Flash Fiction: Radio Studio

I used to work nights at a local station — nothing big, just one of those low-frequency, community-run setups where most of the time you’re playing blues or reading PSAs no one listens to. It was easy money and I liked the quiet. I liked knowing the world was mostly asleep while I was awake. I felt… outside of things. Safe, maybe.

The first time I heard it, I was just killing time between segments. We had an old tuner in the booth — a leftover from a time when people still cared about shortwave. I used to play with it when I was bored, just drift across the bands and listen to the fragments.

That night I landed on something strange.

No call sign, no static. Just… silence. A kind of thick, loaded silence, like when someone’s about to say something important.

Then a voice came through. Completely flat. No emotion, no inflection.

It said a name. A full name. Then a time. Then a short description of how that person would die.

Then it moved on to the next one.

Three names, total. All local. All specific.

I didn’t think much of it. Pirate signal, maybe. Some weird art project. I wrote the names down out of curiosity. When my shift ended, I went home, made coffee, forgot about it.

Until the news came in later that day.

Two of the names were already dead. Car accident and an overdose. The third happened that night, just like the voice said. Same name. Same cause. Same time.

I don’t know what made me check. Maybe I just wanted to be wrong.

But I tuned back in the next night.

Same frequency. Same voice. Different names.

I started recording it. Built a little archive. I never told anyone. I didn’t play it on-air or share it online. I just… listened. Quietly. Every night. Like a ritual.

At first, it was just morbid fascination. Like rubbernecking a wreck. Then it started getting under my skin.

I’d hear names I recognized. Not people I knew well — just names that brushed up against my life. A girl from high school. A guy who used to stock shelves at the grocery store I went to. A friend of a friend.

And then one night it said a name I couldn’t pretend I didn’t care about.

My brother.

I sat in my apartment and stared at the recorder for two straight hours after I heard it. I didn’t call him. I didn’t warn him. I just waited.

He died the next day. Hiking accident. No one saw it happen.

That’s when I realized the station wasn’t just predicting things. It was… narrowing them. Selecting them. Like it was choosing from all the possible outcomes and locking in the worst one.

And I had listened to it happen. Every single time.

I tried to stop. I really did. I smashed the tuner. Deleted the files. Quit the station. I didn’t tell anyone why. I just walked out one night and never went back.

But the thing is, once you’ve heard it, you know the shape of it. It stays with you. It waits.

I’d be walking down the street and pass a radio in a store window and just… know it was on. I’d feel it before I heard it.

It started finding me in places where no radio should be. In the hum of the fridge. In the buzz of an old fluorescent light. Once, in the hold music when I called to cancel my cable.

It never said my name. Not for a long time.

Until it did.

When I heard it, I didn’t even react. Just sat on the floor of my kitchen and listened to the voice calmly describe exactly how I’d die. The date, the time, the place. No cause. Just the moment.

I didn’t try to fight it. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t leave the house. What would’ve been the point?

But it didn’t happen.

The day came. The minute passed. And nothing.

I remember thinking: maybe it lied. Maybe I was wrong all along. Maybe it was just noise.

That was three months ago.

I haven’t heard the voice since. But I’m not sure that means I escaped.

I don’t feel… real, anymore. Things around me feel off. Conversations don’t stick. People forget my name. Sometimes I forget my own voice. I’ll wake up and not recognize my apartment.

Sometimes I wonder if it happened after all — if I died, and this is just whatever comes next. Or worse — if I didn’t, and this is the price.

I don’t hear the broadcast anymore, but I think that’s just because I’ve already been chosen. My thread’s already been pulled.

So if you’re listening to this, if you’ve stumbled across that dead frequency on a quiet night and heard your own name said out loud in a voice that doesn’t belong to anyone… turn it off.

Don’t wait to see if it’s right.

Don’t record it. Don’t share it.

Because every time you listen, you make it more real.

And if you don’t believe me, just wait.

It always starts the same way.

A name.
A time.
A voice.

And then the world begins to bend.

Just a little, at first.

Thank-you for reading.

Remember there are many paths back to God.

Follow your own path,

Brenda Marie