she said,
voice level and dry. She pressed something into my hand,
a slip of blue notepaper, corner chard, don't forget the
next line. Before I could reply, she melted into the crowd,
feet light in the puddle pavement. I turned the note over,
wait for the signal. In neat locky, gripped beneath my
own name and a hand that could almost have been
mine a decade ago. A horn blared. I stepped back,
just in time to avoid a delivery vans loshing across
the crosswalk, adrenaline pulse in my throat, roarin sire. I
shoved the note into my pocket, knuckles tight, feeling the
crease and singe against my palm. I made myself walks
out away from the station, passed a row of shut
of stores and the familiar graffitied wall, half covered by
new fliers. The hum of city life picked up again,
pulse by Paul's students, jattering a street musician testing a
saxophone against the wind, the city piecing itself together after
the blackout. Yet every so often I caught a skip beach,
pedestrians holding at an intersection, just a shade too lawn
glancing up together, as a city bus paused before its right,
the driver's blank face forward. Even the dogs in the
park froze at odd intervals, noses lifted waiting for a
kila didn't come. The recidu of the pasm clawn, like
the echo of a psalm's chorus, hummed after it's been forgotten.
With no where where else to be, I ducked into
the lobby of the public library. The hush was soothing,
almost normal. Students scavenged power abloits pensioners hunched over magazines,
a security guard dozing behind a bank of monitors, the
reference discolored with familiar halogen, a warming bomb. Yet as
I moved through reading rooms and technical stacks, my spy
inich certain that even here something was different. Somewhere overhead,
the vents system clan bloon air whistling to a rhythm
I couldn't dismiss. I traced my usual path to the
public computer's muscle memory steering me, then paused. Someone had
left a machine unlocked. The screen was dense with search
results for a w CCX, bluckout coded broadcasts, yellow harsh,
and dozens of old news clippings with my name cut
and pasted into the querries. The browsers tabbed blinkered articles,
foreign posts, and even a map not unlike the one
I tapped up at the station. Pins clustered in a
rough circle over downtown, familiar co ordinates. A chat window
flushed along the taskbar. The username was a jumble of
letters and numbers, but the profile photo was an old
broadcast fan, the same make and color as a one
part behind the station and the night everything collapsed, A
message blinked, addressed to me, Sam, You're not the only
note left. I nearly shut the lid, hands trembling, but
another message appeared. Were all receivers, at least some of
the time. It never just stops. Watch for the hush.
My senses telescoped in. I scanned the others around me,
searching for any telle furtive glances, mouse clicks that matched
the rhythm of the static. I half expected to ceelys
in the next chair or Frank some shadow version of them,
eyes fever bright, passing coded notes, but there was nobody,
just the anxious, random shuffling of city life. The chap
winked off before I could tiver reply. Outside, the wind
shur and garbage up the curl, and above the clouds
were splitting some light lan spoon shop on natural columns,
lighting up the street like a city wise spotlight. As
the sun hit the street, the radiostatic faded were placed
for a few blots by normal talk in traffic, interrupted
only by odd of stressed silences. But in the distance,
just at the edge of hearing, I cut the return
of the old motif. The faintest strain of jazz trumpets cued,
and mournful wound into the background of the city. Back
in my apartment, I tried to some Catharsis, some final
document to prove it all happened, but my words unravel
as soon as I stared at the blank page. I
watched the clock tick, every eye occurring the possibility of recurrence.
I saw the digital numbers flirt with tea free, and
even in daylight, my chest narrowed until they passed. I
kept the blue folder in the desk roar with the
cinged edge, leaking flakes of ash on to receipts, and
old press passes inside my name in three different scripts,
annoated log sheets, over lapping voice samples. The proof, if
it was ever real, now seemed to become less certain,
like a dream shaded by someone else's sleep. The city,
for all its pretense of order, now felt held together
by the scotch tape of returning power and mutual denial.
I heard callers late at night on other stations, distant
a m bands halfway across the continent, using familiar key words,
describing things nobody else in the broadcast booth ever acknowledged.
The patents linked beneath the surface, waiting for host less, tired,
more credulous, or simply new. One afternoon, I stayed outside
w CCX. The sign was busted for good to just
blant plastic and pealing adhesive. The doors were changed and
paper with violation notices. The booth, through warped glass, was
layered in dust, chess bowne, frozen still coat and mug
and notes, Like evidence left behind at the scene of
an unexplainable event. There was no sense of drama, just
attired silence. Hanging over it, the same hush that always
came when someone wanted to be forgotten. I pressed my
palm to the doors glass, and for a flickering moment,
felt a pulse beating back of phantom feedback. Turning away,
I caught a last look at my own reflection, double
exposed shot with a web of blue and green from
the street people's lit was something extra natural that faded
as quickly as the clouds passed over the sun. You still, there,
came a voice beside me, not a question, just the assertion,
old as any broadcast. I turned, but only caught the
retreating wave of a hand sleeve gold in the late light.
As I walked back toward the city's noise, I couldn't
help imagining, through every settle pause, every lingering note on
the radio, every perfectly time silence on the customer's tongue,
that something or someone was still listening, still waiting, The
hush always gathering, always threatening to become music or message
or instruction. Sometimes, when sleep refuses me, I find myself
speaking the phrases into the dark, testing them. Not quite
a prayer, not quite a code. They echo back, dry
and meaningless, But I can't quite lose the sense that
somewhere as circuit is closing, waiting for the next storm,
the next signal, the next host ready not just a broadcast,
but to listen. There is peace in the static, but
only for those willing to live off the record, and
even then the next call is never far away, and
that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I
will see you in the next one.