writing snippet - radio (Chayla)

Chayla grinned wolfishly as the last haunting strains of music faded into the air. The DJ's voice crackled across the speakers of the 30-year old transistor radio, announcing the time. "It is now 12:14, and you're listening to the Witching Hour with Elizabet—the witchy woman herself—right here on WDTZ; music so good, it's spooky. That was Bjork you just heard, Regina Spektor just before it, and Lach before that. I'll start the music back after this PSA from the Center for Disease Control, and we'll see what kind of magic we can make with the next set, starting with...well, we'll just find out won't we?"

Chayla hated the breaks. Not that she particularly cared for the music, but the breaks were worse. The Witchy Woman put together incredible playlists, and played it like she thought of them off the top of her head. Chayla had never heard a disc jockey pull that off as well as she did, and she had listened to a lot of radio shows over the past few years. Elizabet never really played music that Chayla liked, but that was beside the point. Chayla didn't even want to try to imagine the hours she must spend going through the station's catalog. It was rarely the kind of music she liked, but it always worked. And more importantly, it always read.

The temptation to fidget with the radio dial was more and more powerful, but Chayla didn't dare - on this old junker, she'd never be able to get the station back. It was an accident she'd found this station in the first place, while looking for a local classic rock station James had told her about. One that didn't suck, he'd said. Besides, by then the PSA was almost over. That was the great thing about these little stations; they played commercials about as often as ska bands played sonatas.

The Witchy Woman's voice came back on the air, and she started to talk in the next song. Something she'd never heard of by Beck. Chayla huddled even closer over the card table, her ear trained intently to hear the opening riff while she unconsciously fidgeted with the ballpoint pen in her hand. The table was littered with scraps of scribbled paper, snack food wrappers, an torn-up cigarette pack, empty cans of diet Pepsi, and a deck of tarot cards carefully divided into seven different stacks.

Those were just for double-checking, though, and Chayla hardly ever used them any more. Somehow, Elizabet's playlists always gave good readings.