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<p>https://www.steemimg.com/images/2016/08/24/AmandaCharchianeb228.jpg</p>
<p>Rhoda Crowder, a.k.a Lady Baudelaire, whispers the call letters into the microphone with all the seductiveness she can muster at 4 am on a Tuesday. </p>
<p>“This is WXFSssss.” Larry Sweet shakes his head and tells her to repeat. </p>
<p>“Come on, Rhoda, I want guys pulling to the side of the road to jerk one out when they hear this. I want them lined up three deep at the station door for a date.” </p>
<p>“I get it, Larry. I don’t work a phone sex line.” </p>
<p>“You’re the mistress of the midnight airwaves. Seduce us!” </p>
<p>“Yeah, right.” Rhoda leans into the mic and thinks of Mitzi, her beautiful Irish Setter, and how she soothes the poor animal after one of its grand mal seizures. </p>
<p>“You’re listening to W Xssss Fffffff Sssssssss…” </p>
<p>“Yeah,” shouts Larry “that’s it! Sexy as hell! I’m hard. I swear, I’m totally hard.” </p>
<p>“That’s great, Larry. Can we call it a night?” </p>
<p>“Sure thing, sure thing. Doug is a lucky man, you tell him from me.” </p>
<p>“Okay, Larry, see you tomorrow,” Rhoda says, gathering her purse and coat and heading to the door. Larry had gotten on her last nerve, but it wasn’t his fault. Twelve hours at the station, three of them on air, the last two in an attempt to make four letters sound as slutty as possible – it’s all you can ask of a person. She can’t get home fast enough. The walk to her car is more paranoid than usual, her mind soured with thoughts of pimple-faced perverts stalking her through the parking lot, desperate hard-ons three deep, just as Larry had wanted. The only woman DJ at the supposedly “progressive” WXFS, Rhoda is constantly enlisted to do the station identifications, an unpaid duty she is beginning to resent even more now that she fears for her safety. Maybe she should take a class, she thinks, learn how to properly kick balls. At least get some mace, Rhoda. Past time for that. Tonight, thankfully, she reaches her car without incident. The pre-dawn drive from Alexandria to northeast D.C. is always depressing. Outside of Georgetown and a few rich neighborhoods surrounding The National Mall, the city is positively third world. Dirt poor, drug-ridden, over-policed and unrepresented, an entire population suffers like the damned under the raised noses of the nation’s leaders. What a crime, Rhoda thinks, bastards on the Hill probably get a kick out of it. It is an impressive display of power to ignore a wasteland killing itself in your own backyard. But what does she know? She just plays the music and tells a scary story or two for the insomniacs on the graveyard shift. Never been political, just pissed off. Her anger is the general kind, a cultural frustration that, if she is being honest, is a little fuzzy on details. What’s that song Groucho Marx sings…”Whatever it is, I’m against it”. Maybe she’s not that bad, but she can sense something is wrong out there. That much she knows. That much is obvious. By the time Rhoda finds a parking spot for the Datsun Cherry the sky has lightened to the dreary non-color that escorts her to bed every morning. She got lucky today, landing only a block away from home. She looks up and down the street before getting out and locking her car. Head down, she takes quick steps in a beeline for her front door, clutching a dollar bill in her hand, crumpled out of view but ready to hand over in an instant. She is going to pass the empty lot next to her building and knows Yancey will likely be up this early. Rhoda wants the dollar ready for him. She is halfway past the lot when he lurches out of his tent. A tourist would have screamed, but Rhoda and Yancey are neighbors of three years. </p>
<p>Rhoda smiles “Morning, Yancey.” He nods once to return Rhoda’s greeting, then a second time to acknowledge her charity as the dollar scuttles into his white plastic bucket. He would have spoken if he could have, but Yancey has no tongue. He has no lower jaw. No right eye. His right arm is severed above the elbow and a deep, branching scar runs from his sternum to his groin. His left hand has only two digits of thick flesh that together form a misshapen claw. The rumor Rhoda has heard most says Yancey was destroyed by a Viet Cong grenade in ‘68. When the enemy had finished with him the surgeons at the VA had a go. Holed up in Walter Reed for over a year, the handsome local boy had returned home a gargoyle. Now he makes his living by walking shirtless up and down New York Avenue during rush hours, when the suburban commuters are gridlocked in their cars with nowhere to escape. To see Yancey is to see the human form in negative relief, a testament not only to the cruelty of war, but to the relentlessness of man’s scientific march forward. He should not exist, a miracle turned upside down. As Yancey wanders between the cars with his donation pail swinging on his mangled left hand, reactions vary from driver to driver. Some dive into their laps, eyes locked on feet as if their Oxfords were issuing Holy decrees. Others offer tithes in toll change and loose bills. Less frequently someone gives large, often enough to prevent faith in humanity from extinguishing completely, but not often enough to brighten it. On one occasion a man threw his entire wallet into the bucket - ID, credit cards, pictures of his children, the whole wad – the man weeping as if he had been the one in the jungle who tossed that grenade. Yancey gave the man his wallet back, keeping only a twenty for himself. </p>
<p> “Good luck today,” Rhoda says as Yancey limps off to ambush the early birds beating the morning rush. Halfway down the hallway Rhoda is worried. She doesn’t hear Mitzi’s reliable “Mom’s coming home!” scratching and whining, always loud enough to annoy the neighbors. There is no sound of life at all. By the time Rhoda opens her apartment door worry has grown into panic. </p>
<p>“It’s okay! It’s okay! Mitzi’s in the bathroom.” </p>
<p> Rhoda hears the words before she sees him, recognizing the voice as her boyfriend’s. Doug is rising from a chair in the living room, arms out ready to comfort. </p>
<p>“Mitzi’s okay?” Rhoda can hear the animal’s pleas coming from the back of the small apartment. </p>
<p>Doug reaches her, his embrace gentle but strategically fencing her off from the bathroom. </p>
<p>“She’s fine. I put her in there because she kept making a fuss over Philip.” </p>
<p>“Who?” Rhoda looks to the stranger sitting on her couch, the reason her dog is making frightened sounds behind a locked door. She has an instant dislike of him. This guy recons himself handsome, she thinks, but his eyes are too big and he’s got a crooked smile. She wishes he would stop smiling at her like that. </p>
<p> “Rhoda, this is Philip Harlan. He’ll be working with us at the station now.” </p>
<p>Doug has the solicitous tone in his voice he gets whenever he’s about to disappoint her. He motions for Rhoda to sit, but she doesn’t even remove her coat. For his part, Philip Harlan has made no motion to greet Rhoda. He just sits there…smiling. </p>
<p> “Hello, Mr. Harlan,” Rhoda says, mustering a weak show of respect-- the man is hardly in his mid-twenties and looks to have slept in his clothes. He wears a frayed, cigarette-burned sportcoat over a Motorhead t-shirt and jeans so worn out they almost appear white. Even for a progressive rock radio station it’s a sloppy look. “What is it you will be doing at our little station?” </p>
<p>Philip Harlan sniffs in amusement, saying nothing. Rhoda looks at Doug, raising her eyebrows almost imperceptibly. For Doug she might as well be screaming <em>What the fuck, asshole?</em> at neighbor-bothering volume. Doug flashes a quick smile and takes his own seat, an equally firm retort of <em>It’s a done deal</em>, <em>babe.</em> </p>
<p>“Philip is going to be heading up our news division.” </p>
<p>“Our what?” </p>
<p>“Alternative journalism. Not hippie stuff, though, I mean the real radical shit. Reports from the frontline underground, you know? Kind of things that make Cronkite shit in his pants.” Doug is looking at Philip as he says this, ever the suck up to the new hires. Philip, however, never takes his eyes from Rhoda. </p>
<p>“Watching the watchers,” says the man on the couch. </p>
<p>At this Rhoda sits down. “We’re a music station, Doug, we don’t have a news division.” </p>
<p>“Admittedly, it’ll be small. Just Philip and you.” </p>
<p>Rhoda goes rigid. “Why me?”</p>
<p> “Your show is already mostly talking…” </p>
<p>“Just stories, though, Doug, fictional stories. Shit I make up. I don’t know anything about journalism, radical or otherwise. Neither do you.” </p>
<p> “Come on, Rhoda, this fits right in with what we set out to do, remember? Progressive radio, anti-establishment. What Philip does is right in our wheelhouse.” </p>
<p>Philip Harlan leans forward. “We have a duty to the people, Rhoda, but we aren’t going to be stupid about this. Nothing happens overnight. We will gradually add facts to your little stories until everything we broadcast is the truth. In the beginning we will coat it in sugar, but in the end the world will be revealed as it really us. The signal must go out.” </p>
<p>Doug slaps his hands together in excitement “The signal must go out! Man, that’s great. Totally right on.” Rhoda looks Philip in the eyes. </p>
<p>“What are we talking about here? What truth?” </p>
<p>For the first time an aura of seriousness comes over Philip, and to her surprise Rhoda finds herself curious about what this weirdo has to say. </p>
<p>“For example?” </p>
<p>“Sure,” she agrees. “For example.” </p>
<p>“Do you know about biomedical research,” asks Philip in a low voice. “Do you know what they do below the ground in Silver Spring?” </p>
<p>Part 1:https://steemit.com/horror/@senderos/the-nightmare-song</p>
<p>Part 2: https://steemit.com/horror/@senderos/the-nightmare-song-part-2</p>
<p>Photo by Amanda Charchian</p>
<p>Story by Daniel Capuzzi, 2016. All copyrights apply. </p>
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