Good evening everyone and welcome to Radio Silence, where dreams run thin and blood runs thick!
Who knows why he had to start it with something so macabre sounding. But Jane got it. She hadn’t dreamt in months. Just nights of tea and Radio Silence, days of listless wait. Some sleep in between, deep and empty.
She’d have sworn it wasn’t an obsession, if she’d had anyone to swear it to.
This witching hour we’ll be listening to half cracked codes and grocery lists, in case any of your needed further briefing, to be followed by a reading of The Iliad from a Sandal’s Point of View by Elmer. And the usual music, of course.
The tea kettle whistled. Jane stared at the folds in her unmade bed, hands resting on her knees as if not knowing what to do. By the time the rising shriek finally registered half of Lucius’s vague warning to Frank about the arrival of the enemy and his wife’s betrayal had already been read. A lazy Vigenère cypher. The key was MARLENE; clearly the broken heart pulled rank on the imminent danger.
I wish she’d stare less blankly.
Along with a handful of others she listens, absorbed by the soothing voice of the host, projected from a channel that technically doesn’t exist. Not a word of politics, sports, news. Just useless things new and old that reached their brains like the nothing else would, or would want to. And at the same time closed them off, took their time, their sleep. The listeners burn through their kettles, stand under long-cold showers. Radio Silence feeds on the rampant minds of its mute listeners. And yet they strive in their fullness, they forget meals but run on excess thought. At least, that’s my theory. They’d probably tell you otherwise, if they wanted to.
…electrical tape, blueberries, ramen.
A musical intermezzo from The Worst of the 1290’s (the Bland Love Ballads and Uninspired Lutenists edition), and it’s on to Elmer’s Iliad.