Frequents came but once a generation.
Touched by the static and the noise.

Turning the dial like an expert safe cracker.
Fingers that moved so nimbly and beautiful over the knob cranking millimetre by millimetre.
Backward and forward.
Gentle turns and touches.
Somewhere between the whisper and the silence existed the station frequency that had haunted them. Its message clear.
Its message life.

A pop of static again.
The teasing bubble of volume before radio silence.
The air was dead, nothing getting through tonight it seemed.

Above them clouds were dark, brooding, moody.
A smell upon the air of rain and lightning.
Jon knew that he had to find the transmission this evening, or the whole camp would start doubting his prowess as a Frequent.

He licked his fingers again, placed his hands upon the radio, as if divining for water.
As if searching for a pulse.
His fingers danced balletically again upon the dial and the needle slid smooth and slow across the lines, there was empty air and silence, then bursts and crackles of gentle static then...

... The voice.

Clear.
Clean.
Calm.
The voice at last.

"Jon" it said.
"Jon"

This was why he was chosen.
Frequents where one in a generation.
When the box called your name, you were holy. You were God,

Every box they found spoke to him.
"Jon" it would say.
The gentle voice a woman pleading, begging, taunting, seducing him.
From every box they found.
On every point of the needle on every line of the dial.
Regardless of AM or FM, the voice was all that existed.

"Jon" it said.
"Yes, my love" he would say to it.
Never anything but his name returned.
"Jon..." and so it went.

Then today.
"Jon." it said.
"Kill Jon." it whispered in sultry and persuasive tones.
"Kill Jon please."

And upon his lips were a thousand questions.
Frequently asked of him by the villagers.
"Why?"
"How?"
"Where?"

It did not matter.
The village had heard.
It was on every box, whispering at every bandwidth, every frequency, every station they had found.

"Kill Jon Please."

Frequents were like Gods.
They came once in a generation.
And just like Gods, they died savage and brutal at the hands of the sheep that once lay calmly at their feet. The gentle bleats and ba's now vicious screams and baying roars.

"Kill Jon Please."
And the voice commanded, the village obeyed.

Frequent or not.
The Static whisper had demanded, so blood for blood and love for love.
No more questions.
No more whispers.

No more fingers dancing over dials.
The voice was gone.
And, so was Jon