SmokeLong Quarterly

The night the radio whispers Mara Callahan’s name, static pulls at her. The DJ’s voice spins ribbons of words and weather. By 3 AM, she’s on the old highway the locals call the corpse road, her headlights brushing specters, their faces torn like flags.

She tells herself she’s only driving to get her charger. But she’s taken the back road—the one that remembers.

There. Tom’s motel looms around the bend. His motorcycle glints in the parking lot, a lure.

Through the window, a light glows. A silhouette twitches once, then twice. Mara knocks until her knuckles sting. No answer. Her palm rests on the thin wood. She wonders if the door might splinter under her weight. After a beat, she pulls an old grocery list from her bag, scratches her initials across it, and slides it under the door.

At the end of the hall, she leans into the ice machine, its blue hum shivering up her spine. The carpet smells like wet cardboard left too long in the rain. She waits—an orb weaver plucking strands.

***

Another night, months ago, in this same motel. They hid from a storm in room 112. The power flickered. They sat cross-legged on the carpet, eating peanut candies while insects drowned on the sill.

Tom lined up hotel pens like soldiers.

“You think everything’s a message,” he said.
“It is,” she told him. “Even silence.”
He tapped the first pen; it rolled toward her. “What does this say?”

“That you’re leaving.”

He looked past her, toward the lightning as it threaded across the panes. “Or that I’ve already gone.” Thunder rattled the casements. She traced a constellation on his wrist.

“What’s this one?” he asked.

“An escape route.”

He laughed softly, not meeting her eyes. “You’re a missed transmission. Like a radio between stations.”

***

Mara’s always chased signals. As a child, she pressed her ear to sockets, sure she’d hear astronauts. She mapped ceiling cracks into continents, convinced her fate hid within their borders. Even now—after therapy, after go-nowhere jobs and abandoned apartments—she hunts the quiet for clues. She’s broken into boyfriends’ emails, followed strangers from trains to their cars close enough so she could glimpse their panic when they catch her shadow. It isn’t jealousy. It’s hunger for the unlit parts of the map.

Maybe Tom’s inside with another woman. Or maybe there’s no Tom at all—only a lamp, her reflection ghosting the glass. He’ll soon be gone, backpack stuffed with the things she gave him: a sweater, two books, a bottle of salt.

She imagines him under another name in another state, recasting her as a story: There was this woman who thought radios spoke to her.

Or maybe he’s in that room right now, thumb hovering over her name on his phone, afraid she’ll answer, afraid she won’t. All she wants is to hear him repeat her name the way he used to before he moved out. It would prove she still exists in his life’s frequency. She wants to know what he calls her when he’s alone. And if he won’t say it, she’ll make him press her name out. Syllable by syllable.

Back on the landing, the corridor stretches, bricks fading from beige to a deep aquatic hue. Doors multiply, none with numbers. Even the ice machine is gone. A clerk drifts toward her, clutching a jar of moths, their wings wisping.

She turns a corner and discovers her apartment door between two vending machines. Her note peeks out from under it, but new words appear beneath her initials: OPEN ANYWAY. She touches the knob. A living thing—it knows her hand.

Down the hall, a radio crackles.