The Radio

She heard a cackling through the radio. Leaning forward, she turned the dial up to hear it better. No….no, just a crackling, she thought to herself, turning down the volume. It was getting late. She pulled her car into the parking lot. A blinking MOTEL sign stood over the entrance. Slamming her car door, she got out and walked toward the glass window. A register, old and dusty, was barely discernable through the glass. She turned around and looked back into the parking lot. The lights around the sign were no longer blinking - they weren’t even lit.

She sighed. I must be more tired than I thought. Glancing around and seeing no one, she walked back to her car and climbed into the backseat. Just a few hours…. And she drifted off to sleep.

The Jukebox

He sat around the campfire, watching his grandchildren play. They darted in and out of the shadows, playing hide and seek. He had owned this land since he’d been born, passed down to him from his father and grandfather before him. One day, these grandchildren would inherit this land, and the stories that went along with it.

‘Kids!’ he hollered over the crackling of the fire, and the squeals of laughter echoing in the darkness. ‘Come here! I’ve got a story for ya’…’

He knelt down from the log he was sitting on, and turned a knob on the jukebox next to him. It was an old one, a radio, mostly, but crafted differently than the ones on the shelves at the stores nowadays. This one he’d inherited, and it was one he wouldn’t part from, until he was dead, and a ghost in one of his own stories.