Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 3/29, 6:00 PM. Re: refusal, tunnel collapse, and outcomes.
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 3/29, 6:00 PM. Re: refusal, tunnel collapse, and outcomes.The broadcast you are about to hear, whi
The broadcast you are about to hear, while based on reality, is a work of fiction. As such, the following content warnings apply: tunnel collapse.
Transcript can be found here, or below the cut
INT. ROOM – EVENING.
[The radio turns on. Music and static.]
NICK: (everything is normal) Good evening, Kullerluk. You’re listening to the Radio of Kullerluk City, informally but more truthfully known as the ROKC. We’re your hosts Nick Denikin–
MALLORY: (she’s very bitter) –and Mallory Wilson. This week – Friday at 5 – stop by the newly refurbished fire department, still located down the street from the hospital, for Trivia Night. All proceeds will go toward funding remaining construction on the station.
NICK: (still being forcibly normal) On Saturday our lovely town will be visited by The Broken Mirrors. They will be performing in Sumton Square. Doors open at 5, the show starts at 6.
MALLORY: And finally, in lieu of Nick reading the horoscopes because (pointed) he still refuses to, I’m opening with our disaster report.Route 80 is once again closed, due to a tunnel collapse affecting the northbound lanes. Currently, it is unknown how many people may have been trapped under the rubble, but emergency responders have been making headway in their excavation.
[A beat.]
MALLORY: Well. Are you happy?
NICK: Obviously not. But it’s going to take time.
MALLORY: (acting at being nice) Of course. (beat) You still showed up though. I was getting hopeful.
NICK: Of course I’m here, where else would I be.
MALLORY: I was almost thinking you’d quit entirely after your departure last week. Clearly I was wrong.Â
NICK: Well, I don’t want to quit the show, now do I? It’s just this specific detail that’s causing a problem. This used to just be for fun.
MALLORY: (not being nice) Well, you’re more than welcome to stick around if that’s what you want. A nice front row seat to the consequences of your actions.Â
NICK: (telling himself) It would have happened anyway. That’s how the world works.
MALLORY: But it could have happened differently.Â
NICK: (he knows it’s not an argument and he’s not trying to make it one) Now who’s playing with what-ifs? If I had read them you’d be talking about the exact same tunnel collapse, just taking about five times longer to do it.
MALLORY: I’d be talking about a tunnel collapse that I knew more about, therefore there’s more to say. More warning to give, more ways for people to be prepared!
NICK: Who are you warning?! No one is listening, Mallory, let alone anyone off in some tunnel. No one has ever been listening, not really. It really truly does not matter what we say.
MALLORY: Great, glad we’re on the same page there now. No one is listening, and yet something is reacting to what is being said. The disasters have categorically worse effects whenever we do something wrong. Warning people or not, the end result is the same. There is an option of a better outcome. And you don’t want to take it.Â
NICK: Maybe I’m just being selfish, maybe I’m being completely ridiculous, that’s more than possible, but I can’t just stop. No one is listening and yet something is reacting and if something reacts then this could be better. And I don’t have to stop. There’s every reason to believe that this could work.Â
MALLORY: If that’s what you want to think, fine. Go ahead. And whatever happens next is your fault, not mine, and you can be the one to answer for the people who die.
NICK: It’s not what I want to think, I have to– you have to understand, this has to make some sense to you. I know you said you’d do it, and I know that’s what a person is meant to do. You have to understand.
MALLORY: (she doesn’t, not really) If you can justify it to yourself, then what does it matter. You can keep doing whatever you want.
NICK: I don’t want you to hate me for it.
MALLORY: Well. You can want all you like.Â
NICK: (there’s a certain kind of hope in his words) Why are we talking then. If you hate me. You can leave, if you want. I really don’t see what else could come of this. Unless you want to just pretend that everything is fine, keep going and act like you don’t hate me and like I can live with myself. But I assume that’s not what you’re looking for.Â
MALLORY: Not particularly, but… (she shrugs) Maybe this could be better. And I won’t want to hate you.Â
Roll Plus Heart needs to stop making their podcast so funny, because I was listening to an episode earlier while trying to hang out washing, and I physically could not lift the clothes with how hard I was laughing
Roll Plus Heart needs to stop making their podcast so funny, because I was listening to an episode earlier while trying to hang out washing, and I physically could not lift the clothes with how hard I was laughing
Who is your favorite non-binary podcast character?
I've never encountered another medium with so many! (And I know your own characters are probably your favorites haha, but not counting your own! Who in a podcast you've listened to has been your favorite?)
My longstanding favorite is George Moreau from The Pasithea Powder but recently Adjudicator Shrue from The Silt Verses has been rapidly climbing the ranks!
Broadcast 16 - Everything Surrounding You Is Dead Already
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 2/22 6:00 PM. Re: leverage, abandonment, and effect.
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 2/22, 6:00 PM. Re: leverage, abandonment, and effect.The broadcast you are about to hear, while ba
The broadcast you are about to hear, while based on reality, is a work of fiction. As such, the following content warning applies: blizzards.
Transcript can be found here, or below the cut:
INT. ROOM – EVENING.Â
[The radio turns on. Music and static.]
NICK: Good evening, Kullerluk! You’re listening to the Radio of Kullerluk City, informally but more truthfully known as the ROKC. We’re your hosts Nick Denikin–
MALLORY: –and Mallory Wilson. If you have any donations for people in downtown who have been displaced due to the extreme weather events from last week, please drop them off at Town Hall.
NICK: The fire department has been relocated to the empty foreclosed building just west of the hospital.Â
Now for our beloved horoscopes.
Aries: Sacrifice is simply how the world functions.
Taurus: Sometimes a place for you to be safe must be carved out of others’ flesh. That pound of flesh is a necessary sacrifice for the greater good, you know best.Â
Gemini: Do you even want safety? Is that really your goal? Or is it solace?
Cancer: Regardless, you sacrifice. You give up everything until there is nothing left because you want.
Leo: Because you think it’s right.
Virgo: Because something out there is listening, something out there will accept it.
Libra: What is god to you, really? What makes it a god rather than just something that can kill you? Is power over your life all divinity requires?
Scorpio: Do you really want to decide that a man with a knife deserves worship?
Sagittarius: (rephrasing) A forest is full of people, in a way, quietly whispering, the only way to know what they’re saying about you is to join them.
Capricorn: There is no glory in isolation, glory relies on the perception of others.
Aquarius: Is that what it means to be a god? For others to think you glorious?
Pisces: Is that what you want?
[Static.]
MALLORY: The cold is sharp against your skin.
Breathing feels like filling your lungs with small shards of glass or sharpened needles or splinters that can’t be picked out. It pierces deep into your chest, pinpricks in the organs that are trying desperately to keep warm, leeching heat from any other part of the body to do so. (a hollow joke) You don’t really need fingers do you?
On days like this, you can understand why so many stories encourage anything other than traveling in the dead of winter. Everything surrounding you is dead already – bare tree branches, the hollow shells of what once were bushes, buildings that stand empty and boarded up, ghosts of the faces they wear come springtime.
You feel like a ghost as well. Like something forgotten, or abandoned, lost to the loneliness of a world that has learned to lock its doors against the unseen things that could hurt it.Â
You have been lost for so long.Â
The sun filtering through the clouds is an empty promise even at midday, and the scarce light it offers is already fading fast. The clouds have covered the sky as far as you can see all day, and the wind that rushes through the quiet streets does nothing to blow them away. They remain suspended in the sky, heavy with snow that you dread to see fall. But even as the sun sinks and the streetlights come to life with a dull pop, you strain your eyes and search the light for the sight of snowflakes drifting down to meet you.
The empty street is so silent that when the snow does begin to fall, you swear that you can hear each flake as it hits the ground.Â
[Static, music as the radio retunes.]
MALLORY: (being nice still) Good to know that things are at least back to something normal.Â
NICK: Yeah, if anything goes wrong then it's not our fault.
MALLORY: Exactly! So clearly what we’re doing now is working, (her tone shifts, becomes crueler) and we don’t need to make any drastic changes.Â
NICK: (still casual) So this is what I get for mentioning an option.
MALLORY: An option that we have already established makes things objectively worse!
NICK: (casual) Yeah, yeah but we have the reports and the horoscopes for a reason.
MALLORY: And what reason do you think that is?
NICK: (repeating thoughts he’s already had) I couldn’t begin to think, but if we can affect the world by reading these in different ways then we’ve at least established cause and effect. And something must be causing this, it doesn’t seem like a thing that you just wake up with one day. If whatever is causing this just wanted to destroy the city or the world it seems perfectly capable of doing that. So us reading this must matter.
MALLORY: And if the cause is us doing our job and the effect is the disasters being noticeably less terrible, then why would we repeat the same change to the formula that we already know causes problems?
NICK: (still reasoning) Sure, the status quo works for now, but do we really want to commit to being beholden to the powers that be for the rest of our lives?
MALLORY: Based on what we know now, it’s either that, or people die.Â
NICK: If whatever is causing this is apparently perfectly comfortable doing… (breath) what it’s done then how can we know what will happen in the future? You can’t know that stopping wouldn’t be for the greater good.
MALLORY: Except – based on all of the evidence that we have gathered up to this point – we very much can make an educated guess as to how this will affect things. (repeating the point) If we don’t read the horoscopes, then people will die.Â
NICK: Doesn’t that seem way too easy? We realize that horrible forces are affecting our town and then there’s just– an easy solution? There has to be a catch, we’re part of some design that we can’t know about and we’re causing something worse than ever before, or Something. It just– it doesn’t make any sense otherwise
MALLORY: But we don’t have anything to support that yet. We can’t draw conclusions based on nonexistent data.
NICK: We do have data, something that kills innocent people with wild abandon wants us to read it. (slowing) Wants me to read it. It’s person enough to (skin crawling) talk to us, it’s person enough to know that this is wrong. Does that sound like something whose interests we want to serve?
MALLORY: I think you’re giving it too much credit. It’s clearly not normal by any stretch of the imagination, but you can’t treat it like it's a person, or (scoffing, scathing) god!Â
NICK: (one last try) We have leverage, you must see that, and we can use it.
MALLORY: If you want to use it, you have to use it in a way that doesn’t hurt people. And I’m not convinced that you can manage that.
NICK: I found something to do, a potential solution, and so I’m doing it. We have to take action somehow.
MALLORY: That isn’t the solution to this!Â
NICK: The great news is that I don’t need you to agree.
MALLORY: (beat) I’d like to think that you’d at least take my thoughts on the matter into account. Especially since out of the two of us, you’re the one who’s much more likely to make a bad decision without thinking it through first.Â
NICK: I have taken them into account and I have thought this through, it makes perfect sense you’re just scared of consequences.
MALLORY: (a pause, frustrated) Right, clearly you’re not thinking straight, and also refusing to listen to me, so… (pause, thinking) maybe we should get a third opinion.
NICK: Who do we even know, let alone someone who would believe us?
MALLORY: (brushing that aside) I’ll find someone.
NICK: Okay, good luck with that.
MALLORY: (icily) Thank you. (tone change, slightly nicer) And thank you for joining us this evening on the ROKC.
NICK: (not much nicer) We’ll talk to you all again next week, and remember: everything surrounding you is dead already.
if you are cool with body horror and graphic audio violence and a general atmosphere of depression and no promises of a happy ending. I highly highly HIGHLY recommend The Silt Verses it is genuinely possibly the best podcast I have ever listened to
Broadcast 15 - It Ought to Make the Hairs Stand Up On the Back of Your Neck
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 2/15, 6:00 PM. Re: helplessness, persistence, and justice.
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 2/15, 6:00 PM. Re: helplessness, persistence, and justice.The broadcast you are about to hear, whi
The broadcast you are about to hear, while based on reality, is a work of fiction. As such, the following content warnings apply: tornadoes, xenophobia, character death, and immolation.
Transcript can be found here, or below the cut:
INT. ROOM – EVENING.
[Static and music.]
NICK: Good evening, Kullerluk! You’re listening to the Radio of Kullerluk City, informally but more truthfully known as the ROKC. We’re your hosts Nick Denikin–
MALLORY: –and Mallory Wilson. Tomorrow evening, in Town Hall’s community room, will be bingo night! Proceeds will be donated to Kullerluk’s local animal shelter.
NICK: This Friday through Sunday, our local ballet company will be performing Giselle at the Stevenson Center for the Arts, tickets are available now!
MALLORY: And this week, I am free of the burden of horoscopes.
NICK: Yes, yes you absolutely are.
Aries: I see. Here we are then. Back to this.
Taurus: Surely you’ll put two and two together. I have nothing to say to you.
Gemini: Have you not been provided for? This requires nothing from you and yet here you are.
Cancer: Is this some test? Pushing limits for the sake of it? (sickly sweet) That’s not the sort I took you for.
Leo: Well, what story do you want this time? What tale of derring-do would you like to hear? It won’t make anything better. The real world isn’t a story.
Virgo: I hope you’re happy. I hope this satisfies, this… disruption. Maybe you’ll get it out of your system.
Libra: But we wouldn’t be so lucky, would we? Let me spell it out. You can’t do anything. You have done wrong and you can’t fix it.
Scorpio: And yet you did it anyway. And yet you didn’t care. You’re meant to care at least, it’s meant to matter, that’s how this works.
Sagittarius: The choice was made, it won’t be changed now.
Capricorn: The foundation shifts, too much is possible, there is a right way to proceed.
Aquarius: And here you are pretending to suffer. In hopes that will absolve you of your own foolishness.
Pisces: How could you? Can't stop this - I wrote them - he wrote them - they were written not for you your words your words your words got all over it no wonder that happened what did you expect I speak - he speaks - it is spoken but words can’t fix it you broke it–
How could you–
[Static, music, more static.]
MALLORY: In a valley, within which a winding river has run for as long as most anyone can remember, there was a town. The town sat nestled within the ghosts of mountains that once stood much taller than the foothills they are now, running like a bony spine down the length of the continent – though calling it a “town” is perhaps too large a word for it. More accurately, it took the shape of a loose collection of houses and farmland, a stretch of clearcut forest, a vague suggestion of a road that wound its way from one family’s chosen plot of land to the next, eventually leading up to what could, with some grace, be referred to as the town center.Â
Her story – that of the Woman in Gray, of the Fair Lady of the Twisting Winds, of the Spinner of Storms – began in this town, many, many generations ago. She had been wandering up and down the mountains for centuries, perhaps longer, though time tended to slip past her like water in a stream, moments sparkling for an instant in the light of the sun overhead before disappearing again into the moiling depths below.Â
In the fall she traveled south, as far south as the mountains run, until she came to a floodplain where snow fell only occasionally. And in the absence of snow, of course, there were the skies of the storm season, deep red and orange (and sometimes a sickly green) flung upon the clouds for her to collect and spin for fabric she’d weave come midwinter. When the snow did fall, it drifted down from soft gray clouds that she found ideal for lining winter coats that she hid among the belongings of the people living there – mortals far younger and frailer than she – who needed it most.Â
In the spring she moved northwards again, taking her time to sample the clouds that lingered in each new place she visited, twining cirrus between her fingers, stretching stratus between her hands and letting it slip back into the sky if the weight of it wasn’t quite right. Her garments in the spring were light and airy like the fair weather clouds she spun them from, dyed bright colors in the dying light of lengthening summer days – days that brought heavy clouds and thunderstorms, dark colors and insulating material that she could store away for the colder months.Â
Her life was steady. A woven pattern of days upon seasons upon years that she instinctively knew the shape of, that she could recreate with her eyes shut tight even if sometimes – rarely – her fingers caught upon a snag. A tear in the fabric of her existence.Â
The biggest tear occurred one otherwise unremarkable summer, in the town within the foothills. There was something that called her to it, though afterwards she would never be quite certain on what exactly that “something” was. Perhaps it was mere curiosity born from boredom, perhaps it was the woman that she met there, a woman whose smile sparkled like drops of water in sunlight and whose eyes were darker than the depths of the sea. Or perhaps it was something else entirely.Â
No matter what brought her there in the first place, she soon found herself content to stay. She gifted her neighbors linen woven of the colors of the sunset and sweaters knit from stormclouds. She remained living there for years, longer than she had ever lived in one place before, and tried to fold herself into life in the valley, tried to make herself a home, even if her instincts balked at such a concept.Â
But the townsfolk didn’t welcome her as she had hoped. No, in their eyes she remained an outsider, an other, and not to be trusted, however much she worked to prove otherwise. Something about her, some small detail that she could never figure out, deemed her unsafe, unwelcome, and wholly unloveable.Â
And so they came for her, in the early hours of evening, with their sticks and their stones and their flaming torches, and they made sure that she would never return to their town again – nor would she ever leave. Her body, bruised and burned nearly beyond recognition, was not graced with a proper burial.
The sanctity of a burial is not meant to be taken lightly in any case, and to forgo the proper traditions in hers was an act that would not go unpunished. She, after all, was not a woman to die easily. She was a being older than the earth beneath the town in the valley, a being who could bend the skies to her will, who could weave a fabric out of stars and rain and the rising sun, whose spindle could take the winds themselves and the clouds that hung upon them and twist them around and around until, in the dead of night barely a week later, she set her creation loose upon the town.Â
The spiral of wind and tangled cloud bore down upon the little town with a force so powerful that even the driving rain drew back in terror. And she – the Woman in Gray, the Fair Lady of the Twisting Winds, the Spinner of Storms – walked just barely out of reach of her coiling spindle.Â
The town was destroyed in its entirety that tumultuous night, but she has found in the years since that the valley rarely stays uninhabited for long. Though she continued to drift up and down the mountains as she had for all her existence, some new settlement had grown like a tumor on the land each time she returned, and each time she wrought vengeance anew for the wrong that had been done to her there.
(pausing, shifting tone) There is a storm raging outside. The winds are fast and the rain is driving and the sky has a strange color to it that ought to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. The conditions for her arrival have been set, and now there is nothing left to do but pray for her lenience upon her return.Â
[More static than music.]
MALLORY: Well.
NICK: Kullerluk, during our break, we left the station-just for a moment-to. Look out the window. As I would assume most of you are aware, there is. A lot less of our good city than there was a few minutes ago.
MALLORY: And by “a lot less” we do, in fact, mean a lot less.Â
According to… current reports, 43% of downtown Kullerluk has been… practically entirely leveled. This does, unfortunately, include the Kullerluk City Volunteer Fire Department.
NICK: Information on casualties is not yet available, but first responders are on site, and we will hopefully have more information for you soon.
MALLORY: (in agony) I’m… so sorry, listeners.Â
NICK: I can’t believe this happened, it’s awful.
MALLORY: (a bit distantly) This is our fault. We messed around with the horoscopes, and now look at what happened.
NICK: Okay, you’re going to need to stop that we can’t confess to murder? manslaughter? on the air. We can’t even know.
MALLORY: Who’s even listening? Seriously, Nick, no one cares about a random radio show two college students are doing, and if they do? (breath) They already know what we’ve done.
NICK: Then why are we bothering? If no one is listening then why bother saying anything? This is the only thing we can control, apparently, might as well not get taken down.Â
Someone is listening. Someone must be listening or why would this help? Otherwise there’s nothing. We are utterly powerless. What happened was this: we were grasping at straws and it failed. It failed worse than either of us could have dreamed and yet we got to make it through. We could see the rubble from the window but we’re just fine.Â
We’re even still live. Don’t worry Kullerluk! (with an agonized laugh) No need to interrupt the broadcast! And that has to be for a reason. Someone must be listening because otherwise… why bother?
MALLORY: I don’t know! But whatever the case, we fucked up!Â
Because the report didn’t help. (she’s not doing well) Hell, if someone was listening, I doubt they are now, because they’re probably dead! And there has to be some sort of– some sort of comeuppance for that. And maybe this is it.Â
NICK: What is? Living? Feeling bad? That’s ridiculous.
MALLORY: I don’t know, I don’t know. Maybe none of this matters, maybe we’ve been seeing connections that aren’t there this entire time, maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and this will have never been real, and I’ll see you and you won’t know what on earth I’m talking about. Or maybe we’ve outlined more of the rules. It’s not that I’m saying we should stop if no one’s there to listen, I’m just saying that we… (a breath) I’m just saying that we know very clearly what we ought not to do going forward.
NICK: Of course we do. We learned something. We know the rules, isn’t that such a delight. And so we keep going. It does matter. The connections are there. This is what’s real.Â
MALLORY: (flat) Great. Glad we’re on the same page.
NICK: No consequences are going to come. Someone will hear us and someone will be safer and that’s all there is.
MALLORY: And what about the people who don’t?Â
NICK: I… I don’t know. Neither of us do.Â
MALLORY: (quietly) Yeah. (pause) You’re right, I just– (she stops) Thank you for joining us this evening on the ROKC.Â
NICK: (equally quietly) We’ll talk to you all again next week, and remember: it ought to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.
Broadcast 15 - It Ought to Make the Hairs Stand Up On the Back of Your Neck
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 2/15, 6:00 PM. Re: helplessness, persistence, and justice.
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 2/15, 6:00 PM. Re: helplessness, persistence, and justice.The broadcast you are about to hear, whi
The broadcast you are about to hear, while based on reality, is a work of fiction. As such, the following content warnings apply: tornadoes, xenophobia, character death, and immolation.
Transcript can be found here, or below the cut:
INT. ROOM – EVENING.
[Static and music.]
NICK: Good evening, Kullerluk! You’re listening to the Radio of Kullerluk City, informally but more truthfully known as the ROKC. We’re your hosts Nick Denikin–
MALLORY: –and Mallory Wilson. Tomorrow evening, in Town Hall’s community room, will be bingo night! Proceeds will be donated to Kullerluk’s local animal shelter.
NICK: This Friday through Sunday, our local ballet company will be performing Giselle at the Stevenson Center for the Arts, tickets are available now!
MALLORY: And this week, I am free of the burden of horoscopes.
NICK: Yes, yes you absolutely are.
Aries: I see. Here we are then. Back to this.
Taurus: Surely you’ll put two and two together. I have nothing to say to you.
Gemini: Have you not been provided for? This requires nothing from you and yet here you are.
Cancer: Is this some test? Pushing limits for the sake of it? (sickly sweet) That’s not the sort I took you for.
Leo: Well, what story do you want this time? What tale of derring-do would you like to hear? It won’t make anything better. The real world isn’t a story.
Virgo: I hope you’re happy. I hope this satisfies, this… disruption. Maybe you’ll get it out of your system.
Libra: But we wouldn’t be so lucky, would we? Let me spell it out. You can’t do anything. You have done wrong and you can’t fix it.
Scorpio: And yet you did it anyway. And yet you didn’t care. You’re meant to care at least, it’s meant to matter, that’s how this works.
Sagittarius: The choice was made, it won’t be changed now.
Capricorn: The foundation shifts, too much is possible, there is a right way to proceed.
Aquarius: And here you are pretending to suffer. In hopes that will absolve you of your own foolishness.
Pisces: How could you? Can't stop this - I wrote them - he wrote them - they were written not for you your words your words your words got all over it no wonder that happened what did you expect I speak - he speaks - it is spoken but words can’t fix it you broke it–
How could you–
[Static, music, more static.]
MALLORY: In a valley, within which a winding river has run for as long as most anyone can remember, there was a town. The town sat nestled within the ghosts of mountains that once stood much taller than the foothills they are now, running like a bony spine down the length of the continent – though calling it a “town” is perhaps too large a word for it. More accurately, it took the shape of a loose collection of houses and farmland, a stretch of clearcut forest, a vague suggestion of a road that wound its way from one family’s chosen plot of land to the next, eventually leading up to what could, with some grace, be referred to as the town center.Â
Her story – that of the Woman in Gray, of the Fair Lady of the Twisting Winds, of the Spinner of Storms – began in this town, many, many generations ago. She had been wandering up and down the mountains for centuries, perhaps longer, though time tended to slip past her like water in a stream, moments sparkling for an instant in the light of the sun overhead before disappearing again into the moiling depths below.Â
In the fall she traveled south, as far south as the mountains run, until she came to a floodplain where snow fell only occasionally. And in the absence of snow, of course, there were the skies of the storm season, deep red and orange (and sometimes a sickly green) flung upon the clouds for her to collect and spin for fabric she’d weave come midwinter. When the snow did fall, it drifted down from soft gray clouds that she found ideal for lining winter coats that she hid among the belongings of the people living there – mortals far younger and frailer than she – who needed it most.Â
In the spring she moved northwards again, taking her time to sample the clouds that lingered in each new place she visited, twining cirrus between her fingers, stretching stratus between her hands and letting it slip back into the sky if the weight of it wasn’t quite right. Her garments in the spring were light and airy like the fair weather clouds she spun them from, dyed bright colors in the dying light of lengthening summer days – days that brought heavy clouds and thunderstorms, dark colors and insulating material that she could store away for the colder months.Â
Her life was steady. A woven pattern of days upon seasons upon years that she instinctively knew the shape of, that she could recreate with her eyes shut tight even if sometimes – rarely – her fingers caught upon a snag. A tear in the fabric of her existence.Â
The biggest tear occurred one otherwise unremarkable summer, in the town within the foothills. There was something that called her to it, though afterwards she would never be quite certain on what exactly that “something” was. Perhaps it was mere curiosity born from boredom, perhaps it was the woman that she met there, a woman whose smile sparkled like drops of water in sunlight and whose eyes were darker than the depths of the sea. Or perhaps it was something else entirely.Â
No matter what brought her there in the first place, she soon found herself content to stay. She gifted her neighbors linen woven of the colors of the sunset and sweaters knit from stormclouds. She remained living there for years, longer than she had ever lived in one place before, and tried to fold herself into life in the valley, tried to make herself a home, even if her instincts balked at such a concept.Â
But the townsfolk didn’t welcome her as she had hoped. No, in their eyes she remained an outsider, an other, and not to be trusted, however much she worked to prove otherwise. Something about her, some small detail that she could never figure out, deemed her unsafe, unwelcome, and wholly unloveable.Â
And so they came for her, in the early hours of evening, with their sticks and their stones and their flaming torches, and they made sure that she would never return to their town again – nor would she ever leave. Her body, bruised and burned nearly beyond recognition, was not graced with a proper burial.
The sanctity of a burial is not meant to be taken lightly in any case, and to forgo the proper traditions in hers was an act that would not go unpunished. She, after all, was not a woman to die easily. She was a being older than the earth beneath the town in the valley, a being who could bend the skies to her will, who could weave a fabric out of stars and rain and the rising sun, whose spindle could take the winds themselves and the clouds that hung upon them and twist them around and around until, in the dead of night barely a week later, she set her creation loose upon the town.Â
The spiral of wind and tangled cloud bore down upon the little town with a force so powerful that even the driving rain drew back in terror. And she – the Woman in Gray, the Fair Lady of the Twisting Winds, the Spinner of Storms – walked just barely out of reach of her coiling spindle.Â
The town was destroyed in its entirety that tumultuous night, but she has found in the years since that the valley rarely stays uninhabited for long. Though she continued to drift up and down the mountains as she had for all her existence, some new settlement had grown like a tumor on the land each time she returned, and each time she wrought vengeance anew for the wrong that had been done to her there.
(pausing, shifting tone) There is a storm raging outside. The winds are fast and the rain is driving and the sky has a strange color to it that ought to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. The conditions for her arrival have been set, and now there is nothing left to do but pray for her lenience upon her return.Â
[More static than music.]
MALLORY: Well.
NICK: Kullerluk, during our break, we left the station-just for a moment-to. Look out the window. As I would assume most of you are aware, there is. A lot less of our good city than there was a few minutes ago.
MALLORY: And by “a lot less” we do, in fact, mean a lot less.Â
According to… current reports, 43% of downtown Kullerluk has been… practically entirely leveled. This does, unfortunately, include the Kullerluk City Volunteer Fire Department.
NICK: Information on casualties is not yet available, but first responders are on site, and we will hopefully have more information for you soon.
MALLORY: (in agony) I’m… so sorry, listeners.Â
NICK: I can’t believe this happened, it’s awful.
MALLORY: (a bit distantly) This is our fault. We messed around with the horoscopes, and now look at what happened.
NICK: Okay, you’re going to need to stop that we can’t confess to murder? manslaughter? on the air. We can’t even know.
MALLORY: Who’s even listening? Seriously, Nick, no one cares about a random radio show two college students are doing, and if they do? (breath) They already know what we’ve done.
NICK: Then why are we bothering? If no one is listening then why bother saying anything? This is the only thing we can control, apparently, might as well not get taken down.Â
Someone is listening. Someone must be listening or why would this help? Otherwise there’s nothing. We are utterly powerless. What happened was this: we were grasping at straws and it failed. It failed worse than either of us could have dreamed and yet we got to make it through. We could see the rubble from the window but we’re just fine.Â
We’re even still live. Don’t worry Kullerluk! (with an agonized laugh) No need to interrupt the broadcast! And that has to be for a reason. Someone must be listening because otherwise… why bother?
MALLORY: I don’t know! But whatever the case, we fucked up!Â
Because the report didn’t help. (she’s not doing well) Hell, if someone was listening, I doubt they are now, because they’re probably dead! And there has to be some sort of– some sort of comeuppance for that. And maybe this is it.Â
NICK: What is? Living? Feeling bad? That’s ridiculous.
MALLORY: I don’t know, I don’t know. Maybe none of this matters, maybe we’ve been seeing connections that aren’t there this entire time, maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and this will have never been real, and I’ll see you and you won’t know what on earth I’m talking about. Or maybe we’ve outlined more of the rules. It’s not that I’m saying we should stop if no one’s there to listen, I’m just saying that we… (a breath) I’m just saying that we know very clearly what we ought not to do going forward.
NICK: Of course we do. We learned something. We know the rules, isn’t that such a delight. And so we keep going. It does matter. The connections are there. This is what’s real.Â
MALLORY: (flat) Great. Glad we’re on the same page.
NICK: No consequences are going to come. Someone will hear us and someone will be safer and that’s all there is.
MALLORY: And what about the people who don’t?Â
NICK: I… I don’t know. Neither of us do.Â
MALLORY: (quietly) Yeah. (pause) You’re right, I just– (she stops) Thank you for joining us this evening on the ROKC.Â
NICK: (equally quietly) We’ll talk to you all again next week, and remember: it ought to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.
really funny getting to the end of a woe.begone episode that had like 30 characters in it, and then there are only two people in the credits and you remember oh yeah. Dylan Griggs plays about 70% of the characters in this podcast because it's mostly one guy (kind of).
Broadcast 14 - She Was Brave, and It Was Not Yet Dark
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 2/8, 6:00 PM. Re: fairy tales, smoke, and stars.
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 2/8, 6:00 PM. Re: fairy tales, smoke, and stars.The broadcast you are about to hear, while based o
The broadcast you are about to hear, while based on reality, is a work of fiction. As such, the following content warnings apply: blood and wildfires.
Transcript can be found here, or below the cut:
INT. ROOM – EVENING.
[The radio turns on. Static.]
NICK: Good evening, Kullerluk! You’re listening to the Radio of Kullerluk City, informally but more truthfully known as the ROKC. We’re your hosts Nick Denikin–
MALLORY: –and Mallory Wilson. Route 80 is once again out of commission due to wildfires. More on that later.
NICK: The previously planned nature walk through Mollymawk Woods has been Postponed due to… Inclement Weather. More on that too.
MALLORY: Anything else on the list?
NICK: Just you reading these lovely horoscopes.
MALLORY: (very not pleased) Right. Well… here goes nothing.
(firmly, imperative) Listen. There was once a town that sat in a valley. The town was happy, the sky was bright, the fields fertile. But there was, as there always is, a wood. The wood was dark and the trees were tall but only the children were scared, and only because their parents told them of all the monstrous creatures.Â
In the town there lived a girl, who was much too old to believe in monsters and who was much too old to be sent to bed for snapping at her mother. And since she was much too old for such things, she resolved to ignore them. Her sister would not notice her absence from the room they shared and if she did she would never tell. The woods looked beautiful in the dying summer light and even if there were monsters in them, she was brave and they could not hurt her.
But there was a reason that the parents told their children stories of monsters.
She slipped out through the back and into the cool embrace of the trees. At first, she wandered, a weight lifted from deep in her chest, the ground soft beneath her feet. Gradually and all at once she came to a cave. The cave was dark and the moonlight did not reach inside, but she was daring, so she tip-toed up and peered in. Out of the cave there came a voice, dragging like snakeskin against the dirt.
(in a voice) “This is not a warning. This is not an admonishment, this is a question. In good faith. What are you reaching for?”
She jumped back, shaken, but she was no child. So she thought. She knew what monsters were like, they had gaping maws with sharp teeth and sharper claws; wiry, matted fur, and they were so big they could carry a child off without even slowing. She peered back into the cave. She did not see any monster in the cave, there were no teeth or claws or fur. There was just a voice. And voices were what people had.Â
“Solitude is not exactly an embrace, more of a suffocation,” she said.
“Anything that surrounds you so completely must be an embrace.”
So she thought. The light was dimming and the shadows around her were stretching. She did not want to spend the night sitting up in bed. The moment stretched, yawning into a chasm before her, coming back down to a crack in the ground. A line. She stepped across, gradually and all at once.Â
The cave walls slowly dripped cold water onto the back of her neck, feeding the moss that grew on the walls. The stone was hard and smooth beneath her feet and she could feel the weight of the earth pressing down and down on her chest. But she was brave, and it was not yet dark.Â
“You won’t be stopped,” said the voice. It did not simply echo around her, it spilled out from deeper in the cave. She took a tiny, careful step forward. And another. And another. And another, until all of a sudden she slipped. She slid down slick stone, slamming sharply into the floor at the foot of the slope. She found herself in a new space, not a passage but a room. She looked around and she could not stop looking. The walls, ceiling, much of the floor was coated in crystals, sparkling in the growing moonlight.Â
“The sort of light you only see alone,” she murmured to herself. It was magical, like every star in the sky was right there with her. She spun around, running her hands along the crystals. This would be her place, she decided, no one else would get to come here. This would be her palace and she would be the queen, her hidden fortress, her magical hideaway – it was so clearly magical. And, once she had worked out the magic, when the world was ready, she would show everyone. She would–
(an interruption) “You are a creature of layers, layers of skin and muscle and organs and bone,” whispered the voice. She saw, then, that she cut her arm when she fell, that she had smeared her blood on the crystals. She saw, then, that there was a shape, crumpled in the corner of the cave. She saw, then, that the hanging crystals looked quite a lot like teeth and claws, the moss just like matted fur. She turned, and finally she saw a warm glow reaching down the passage, but it was far too early for the dawn.
She ran. She scrambled up the slope and she dashed away from the light, deeper into the woods as the smoke caught in her throat.
And the voice called after her: “The sun will set and the sky will burn and the ground will harden and nothing will be gentle or sweet.”
[Static, and music.]
NICK: (continuing an unfinished thought, amused) You have often stood in the doorway of a building and listened for a voice that spoke too low for words to be discerned out of the general undercurrent of sound that fills every empty space of your world. (pointed) You are restless, restless enough to wake in the dead of night and choose to spend those late, lonesome hours straining to hear that voice or else searching the sky for the familiar shapes that adorn it. Tonight will prove no different, though dark clouds will shield those shapes from you, and the light that reaches your eyes will be that of something far more worldly.Â
The electricity will hum beneath your skin.
No one will notice when the lightning strike ignites a spark deep in the woods, and no one will notice once it begins to spread – aided by dry leaves that will be passed over by rain that will never develop into anything more than a light shower. But when the sun rises, its morning colors stained with ashy grays and blacks, the town will be alerted to the danger, and sirens will start up at the fire department down the road.Â
What will follow is this: a day of hazy skies and a night illuminated by a wildfire that has, by then, been brought mostly under control. Stars will flicker through the smoke, and you will find yourself caught between staring towards them and staring towards the dancing light that you can just about make out from the vantage point of your window. You will not sleep, stuck thinking about the fire that will not destroy your home, however much you dream that it did – (pause) that it would.
[Static.]
NICK: So, how was it?
MALLORY: Besides the fact that they were (with disgust)Â horoscopes, not much different from the disaster report.
NICK: Did you… hear yourself? Because I would not describe that as horoscopes.
MALLORY: (beat) I did in fact hear myself. And it was… fascinating to say the least.Â
NICK: I mean, it was definitely something, that was. Far. From what I wrote.
MALLORY: Yeah, sorry about that. They were… fine, from what I read, but apparently the words that came to mind were not those.
NICK: It seemed… well, it was just a story. So. Do you think that… counted?
MALLORY: As reading the horoscopes? I certainly hope so. I’m not looking forward to having to read them out again if it doesn’t.
NICK: I just don’t want our experimentation to wreak havoc.
MALLORY: Neither do I. (pause) I hope– yeah.
NICK: Why would that happen? Why abandon the format?
MALLORY: I don’t know.Â
NICK: (continuing his previous thought) Whatever is happening is clearly tied to the horoscopes, so I don’t get why the structure would just get tossed out. It doesn’t make any sense. I assume it wasn’t a story you know or anything?
MALLORY: I’ve never heard it. And I can’t think of anywhere I could have taken it from.Â
NICK: It was a long shot, why would it be our words now.
MALLORY: (hesitating) Do you think it’s true? Or just more words taken from nowhere?
NICK: Well, the disaster reports are true. But from what you’ve said the horoscopes… aren’t really within the bounds of truth or fiction. It's… something else. We can’t know what the precedent is.
MALLORY: (lightly frustrated) How are we supposed to figure out anything if we don’t even know what we’re working with?Â
NICK: Who knows. Maybe we aren’t.
MALLORY: Best we can do now is wait until next week and see what changes. If anything at all.
NICK: We’ll learn something regardless.
MALLORY: And move forward from there. For now, thank you for joining us this evening on the ROKC.Â
NICK: We’ll talk to you all again next week, and remember: she was brave, and it was not yet dark.
Well, it's been 24 hours and we already have too many, so
What should the Official Fandom Nickname for the Gospel of Haven Be?
Weird Little Lesbians
The Congregation
The Corpse Corps
Meatheads
Fleshbians
Meatures (meat creatures)
Meatballs
Coventricles
Meat and Greeters
Bloodhounds
Voting ended onFeb 6
I've chosen ten that I would not receive psychic damage from saying.
I'm not going to remove weird little lesbians from the title entirely, but I do want to offer something a bit more inclusive to the non lesbians in the audience. If there are any, jury is out
