The Voice in the Static

It was quiet, too quiet for the middle of a warehouse parking lot. Kareem adjusted the old two-way radio on the security booth desk. The hum of the fluorescent light overhead was steady, almost soothing, but the static on the line crackled sharply in the silence.

He rubbed his eyes and leaned closer. A whisper threaded through the stati faint, almost polite. At first, he thought it was interference, maybe the antenna catching a neighbor’s frequency.

Then he heard it more clearly.

“Kareem…”

His stomach tightened. That was no interference. He scanned the empty lot. Nothing. Just his reflection in the darkened window and the glow of the booth’s single monitor. He shook his head. “I’m imagining things,” he muttered.

The nights had grown long since Sami’s death. His younger brother, gone last year, in a way Kareem had tried not to think about. He still remembered the way Sami would knock softly on his door at midnight, hoping to talk. And he remembered not waking up in time. That night had haunted him quietly, a thin shadow in every unremarkable day.

He told himself the voice was nothing but a trick of static and sleep deprivation. He returned to his notes, logging cars as they drove past, listening to the quiet hum of the warehouse settling.

The next night, it happened again. This time, the whisper was different clearer, softer, familiar.

“Don’t leave.”

Kareem froze, gripping the desk. The voice it wasn’t just words. It carried a weight, a cadence only Sami’s voice could have carried.

He spoke into the empty booth. “Who’s there?”

Silence, followed by a crackle. Then the static shaped into a sentence he hadn’t heard since childhood:

“You worry too much.”

Kareem’s hands trembled. He sank into the chair, stunned. Something was threading itself through the interference, through his own exhaustion, through the long months of guilt he’d been hiding even from himself.

By the third night, the voice had become insistent. Kareem’s fatigue was heavier now, a leaden weight dragging at the edges of his mind. The whispers knew him too well. They repeated things only he and Sami had shared promises, memories, jokes no one else could know.

He sat, hands on the console, listening to the fragments.

“Why didn’t you open the door that night?”

He had tried to bury it, but the memory rose again, sharper than before. That night. Sami had come to him. He had not heard the knock. He had not acted. And now it seemed the voice wasn’t just a memory, it was a summons.

Kareem tried to explain it logically. He checked the antenna on the roof, called the day-shift technician, even searched online for interference patterns. Nothing should have carried the voice of his dead brother to him. It should have been impossible.

Yet, every night, the radio hummed and whispered. Kareem spoke aloud the things he had kept locked away: the guilt, the grief, the exhaustion that made sleep impossible. With every word, the static seemed to pause, as if listening.

One night, he climbed to the roof to inspect the antenna one more time. The wind was cold, whipping his jacket around him. A nearby telecom tower blinked lights into the distance. He realized the signal could bounce from there maybe it had. Maybe it carried snippets of his own thoughts and memories back to him, warped and filtered by the electronics around him.

He laughed quietly, bitterly. So it wasn’t a miracle. Not really. Just wires, frequency waves, interference. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And yet…

When he returned to the booth, the static crackled softly. A single, fragmented word formed, delicate and unmistakable.

“Go…”

Kareem froze. The source didn’t make sense. By logic, it shouldn’t be there. But the word felt personal, urgent, patient. It felt like someone waiting for him to hear to decide.

He didn’t respond. He simply sat, listening, letting the silence that followed stretch long. The radio hummed softly, no longer urgent, no longer accusing.

The next morning, the booth was empty when the day guard arrived. The radio sat quietly on the desk. Kareem had left without a word. No one saw him again that day, and no one knew how long he had sat there listening to nothing and everything all at once.

Sometimes, when the antenna crackles just right, the guards say they hear something in the static. A faint whisper that seems almost real. Sometimes, it sounds like a name. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

Kareem didn’t know if the voice was real. Or if it had always been a reflection of what he carried inside him guilt, grief, love, memory.

Either way, he had listened.

And that, perhaps, had been enough.