This piece is in response to this week’s Carrot Ranch prompt to write a 99 word story that includes something heard on the radio. It can be from any station or era. What is heard? A song, announcement, ad? Think of how radio connects people and places. Go where the prompt leads!
The radio kills people. I was 12 years old when the radio killed JFK. Stunned, I rushed out to tell my father. He was annoyed that I’d interrupted him mowing the lawn and just grunted and continued his grass cutting. I was 13 when the radio killed Winston Churchill and National Geographic published a floppy plastic record of his funeral service. I was 29 when the radio killed John Lennon, who I was hearing on the radio as one of the Beatles in the same year that the radio killed JFK. I’m convinced the radio is a serial killer.
Six Crooked Highways 
I can see why someone would feel that the radio would seem like a serial killer. Good one!
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Thanks, Susan
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Excellent! The radio, the television, social media… I couldn’t agree more.
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Channeling the Grim Reaper?
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No, just avoiding the cliched responses 😉
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Excellent, and well written, Doug. The radio plays a big part in my life. After reading your piece of flash fiction, I wonder if it’ll kill us all?
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Thanks, Hugh. It was more metaphoric about how we hear bad news and how it affects us. Somehow modern media doesn’t seem to have the same impact. I don’t know about you but I doubt that I’ll ever be famous to enough to die that way. 😉
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When the radio was one of only a few ways to get news, I can only imagine how important it was to listen to the radio, Doug. However, it was also a great source of entertainment. I can’t imagine what it must have been like all sitting around a radio for entertainment. I’m guessing a little like all sitting around a TV (before the days of hundreds of channels)? Not that families do that now. With catch-up TV, recording and social media, it’s taken away yet another means of a family all getting together.
I like the way you approached the prompt.
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Indeed, Hugh. We sat around and ‘watched’ the radio as though we knew TV was coming. https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/06/28/article-2009161-0BF84187000005DC-100_233x257.jpg
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Wouldn’t that be a story, if broadcasts were interrupted for a good news flash, if people huddled by a radio to hear that breaking good news, if decades later people reminisced about where they were on a particular good news day. More birth announcements, life celebrations, not violent deaths.
Serial killer radio- good story, Doug!
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Thanks, Davery. Trouble is if people gathered around the radio for birth announcements, celebrations etc there might be unseemly dancing, alcohol consumption or any number of other sins committed. 😉
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True, but for all the right reasons.
Just wrote a second one somewhat inspired by yours perhaps.
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I noticed. They shouldn’t have turned on that radio. 😉
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A serial killer. Yes, it does seem that way. If we didn’t hear it, like the tree falling in the forest, would it be true?
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Very creative. Now we have multiple electronic assassins in our homes. No wonder people are feeling stressed.
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Thank you and indeed, Carol.
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