You are listening to a Clarksville magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Greetings Clarksville Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you well. This is our fourth story for the month of July.

Issue 142. And first, an apology.

The story that you're about to hear for what are delusions if not dreams is by author

Osahon I'm pretty sure that in the story that we featured a few months ago, back in January 2018, where he wrote, say it low, then loud.

I think I butcher his name.

So I'm very sorry if I got your name wrong.

And thank you so much for the pronunciations going forward.

I will do my absolute best to get them right.

O-Sah-O-Sahon, I-I-Mo lives in Nigeria where he writes speculative fiction.

He is a recent graduate of the Alpha Writers Workshop for young SFFH writers and teens.

He has fiction in the dark as well as Cosmic Roots and Eldred Shores.

You can find him online at OSA H-O-N-4-4-5. And as I mentioned, January 2018 brought you

say it low than loud. So my dear listener, I do hope you can

sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story. An operator speaks. His mouth is full of wires, yet he talks still. He really shouldn't be speaking

for his mouth is full of fraught wires that rub against each other creating friction,

letting loose sparks in his mouth. Sparks, like fireworks on his tongue,

exploding close to his teeth, just reaching the roof of his mouth.

He burns and winces from every shock feeling like lit cigarettes were just pressed into him.

It never gets better. It never gets old. The room is drenched in white, like someone has painted the world. The world must be broken because the room has lines running through it and if he touches

the lines, parts of the place shift like a puzzle piece before slowly coming back together.

Undone, then back again.

...