Short Story: Our Radio Must Die

S. Mubashir Noor shares a poignant supernatural satire with a surprise ending that leaves the reader perplexed.

Neither side wished for war, and yet every few years it came like clockwork, licking its lips in want of carnage. It must have a mind of its own, a will more persuasive than the grandstanding promises of politicians who paid lip service at the crooked altar of peace.

My steps quickened over the burned and beaten ground beyond the rows of bent barbed wire. Empty half-dug trenches full of shadows and sad flowers painted in soot were my only companions.

I was tasked with creeping across enemy lines into enemy territory, investigating a bizarre contraption near the border that resembled a radio, and swiftly returning to the warehouse pickup point where an unregistered motorbike awaited me. Standard scout stuff.