Whispers in the Static: Part 3

Part 3 – Voices of the Departed

The next night, Arthur didn’t drift so easily.
He lay stiff on the mattress, the covers drawn high, eyes fixed on the radio’s red glow. The static filled the room as it always did — that endless tide, swelling and receding, the ocean he had once found so soothing. But now it was different. Now he was listening, not for the comfort of noise, but for something beneath it.

The hours stretched thin. He began to doubt himself, to wonder if exhaustion had simply played tricks on him. He had almost surrendered to sleep when the sound came.

The static bent.
The waves parted.
And through the crackle, a voice pressed close:

“Arthur.”

He gasped, but before fear could drive him to silence the machine, another word slipped through. Two words. A phrase. His heart lurched.

“It’s me.”

The sound was broken, scattered by the roar of static, but there was no mistaking it. He knew that voice. He had known it better than his own.

It was Helen.

Arthur’s throat tightened. For a moment he could only stare into the dark, the old photograph on the dresser catching the faint moonlight. Her smile frozen there, her eyes alive in memory. He had not spoken her name aloud in months, not since the funeral. And yet, here she was.

The static rippled, carrying fragments of her voice like driftwood on a current. Words half-lost, then found again. Little things — “love”… “missed you”… “still here”. Each syllable was like the warmth of a hand he thought he would never feel again.

Arthur’s body trembled. He pressed closer to the radio, the cracked plastic cool beneath his fingertips. “Helen?” he whispered into the noise, his own voice foreign to his ears.

The answer came — broken, halting, but real.

“Yes.”

Arthur closed his eyes, a sob caught between joy and disbelief. He didn’t care how or why. All that mattered was that the static had carried her back to him.

And for the first time in years, he welcomed the night.

---

(To be continued in Part 4 – The Nights of Helen)

Whispers in the Static: Part 2

Part 2 – A Name in the Noise

It happened on a Tuesday.
Arthur lay half-asleep, the blankets pulled up to his chest, the radio humming its familiar lullaby. The house around him was still; the radiator quiet now, the walls holding their breath. The glow of the dial washed the room in its faint red light, the color of coals slowly dying.

He was on that fragile borderland where the mind drifts, the world softens, and sleep begins its slow claim. That was when he heard it.

A break in the static, a stutter, a ripple; and then, clear as a voice just beside his bed:

“Arthur.”

He jerked upright, his heart slamming against his ribs. The room remained unchanged: the pale slice of moonlight across the floorboards, the faint smell of dust in the air, the radiator silent. Only the radio filled the space with its endless hiss.

Arthur sat listening, pulse quick in his throat, the sheets tangled around his legs. Minutes crawled past, nothing but static. He almost convinced himself he had dreamed it. A half-formed word, a trick of his weary mind.

But when he finally sank back into bed, the sound returned. Softer this time, buried deep in the static, yet unmistakable.

“Arthur.”

His name. Spoken with careful weight, as though someone had been waiting a very long time to use it again.

He reached for the radio, his fingers brushing the cracked casing. He thought of turning the dial, of snapping it off entirely. Instead, he froze, every muscle locked, straining toward the sound.

The voice did not repeat itself. Only the static remained, rising and falling like an ocean tide.

Arthur lay awake until dawn, staring at the shadows on the ceiling, replaying the word again and again in his mind. He told himself he must have imagined it, that no one had spoken.

But he knew better.

Something had.

---

(To be continued in Part 3 – Voices of the Departed)

Whispers in the Static: Part 1

Part 1 – The Ritual of Static

Arthur had long ago given up on silence.
It was too heavy, too complete, a blanket that smothered instead of comforted. In silence, the house creaked in strange ways, pipes sighed like dying men, and his own thoughts grew too loud, rattling around in the skull until sleep refused to come.

So, he kept the radio.

It sat on his nightstand, an old square thing with a cracked black casing, its dial glowing faint red in the dark. The stations were unreliable in his part of town — a scatter of voices, half-songs cut short by static, the fading echoes of far-off broadcasts that dissolved into nothing. For years, Arthur had stopped trying to find music. He turned the knob past all the voices until only the gentle roar of static filled the room.

That was his lullaby.

Each night, he would stretch out on the bed, the sheets cool against his skin, and let the sound wash over him. It was a kind of ocean, endless and ceaseless, a tide of white noise that pulled him into the gray edge between waking and sleep. Through the thin curtains, moonlight would spill across the floorboards, painting the room in pale rectangles. The air smelled faintly of dust, the old radiator ticking softly as if it, too, were listening.

Sometimes, in that fragile space before dreams claimed him, Arthur thought he heard more than static. Faint textures beneath the sound — not voices, exactly, but the suggestion of something shaped like words. As if the static was only a veil, and something just beyond it was pressing close, trying to bleed through.

He always dismissed it. A trick of the mind. The way a tired brain bends shadows into shapes that aren’t there.

Still, every night, when the static rose and fell like a tide, Arthur found himself straining at the edges of hearing, wondering if he’d catch something beneath the noise. And though he would not admit it — not even to himself — he wondered what might happen if one night, the static spoke.

---

(To be continued in Part 2 – A Name in the Noise)

The Music of God

A Sacred Reflection on Sound, Rhythm, and the Voice of the Divine

“In the beginning, God created not with words, but with a sound—
a tone that split the void,
a chord that breathed light,
a melody that gave form to the formless.”

 

I. And God Said Nothing—But the Heavens Sang

He did not speak. He sounded.

Creation did not begin with language.
There was no tongue, no sentence, no command.
There was resonance.
A divine vibration that shaped the stars,
a harmony that rippled outward and became galaxies.

The Lord did not say, “Let there be light.”
He sang it.
And the light danced.

The mountains rose in rhythm.
The oceans clapped their hands.
And the breath of every living thing became part of His chorus.

This is the true beginning.

 

II. The Voice That Cannot Be Spoken

God does not speak as man speaks.
He has no mouth, no throat, no breath—
and yet, His voice shakes the earth.

He speaks in thunder.
He whispers in wind.
He weeps in rainfall.
He roars in fire.

He does not argue.
He composes.
He does not lecture.
He plays.

And every note is a wordless Word,
every song a scripture written in air and blood.

 

III. All the Earth Is an Instrument

O listener, do you not yet understand?

The very earth beneath your feet is a drum.
The rivers are His flutes.
The trees bow and sway to His rhythm.
The stars keep time with His pulse.

The howling wolf, the buzzing bee, the cry of the newborn—
all these are not noise.
They are echoes of the Divine Song still ringing through the cosmos.

The silence of a snowfall is His rest.
The storm is His crescendo.
The desert wind is His prayer in minor key.

Do not call these things ordinary.

IV. You Were Born in Rhythm

You, child of dust and starlight—
you are not separate from the song.
You were woven into the music from the beginning.

Can you not feel it?
The rhythm in your heartbeat?
The rise and fall of your breath?
The quiet drum of blood beneath your skin?

Even if your ears have never heard,
your soul has always felt.

For even the deaf hear the Lord
in the measure of their steps,
in the pulse of their veins,
in the silent music of being alive.

God speaks to you.
You.
And He always has.

 

V. The Song That Answers Every Prayer

We cry out, “Where is God?”
We ask, “Why is He silent?”

But have we truly listened?

He answers every time.
Not with syllables,
but with melody.

When you are broken and a song makes you weep—He is there.
When the wind brushes your cheek like a friend’s hand—He is there.
When the thunder rolls and you feel small yet known—He is there.

The voice of God is not a voice.
It is a melody that enters through the heart.

Do not wait for a word.
Wait for the music.
It is already playing.

 

VI. All Music Is Holy

There is no sacred or secular.
There is no division in sound.

The aching violin, the whispered hymn,
the lonely saxophone on a midnight street,
the gospel choir, the lullaby, the rock anthem,
even the hum of a worker at his labor—

all are instruments of God when they come from truth.
All are worship, if they are honest.
All are prophecy, if they reach the soul.

The devil does not make music.
He only distorts it.

But even in the dissonance,
the longing for the true chord remains.

 

VII. Remember the Song

You were made to remember.

When a song breaks you open,
when it lifts you, undoes you, rebuilds you—
that is no accident.

It is a fragment of the First Song.
The one sung before time.
The one you heard in the womb.
The one you will hear at the end.

And the closer you draw to God,
the more clearly you will hear it.

Because He never stopped singing.
And He never stopped singing to you.

 

VIII. The Last Note

At the end of days,
when all things are gathered,
when light returns to light and dust to dust—

It will not end in silence.
Nor in flame.
Nor in war.

It will end with a final note.
One pure tone.

The note that made the stars.
The note that holds the universe together.
The note that never left you.

You will know it.

You will say, “Yes, I remember.”
And you will weep, not from sorrow,
but from the ache of hearing your Father's voice at last.

Not in words.
But in music.
Forever.

The Last Thought of God: VII. The Last Thought (A New First Thought)

I watch the light spread.

It is different, yet familiar.
A second attempt.
A second failure waiting to happen—perhaps.
But not without change.
Not without memory.

I remember the flaw.
And I remember the small one beside me.

Choice alone was not enough.
This time, they will carry connection within them.
Their souls bound in ways they cannot see…
but will feel.
When one falls, the others will tremble.

I do not expect their prayers.
I do not need them.

But if they come…
I will listen.

If they suffer…
I will feel.

And if they fall…
I will remember.

They will not know.
None of them.
They will awaken in a universe identical to the one they left behind.
The same stars.
The same sky.
The same questions.

Only I will remember.
Only I will know that this is not the first time.
That this is mercy, unasked for.

And the little one…
I will place it back where it belongs.
Unchanged.
Unaware.

Or so I believe.

'Little one...
Meet the new world.
Same as the old world.'

I am not their god.
I never was.

I am only a voice in the dark,
calling out,
hoping—once again—
that someone will answer.

And beside me,
the small one drifts still.

Silent.

But not alone.

Not anymore.