VIKKI

Greetings comrades and clowns! Once again I have clawed my way out of the dark grave of sleep, scrubbed the dirt from my nails, and grasped my mic tightly to bring you my voice - a light in a dark cave. A dark sun in a blinding void. To those of you who search the darkness, who wander the light, and who stagger through the shades of grey and shafts of dusty hues in between.

From my timeline to yours… this is Radio Other.

(FUNKY INTRO MUSIC)

VIKKI

Welcome back listeners! Here in the studio today, we have my friend, Ellie-

ELLIE

Richards.

VIKKI

You don’t have to interrupt me.

ELLIE

You always get my name wrong, so I figured it was better to save time.

VIKKI

But the mispronunciation is the comically charming quirk of our relationship! We can’t lose it.

ELLIE

Vikki… shut up.

VIKKI

… Okay, fine.

[SIGH]

So, today we’ve decided to split up. I know that you used to do that on the Sceptic Screen sometimes, right Jelly ellie? You’d go off and root around in the towns dusty archives for two hours while they recorded boring shots of yelling at each other about not seeing ghosts.

ELLIE

It was a bit more complicated than that, you know-

VIKKI

I’m sticking with my interpretation!

That’s what we’re doing today. I’m going to be going out and taking down some of the posters, trying to do some live interviews with the townsfolk in the process, kind of a smooth detective thing. Meanwhile, you can go through my notes and listen to some of the interviews I’ve already done.

E, sounding like she would rather be throwing herself into the void: Sounds thrilling.

VIKKI

It will be! Dontcha just know it.

ELLIE

All too well….

VIKKI

In the middle left drawer of my desk, you should find the stack of tapes marked with the names of the interviewees. Below that’s all my notes I’ve compiled. I just want a second pair of eyes on them.

E, tired: Got it.

VIKKI

Perfect.

Oh, and I’ll be taking a tape recorder with me so we can get some good content of my travels as well— the Otherphone stays here with you, so make sure you talk to yourself a good amount so it’s not boring. I mean, I know you already talk to yourself plenty, so I guess its more the boring part I’d worry about. Don’t be boring. Okay?

E, 100% done: Got it.

VIKKI

Good! Now, I’ll see you in a bit. And to all the lovely listeners- I’ll see you in no time.

—--

[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS ON]

VIKKI

I lied.

I’m not actually going to take down the posters. Or interview anyone. Well… at least not about anything relevant to the case.

…

I’ve been relistening to that tape I found from last week, the one with Lizzy on it.

I didn’t remember any of that. The thing with the piano- I realised I barely remembered anything about that.

And I…

I don’t know why, but I feel like if I’m going to solve whatever is going on with all of… this… I need to figure out whats going on with me first.

I need to be sure it isn’t connected.

[PAUSE]

I’m going to start at my old house. I know my parents said they didn’t want to see me, but I’m sure as long as I don’t try and go inside or anything it’ll be okay. I just want a point of reference, so I can try and find that clearing.

[FOOTSTEPS]

Lizzy’s grandma used to tell us stories about the woods when we would go over to her house. She had this lovely one story cottage. She used to knit blankets, and hang them on the walls so they didn’t look so blank.

I’ve always hated blankness. I like colour, life. Things that have energy in them.

The more simple something is, the more it feels like it’s a symbol. Symbols are concrete, representative. I don’t want to represent anything. I don’t want to be… confined to a meaning.

Lizzy’s grandmother used to work for the Entity. She wasn’t allowed to talk about the details, but it was clear from the way she kept her gun cabinet polished that she was not someone who had known peace.

I wonder if her work changed how she felt when her daughter took her life, along with the other seventy members of the cult she’d belonged to. Anthony and Lauren Dowell.

Lizzy didn’t talk about her parents much. I never could tell whether it was because she was too sad, or because she wasn’t sad enough. I mean, can you really mourn someone who you barely knew? They were her parents, but from the way she did talk about it, in those moments she wanted to, they never were her family.

Lizzy’s grandmother used to tell us stories about the woods.

I don’t remember a lot of them that well.

I’ll try my best to tell at least one, though. Otherwise, it’ll just be me walking through the trees this whole time… that wouldn’t be very exciting for either of us, would it? No, it would not.

The one tale she used to tell that I loved was called the Tale of the Fish. Tale, as in “Tail,” but also “Tale”. Out loud that probably doesn’t make sense, so just compare the two spellings.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named River, who wanted more than anything to live forever.

One day, she was walking along a forest trail, near the base of the mountain, when she heard something call out to her.

It was a voice, singing out from the maw of a blackened cave. River approached it, trying to make out the words.

The song was a message. It told her that it could give her what she wanted more than anything - immortality - if she was willing to help it travel back down to the Valley it had come from. That Valley was Uncanny Valley.

River said that it sounded like a good deal, and the voice told her to follow it if she wishes to know more. So River walked, through the tunnels, up the steep murky silence of the mountain caves, following that lulling voice.

When she came to the top, there sat a small circle of stalactites hanging down above her head. She stepped into the centre, and the voice came clearer than ever.

River asked what exactly she had to do to help it travel.

And the voice of the mountain said that all she had to do was create a passage. It told her that it could make her immortal right now, if she promised to make a trail down the side of the mountain.

River agreed. Her heart leapt into her throat, delighted at the prospect. It seemed too good to be true.

As she said yes, one of the stalactites shuddered, and broke off, plunging into her throat. River screamed, but all that came out was a wet bubbling.

Blood, cold and blue from the thin mountain air, poured down her shirt, and onto the ground. River fell to her knees, waiting to die. She was sure it had been a trick.

She kept on bleeding.

Slowly, the blood filled the small dip of ground she sat in. Then, it began to flow faster, trickling down the side of the mountain.

River waited to die.

She did not.

She could not move. She could not speak. She could not gasp in pain.

And she could not die.

Her body just kept bleeding, the blood carving a path down the mountain. And as River’s eyes watched the steady stream, she knew she had not been tricked.

What was done was done.

That’s the line that Lizzy’s Nona always ended with.

What’s done is done.

I always thought the story was interesting because it didn’t have any real morals to it. No clear message. There’s always meaning if you cherry-pick, but on the surface…

It seems more like regret than fear. Not like a warning.

I’m not afraid of death. But that story…

It made me scared of the alternative.

[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS OFF]

—-

[OTHERPHONE CLICKS ON]

ELLIE

Well that was an interview with Rangi Sielu... and more importantly, fifteen minutes of my life wasted. [SARCASTICALLY] I have learned nothing, so thank you Vikki, you useless waste of oxygen…

Okay, that was mean.

But do I really care at this point?

…

[SIGH]

…Next up, Atticus Lorraine.

I hate this job.

[OTHERPHONE CLICKS OFF]

—-

[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS ON]

…. Here we are again.

A house.

I don’t know whether to call it a home.

It’s two stories, white vinyl siding and…

[SHAKY BREATH]

… what happened to it?

The windows are dirty. Cracked.

The paint is peeling, and… there are vines. Thick ivy vines, climbing up like reaching fingers. (a bit panicked) Like they’re waiting for the glass to shatter, to reach inside and choke the place.

This is not the place where I was raised.

[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS OFF]

[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS ON]

I’m going in.

[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS OFF]

[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS ON]

[KNOCKING ON DOOR]

[PAUSE]

VIKKI

Hello? Is there… anyone there?

[VIKKI TRIES THE HANDLE]

It’s… it’s unlocked. I…

[THE DOOR OPENS]

I’m home.

[They walk, the floorboards creaking beneath their feet]

This is… this is the front entrance.

If I go down the hallway, there will be the staircase to the right… up to the second floor.

That’s where Jasons room was… is. It will still be there. But it won’t be Jason’s anymore.

…Will it?

When does something stop belonging to someone?

Is it when you leave? When the last of your belongings is removed? When the last scuff of old heels fades from the floors? When the wood rots away the scratched names? The paint peels the pencilled in height markings off the wall?

Or is it just human vainglory I’m talking through? Trying to assume that our hands could ever truly possess a thing? That purchase equals property?

I… I don’t know

I am going to tell you what I remember, so I can’t forget it again.

…

I am ten years old, and I am tired of walking.

I do not belong to anything, and I have no belongings…. No. I have a microphone that owns me, and I own it, and neither of us speak.

…

There is a two story house ahead of me, white vinyl siding, the windows polished and casting golden light out into the evening air. I walk up to the side, peering through.

There is a mother and father at a table, and there is their son sitting between them.

I decide to belong to them.

They do not decide to own me.

…

[SOUND OF STEPS]

There used to be photos hanging on the walls of these stairs. They had so many photos. Photos of the family, of the family’s dog, Max, before he passes away when I am 13. They kept them in pleasantly frames, pretty and ideal.

…

In the second floor hallway, there was a wide, scalloped mirror, hung in the centre of the wall. Framed in gold.

I am ten years old, and I am looking at myself in the mirror.

It is the closest I will get to being in a photo on their walls.

They called me a Sidh, a changeling.

I do not know what they mean, but I know that I have done something wrong.

I stare at the person in the wavy mirror surface, and I wonder when their cheeks will hollow out like a skull, and their wiry limbs will fill out with enough blood that they don’t see a ghost in their place.

…

The mirror still hangs there.

Tabitha, the woman I call my mother, will find me in the hallway soon. She will hurt me. And I will smile, because at least now she sees me as human enough to touch with her bare hands.

I’m staring at myself in this mirror, and I see a ten year old face staring back at me.

They are still smiling.

They think they are loved.

They think that they have the right to demand love from strangers. They think that they have have the right to expect to be loved.

They do not understand what this world is. They do not understand that love is a conditional thing, and that they will never be loved completely or perfectly. That they are not someone who deserves it.

….

Lizzy’s Nona said that breaking a mirror is seven years of bad luck.

…

[SOUND OF A MIRROR SHATTERING]

[TAPE RECORDER CLICKS OFF]

[OTHERPHONE CLICKS ON]

[THE DOOR OPENS]

GEORGE

Hey, Vikki, I-

[ELLIE SQUAWKS IN SURPRISE]

ELLIE

George!

G, startled: Oh! Sorry, I thought- Is Vikki in?

E, a bit flustered but collecting herself: No, no. They disappeared off into the woods with their tape recorder thing. (calm again) Told me to stay here with their microphone thing and go through these recordings. (she laughs nervously)

G, exasperated: Of course they did.

ELLIE

Um, do you need them? If you need me to take a message or something I can write it down, I just-

G, cutting her off: No, no. It’s fine. I just wanted to check in on them. Make sure they weren’t… getting into too much trouble.

E, a bit annoyed: Good luck with that. I’m starting to think that the only reason they’ve taken an interest in this is BECAUSE of the trouble.

GEORGE

Why are you working with them then?

ELLIE

I… *she pauses, considering* I don’t really know. Maybe because they’re being helpful?

G, amused: Honestly, I can’t see how they’ve been helping. This place is a mess.

ELLIE

Tell me about it. (shuffling papers) Turns out Vikki pretty much kept everything they’ve ever touched. They have a drawer full of just… nature things. Like, leaves and sticks and weird shaped rocks.

GEORGE

Goddamn. Do you need a hand?

ELLIE

What? I mean- um, yeah! That’d- That would be nice.

GEORGE

Got it. (he takes a deep breath) So, where do we start?

ELLIE

Well, I was just about to play the Leila Singh interview.

GEORGE

So I get the feeling that I’m gonna have to ask if I want context?

ELLIE

Oh, right, sorry. Um, Vikki’s been doing these recorded interviews with people who have information about the stuff we’ve found. So far, not much of note. I’m pretty sure they recorded basically anyone who would talk to them for any reason. There’s a whole one of Ted - he’s the guy who works in the office across from them - coming in to ask about when we’re getting more coffee filters for the break room.

GEORGE

Not exactly a startling take on the fate of humanity.

ELLIE

My point exactly. (Pause) I guess if you want to start, you could go through some of the notes they took? Their handwriting is… unique.

GEORGE

God, don’t remind me. I used to do a penpal thing with them in Enochian back in, I don’t know, eighth grade? (now amused) Nearly incomprehensible.

[ELLIE LAUGHS]

ELLIE

Ready to see what else Vikki thought was important?

GEORGE

I don’t see me really having a choice here.

ELLIE

That’s probably right.

(The tape slides in)

[OTHERPHONE CLICKS OFF]

—-

[OTHERPHONE CLICKS ON]

[GEORGE LETS OUT A BREATH]

E, slowly disbelieving: … fuck.

—