The Receiver

Every evening between 4:37pm and 7:34pm, at a news station in a small town in Illinois, a man sits in front of a satellite receiver pointing NORTH. She works the night shift and can see him from the window of her office. Sometimes, during her first break, she sits with him to get away from the burning fluorescent lights inside. "What are you waiting for?" she asks one day, "when you sit here and wait?" "I'm not waiting," he responds in a soft voice, "I'm receiving." At 3:47am on July 3rd the man wakes from a deep sleep, drenched in cold sweat. Grabbing nothing but keys, he tumbles out of his trailer and into his truck, taking off for the station. "The time is now," he says to himself, "of course it's now, how could I be asleep?" She is in the office working late, organizing footage of a car wreck that killed four, when she spots him shuffling frantically across the grass, his eyes bloodshot and never blinking. This is the first time she's ever felt scared of him, and she could tell he was scared of himself. Yet still, some rushing feeling pulls her toward the man, and so she follows it to the receiver pointing north. Outside there is a power in the air and its thickening around her, flowing past her like a humid wind and showering over her like a rain of stars. “The Receiver,” she whispers in a daze, referring to the man. And all at once the wind stops, the essence concentrated into a pearl glowing and floating softly between his palms. He looks at her with a shivering smile and eyes full of tears sparkling by the light of what he had been gifted. "What an incredible story" she thinks, and never tells a soul.