Page 52 - North Star Literary & Art Magazine

Us?
I was already going crazy. It was just me, trapped alone and doomed to die with only the thoughts in my head to keep me company. But I’d take my own life before I was driven to madness. There had to be something, something, in my tomb that would kill me. The cellar was filled with my family’s sentimental memories. I could manage to smother myself in my mother’s Easter sweater but there had to be something better.
Perhaps all I wanted was to die a dramatic death. I could easily bash my head against the concrete walls- but that was so brutal. If my body had stopped me from an instant death would it truly let me get away with something so prolonged?
With each box I searched the panic grew; sweater after sweater, old baby toys and art from my toddler days- it was all so useless! I gripped the last cardboard box from the shelf without thinking, so submerged in desperation that when I fell to the floor from it’s weight I could only think; that could've killed me.
I ripped open the top with a fever, bloodied nails leaving behind a red trail. All the adrenaline built in the brief fall dissipated within the span of a second. My heart plummet- ed to my toes.
I’d never seen anything like it before. Whatever it was was big and bulky, a blanket of metals and twisted writes stringed this way and that. It looked like something Dr. Frankenstein would’ve used to raise his monster.
It was a struggle to get it out on my own
my own, i’m alone, god, i’m alone
but I managed to prop it on top of the other boxes I had gone through. Now that it was out of it’s cardboard confines I knew exactly
what it was. My hands grasped the microphone, bringing it closer to my mouth. My fingers ghosted over the plethora of buttons, most of which I had no idea what they did, but that tiny little circle was a universal symbol. I flicked the switch on. The radio came to life.
“Hello?” a whisper left me. “Can anyone hear me?”
The radio crackled as I messed with its buttons, twisting knobs this way and sliding levers that way. No matter how many channels I tried, no matter how many frequencies I visited my question always went unanswered.
I wasn’t blind to the poetic nature of it all; that I, the girl who wanted so badly to die was condemned to live in a world alone. I lost count of the minutes
or was it hours? had it already been days?
I spent repeating the same thing;
“Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
“Please, I need help. Can anyone hear me?”
“My name is Sam Ollibee. I live in the big blue house on the corner of Cherry St.
and I’m trapped in my basement. Please, can anyone hear me?”
I found a new enemy within the static replies, their repetitive hisses were burned
into my eardrums. I contemplated putting the heavy radio on the highest shelf available to me and shaking it. Maybe like Newton’s apple my radio would fall just the right way, changing my life and ending it.
Logic won out, and I realized even though the radio was heavier than a bag of
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