𝚖𝚘𝚘𝚗, 𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚘, 𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚠;
It had started with crackling static, the sort of low hum put out by a radio rarely used, a forgotten relic in the modern era of streaming services and ai home assistants. It'd happened all at once, every dusty radio across the country springing into life, each one spitting crackles and pops no matter the station it was dialled to.
Frustrated owners unplugged them from the walls, threw them into dustbins and generally discarded the old radios - broken, forgotten, retro devices cast into rubbish tips or stripped for parts. Anything, really, to stop the crackling.
But, we should have listened.
If we'd listened, we might have heard it.
We might have heard the warning, the flow of whispers sitting just beneath the audible static, the repeating message from beyond telling us over, and over again that, '𝙄𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙜.'
But we didn't.
So when it came, we couldn't stop it.
The day after the static stopped, the country woke up to a sky turned black. Whilst the earlybirds thought it nothing more than dense cloud cover, it soon became apparent that the darkness was due to the gargantuan, ribbed edges of something 𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚. Undulating, moving in almighty breaths, the surface appeared impenetrable, with no mouth, nor eyes, nor anything the human race could possibly perceive.
Each day, the beast moved closer, a few inches became a few miles, until the fleshy underbelly descended upon the loftiest tree tops, flattening skyscrapers and flat blocks as if they were little more than brittle tree branches. The closer it came, the louder it got, the same static that had sounded through the radios now emanating, at a tremendous volume, from deep within the creature.
Ear drums ruptured for those not quick enough to seek protection, the newly deaf sunk into a world of abject silence, save for a single, repeating phrase, seemingly forced into their subconscious by planet Earth's latest visitor. Spoken in broken words stolen from history's radio broadcasts, uneven and unnerving in it's borrowed tongue, the beast proclaimed, "𝙒𝙚 𝙘𝙖𝙢𝙚 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙤𝙤𝙣."
Originally written and shared as part of Verbuary 2023: https://tinyurl.com/yzh7rp65