To Whoevers Listening

Three : Blackout

I make it through the day without stuffing up too noticeably and duck out of the live room at sunset to call my mum and tell her about my schedule change. She doesn't answer, so I leave a voice mail in her message bank knowing that she'll get it. She's probably just out shopping, anyway. Maybe she already heard me on the radio.

While a line-up of four songs plays in the background, I make my way into the kitchen to scout out the food situation.

For the most part of the last eleven years of Obie's life, he's lived here at the station. It's pretty much set up the exact same as a house with a kitchen, a bathroom, a laundry and a bedroom upstairs. But it hasn't been used that much in the last five months because not so long ago Obie finally went out and leased himself an apartment after the constant nagging from both Maggie and his mother became too much. I'd heard the telephone calls. Edith, Obie's mother, believed that if he ever wanted to ask a lady over for dinner, there was no chance she'd be willing to go on a thirty minute drive up into the mountains alone with a man she'd just met.

So he got himself an apartment and has kept the station set up as a back-up plan for himself, and me or Maggie if we ever needed somewhere to stay.

I open the fridge to the welcome sight of chocolate milk, a plate full of salami sandwiches and a bunch of other knick-knacks I could easily put together to make something new.

When Maggie found out she was pregnant a little over eight months ago, she practically went into instantaneous mother-mode on both me and Obie. She cooked food, cleaned the station, made sure we kept hydrated and asked if we got enough rest each night. She treated us like her children. It was strange at times, but entirely sweet.

Maggie is younger than Obie, twenty four and just recently widowed. Her husband, a solider in the army, was killed in combat a month after she discovered she was pregnant. One of the main reasons we let Maggie baby us in the way she did was because we knew it was helping keep herself distracted from more painful things.

I grab a bowl of already made spaghetti from the fridge and put it into the microwave. I close the door, start the timer and turn to the fridge.

The moment my back is turned, the microwave clicks off and the light overhead flickers, than goes out. But only a couple seconds later, the power comes back on again.

Good, because otherwise the back-up generator outside would of clicked on and I would have had to go outside to switch it off again.

I abandon my lunch and run back to the live room, where I fade out the last song and put myself on air.

“Sorry about that folks, a slight power outage there. I –“

My voice cuts out as the entire station buzzes with the whirling sound of electricity leaving the building for good this time.

I sit in the dark for a moment, the snow outside blocking the rays of light from the rapidly descending sun.

And then the generator kicks in and light fills the main room once again.

The buttons on the control board flash and above me the red sign announcing “ON AIR” burns bright.

“Alright,” I breathe out a sigh. “We're back.”