The Radio at 2:13 a.m.

Every night at 2:13 a.m., the radio in Mara’s attic turned itself on.

It was an old short-wave set—heavy, dust-choked, impossible to power without being plugged

in. Yet somehow it always crackled to life, humming through dead stations as

if searching for something. She’d inherited the house from her uncle,

who’d died alone inside it. The police report said “natural causes,” but the neighbors

used a different phrase: He heard something on the radio. Mara didn’t believe

in haunted machines. She believed in wiring faults, bad breakers, drafts.

She believed in reasons. On the seventh night, she got tired of pretending she wasn’t