Killer FM

By Mac Galloway

Trapped in a job she loathes and a life she's desperate to escape, Sam's life takes a drastic turn when a listener calls into her radio show eager to play a twisted game.

 

As the nights grow the number of people Sam can trust dwindles. Can she find a way out of the game before she becomes a part of it?

 

After all, not all prisons are physical.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mac Galloway
• Release date: Mar 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224550449

Book preview

Prison is, as it always has been, a place to punish. Rightly or wrongly prisons have always existed to torment those who reside there. The greatest sting of the prison isn’t the physical confinement, but the sense of sapping stagnation fostered in their depths. The nagging feeling of the world moving on, forgetting those who reside there. The prisoner then, isn’t out of society so much as they are out of the flow of time.

Prisons take many forms, but very few are physical.

Samantha's eyes cranked open with begrudging effort. As her room came into focus it was much like she'd left it, that is to say, it was a dump. The late afternoon sun pounded against her heavy curtains making sleep impossible. Sitting up, she took her glass of water from the nightstand and surveyed the damage. Clothes were strewn about the floor in such a thick layer that she could walk from bed to ensuite without ever touching the floor.

The kitchen and living room matched her bedroom’s hiding-from-world motif. She hadn’t had a guest over since she moved in not because of shame but the pervasive cloud of apathy that wafted from every corner.

Samantha checked her watch, waited until the last possible moment, and made for the door with the most passable jacket within arm’s reach. The apathy from her apartment leaked into the hallways. Once brand new the shining trim had dulled, and the plush carpet scuffed. Even the other residents she passed on her way to the garage had been infected by the creeping rot. Bags under empty eyes that never quite meet the gaze coupled with a limp ‘hello’ before trudging onwards to whatever soulless grind constitutes a job.

The car in Samantha’s spot was a fitting epitaph for her suicidal plunge into the jaws of fame. Once sparkling new and exciting, now stale and slowly falling apart. Sliding behind the wheel Samantha barely summoned the energy to sigh.

The rot from her apartment hadn’t yet seeped onto the streets of Maidensborough. The streets were clean and the faces she did see belonged on strong and trim bodies with great shining smiles. More than mocking contempt, she felt jealousy. She envied their midweek smiles. Afternoon sun drenched the landscape in a glow that was completely wasted on Samantha. The sun warmed her arm in the open window, and she felt the tender warmth moving to her core. It wasn’t enough to break the melancholic grip on her spirit, but it was enough to power her to work one more time.

She pulled up at the radio station and climbed out. The station was clear and glistening. The lawn manicured and kept. The steel and the stone formed a great body from which a mighty spire of a radio mast rose. A fossil in the sediment of the digital age stood resolutely. It declared that it was and forever would be.

Samantha tactically avoided the eye contact of the people coming out of the building from the last show. Some excitedly chattered, others left with bowed heads and rushed gait. It was her prison, but it could’ve been any old office.

Moving down the main corridor the floor held her gaze until she heard the sound she had dreaded since she woke.

Samantha! A sickeningly bright woman verbally yanked her eyes up. She wore a chic outfit or whatever passed for chic now that Samantha had let go of the stream.

Where Samantha had rolled out of bed and headed into the station, Erika had spent every minute before her commute meticulously setting her appearance. Radio was a non-visual medium, but Ericka had never gotten that memo. She was the self-appointed heart and soul of the station, and she relished the duty. A relentless do-gooder and Samantha was her latest project.

Ericka, good to see you, Samantha failed to inject any enthusiasm in her voice How did your show go?

So good! Every show is such a rush! Her voice made Samantha want to crawl back inside herself.

No doubt, Samantha waved her off with an expression she was sure was a smile but could have just as easily been a grimace.

Erika’s voice bounced off the walls as Samantha continued through the hallway. The discomfort she felt talking to Ericka stemmed from jealousy in such a clichéd way it doubled her suffering.

The walls of the studio hallway charted its’ life from conception to the present day. Iconic presenters from the golden age, pioneers in the brand-new century all the way to her shiny poster. She never could bear to look her younger self in the