PSYCHOSAPIEN

8

"Yo yo yo yo my party people, let's get this Friday morning pumping! This is your best friend and local radio host, Chuck Gold, and thank you for tuning in to a very special episode of my show, Golden Mornings with Chuck Gold. I'm Chuck Gold and I hope you're having a golden morning!"

"Does he start every episode like this?" said Sten.

"He does indeed," said Ellie.

Ellie and Sten were sitting outside the university radio station recording booth, sharing a threadbare couch that had been worn smooth by decades of squirming butts. They could see Chuck through a large viewing window. He looked up and gave them a wave, pointing at the headphones clamped to his head and mouthing, "I'm on-air!"

"We know!" Ellie mouthed back.

Chuck, who was very bad at lip-reading, grinned and gave her the thumbs-up.

He was so happy. Nobody ever came to watch him record his show. It made it difficult, sometimes. Speaking into the ether, not knowing if anybody was listening. Not knowing if your message was being received.

But having Sten and Ellie there watching him, cheering him on, that was special. And it didn't go unappreciated.

He smiled, adjusted his headphones and spoke into the microphone:

"We don't normally do true crime stories here on Golden Mornings with Chuck Gold, but something happened this morning. It happened right here on campus, and it happened to me, Chuck Gold."

He went on to tell the whole story, sparing no detail. He talked about the creature's monstrous jaws, its razor-sharp teeth, its speed, strength and bloodthirsty rage. He explained how the cops hadn't believed their story. How they'd even suspected him, Chuck Gold, of being a cold-blooded murderer.

When the tale had been told, he put a request out to his listeners.

"If any of you have seen, heard or otherwise noticed anything weird on campus, I want to hear about it. The phone number is 22-19-10." He took a long, ominous pause. "I'll be waiting."

He sat back, putting his feet up on the control panel, and waited for the calls to start flooding in. At first nothing happened. The lights on the phone system stayed dim. Maybe nobody was listening. Maybe he was just talking to dead air.

Then the lights started flashing. Two of the phone lines. Yellow lights.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

With a grin, Chuck leaned forward and tapped the button for line no. 1.

"Speaker number one, I hope you're having a golden morning—you're on the horn with Chuck Gold!"

"Uh... hey." The connection was tenuous. Crackly. The speaker's voice was thin and high. The voice of a teenage girl. "Hey... Chuck."

"That's me. What's your name, listener?"

"Robin. Robin Chang."

"Did you have an encounter with the creature, Robin?"

"Uh... yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I had an encounter with something. It... it ate a girl named Sonia and two boys named Aaron and Kyle."

"Wow, that's great!"

"Huh?"

"I mean, not about those kids getting eaten. But you actually saw the creature! You can help us prove to the cops that we weren't just making it up!"

"Well, yeah. But, like, I'm 15. I don't know if they're going to, like, put that much stock in my opinion or whatever."

"Don't sell yourself short, Robin!"