Oso Sur

Block 1 — 23:05

Caller: Yes (Jack of Hearts — standard) Caller card: Jack of Hearts — Breathless, not quite afraid

A young voice. Quick. Like someone speaking in a whisper they hoped wouldn’t carry to the wrong ears.

They’d met someone. Or something had happened. They were working out which.

The description came in fragments: one night, brief, vivid. No name exchanged. But a symbol left behind — a ring, or a piece of parchment, or a yellow thread. They weren’t sure which. They had been holding it since and couldn’t bring themselves to put it down.

They described eyes like static. A voice like a familiar song played in reverse — recognisable but wrong in some way that wasn’t unpleasant. A presence that shouldn’t have been where it was.

They asked if Oso had ever fallen for something not entirely real.

They asked for something cool. Something dark. A sound to dream to.

They didn’t ask if it was a good idea. They didn’t seem to think that was the relevant question.

I want to feel this way again, they said. Even if it hurts.

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Block 2 — 00:10

Caller: Yes (Queen of Diamonds — standard) Caller card: Queen of Diamonds — Controlled, fracturing at the edges

She had a long-time friend. Someone from before. The kind of friendship built in years of shared difficulty. She had believed in this person’s judgement the way you believe in something you’ve tested and had hold.

Over recent months, the friend had been changing. Following an unspecified signal. Asking questions that had no sensible answers. Saying the sky was a different colour than she could see. Attending meetings at unscheduled hours with people the Caller couldn’t account for.

Tonight, the friend had asked her to come to a remote location. Said they were going to show her the truth.

She hadn’t gone.

She wasn’t sure if she had made the right choice.

The wildcard track — the one that shouldn’t have fit but did — had felt, she said, like a warning. Or like a message from a version of herself who had already made both choices and was trying to communicate from the other side of one of them.

If I disappear, she said before hanging up, tell them I was trying to understand.

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Block 3 — 01:15

Caller: Yes (King of Clubs — phenomenon) Caller card: King of Clubs — Deep, careful, watching

He led with the moon.

Not tonight’s specifically — though he acknowledged it. He began with a moon he had seen thirteen years ago to the day. He described it as identical: the same waxen yellow quality, the same air pressure, the same specific birdsong pattern from the tree line. He had been at a similar elevation. The radio had been on.

He said this was a closing loop. A resonant frequency that recurred only under particular conditions — emotional, geographic, possibly cosmological. He used these words without self-consciousness, as though they were practical terms he’d had occasion to use before.

Then: the same voice on the radio. Oso’s voice.

You made a different choice last time, he said.

He did not specify what choice. He did not appear to need to. He had the manner of someone delivering information they had been carrying for a long time, waiting for the correct moment to set it down.

The line held for a few seconds after he finished speaking. No ambient sound. Then the disconnect.

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Block 4 — 02:10

Caller: Yes (Queen of Hearts — phenomenon) Caller card: Queen of Hearts — Looking back along a road not chosen

She had not expected the breakup song to land the way it did. It wasn’t heartbreak she remembered — it was the decision that came after. The one she made when no one asked her to make it. To stay in a town too small. To take a job she hadn’t wanted. To wait, without having framed it as waiting.

The person she had loved had not asked her to follow. She had not offered. She had never resented them for that. She had just never fully unpacked either.

Tonight a train passed her window. Same model as the one that had left that night, years ago. Same rhythm of the cars. Same light intervals from the passenger windows.

She wondered if it was the same train.

She said WBPR was the only place that made her feel like she’d already gone. Like she was somewhere else, and had been for a long time, and the life she was living was a habit she’d forgotten to examine.

She signed off: Goodnight, DJ. Say my name next time.

She had not given a name at any point during the call.

---

Oso Sur — Personal Notes

Full moon tonight. Birdsong at midnight. Both things I noticed before the broadcast started and neither one felt normal, but both are the kind of not-normal that you can file away and keep moving.

The kid in Block 1 is in trouble in the specific way that doesn’t feel like trouble yet. Whatever they encountered left something behind — literal or otherwise — and they want to keep hold of it. I don’t have a protocol for that kind of pull. The veil doesn’t recruit through fear. It recruits through beauty. That’s the part I think about.

The woman from Block 2: she was already halfway out the door from the friendship before she called. The remote meeting she didn’t attend may have been the right call. Or it may have been the door that was already closing. I don’t know. I don’t know what her friend found, or whether finding it is better or worse than not.

The King of Clubs: I have been sitting with this one since the line dropped. He said I made a different choice last time. I don’t know what last time is. I don’t know what choice he means. But he knew about the moon, and the birds, and the signal — and he spoke about all of it like a man who had done the maths and come out the other side. He wasn’t warning me. He was informing me. There’s a difference.

The last caller never gave her name. She assumed I’d know it eventually. That’s the second time in four sessions a caller has operated as though I have access to information I don’t have yet.

I need to start keeping better notes.

The moon is still up as I write this. Yellow, still. Whatever light that is, it isn’t the same as other moonlight. It illuminates differently. It makes shadows point slightly wrong.

Coffee’s cold. Bourbon accounted for. Equipment quiet.

I’ll be back on next week.