Only Static Comes After

None of us talked about it again that night.
We finished the shift. We filed the logs. We handed off to the morning team.
I walked out into the Providence dawn, the sky going pale grey over the river, the mill buildings casting long shadows across the water.
I stopped on the bridge and stood there for a while.
I had always taken overnight shifts. Every job I’d ever held. I’d told myself it was the pay differential, the quieter commute, the particular quality of focus that came with empty offices and empty streets.
Standing there in the early light, I understood for the first time that I’d been choosing the dark hours for a reason I had never examined.
The voice knew what I was before I did.
I walked the rest of the way home as the city woke up around me, and I did not look at any of the radios in the shop windows I passed, though I felt each one as I went by, humming at frequencies just below hearing.
And I knew, without question, that they felt me too.

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About the Author

Adrian Chervinsky — studied Criminal Psychology not to catch them but loose the cops tail … Dark narrow streets you prefer to avoid? He calls them home.

— Adrian Chervinsky

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August 8, 2026

10min-stories