Fiction: Living on the Air

Lorraine didn’t believe in astrology. Nor did she, as so many people do, open a book, point to a sentence and use that as a guide for the day. Further, she had no truck with runes or tarot or any other fortune-telling schemes.

She had something much better than all those petty and discredited oracles.

On Monday morning, Lorraine bopped the alarm clock and sat up in bed. As always, she felt the sense of the day’s mystery both surrounding and permeating her. She got out of bed, made it carefully, and went in to shower.

After drying her hair, she poured her usual bowl of bran flakes and made two pieces of toast with elderberry jam, which reminded her of her father. Just before eating, she reached into a drawer. Inside were a little transistor radio, a pair of scissors, and fifty-four unopened packages of AA batteries, two to a package. She drew out the radio, the scissors, and a package of batteries. She cut open the package of batteries and opened the radio’s battery compartment. After placing the scissors back in the drawer Lorraine put the batteries in the radio.

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Fiction: The Rodeo

“Welcome back. For those of you just joining us, today on NewsTalk 102 we have Sheriff Ralph Tarbridge. I want to turn now to a sensitive topic: this weekend’s Tri-County Rodeo. Sheriff, as our listeners know, the rodeo used to be the biggest event in the tri-county region. In recent years it’s developed a reputation for being the deadliest place to be on Independence Day weekend.”

“That is, unfortunately, true, Keith. There’s been a murder committed at the rodeo each of the past three years. So far, despite the assistance of the FBI, the murders are unsolved.”
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