RFI

It was four o’ clock in the morning and I woke to the sound of voices on the radio.

For a moment I stared into the blackness, struggling to remember where I was.

In bed. In a trailer. In Bisbee. Friday morning.

I had tuned the old radio in the Airstream to the white noise of a dead channel so I could sleep. And now I was listening to a broken conversation, crackling over the speakers. An odd voice, lacking inflection spoke first.

“My arm. Limbs. Why. Halted?”

I heard a second voice, crass and guttural.

“Don’t move. Stop moving!”

Some time passed and the first voice spoke twice without response.

“Where–myself?”

“My [unintelligible]. Crew. Vassal.”

I could also hear a third person speaking in Spanish. I caught the words “carro,” “sangre azul” and the phrase “tengo miedo.”

The first voice spoke again, only now with emotion, pleading.

“Please. No.”

Then a new, deeper voice, very clear over the radio.

“Take care of it now.”

Suddenly, there was a high-pitched shriek and a popping sound, both on the radio and somewhere in the distance outside. Then silence.

The static resumed and my whole body was stiff. The combination of the hour, the strange mix of voices and the scream left me buzzing, wide-eyed and awake.

My wife stirred in the bed next to me and my body relaxed a little. “Kate?” I whispered. Nothing. She hadn’t heard any of it.

I laid awake for probably another hour or so before I finally gave up and got up from bed. I slipped on my sandals and quietly stepped out of the trailer. It was a quiet, moonless night in the desert.

There was a soft breeze and I could smell the rainy scent of creosote. The neon motel sign cast a dull pink glow over the adjacent trailers. All was dark outside the court except for the halo of light from downtown Bisbee and a fire at the foot of a nearby bluff. I found an old metal patio chair and sat down.

I had chosen this motel as a destination after reading about it in a local magazine. The “rooms” were 50’s aluminum trailers, completely restored and decorated with vintage furniture and tchotchkes. Kate and I figured it would be a good place to get away for the weekend. Until tonight, it had been a relaxing and uneventful trip. After an hour or so, I finally began to nod and so I retired to my bed.

August 2nd, 2008 by rob