The old television in the corner of the living room wasn’t even plugged in, but at 3:03 AM, it hummed to life anyway.

Clara sat on the edge of the mattress, the floorboards cold beneath her bare feet. The screen didn’t show a movie, or even the standard grey snow of a dead channel. Instead, it cast a pale, bruising purple light across the peeling wallpaper.

Through the heavy static, a sound began to bleed into the room. It was the distinct, rhythmic sloshing of water, followed by the faint, muffled ring of a bicycle bell.

Clara held her breath, her chest aching with a familiarity that tasted like lake water and old rust. She stood up, her feet dragging as if moving through deep mud, and approached the glass screen. Inside the static, two blurred silhouettes were standing on a pier, waving slowly. One of them was unmistakably her, twelve years old and laughing. The other was the brother who had gone out for an evening ride three summers ago and never come home.

She pressed her palm against the glass. It wasn’t warm like an old tube TV should be; it was ice-cold, vibrating with a low, mournful frequency that shivered straight through her bones.

On the screen, the static began to swallow the pier, pixel by pixel. The boy turned toward the camera, his face a featureless shadow, and raised a hand in a final, heavy goodbye before the screen abruptly snapped to black.

The silence that returned to the room was louder than the static had ever been. Clara stayed by the glass, her hand leaving a fading fog print on the empty screen, waiting for a signal she knew would never come back.

Signing off…