Low band frequency

Waiting at the traffic light., she flipped through the stations on her new satellite radio as the wind flipped through her hair. It was the first nice day in May after a string of rainy disappointments and below average temperatures, and Katie was glad to finally put the top down on the convertible. Past top forty, modern rock, pop, classical, the 24 hour news station., she found the stations dedicated to the decades. The heavenly sounds of Def Leppard flowed from the speakers, and Katie finally leaned back in the seat. She took a deep breath of the pleasantly warm air and smiled, tapping the outside of the car door in a broken rhythm with her left hand while she draped her right hand casually on the steering wheel. Although she had been held up at work later than planned, Katie still had plenty of time to go home and get ready. The reservation was for eight o’clock. It would be nice for Allen and her to spend some time together. He had been so stressed out and withdrawn lately. The past two dinner reservations had been canceled last minute, and Allen had been so busy down at the precinct last time he hadn’t even called. Sometimes Katie felt like she didn’t have a husband anymore.

“This time,” she had said earlier in that day, pointing a stern finger in his face, “you had better make it.”

“Or what?” he had asked, crossing his arms.

“You don’t want to know. Pray you don’t find out.”

Jim laughed, the fatigue in his eyes lifting momentarily. He leaned forward and quickly kissed her. “I promise. Upon pain of torture and dismemberment.” He headed out the door, turning back to wave at her before the door shut.

“You’ll wish it just torture and dismemberment” she yelled, and watched his car pull out of the driveway.

Katie jumped in her seat as the driver behind her honked his horn. The light had turned, and she waved an apology as she pulled the convertible forward.

“Pour some sugar on me . . “ she sang along with the radio. The roads passed by, and Def Leppard faded away. Katie sighed and began to flip through the channels again.

“Why isn’t there anything on the damn radio?” she muttered, sailing through a red light and narrowly avoiding getting crushed by a truck.

The driver punched on the horn, and her head swung to the left as time slowed down. Every detail was picked out in detail in the warm spring air. The grille of the white pickup seemed about head high, and she saw the face of the driver, his short dark hair and yelling face, arms locked straight out. The placid face of a chocolate Labrador in the passenger seat stared out at her. He had a green shirt on, and the inside of the cab seemed to be dusty. The dried out corpse of a bee laid in the corner of the windshield and the dashboard, it’s wings and it’s first pair of legs spread out to the side, bleached pale by the sun.

Katie reflexively stomped on the gas and shot through the intersection. In her rear view mirror, she caught a glimpse of the truck and the trailer it was pulling sliding to a halt, tires screeching. The horn faded into the distance as Katie kept moving.

“Oh Jesus, oh shit, oh Jesus.” Both hands on the wheel now, her imagination, running wildly. She saw the collision, felt the pain of her mangled limbs, saw the revolving lights of the ambulance play over the accident scene, the worried faces of the paramedics as they huddled over her. Katie kept her eyes narrowly focused on the road, as the aftermath of the accident continued to play out in her mind. The paramedics worked frantically over her as the ambulance sped toward the hospital, and the pain faded and surged randomly. A perfect arc of blood squirted out like a fountain, splashing onto the cheek of the paramedic on her left. He blinked in surprise, but never paused in his work as the blood splurted out in time with her fading heartbeat. Katie looked intently at his face as the anonymous figure worked steadily to save her life. He looked far to young to be a paramedic, to have this awesome responsibility.

Katie steered her car along the suburban streets, grown quieter as she got farther from her office. The fingers on her right hand felt sore. She thought she must have jammed them against the radio when she hit the gas and reached for the wheel. A very quick, nervous glance at her hand revealed a scratch and a tiny drop of blood oozing from the knuckle of her index finger. The hands of the doctors working on her in her imagination were covered in blood as scalpels, gauze, needles, and a host of surgical instruments she couldn’t recognize passed over her with dizzying speed. The lights in the emergency room began to go dim. Katie saw Allen sitting in the waiting room of the hospital, hunched over in a chair. His left leg was bouncing up and down, and he twisted his fingers in his hands. He leaned back and rubbed his face, his eyes bleary and brimming with tears. Katie saw the portly form of Derrick, Allen’s partner down at the police station, hesitantly come into the room. He wore an anguished expression on his tear stained face, and took a deep breath before shaking his head. Allen slumped in the chair and began to sob before Derrick came over and put a hand on his shoulder. She heard him began to scream and plead.

Katie continued to cruise through the calm suburban streets. The warm wind blew ruffled her hair and dried some of the panicked sweat off her forehead. Allen’s screaming and pleading seemed to coming from all around her. It faded off into terrible raspy choking sound. There was a beat of silence.

“Well, that was the always popular Duo of the Damned with their new hot single, “Mouthful of Fire” said a low and guttural voice from her convertible’s speakers. There was another beat of silence. “Hmmm” the voice continued. “I’d also like to take this time to welcome our new listener, even if she doesn’t quite realize. But enough chitchat, how about some more music, huh? This is an oldey but a goody, always someone bound to request it, so I might as well give it to you know. Take a listen to “Please stop Daddy, you’re hurting me”! The guttural voice stopped and a myriad of children’s voices picked up with a haunting pleading and begging. A lone child’s voice occasionally swam out of the general group before fading pitifully away.

The adrenaline from the pick up truck’s near miss began to fade, and Katie felt sick to her stomach. The seriously messed up music wasn’t helping either. Quickly glancing at the radio, she couldn’t read the station ID. It looked like the whole digital display had gone black. Katie was too still to nervous to take her hand of the wheel and change the station. She gritted her teeth and endured the terrible song oozing from the speakers. Katie wondered what kind of a fucked up station she had dialed into. They sure as hell were going to get a complaint from her. The song’s volume doubled suddenly, and Katie jumped in her seat, swerving to the left before overcorrecting and swinging hard to the right. Her quasi-drunken swaying down the road smoothed out, and she uncurled her right hand from the wheel to hit the volume or the power, anything to stop the terrible song. A shadow passed over her on her left, and she quickly gripped the wheel again, afraid to lose control. The children’s screaming voices faded away one at time, becoming more frightening individual voices began to come more clearly to attention. Katie looked ahead and saw an upcoming traffic light flash from green to red. She took a deep breath and welcomed a chance to stop and compose herself, and to turn off the radio. Katie slowed down at the light but hit the brakes a little to hard, and the seatbelt locked in place, squeezing hard across her chest for a moment. Still shaken up from the close call and embarrassed that someone might hear those awful cries from her car, she reached for the radio.

“Unh unh! Don’t touch that dial, loyal listener!” the guttural voice admonished as the screams abruptly cut off. Katie hesitated with her hand halfway to the power button. The display was still completely black. She noticed that her index finger had stopped bleeding, had barely bled to begin with, but seemed a little bit swollen and sore. Katie reached her hand forward again, but the guttural voice continued.

“Hey! You heard me. No touching that dial.”

She leaned back in her seat and held the wheel again, a little gingerly with her right hand staring straight ahead. Katie realized how close she was to home. She was going to park the car, turn off the radio, maybe cancel the subscription or just throw it out. Enough was enough. Maybe she would take the bus or the train to work tomorrow. Or walk. Anything but drive.

“Well, that’s better. Thank you” said the deep voice. “How about some news? What a wonderful technological age we’re living in today, don’t you think? We can learn what’s happening all across the world almost as soon as it happens! The wall of an ancient church in Italy collapsed yesterday during Sunday, killing 65 worshippers in attendance and injuring hundreds more. A man drove to an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, letting the boys go before killing all the girls and himself before the police could arrive! Sadly, it seems as if there was one survivor, who at least is in critical condition in a nearby hospital. In local news, it looks like a group heroin dealers has become aware of the police surveillance on their operation thanks to a crooked informant in the department itself, who needed to cover his gambling debts and sold out his fellow officers.”

The light turned green, and Katie slowly and smoothly hit the gas and followed the other cars ahead of her. It was only a few minutes from home, and this radio was going in the trash can. She might skip the dinner menu with Jim and head right for the wine list. She clenched her jaw and tried to ignore the voice on the radio. Katie breathed a sigh of relief as she saw her driveway ahead and turned left, putting the car into park and burying her face in her hands.

“Now that’s it for the news. Please stay tuned as we pride ourselves on up to the second reports, exclusive to the station and right to you” the voice growled. The vision she had of what could have happened in the accident flashed through her head, no less frightening in details the second time around, even though it only lasted a second.

“Now how about you take the faceplate into the house, Katie, and hook it up to the house unit. You don’t want to miss this unique opportunity of listening in.”

Katie’s head whipped around and stared at the dark digital dial. She shut off the car, but the radio remained on.

“You’d better go inside and at least put some ice on that finger of yours. It looks like it hurts.” Katie’s heart was beating as fast as it was after she saw the truck’s grill at face level. “”Come on now. The quicker you get ice on that, the less it will swell, the better it will feel.” She numbly unbuckled her seatbelt and sat in the car for a minute. The voice was silent, but she heard a faint hiss from the speakers that were still live. Katie hesitantly reached for the door, put her hands in her lap, then reached for the faceplate of the radio and unhooked it from the receiver. She cupped it in her right hand as walked towards her front door and fumbled the house key into the lock with her left. Katie walked into the kitchen and plugged the satellite radio into the household receiver that came from with their two year subscription. It snapped to life, the screen still dark. She turned her back to the radio and went over to the fridge, opening the freezer door and taking out the ice cube tray. There were only a few left, but she wrapped them in a paper towel and filled up the tray with water. She hated when Jim never refilled the ice cube tray. Katie pushed a chair from the kitchen table into the corner of the kitchen, as far away from the radio as she could get, and sat down with the ice pressed to her finger.

“Ahh, that’s better, I’m sure” the voice continued. “You know, a lot of people assume it’s never cold here, but punishment takes so many forms, limited only by one’s imagination. You have any questions? We pride ourselves not only in the music we play but the news we provide to our listening audience. It’s not often someone gets a chance like this.”

Katie sat quietly in her chair, staring down at the floor before she spoke.

“How is this happening? What is happening?”

“Beats the hell out of me” answered the radio, before erupting in a spasm of harsh laughter that drilled painfully into Katie’s head. She cried out and clapped both hands over her ears, dropping the ice cubes to the floor.

The painful laughter faded away, and Katie sat in the chair, a few tears slowly dripping down her face and mixing with the melted ice cubes. “Sorry about that. Hey, are you okay? You could probably use a smoke, huh? Too bad you quit a couple of years ago. Remember when you first started smoking? You were fifteen and you visited your grandmother? Remember stealing that money out of her purse and buying cigarettes? Like I said wit the music before, that’s an oldey but a goody. That song bring back any fond memories?

“Stop. Please stop.” Katie whispered.

“Sorry, I can’t. I have to keep the conversation going. What else is going to fill up this dead air? Listen, I know you were a little distracted before, so maybe you weren’t listening to the news. Just like Jim has been a little distracted with all the work has been doing down at the police station, right?” Katie’s breath caught in her throat. The guttural voice continued, without mercy or pity. “He doesn’t really like to talk too much about work, right? You and I both know that. We here pride ourselves on up to the second coverage, and here’s the latest word about the heroin ring being tipped off to their police surveillance. Or would you rather here it from Derrick? He’s on his way, and sometimes sad news is better delivered in person.”

Katie felt very small and alone sitting in the chair in the corner of the kitchen, afraid to look up or even move until she heard the sound of another car pulling into the driveway. Leaping out of the chair and running to door, Katie saw the portly form of Derrick, Jim’s partner, walking towards the front door, with an anguished expression on his face. Katie spun around and slumped to the floor, with her back leaning against the door. The static from the radio in the kitchen was only interrupted by Derrick’s knocking and his please for Katie to open the door.