Haunted Passages Short Story: “found this today” by Erin Lyndal Martin & Pris Sears

RadioHeads Private Lounge >> Direct Message >> Mar 8 2021,11:04
From: ✨ FrankieSay >> To: 🌥️ CloudJockey
Re: Songs in the static?
I saw your post about the tape you made from music you heard between stations. I know you don’t know me, but you should really check out the recent posts in Random on the Raresounds music forum. You have to make an account, but I promise it’s worth your time.
At one point, I would have offered a pretty penny for a copy of your tape, but not any more. I’m not the only person that’s going to find your post and make the connection – you should delete it AND the tape.

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🔥 hotfootluke | Jan 2, 2021 | found something today
check this out – I found it on my way home from the restaurant last night. it was in the gravel by the railroad tracks. a bunch of the tape was pulled out but there’s still a lot left inside. the case was a little further down. look at the photos, especially the j-card with the tracks written on it. it’s like a bootleg cassette but the track listing is weird. timestamps and a bunch of other numbers. anyone ever heard of band names like that?
📎 Attachments: <cassette.jpg> <j-card.jpg>
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Jan 3, 2021 | Re: found something today
lol probably one of your honky bucket’s finest dropped their conway twitty 8-track in the parking lot
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🔥 hotfootluke | Jan 3, 2021 | Re: found something today
shut up, jones. it was way up the railroad track, not even near work. it’s not a premade tape OR an 8-track – did you even look at the pictures?
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🥾 farfromhome | Jan 4, 2021 | Re: found something today
Those seven “band names” on the card look more like latitude and longitude with tape timestamps as well as dates and times. I’m not sure what that last little sequence is. Looks like they were written with different styles and pens.
I can’t see the notches but it looks like a high-quality tape, maybe metal. You could fix it with some scissors and tape. Cut off the crunched up part so it doesn’t get eaten again. See: repairing tapes for dummies
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🔥 hotfootluke | Jan 5, 2021 | Re: found something today
thanks, farfromhome. I think.

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🔥 hotfootluke | Jan 16, 2021 |  fixed it
I stole mom’s little eyeglasses screwdriver and fixed that tape I found a couple weeks ago. half of the first song is missing – a bunch of the tape on the reel was messed up too and I had to cut it out. so if those are timestamps on the j-card, they don’t match any more.
but what’s there is amazing. it sounds like it was recorded from over the air? there’s some static that cuts in and out and then the sound fades out completely in places, even on my earbuds. like it went out of range or something. but when it fades out it’s like there’s something else in the background. there’s a voice but it’s really quiet – I’ll have to get out my bose 700s and see if I can make it out. it’s all instrumental – I know there’s acoustic guitar but can’t tell if this is old or new. I got goosebumps, though. wild.
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Jan 16, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
why don’t you stop bragging about the gear you spend all your money on and just upload it for us? listening to you describe music you can barely hear is worse than bird’s “wonder man” – at least he was drunk and junk-sick, what’s your excuse?
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🥾 farfromhome | Jan 17, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Don’t you have a deck for ripping tapes?
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🔥 hotfootluke | Jan 18, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
I have a boombox with line out. but I just barely got this tape together enough to listen – kind of afraid to transfer it. it’d be lossy anyway.
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🥾 farfromhome | Jan 18, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Codec? Come on, hotfoot. You know how to do this.
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Jan 19, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
lol it’s just some lame cassingle that luke trainwalker doesn’t want to share. probly just some shit they sell at cracker hell he’s using to try to make his life look interesting
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🦑 modsquid | Jan 19, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Luke, are you forgetting about Basinkski’s Disintegration Loops? The sound of the tape degrading is the point. You must preserve the remnant and record it being used as a violin bowstring.
It’s like that series I did with the Cookie Monster on Laura Ashley fabric. Reinstating context as content.
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🔥 hotfootluke | Jan 21, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
lol it’s just an old tape someone recorded off the radio. I heard the faint voice better using my bose headphones, it’s someone doing a station announcement after the first song.
the j-card is definitely handwritten. like farfromhome said, it looks like different pens, a brown felt-tip pen, a black ballpoint, a couple in pencil. maybe different writers? I’m a dishwasher, not a CSI lab technician. it’s weird tho, it doesn’t name the songs or the stations. I don’t know what this is or why someone ripped its guts out and threw it out by the train tracks.
the music on this first song is hard to describe. it’s like – well, it’s kind of cozy and transcendent at the same time.
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Jan 21, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
like alice coltrane?
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🦑 modsquid  | Jan 21, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Sounds like a lot of Scandi classical. Is there a cello?
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🥾 farfromhome | Jan 21, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Deerhunter? What was the call sign?
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🔥 hotfootluke | Jan 22, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
it ends with harmonica, no shit. it’s in a minor key with these notes holding forever. when it got eaten up by static and disappeared I thought I was going to be physically sick.
@farfromhome, I couldn’t catch all the letters, it sounded like KFXX or KFKX or something like that.
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🥾 farfromhome | Jan 23, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
You must have heard wrong. KFXX is a sports radio station and KFKX hasn’t existed since the 1930s. At least we know it’s most likely from west of the Mississippi. Static means it was probably an AM band. The transmitter could have been pretty far away – if it was from a nighttime broadcast, skywaves let you pick up signals bouncing off the ionosphere hundreds of miles away from the source. Or more.
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✨ FrankieSay | Jan 25, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
I read a story about a song like that from some weird tape a long time ago. Lemme try to find it again.
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✨ FrankieSay | Jan 28, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
It’s in this thread on the Black Hole site. Somebody found a tape with songs like that and they posted about it for a couple weeks, then vanished and never posted again.
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 1, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Isn’t that just creepypasta?
Luke, I thought you were more into darkwave revival than spooky folk.
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🔥 hotfootluke | Feb 2, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
there’s nothing on snopes. maybe somebody made this tape as a prank? so people would look up that story and think it was real?
@modsquid, it’s not really folk or country. elements of them but it’s something else. it gets down inside you. feels old but I’ve never heard anything else like it.
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✨ FrankieSay | Feb 4, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
DUDE. It wasn’t just one person. Did you follow all the links off the Black Hole thread? There’s two other people who found tapes and then stopped posting or disappeared. One of them links to a RL missing person’s report. This one even mentions a “heart-shattering harmonica outro.”
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 5, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Culture jamming.
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🔥 hotfootluke | Feb 6, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
how is that culture jamming???
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 7, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Reflexive metonymy. C’eci N’est Pas Une Pastiche.
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Feb 7, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
@modsquid you’re full of shit
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 7, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
I have an autoimmune condition and I volunteer at a gallery ten hours a week. How can I be full of shit, jones?
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Feb 7, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
in your profile pic you’re wearing bigass bedazzled glasses and mickey mouse ears. i rest my case.
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🔥 hotfootluke | Feb 8, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
shut up, jones. which one of you planted this story? are you guys fucking with me because I don’t want to upload the tape? is FrankieSay somebody’s sock puppet?
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✨ FrankieSay | Feb 8, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
I’m the only person on this little forum who knows “Tainted Love” was originally recorded by Gloria Jones. I personally own the vocoder Ralf Hütter used on Electric Cafe. I don’t fuck around with music and I remember that thread because I thought it was fascinating and tried to find that tape for years. I am nobody’s “puppet” and have no trouble proving it.
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Feb 8, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
frankie say “flex
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 8, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Shut it, jones.
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🏄  davidnohasslehoff | Feb 10, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Hey, Frankie on the Black Hole forums said someone here found another tape like the one I commented about over there. That thread you necro’d was old as dirt, Frankie, and it’s been almost 20 years since the thing I talked about happened but I’ll tell it again.
When I was just out of high school, my friend back home was out at a diner and someone had left a tape on the table. She liked trying new music and took it. She didn’t mention any message, I don’t think there was a case or insert there. It was just the tape. I heard a little – tbh it was a little weird for me haha. She went missing maybe a couple months later.
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 10, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Were you the one who posted about the harmonica?
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🏄 davidnohasslehoff | Feb 10, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Nope, never heard the music lol. I just heard some, like, static and faint voices or something in between the songs that she played over the phone to me. That weirded me out enough. She was totally into the tape though. I mean, she was having a shitty time. Her parents were getting divorced and she was deciding where to go for college. And to be honest, we had been steady for a couple years in high school but weren’t really dating any more. I had already started college out of town. We still talked on the phone but it was long distance and I was pretty busy with school and stuff. The last time I saw her I was visiting my family for Christmas. She said the tape was comforting. She was glad that she picked it up. She disappeared not long after that.
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🥾 farfromhome| Feb 11, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
I’m sorry you lost her. Did she find out anything about the tape? Did she look up the songs or anything? How many songs were on it?
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🏄 davidnohasslehoff| Feb 12, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
I don’t know how many songs, maybe three or four? She just wanted to listen as far as I could tell, she didn’t say anything about trying to find out what they were about.  But back then we weren’t online all the time.
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✨ FrankieSay Feb 12, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Pshhhkkkkkkrrrr​kakingkakingkakingtsh​chchchchchchchcch​*ding*ding*ding*”
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🎷 jonesforjazzFeb 12, 2021 | Re: fixed it
upvoted!
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 12, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
How did you know it had to do with the tape?
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🏄 davidnohasselhoff | Feb 12, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
I didn’t. I don’t, really. But she was so into that tape near the end. All she wanted to do was listen to it. She talked about it like it was a life-line, getting her through some hard days. I heard later she was skipping school, had stopped applying to colleges. Then she was just gone one day. The tape was in the player in her room, all her things were there, but she was gone. It wasn’t until a lot later I saw that thread about a similar story on Black Hole. I never found out what happened to her.
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✨ FrankieSay | Feb 12, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Did the cops question you?
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🏄 davidnohasslehoff | Feb 13, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Oh yeah. Like, a lot. I took a polygraph, let them take a DNA swab, gave them anything they asked for. I figured if I refused anything, they’d just go after me harder. But I wasn’t even in town when she disappeared, I was back on campus.
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 13, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
They never found out anything?
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🏄 davidnohasslehoff | Feb 13, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
If they did, they kept it a secret.
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 13, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
What happened to the tape?
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🏄 davidnohasslehoff | Feb 14, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
I don’t know, her family hated me after all that. The cops were the ones that asked me about the tape. I told them where she found it, but I don’t think they followed up on it. I couldn’t ask her folks for anything and they would have thought I was crazy or trying to cover up something if I contacted them about some tape. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it at all even now lol but maybe it will help someone.
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🥾 farfromhome | Feb 14, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
You might not want to answer, but would you look at the photo hotfootluke posted here and let us know if any of the tracks’ coordinates match your friend’s last location? You can use this maps site to look up a place by its coordinates.
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🏄 davidnohasslehoff | Feb 14, 2021 |  Re: fixed it
OK, the coordinates on the fifth line are not too far away from our hometown. I don’t know if it means anything but it is pretty weird. I’d like to hear that song.
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 15 2021 |  Re: fixed it
Anyone heard from Luke?

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🔥 hotfootluke | Feb 18, 2021 |  here
I’m fine, jeez y’all don’t have a cow in my DMs. a ton of people are out sick at Cracker Hell and I have been working like crazy. I bought an old battery tape player at the thrift store so I could listen to the tape when I’m not at home. I listened on my way to work and I swear the vibe while I was working was totally different. the boss won’t let me have the player in the kitchen but it doesn’t matter, I’m starting to hear the first couple songs in my head. if I could write music I could write out the first song, the broken one, from memory. what there is of it. maybe the whole thing.
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Feb 18, 2021 |  Re: here
it’s called darkness.
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🔥 hotfootluke | Feb 18, 2021 |  Re: here
who’s to say it wasn’t? whatever it was, listening while I was walking home along the tracks last night felt so peaceful. I caught myself exhaling, really exhaling. I heard a train in the distance and it was sublime.
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 18, 2021 |  Re: here
You’re back! That vibe sounds excellent – but, did you read the other thread?
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🔥 hotfootluke | Feb 19, 2021 |  Re: here
yeah… I looked at the map site. the first song, the coordinates are near Chicago. the second one is some place I never heard of in Georgia. the fifth one that @davidnohasslehoff was talking about is near Miami.
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 19, 2021 |  Re: here
What does it sound like? The fifth song?
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🔥 hotfootluke | Feb 21, 2021 |  Re: here
ugh jones is just going to make fun of me again but I’ll try. it starts out with bells, little tingly, shimmery, tinkling. like walking through curtains of silver bells, with an ice cream truck far in the background. then water, waves washing in and out as a thumping almost disco rhythm fades in. it’s only 3 and a half minutes long but it’s pristine. the recording is the clearest one yet, just a little static at the beginning.
anyway, then it goes into this alternating thing where there’s a screaming electric guitar counterpointing some kind of fat woodwind, a clarinet maybe? they take turns, then the guitar goes dark, the woodwind gets shrill, they spin around and around each other and then it all falls apart into the little bells and water. that phases into a roar that morphs into this majestic hum, a chorus of voices all serene and strong holding harmonizing notes until it’s almost too much to listen to, like your brain is going to crack. but it isn’t too much. I can’t wait to listen to it again. there’s no lyrics or single voice in it at all.
I got a nice little AM radio, and a stack of metal tapes with all the extra hours I’ve been working. I ran a wire antenna up for it. you were right, @farfromhome, you can pull in stations from a long ways away late at night. I swear I heard a scrap of what might be the beginning of song number one when I was scanning, but it faded before I got the recorder set up. I won’t make that mistake again.
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Feb 21, 2021 |  Re: here
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 21, 2021 |  Re: here
You struck jones silent. Truly Strange Days.
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Feb 21, 2021 |  Re: here
shut up, squidbod. luke sounds like an absolute raving unit. he’s got the plague and is fever dreaming
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🥾 farfromhome | Feb 22, 2021 |  Re: here
@davidnohasslehoff does any of that sound familiar? @hotfootluke, Chicago is where KFKX was based but like I said earlier, that station hasn’t existed since the 1930s and was mostly known for gospel music back then. Unless your tape’s from a KFKX Ghost Radio special broadcast, it’s got to be a coincidence.
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🏄 davidnohasslehoff | Feb 23, 2021 |  Re: here
Man, I don’t know anything. Does that song description sound like her? Maybe? She liked the beach, she could be moody. I think mostly she was lonely. She didn’t feel connected to anybody. But why would it sound like her? She loved music but she wasn’t a musician. I never saw her touch a guitar or a clarinet.
The coordinates are weird. The whole thing’s weird. It’s been a long time, she’s been declared dead for like a decade now. I’d pitch that tape, though. That’s probably why it was all torn up. Those songs do something.
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 23, 2021 |  Re: here
Luke?
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🔥 hotfootluke | Feb 24, 2021 |  Re: here
nah, I won’t pitch the tape. somebody went to a lot of effort to make these songs, maybe a lot of people. and other people found them and recorded them. it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. and it’s helping me – work is chill, I get through double shifts like nothing, everything rolls off my back while I hear the music in my head. each song is so different from all the others. I don’t know what ties them together except each one is pure in its own way, the ultimate essence of what it is. like a diamond. I don’t know how else to describe it.
I’m not sick, jones, just really busy. I feel good – even when I stay up late taping, I don’t feel tired. it’s funny, the different songs keep getting stuck in my head, I can play them all back in my memory now. but the last couple days, there’s a new one. something I haven’t heard before. it isn’t from the tape, but I think it might be the best one yet. I wish I could get it out where you could hear it.
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🥾 farfromhome | Feb 24, 2021 |  Re: here
Radio waves carry energy as well as information.
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 24, 2021 |  Re: here
What’s that supposed to mean?
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🥾 farfromhome | Feb 24, 2021 |  Re: here
It’s just a fact. Doesn’t “mean” anything.

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🦑 modsquid | Feb 27, 2021 |  hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
@hotfootluke, we haven’t heard anything from you for a couple days. How’s the taping going?
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Feb 28, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
don’t you have anything better to do than stalk losers online?
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 28, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
jones you’re an ass. Don’t you know him IRL? You’re the one that told everybody where he works.
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Feb 28, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
i may be aware of his general meat location. doesn’t mean i’m going to go delivering love notes for you.
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🦑 modsquid | Feb 28, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
Screw you, jones, I’m just worried about him. Some friend you are. See if I let you in on a certain secret vinyl sale I heard about.
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Feb 28, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
i never claimed to be anybody’s friend but fine, i’ll check around
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🥾 farfromhome | Feb 28, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
Can you message me your phone number, jones? So we can check on you if you go dark too?
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Feb 28, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
i’m just going to cracker barrel. no, wait, i’m going to CRACKER BARREL, that’s why it’s scary
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🦑 modsquid | Mar 1, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
No word from jones or Luke?
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🥾 farfromhome | Mar 1, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
I think I made friends with both of them on Facebook. I’ll see if it says either is online…nope. Though Luke barely finished his profile. I’m not sure he ever used it.
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🦑 modsquid | Mar 1, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
I never talked to him anywhere but here. I didn’t know you were all friends on Facebook! I can’t imagine them posting pictures of dinners, concerts, vacations… cats?
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🥾 farfromhome | Mar 1, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
I never met either of them IRL. I was in a phase a couple years ago where I…collected “friends.” Don’t feel left out, you aren’t missing anything. As far as you could tell from Facebook, neither of them have much of a life.
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🦑 modsquid | Mar 1, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
Well message me if you see them.
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🦑 modsquid | Mar 3, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
@jonesforjazz? @farfromhome? anybody?
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🎷 jonesforjazz | Mar 7, 2021 |  Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
he never showed back up to work. his parents are going nuts. all of you need to stop dm’ing me about tapes, i don’t have any and if i did i’d have already burned them. i’m deleting my accounts.
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🚩 Moderator | Mar 7, 2021 |  LOCKED Re: hotfootluke, please pick up the white courtesy phone
This thread has been locked for abuse. 37 comments deleted by moderation.

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RadioHeads Private Lounge >> AM junkies
🌥️ CloudJockey >> Feb 26 2021,01:54 >> Songs in the static?
Do any of my fellow AM junkies ever hear songs fading in and out at night? An empty band you’re scrolling through suddenly has a wash of music like nothing you’ve ever heard? I hit one frequency tonight on the high end of the dial, nothing but a white wall of static and then a faint train whistle made me stop. It turned into heavy keyboards and a young man’s voice. I couldn’t get the words. I’m not sure if they were words or screams, but he sounded wild, joyous. It was grotesque but kind of gorgeous, if you like that kind of thing. I’m not sure I want to hear it again, but I caught some of it on tape. Let me know if anybody wants me to dub them a copy.

Erin Lyndal Martin is a creative writer, visual artist, and music journalist. Her fiction has appeared in sites including Wigleaf, Monkeybicycle, and Cease, Cows. Her online presence is at erinlyndalmartin.com or via Twitter @erinlyndal.

Pris Sears plays bass and has published newspaper columns and magazine articles in her home state. She recently made her first fiction sale; her horror story “The Pike” will be included in the forthcoming Novus Monstrum anthology from Dragon’s Roost Press.

Image: flickr.com

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