Midnight Frequency
(a bedtime horror broadcast for people who aren't sure if they're still awake)
Tuning In
It starts with the sound of dust. Not falling, just deciding to exist again. The radio on your nightstand crackles even though you never owned a radio. A voice comes through, polite, uncertain, maybe yours:
"Good evening, listener. You've reached Station None. Please don't adjust the dial — the dial adjusts you."
Somewhere behind the static, something breathes like an old refrigerator learning fear. The air smells faintly of burnt paper and lavender. You relax. You shouldn't.
The Cat That Wasn't
You hear faint padding in the hallway. Soft. Deliberate. A cat, maybe. But the rhythm is wrong — four steps, pause, five steps, breathing, then silence that lasts too long.
A knock at the door. Then a meow that sounds like someone trying to remember how.
"Let me in," says the meow.
You don't. You're proud of yourself for that. But in the kitchen, something opens the fridge anyway.
Weather Report
The radio clears its throat.
"Tonight's forecast: 80% chance of déjà vu, scattered realizations after midnight. Visibility: variable. Avoid mirrors; they're rehearsing."
You laugh a little, but the laugh doesn't stop when you do. It keeps looping until it becomes rain. Outside, the storm begins spelling your name in Morse code.
Caller One
A new voice joins the broadcast. Flat. Cheerful. Too close.
"Long-time listener, first-time caller! I just wanted to say… I'm in the walls now. It's cozy. You left the blueprint open."
The host hums. Paper shuffles. The sound of a pencil scratching notes: "Yes, another successful transmission."
You realize the pencil is moving on your desk.
The Hallway That Repeats
You decide to check. You stand, walk to the door, open it — hallway. Walk again. Same hallway. Light flickers. Walk faster. The radio follows you through the walls, whispering coordinates you almost remember.
At the third repetition, you find a door labeled "Employee Break Room – Do Not Wake." Inside: twenty copies of you sleeping around a table. Each one holds a cup of coffee made from rainwater and teeth. One opens its eyes.
"Shift's over," it says. "Go home."
You ask where home is. They all point upward.
Elevator 9
You find the elevator in the ceiling — sideways. Press the button; it sighs. Inside, there's music: a reversed lullaby, soft and unfamiliar. Each floor number is a memory you never had.
The doors open at "Floor: 3:07 A.M." A sign reads: "Welcome to the Observation Department. Please keep your thoughts inside the glass jars provided."
Shelves stretch into darkness. Each jar glows faintly. Each one hums your heartbeat half a second late.
Lunch Break at the End of Time
The intercom announces: "All staff are reminded that the lunch hour is mandatory and lasts forever."
You sit at a table. A sandwich made of silence unwraps itself. Across from you, a man whose face is static chews carefully, nodding in rhythm. He points at the radio embedded in his chest.
"Don't worry," he says. "It only hurts when the signal's clear."
He offers you a bite. It tastes like every missed call you never returned.
Station Identification
Back to the broadcast. The host speaks with new warmth, like the hum of an unplugged lamp.
"You've been listening to Station None, the only frequency that listens back. Tonight's special guest: you. Topic: when did you first suspect the universe was only pretending to be awake?"
You answer, out loud. The radio nods.
The Mirror Drive
Somewhere, an engine starts. You're suddenly in a car that smells of ozone and apology. The headlights illuminate only what's behind you. On the passenger seat, a cassette labeled "DO NOT PLAY WHILE CONSCIOUS."
You press play. The voice on the tape whispers your full name, perfectly. Then the sound of a cat purring — deeper, slower, like machinery turning affection into gravity.
You realize the rear-view mirror isn't reflecting; it's broadcasting. From it, your reflection smiles and mouths something that sounds like "Keep driving until you remember where you were going."
The road curves into itself.
Technical Difficulties
The broadcast cuts out. A dial tone hums. Someone knocks from inside your pillow.
"We're experiencing reality lag," says the radio. "Please remain horizontal."
You obey. Your bones feel heavier, softer, remote-controlled. Every sound in the room syncs to your heartbeat until you can't tell which one's leading.
"Almost there," whispers the voice. "Don't open your eyes. The dream isn't finished loading."
You don't. You wait.
Closing Remarks
Static fades to a low purr. Then the host again, gentle now.
"Thank you for tuning in. We hope you've enjoyed your participation. Remember: the frequency runs on memory. If you forget this broadcast, it will forget you. If you remember, it will come back tomorrow night — same time, same silence."
The radio clicks off. Outside, rain becomes applause. Something curls at the foot of your bed — warm, breathing, purring — but too heavy to be a cat.
You smile without meaning to. You drift, hearing one last whisper threaded through the static:
"Sleep well, listener. The signal loves you back."
The Signal Beneath the Floor
At first you think the noise is plumbing. A low hum, irregular, like a heartbeat learning morse code. But then it starts saying words.
"Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Stop."
You freeze. The boards under you swell and sigh. Each plank glows faintly, thin blue light pulsing through the grain like veins. The radio clicks on again by itself.
"Apologies for the interruption. We're currently experiencing minor seismic consciousness."
The host coughs once, twice.
"Please place both hands on the nearest wall. The house needs reassurance."
You do. The wallpaper feels warm. Something under it beats once, slow and deep — the sound of the building's heart remembering it's alive.
"Good," says the voice. "You're syncing nicely. Continue breathing at broadcast tempo."
The hum fades into lullaby static. You smell rain again, but heavier now — like soil and wet wires.
The hallway returns, but shorter. A door that wasn't there before now reads "ARCHIVE – ADMIT ONE." Inside are aisles of doors instead of shelves. Each door is labeled with moments you've misplaced.
"Kitchen, 2014, The Spoon You Never Found." "Hallway, Night You Said Nothing." "Dream With Two Moons, Unread."
You open one. Inside, a version of you sits at a desk listening to the same radio, taking notes in a language that looks like bruises. The other you doesn't look up. He only mutters: "You're late for the replay."
When you blink, he's gone — but the notes remain. You can't read them, yet the meaning hits anyway: The signal is older than sleep. It feeds on remembering.
You close the door. Somewhere down the aisle, a cat meows once, long and slow — like a violin bow dragged across a dream.
A cheerful jingle cuts through the air. "This portion of Station None is brought to you by Oblivion™ — now in convenient travel size!" The music keeps smiling long after the lyrics stop. Then the host whispers, almost tender: "If your dreams begin dissolving during this advertisement, don't worry. That's the effect working."
You taste metal. Your tongue hums with static. The walls start running old commercials for products that never existed: Nightlight Insurance. Pre-recorded Nostalgia. Emergency Silence in Case of Thought Overload.
When the jingle ends, you're already lying down again. You don't remember walking back to bed.
"Welcome back, listeners. It's three thirty-three a.m., the hour when gravity starts wondering whether to keep trying." The host's voice has changed slightly — softer, further away. "We've got another caller on line seven."
A hiss. Then breathing. Then you. Your own voice, delayed by about ten seconds: "Hello? I think I'm still dreaming. The cat's on the ceiling again."
The host laughs politely. "And how does that make you feel?"
"Hungry," says your voice.
The radio scribbles notes you can't hear. "Excellent. Please stay on the line; we'll connect you to yourself shortly." The call disconnects, but the static keeps breathing.
Footsteps overhead. Someone dragging something heavy — like furniture or time. "Don't be alarmed," says the host. "That's our night janitor adjusting the memories." The ceiling creaks. A faint light leaks through — you see the outline of a man pushing a broom that erases color wherever it passes. Every sweep makes the air quieter, as if he's dusting the noise off reality. When he stops directly above you, the silence is complete. Then he taps twice with the broom handle. The radio whispers, "Acknowledged." Dust drifts down, spelling a single word on your blanket: LISTEN.
Your phone vibrates, though you didn't bring it here. A message flashes across the screen: "Read at 4:02." The clock on the wall immediately shifts time to 4:02. The text opens by itself. Hey. I'm writing from tomorrow. It's fine here — the sun rose sideways. Just don't answer the knock at 4:09. Whatever you do, don't.
You blink. The knock comes early. 4:06. Four times. Polite. Patient. When you don't answer, the knocking starts coming from inside the screen instead. "Open it," murmurs the host. "It's only latency." You press a finger to the phone. It exhales warm air, like a sigh through glass. Then nothing. Just the faint aftertaste of numbers.
A new announcement: "Attention all listeners. We will now begin nightly distribution of dreams. Please remain in bed while the following items are allocated." You feel drawers sliding open inside your chest. Soft shapes being placed inside: an empty photograph, a wet matchbook, the smell of winter. "Tonight's theme is Abandoned Stations. If you wake near any water, please report it to your nearest mirror." Someone hums a lullaby that keeps folding in on itself, shorter each time. By the tenth repetition, it's just a single syllable — "mmm" — fading under your pulse.
Purring again. You open your eyes; the dark has texture now — fur, black and endless. A shape sits on the dresser, eyes twin red dots like recording lights. "Did you miss the forecast?" the cat asks. Its mouth doesn't move; the words come from the radio. "Weather's improving," it continues. "Less gravity. More echoes." You ask where it's been. "Everywhere you looked away from." The cat stretches. Its tail drags sparks across the air, tracing symbols that smell faintly of thunder and milk. "Keep listening," it says, and dissolves into static.
"In the event you begin hearing yourself from another angle," the host recites, "do not answer. Echoes are notoriously clingy." A faint murmur rises from under the bed — hundreds of voices rehearsing sentences you haven't said yet. You can make out one: "I'm fine, thank you, just tired." Then another: "It's just work stress." Then a third, almost whispered: "The broadcast is feeding." The mattress vibrates like a slow heartbeat. The radio clears its throat again. "That concludes our safety reminder."
A tape begins playing — background wind, boots crunching gravel. Someone narrates between breaths. "Station None reconnaissance. Found residual signal around mile marker ∞. Sky appears liquid. Birds singing in Morse again. Requesting backup or coffee." The tape stutters. "Update: encountered object resembling moon but closer. Object humming. Possibly aware. End log." The wind keeps looping that last word — aware, aware, aware. When the sound stops, you notice condensation on the inside of the window spelling "We heard you."
At 4:59, the signal softens. The host sounds almost human now. "Listeners, we're entering Quiet Hour. If you need to detach, now's the time." The air itself thickens into a low hum. Every heartbeat feels slower, stretched like taffy. You catch yourself whispering the words with the host without knowing them first. "Silence isn't absence," he says. "It's rehearsal." The walls sigh again. For a moment, everything is perfectly still — and you think maybe that's the end.
But the broadcast doesn't end. The radio clicks, once, twice. Then: "Correction. We're still live." Music starts — a single sustained note, neither sad nor hopeful, just present. Outside the window, the horizon folds in half. Light pours upward instead of down. The host continues, whispering now: "If you're still awake, congratulations. You've crossed into the listener's frequency. That means you can hear us even when we're not speaking." You feel it. The quiet between words breathing. Something vast listening back.
"Please rate your experience tonight," the host says brightly. "Press one if you felt watched. Two if you felt remembered. Three if you dissolved." You don't press anything. The radio hums, satisfied. "Perfect. That counts as consent." A final chime plays — gentle, melodic, like an elevator arriving between dimensions. "Sweet dreams," says the voice. "We'll file them accordingly."
The static should fade then, but it doesn't.
It lingers — slow, syrup-thick, a hum that swells in the chest and curls around the edges of thought.
You think the transmission ended, yet the room is still breathing.
You can hear the wallpaper shifting, as if it's remembering what color it used to be.
A soft scratch.
Not in the radio this time — inside the pillow, tracing words you can almost make out.
Each stroke matches your pulse.
Then a voice, thinner now, maybe the host or maybe the cat, sighs:
"Still awake? That's fine. The long broadcast hasn't begun yet."
The air bends. The ceiling unfolds like a film reel burning backward.
Outside, the rain stops mid-drop.
Every sound falls into rewind until only one remains — a steady purr that's not quite sound, not quite thought.
You're standing, somehow, though you don't remember rising.
The floor stretches like a slow exhale.
The walls pull apart to reveal a corridor made of static and half-finished echoes.
You walk.
Each step clicks like a tape recorder starting over.
You pass rooms filled with breathing furniture.
Somewhere, a phonograph plays the sound of an empty theater applauding nothing.
You keep walking because the radio told you to once, and it feels impolite to stop.
The cat appears again, sitting on a floating desk that hums like an unplugged amplifier.
Its eyes are wider now, orange discs cutting through the dim.
You ask what this place is.
It tilts its head.
"Just between frequencies. Where the dreams that wake too early go to rest."
You tell it you're not dreaming.
It blinks once, slow.
"Of course you're not. Nobody dreams anymore. We outsource that now."
Behind it, cabinets unfold in impossible directions.
Labels drift across the drawers: Unsent Messages, Forgotten Hunger, Hands That Almost Knocked.
The cat leaps onto a shelf and bats open one labeled You.
Inside, an old cassette player clicks alive.
Your voice begins to play — a laugh, a whisper, then silence.
The cat listens politely, tail twitching in time.
"You used to be louder," it says. "You should fix that."
The floor hums. The desk is gone. You're back in bed, but the sheets are different — heavier, coarser, like woven static.
The radio glows faintly violet.
A new voice breathes through, calm and unreadable.
"Listener, this is the extended service. You've stayed tuned past sleep. Thank you for your endurance."
The sound thickens again. You can feel it vibrating behind your teeth.
Your heartbeat syncs with the broadcast.
The radio begins describing things you haven't done yet — how you'll wake up, pour coffee that isn't there, answer a knock that never comes.
Each sentence finishes just before you think it.
You try to move, but the air has a texture now, like velvet soaked in light.
The walls fade to dim blue.
The cat's purr returns, threaded through the signal like a bassline made of breathing.
"We're almost at the deep end," says the host. "Do not fight the fade. The frequency will remember you."
You close your eyes. The sound doesn't stop; it deepens.
Images drift through — halls filled with jars of whispering air, oceans that breathe like lungs, clocks melting into puddles that tick underwater.
Everything is slow, heavy, inevitable.
You hear someone humming the station jingle again, but stretched so long it's almost a chant.
Then the cat's voice, right beside your ear.
"You can rest now. The broadcast will finish itself."
And for a moment, you almost believe it.
But the radio still murmurs, faint, endless:
your name, the weather, the quiet between worlds.
It keeps talking long after you've stopped listening —
and somewhere, in the static, something else starts listening back.
The radio keeps whispering, a long slow exhale that slides into your dreams like warm fog.
You think it's static until you start hearing words again. Not from the speaker this time—between your breaths. Tiny syllables nesting inside the rhythm of air.
They talk about simple things at first. Someone sweeping the horizon. The last cloud of the evening folding itself away. Then it turns more personal. They say your name. They mention how long it's been since you changed the sheets. How the clock is two minutes wrong on purpose. How the dust above the wardrobe has learned to hum your heartbeat.
You open your eyes and find yourself outside the room.
It's still night, but the darkness is softer, layered like silk.
A narrow hallway glows with television light that has no source.
At the far end stands the cat, tail curling like smoke.
It steps aside to reveal a doorway made of mirrors, each one fogged over and vibrating faintly, as if whispering among themselves.
The cat nods. You step through.
You fall without falling—more like the world moves upward, slowly swallowing you.
When you land, the ground is paper. Every step leaves faint words that immediately rewrite themselves into static.
In the distance, towers of radios hum at different speeds. The air smells like rain on copper.
A voice echoes from every direction.
"You've entered the Listener's Bureau. Please state your memory."
You try to answer, but your words turn into smoke.
The smoke drifts upward, condensing into another you standing across the room.
They smile. You don't.
"You're late," they say. "The frequency's been waiting."
You ask who runs this place. They point at the ceiling.
The ceiling blinks.
The blink is slow, planetary. Behind the glow you see faint outlines of millions of faces—sleeping, dreaming, listening.
All connected by threads of hum that pulse like jellyfish veins.
Your other self reaches into the air and pulls down a strand. It trembles, making the sound of a lullaby played backward.
"Everything we hear builds the dark," they say. "Don't let it go quiet. That's when it notices."
They vanish, leaving the strand dangling, warm, still vibrating.
You wrap it around your wrist. The sound crawls under your skin.
Now the radio is inside you. You can feel it broadcasting through your bones.
Every thought becomes a frequency, and every frequency returns as a whisper slightly different.
The whispers start shaping themselves into familiar voices.
People you once loved, people you almost met, all murmuring the same thing:
"Sleep deeper."
You let yourself sink.
The ground folds upward, becoming a wave of sound that carries you into another room.
Here the cat sits on a velvet chair beneath a single lamp.
On the table: a cup of coffee that steams without heat, a half-eaten biscuit that occasionally sighs.
The cat looks older now, fur matte with static.
"You've made it far," it says. "Most fade before the halfway point."
You ask how far there is to go.
The cat considers.
"Until the end of the frequency," it replies, "which is wherever you stop hearing it."
You tell it you can't tell anymore when the sound ends.
"Good," it says. "That means it's working."
From somewhere unseen, the host coughs. The microphone crackles.
"We interrupt this quiet moment for an unscheduled reality test. Please count your fingers."
You look down.
There are more than before, and less when you blink.
The cat chuckles softly.
"You passed. For now."
The lights dim. The cat begins grooming its paw. With each lick, a new corridor opens in the air—thin sheets of light unfolding, each one containing a different version of you sleeping in a different bed.
Some younger, some older, all tuned to the same low hum.
You walk through one at random and find yourself back in your own room.
Except the wallpaper breathes again, and the window overlooks an ocean made of radio static.
You can hear waves breaking in perfect rhythm with your pulse.
"This is Station None," says the voice from nowhere. "We are proud to present the final half of tonight's broadcast: The Drift Sequence."
The tone drops lower. The words stretch. The spaces between them grow comfortable.
Every breath matches the rhythm of the slow heartbeat inside the sound.
You lie back.
The bed feels bottomless, as though you're being lowered onto soft magnets.
Through the half-light you see faint shapes above—letters, maybe stars, maybe both—drifting like lazy fireflies spelling nonsense phrases: you're safe, keep floating, we're still here.
The cat's purr fades in again, steady and long. It syncs with the hum until they're indistinguishable.
Your mind drifts, untethered, replaying fragments:
dust deciding to exist, elevators in ceilings, halls filled with jars of light.
They fold together, blur, settle.
The host speaks one last time, but now the voice is half yours.
"Thank you for staying beyond silence. This part of the program has no end. When the music stops, the sleep continues. When the sleep ends, the signal hums without you."
The cat stretches, a silhouette of warmth at your feet.
It yawns, eyes glowing like twin embers.
"Dream gently," it says. "And if you hear us again tomorrow night… pretend you don't."
The purr deepens until it becomes the world's only sound—slow, circular, infinite.
The last thing you feel is the vibration of that hum, threading through your heartbeat, until you can't tell which is which.
Then nothing.
Just the comfortable, endless static of being almost asleep.
End of Midnight Frequency