Table of Contents

• Home
• Introduction
• Where Goths Come From - Neef
• The Watcher - Hobbes
• The Resurrection Shuffle - Barbarella
• Cassandra - Cosey Mo
• Drunken Old Bastard - Sandro
• Alcohol - Trayce
• Shadows - Entrippy
• Entropy - Kage-Ryu
• Is There A Point - Trajik
• Whispers - Kitsune
• Confessional - Sandro
• Garden - Entrippy
• Radio - Cam
• Cold Spell - Nikolai
• Slices - Neef
• A Bottle of Something Strong - Jraff
• The Light Fades - Tim
• Rain - Tim
• Self Help - Gothic Gallae
• Cato - Trajik
• Addiction/Fragment - Trayce
• Heal Thyself - Nikolai
• Shattered - Hobbes
• Travelling Song - Solitaire
• Distance - Stranger
• Legacy - Stranger

Radio

...leave...

For a second everything stopped. I could still hear her clinking clinking I stepped closer. I had to.

...or your child lose his father...

I baulked. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I was thinking I don't have a kid. I was thinking I'm not married. I was thinking I didn't have a vasectomy for nothing, for Chrissakes. I was thinking those things because those things I could handle.

Behind me, in the kitchenette, I could see a small tea service resting on the miserable, miniscule formica countertop - a small china pot and two round cups. I could see an electric jug steaming, steaming, steaming, unnoticed. I saw her take one of the cups (clink) and walk out of sight with it (clink) and back, replacing it (clink), lift it (clink), walk out of sight with it (clink)... endlessly.

I opened the toolbox, grabbed the flathead, and started prying the back off the radio. The radio was light, but there was something in there. Loose things. I twisted the screwdriver in its back. There was a crunch, something splintered - pale wood showed in strips beneath lacquered brown - and the single, shaped wooden panel that formed the back fell away.

She screamed and screamed.

Cockroaches. Running everywhere. Not many but seeming like a swarm in that tight space.

I'd say there were about seven.

She screamed and screamed, standing idiot-struck in the doorway, roaches scuttling over her feet.

I forgot the toolbox.

I dropped the radio and backed for the door.

I think she forgot I was even there. She was on her hands and knees trying to grab them as they scattered away.

I left her there, fumbled with all the locks and fell backwards into the hall.

I thought of roaches escaping over my hands to the brown carpeted floor.

I thought of the stoic faces of her dead relatives looking back - frozen - through black and white windows decades away from where I stood.

I ran from there, making it to the stairs, looking back in time to see those two kids in grey hoodies walking in through her open door. Something crunched underfoot as they disappeared inside.

Her screams changed pitch and frequency.

No forecast, no go out.

I fell down the stairs more than ran, slipped twice on the way to the van and had to pull over after three blocks on the way home.

I quit the next day.

My son's name is Michael.

"Radio" © Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001 Cameron Rogers.
All Rights (in all media) Reserved.