All the World's Static

An homage to The Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone redefined storytelling, drawing audiences into the unimaginable. Now, 66 years later, top writers, artists, and musicians are stepping into its eerie glow with a fresh twist. Ready to see where they’ll take you?

Liz Zimmers | Edith Bow | Sean Archer | Bryan Pirolli | Andy Futuro | CB Mason | John Ward | NJ | Hanna Delaney | William Pauley III | Jason Thompson | Nolan Green | Shaina Read | J. Curtis | Honeygloom | Stephen Duffy | K.C. Knouse | Michele Bardsley | Bob Graham | Annie Hendrix | Clancy Steadwell | Jon T | Sean Thomas McDonnell | Miguel S. | A.P Murphy | Lisa Kuznak | Bridget Riley | EJ Trask | Shane Bzdok | Adam Rockwell | Will Boucher

All the World’s Static

1.

The flea market was a wilderness of rust and recollection. Sophie wandered its narrow paths with the detached curiosity of someone visiting a museum of someone else’s life. The vendors hawked their wares half-heartedly, the objects themselves held no value beyond their role as tokens of barter.

One table displayed old typewriters, their keys rows of chipped teeth, arranged beside a stack of curling film canisters. Another had a pile of jewelry, tangled and tarnished, that sparkled weakly under the grey autumn sky. Sophie’s fingers hovered over a bracelet with a single dull garnet but did not pick it up.

The radio caught her eye from across the aisle. At first, it was another piece of forgotten machinery, but something in its shape - a simplicity that defied its era - drew her closer. It sat at the far edge of a table piled with broken clocks and half-empty boxes of bolts, left there seemingly by accident.

The casing was smooth, black, and polished, though not with care; it had the sheen of an object that resisted decay on principle. The knobs were rounded and translucent, with veins of pale amber running through them, and the speaker grill was finely perforated, crafted by someone who cared more for form than function.

Sophie picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, and cool to the touch, a stone left out in the morning frost.

“Not many people know how to use one of those anymore,” the vendor said. His voice startled her - it was low and gravelly, as though he had not used it in some time.

She glanced at him. He was wiry, his face weathered to the color and texture of parchment. His eyes glinted beneath the brim of a flat cap, but his expression was unreadable.

“I like old things,” Sophie said, brushing a thumb across the radio's smooth surface. “It still works?”

The man shrugged, the motion almost serpentine. “Depends on what you mean by ‘works.’ It’s not for listening to the news, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“What’s it for, then?”

“For hearing what’s there. And what isn’t.”

The words sent a chill down her spine, though she told herself it was just the autumn air creeping through her coat.

“How much?” she asked.

“Fifty,” he replied. Then, as she dug into her bag for her wallet, he added, “But mind how you tune it.”

She paused, glancing up at him. “What does that mean?”

He didn’t answer. His thin lips twisted into something that might have been a smile — or a grimace — and he turned his attention to another customer.

Sophie carried the radio back to her apartment with the care she reserved for fragile treasures. She lived on the third floor of a brownstone, where the ceilings were high and the windows narrow. The building smelled of peeling paint and distant cooking, but it was quiet, which she needed.

Her apartment was cluttered with the remnants of other people’s lives: books with yellowing pages, teacups missing their saucers, and lamps with stained-glass shades. She placed the radio on her workbench near the window, where the late afternoon light caught its polished surface. For a moment, she simply stared at it. It looked oddly out of place among her other possessions - too pristine, too self-contained. She half expected it to hum with life even before she plugged it in.

Shaking off the thought, she found the plug and connected it to the outlet. The radio buzzed faintly, a sound like a distant hive, and the dials flickered to life, glowing faintly amber. She turned the first knob. The static hissed and crackled, and a faint whistle rose and fell like wind slipping through a crack in a window. The sound was oddly comforting, the warm murmur of familial voices in another room. She turned the second knob, and the whistle sharpened into something more like a voice — muffled, indistinct, but undeniably human. It spoke in fragments, the syllables disjointed, the signal bouncing off the walls of some vast, unseen space.

And then, just as she leaned closer to decipher the words, she heard it. Her name.

“Sophie…”

She froze. The voice was faint and hollow, like an echo carried across an empty canyon.

“Sophie…”

She turned the knob again, but the voice grew no clearer. The static surged and crackled, drowning out the words, but the tone was unmistakable. It was calling to her - not urgently, but insistently. It had been waiting for her to listen. The room darkened around her, the late afternoon light dimming. The sun itself had stepped back. Sophie leaned closer to the radio, her breath shallow.

“Who’s there?” she whispered, her voice trembling. The only answer was the static, rising and falling like the breath of some unseen beast.

---

Picture, if you will, a flea market — a repository of forgotten treasures and discarded memories, where the remnants of yesteryear linger like ghosts in the autumn air. Among the rusted tools and tarnished trinkets, a young woman named Sophie, who never felt especially comfortable in this world, wanders. She is a collector of stories, piecing together fragments of lives not her own. But today, her search will unearth something far more profound than a bracelet or a teacup. Something crafted not by human hands, but by the inexorable tides of the unknown.

The object is a radio — smooth, polished, and curiously defiant of time’s decay. To most, it’s an artifact of obsolescence. To Sophie, it’s an invitation. She takes it home, unaware that with every turn of its dials, she tunes not just into frequencies but into a space where reality fractures and voices linger in the static — voices that know her name. She’s about to discover that some transmissions originate from places beyond the reach of technology, where the only signal is the pull of destiny.

For Sophie, the radio is more than an antique; it’s a conduit. And the place it connects to lies just beyond the edges of understanding, in a realm we call… the Twilight Zone.

---

When she turned the dial again, the static surged to life, louder this time, filling the room with a crackling roar. Sophie winced, turning it down, but the sound didn’t fade so much as recede, waves pulling back from the shore. And then the voice returned.

“Sophie…”

This time, it was clearer. A single syllable, stretched and hollow, but unmistakable. She leaned in, her pulse quickening.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. The static hissed and popped in reply, but beneath it, she thought she heard another sound — faint, rhythmic, the beating of wings.

“Sophie… Baron…”

Her full name. The voice wasn’t distant now - it was near, intimate, speaking just behind her ear. She spun around, half expecting to see someone standing in the shadowed room, but there was no one there. When she turned back, the radio’s dials were glowing brighter, casting long, flickering shadows across the walls. The static ebbed, replaced by a low, pulsating hum.

“You found me,” the voice said, fragmented but discernible.

Sophie’s mouth went dry. “What do you mean?”

There was a pause, a stretch of silence so profound it felt like the world had stopped breathing. And then the voice spoke again.

“I’ve been waiting.”

The words weren’t loud, but they seemed to fill the room, resonating in her chest like the toll of a distant bell.

Sophie’s hands trembled on the dials. She wanted to turn the radio off, to sever the connection, as she had with so many other connections in her life, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The voice felt tethered to her, an anchored transmission wire running through her chest, pulling her closer with each word.

“Why?” she whispered.

The static surged, and for a moment, the voice was lost beneath it. After three or four heartbeats, the signal sharpened, and the voice returned, softer now, almost gentle.

“Don’t you remember?”

Her breath caught. The question was absurd — how could she remember something she’d never known? But it struck her with the force of familiarity, a dream fragment she couldn’t quite recall, a clouded piece of her private history.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

The radio crackled in response, and then a sound emerged — faint at first, but growing louder. It was the melody of a song she hadn’t heard in years, played on a warped and distant record. Her mother’s song.

Sophie froze. The melody was unmistakable, though the notes wavered, drifting across a great distance. Her mother used to hum it when she thought no one was listening, her voice soft and low, like the cooing of a dove.

“How…” Sophie’s voice broke. “How do you know that?”

The radio’s glow pulsed, brighter now, almost golden. The hum of static softened into a whisper, and the voice spoke again.

“Because I know you.”

The room felt suffocatingly small, the walls pressing in around her as the radio’s presence seemed to grow. Sophie turned the dial frantically, trying to silence the voice, but no matter where she turned, it followed her.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” it said, the words fractured by static but unmistakably calm.

“I don’t understand,” Sophie said, her voice rising. “What do you want from me?”

The radio hissed, the sound nearly like a sigh. “To save you.”

Her hands fell away from the dials. For a long moment, she sat in silence, her heart pounding. The voice said no more, and the static returned, soft and insistent, a rush of wind through an open window. She turned the radio off and sat back, her hands shaking. Even as the dials went dark, she felt the connection linger. The radio’s signal took root somewhere deep inside her. As she lay in bed that night, staring at the shadows on her ceiling, she thought she could still hear it — a faint, persistent hum, like the memory of a dream she couldn’t escape.

2.

The morning came, but the unease from the night before didn’t fade. Sophie sat at her kitchen table, staring blankly at the chipped mug of coffee in her hands. The apartment was quiet. The city sounds that usually trickled in through the window seemed muffled, like the world itself was holding its breath.

She glanced toward the workbench where the radio sat. It was off, its dials lifeless, but its presence loomed large. She told herself she wouldn’t turn it on again. Whatever she had heard last night - whatever it had been - was better left alone, as was she. As the hours dragged on, her resolve weakened. By noon, her preferred silence had become curiously unbearable. She found herself standing in front of the radio, her hand hovering over the switch. Her pulse quickened as she flipped it on.

The static surged immediately, louder than before, filling the room with its restless hiss. Sophie adjusted the dial, searching for the voice, though she wasn’t sure why.

“Sophie…”

Her heart leapt. The voice was back, clearer now, though still fractured by the static. “I’m here,” she said, her voice trembling. “What do you want from me?” The response came quickly, as though the voice had been waiting for her.

“Listen.”

The static shifted, resolving into words - fragments of sentences that seemed to hover on the edge of meaning.

“...not safe… watch the corner… trust no one…”

Sophie leaned in, straining to catch the words. Each phrase sent a shiver down her spine, though she couldn’t explain why. “Who are you?” she asked. There was a pause, then a faint, rhythmic sound like breathing.

“Your… shadow…”

The words were followed by a burst of static, loud enough to make her flinch. When it cleared, the voice spoke again, softer now, almost pleading.

“Stay away from the car… the red car…”

The warning sent a chill through her. “What car?” she asked, her voice rising.

The voice didn’t answer. Instead, the static returned, louder than ever, drowning out her words.

Over the next several days, Sophie found herself unable to resist the radio’s pull. Each time she turned it on, the voice returned, growing clearer with each broadcast. It began to reveal things about her - details no one else could possibly know. It mentioned the scar on her left knee from when she fell off her bike at six years old. It spoke of the oak tree in her grandmother’s backyard, the one she used to climb as a child.

At first, Sophie tried to rationalize it. Maybe someone’s spying on me, she thought, though the idea made her skin crawl. But as the messages grew more personal, it became harder to dismiss the impossible. One evening, the voice whispered, “Don’t open the door.”

A moment later, there was a knock at her apartment door. Sophie froze. The knock came again, louder this time. She stared at the door, her heart pounding, but she didn’t move.

“Who is it?” she called out, her voice shaking.

There was no answer. After a few moments, the knocking stopped. When she finally mustered the courage to check the hallway, it was empty.

Sophie began keeping a new, separate journal, scribbling down everything the radio told her. The warnings were cryptic but unsettlingly specific: “Don’t walk alone after dark.”

“A man in a blue jacket will lie to you.”

“10, 7, 43.”

She found herself looking over her shoulder constantly, her paranoia growing with each passing day. Every stranger on the street, every passing car, held a hidden threat. The signs and numbers all around her on every city street took on a different, nefarious life. The No. 7 bus stop was suddenly a source of danger. The gentleman in the blue raincoat caused her to cross the street.

The radio, meanwhile, took on a life of its own. It turned on by itself at odd hours, the voice calling to her even when she wasn’t listening. It began to speak in riddles, its tone shifting from pleading to commanding. One night, it said, “The truth is in the static.”

“What truth?” Sophie demanded.

But the voice didn’t answer.

By the end of the week, Sophie was barely sleeping. The voice dominated her thoughts, its cryptic warnings weaving into her dreams. She began to feel she was being watched, even when she was alone. Then came the warning that changed everything.

“Sophie,” the voice said, its tone urgent, almost frantic.

“Tomorrow. The intersection at 80th and Stewart. Don’t cross.”

She stared at the radio, her stomach knotting with dread. The voice had given her plenty of warnings before, but this one felt different. It wasn’t cryptic - it was specific, immediate, and impossible to ignore.

The next day, she found herself standing at the corner of 80th and Stewart, her heart pounding as she stared at the busy intersection. Cars zipped past, their headlights gleaming in the late afternoon light. She knew she should walk away. But something - curiosity, defiance, or perhaps the faint hope of understanding - kept her rooted to the spot.

When the light turned green, she stepped forward.

And then she heard it. The voice, louder than ever, screaming her name: “SOPHIE!”

She froze just as a car barreled through the intersection, its driver oblivious to the red light. The vehicle missed her by inches, the rush of air knocking her off balance, the car’s horn hurting her ears. Sophie staggered back onto the curb, her heart racing.

The voice had saved her.

3.

Sophie sat on her couch, her knees pulled to her chest, staring at the radio as if it might spring to life and attack her. Her heart hadn’t stopped racing since the near miss at the intersection. The voice had saved her life, but why? And what kind of force could manipulate the airwaves to such precise and unsettling ends?

The city outside shrank away, its normal rhythms fading into a distant throb. Sophie’s apartment, once her needed refuge, now felt like a trap. The walls seemed to press closer, each creak of the floorboards echoing louder than it should. She was no longer alone. The life she lived, paralleling the world outside, only overlapping when necessary, was on a collision vector with the life everyone else led. The voice wasn’t solely in the radio anymore - it was everywhere.

Determined to regain control, Sophie unplugged the radio. The silence that followed physically hurt, an oppressive void where the static had been. She wrapped the power cord around the device and shoved it into the closet, slamming the door to lock away a monster.

The relief was short-lived.

Her phone buzzed on the coffee table. She picked it up, expecting a text or a call, but instead, the screen displayed a familiar phrase: The truth is in the static.

She dropped the phone, her hands trembling. The television flickered to life, its screen crackling with snowy interference. The same phrase scrolled across the bottom in jagged white letters. Her laptop chimed from the desk. The words filled the screen: The truth is in the static.

“No!” Sophie screamed, slamming the laptop shut. “Leave me alone!”

But the voice didn’t leave. It was in the hum of the refrigerator, the buzz of the lightbulbs, even the faint hiss of air through the vents. Everywhere she turned, it followed, growing louder, more insistent.

Overwhelmed, Sophie tried to focus, to piece together the fragments of warnings and riddles the voice had given her. She flipped through her journal, the pages filled with frantic notes and sketches. She realized the warnings weren’t random - they formed a pattern. The numbers  - 10, 7, 43 - were deeply familiar, moments where seemingly small decisions had led to profound consequences. The voice seemed to know her past as intimately as she did. But what about the future?

The warnings about the red car and the intersection had been specific and life-saving. What else did the voice know about what lay ahead? The thought filled her with equal parts dread and hope. If the voice could protect her, perhaps it could also guide her —if only she could decipher its cryptic messages.

The constant noise was driving her mad. Sleep was impossible; her mind buzzed with static even in the brief moments she managed to doze off.

In a fit of desperation, Sophie yanked the radio from the closet and smashed it against the floor. The glass dial shattered, the wires splayed like severed veins. For a moment, there was silence, blessed and complete.

But then, the voice returned, louder and more pervasive than ever.

“Why did you break it, Sophie?”

It wasn’t coming from a device this time. The voice emanated from the very walls, resonating in her bones. She clutched her head, trying to block it out, but it was useless.

“You need to listen,” the voice insisted.

“To what?” she shouted. “What do you want from me?”

There was a pause, then a single word:

“Danger.”

The voice began to speak in rapid bursts, its tone urgent and commanding.

“Don’t leave the building. They’re watching you. Check the lock on your door.”

She obeyed without thinking, bolting the door and pulling the curtains shut. She stood in the dim light of her apartment, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps.

Her phone buzzed again, this time with a video call request. The name on the screen was unfamiliar: Unknown Frequency. Against her better judgment, she answered.

The screen filled with static, then resolved into a shadowy figure. Its face was obscured, but its voice was unmistakable.

“Sophie,” it said. “You don’t have much time.”

“What is this?” she demanded. “What’s happening to me?”

“You’ve been chosen,” the voice replied. “To receive the signal. To understand what others cannot.”

“Chosen for what?”

“To survive.”

4.

As the call ended, Sophie felt a strange sensation, like the air around her had thickened. The world outside her window seemed distorted, the colors too vivid, the shapes too sharp, the collision vector altered. The voice continued to speak, guiding her movements. “Stay inside. Don’t trust what you see.”

Curiosity overwhelmed her. She opened the door to her apartment and stepped into the hallway.

The building was empty. No sounds of neighbors, no traffic. The world had gone silent, save for the ever-present static that now followed her like a shadow.

Sophie descended the stairs and opened the front door to the street. The city was deserted, the sidewalks and roads eerily void of life. The only movement came from the flickering streetlights and the rustling of papers blown by an unseen wind.

And then, the voice returned, calm and resolute:

“This is your new world, Sophie. A world of sound, not sight. A world of truth.”

Sophie stood on the sidewalk’s edge, the soles of her shoes scraping against cracked concrete. The city was unrecognizable in its desolation. Once a vibrant, chaotic tapestry of life, it was now an abandoned set on a stage, stripped of its players. Skyscrapers loomed like tombstones, and the air carried an unnatural stillness.

She walked through the streets, her footsteps echoing in the eerie quiet. Every so often, she’d pause, hoping to catch a sign of life — a dog barking, a horn honking — but there was nothing.

Then, like a heartbeat restarting, the voice broke through the silence.

“We saved you, Sophie.”

Her breath hitched. “Saved me? From what?”

“The crash,” it said, its tone reverent. “The noise of their lives. The clutter of their minds.”

You’ve been chosen to hear the truth, the signal that weaves through everything. You’re free now.”

As she walked, Sophie noticed something deeply interesting to her. The static that had once been a chaotic din now seemed to form shapes, whispers threading together. She began to distinguish multiple voices, each with a unique cadence.

“Turn left,” one voice said.

“Careful on the steps,” warned another.

The voices were no longer warnings but guides, leading her through the desolate streets. They pointed out details she’d never noticed before: a graffiti mural that shifted when she stared at it too long, the hum of a marquee buzzing in an odd rhythm, the faint pulse of electricity running through the city’s abandoned veins.

“You’re hearing what’s real,” the voice said. “What always was, beneath the noise of humanity.”

Sophie’s journey eventually brought her to the village of Shoreham, where a spectacular tower stood like a sentinel against the sky. It was taller than she remembered, its skeletal frame pulsing faintly with light.

“Why am I here?” she asked aloud, her voice trembling.

“This is where it began,” the voice replied. “And where it will end.”

Drawn by a force she couldn’t explain, Sophie entered the building at the tower’s base. The interior was untouched. The world’s abandonment had paused outside its doors. Dust-coated desks and rusted equipment lay scattered in disarray, and the air smelled of mildew and stale paper.

The voices urged her forward, guiding her to a spiral staircase that wound upward. She climbed until her legs burned, her hands gripping the cold metal railing.

At the top, she found a control room filled with ancient dials and switches. In the center stood a console, its surface glowing faintly with life.

“You must listen,” the voices said, now unified into a singular, commanding tone.

Sophie hesitated, staring at the console. A pair of headphones rested on the desk, their cords snaking into the machinery. She felt compelled to place them over her ears and turn dials.

The static flooded her senses, but this time it wasn’t random. It was layered, complex, a symphony of signals. Within the noise, she could hear fragments of conversation, laughter, and sobbing — all the moments of humanity distilled into pure sound. The genesis of a smile was born in the taut muscles of her jaw and face.

And then she heard her own voice.

“You’re lying!” it cried, trembling with excitement, as a child’s voice would when presented with a sought-after gift.

“Not lying,” the voice replied. “Revealing. The crash was inevitable. The noise had to stop.”

“What crash?” Sophie demanded, her voice echoing strangely in her ears.

“The collision of time and space,” the voice answered. “The weight of too many lives shouting into the void at once, minute after minute. You are the sole survivor, Sophie, chosen to hear the world as it truly is. The static was always the signal, but they couldn’t hear it. Now it’s only you.”

Sophie felt like ripping away the headphones, but she resisted, instead fed by an unvoiced, nameless compulsion she’d felt since adolescence. The tower seemed to pulse with energy, the air thick with vibrations. She ran to the window and looked out over the city.

It was no longer empty. Shadows moved in the streets below, but they weren’t people. They were shapes of pure sound, shifting and flowing like liquid.

“They are here, Sophie,” the voice said, softer now, almost tender. “The echoes of those who lived before. They’re with you always, guiding you.”

She sank to her knees, overwhelmed. The world she’d known was gone, replaced by this strange, spectral existence.

“But why me?” she whispered, tears forming in her eyes.

“Because you listened,” the voice said. “You always listened.”

---

Sophie Baron thought she was alone. She desperately wanted to be alone, but she was never truly by herself. Her world of static has become a symphony of the unseen, a chorus of voices that never stop. She’s found her place in a universe of sound and signal, where silence is forbidden, and truth resonates in every wave.

Because here, in The Twilight Zone, no one is ever truly alone.