Tashmo Episode 1 — Rain

Tashmo awoke to the sound of soft rainfall tick-tacking against the slatted windows…

Tashmo awoke to the sound of soft rainfall tick-tacking against the slatted windows of the squat radio tower she’d begun to call home. A thin breeze of wet air drifted across her nose as she watched the lights from the console flicker and pulse almost in rhythm.

The young woman rolled out of the ratty sleeping bag and turned off the camping lantern next to her. As the soft white light went dim the large room turned a wine red from the glow of the government-mandated exit signs. Tashmo sighed.

“How many twenty-four-year-olds need a nightlight?” Mocking herself.

The neon bulbs of the station kitchen flitted on with a buzz as Tashmo shuffled into the small beige room. Two pantry shelves were entirely empty now, and the trashcan was overflowing with old pizza boxes. She remembered being a kid and going on grocery runs with her dad when it was his turn to stock the tower. He would gleefully grab every frozen pizza box from the cooler and laugh maniacally as he held them over his head chanting, pizza, pizza, pizza! to the chagrin of the little old church ladies grabbing their Lean Cuisines.

Tashmo took a deep breath and switched on the coffee maker. A sizzling came from the hot plate as new daylight streamed in from a short window in front of Tashmo’s face. Her knuckles pressed against the yellowed vinyl countertop. Her eyes averted from the window to stare deep into the percolating glass jar.

Soon little dripping beads of black water began cascading down the inside of the pot. She watched them move quickly, stop, then swiftly dash into the ever growing void below getting consumed. An individual piece — now a part of the whole forever indistinguishable from those around it.

“I can’t…” Tashmo said out loud. “I can’t look up, not today, not again.”

Tashmo began counting the scratches in the countertop. Tapping her finger on each one in sequence. There must have been something heavy here once, she thought as her finger stroked a rather deep gouge. Maybe an espresso machine. Did dad ever drink espresso? He’d make fun of me for asking that, she thought. It’s not surprising they didn’t update anything, dad always said the county could care less about funding the station until the day it was gone and no one could hear the sports scores or the soothing voice of Eddy Arnold while they drove to the feed store.

You got to hear the sports scores, Tashmo… The voice of her father rattled around in the back of her mind as her finger circled a faded yellow coffee ring with a small dot at its center. Tashmo took a sharp breath in and threw her head upward to look out the window.

There it was again, across a stones throw of brittle corn stalks surrounding her on all sides. A dense black fog completely opaque and void of any light or features traveling up and over her, and blotting out the sky. The void had not moved, changed, or receded in any way in the month she’d been trapped here, and today was no different.

Tashmo and her radio tower were alone in the dark.