The October Music - Day 20

Careless Whisper
It was never supposed to be found. At least, not the way it was. The dead air between radio stations was usually just a safe haven for pirate radio and government communications or so we’d been led to believe. In any case, it was something to be ignored at best and used to break the law at worst. Nothing like what it ended up being used for.

It started simply. A few people flipping between stations on their drives to work noticed that one of the dead channels had noise on it. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t grating. It was quiet, soft, almost soothing in a way. They had to turn the volume up considerably in order to make anything out but, even then, the only sound that could be heard was a consistent whispering. Any possible words were lost in the quiet, insistent pulse of the sound, but it didn’t seem to matter. Everyone who listened didn’t want to change the channel.

In fact, they told everyone they could about it. Sure, they were laughed at to begin with. Why would anyone want to listen to creepy whispering on a dead station? Curiosity, though, continues to kill cats and eventually more and more people flipped to the channel to hear what all the fuss was about. As they did, the whispering slowly increased in volume. Words were still impossible to make out, by and large, although some reported hearing occasional clear sounds. Most often, a ‘wuh’ was reported, though nobody knew what it meant.

As these things do, the strange whispering became a phenomenon that exploded in population. Teens and young adults started challenges in which they would listen to the station for as long as they could, which led to a few hospitalizations. Every one of them swore up and down that they heard actual voices, all of which were telling them dark secrets. It was just exhaustion, they were told. It had to be. Otherwise, the lingering fear of what it could mean would simply grow.

The volume increased as even more people tuned in to experience things for themselves. Experts tried to record the whispers, now closer to simply speaking, in order to decipher the message being sent, but every attempt ended in destroyed equipment. Something violent would rip through the speakers and damage electronics. It was baffling.

One day, though, a breakthrough came. One damned scientist determined that the sound was made up of layered phrases repeated over and over. When he isolated them and played them to his colleagues, hearts sank into the ground. There were two phrases in the mix.

We’re coming. You die.

People were urged not to panic. It was just a prank being pulled by some smart little sociopaths. They would be found and punished accordingly. The important thing was not to freak out.

That message ended, though, when the phrases changed. Now, the whisper was clear and understandable for everyone and there was no mistaking the meaning.
​
We’re here.