A late night radio host spoke softly into the microphone as a listener shared a scene that felt like a personal confession. The woman described life in a small apartment where the shadows gathered in the corners and the television hummed like a patient guardian. The host listened with easy curiosity, noting that the man on the other end lived alone, that the screen never slept, and that he treated it as a kind of fireplace. The glow offered comfort without heat, a spectrum of colors he could adjust with a practiced hand, a small ritual that blurred the line between art and warmth. The presenter manipulated the color settings with the craft of a jeweler, conjuring bright, chromatic flames on the screen, then soft, gray embers that resembled ashes left after a winter afternoon. The program mattered less to him than the visual spectacle; television existed, for him, as a fireplace for the mind.
“By the way,” he added, “yesterday I hit the remote a little too hard, and the colors leapt from the screen, lighting the room on their own. At first the flames brushed the picture frames, then painted the curtains, the coffee table, and the carpet. Everything caught. The air itself seemed to flare with red, blue, and yellow, even the dressing gown catching fire for a heartbeat. It moved so fast that the room felt like a kiln where time turned to ash.” The host spoke with a measured whisper, as if the imagery could scorch the room even through a radio wave.
The announcer interjected with a clipped, almost scornful tone, insisting that such a scene could never become real life. The man on the line listened, then offered a sober reply, explaining that the violence of the moment was only a product of the screen—an optical theater that could be tamed by lowering the volume and retreating into the safer, softer light of memory.
“Not roasted,” the woman interjected, her voice steady despite the chaos imagined on the air. “Because the colors do not burn.” She described how she steadied herself by easing the remote’s grip, pulling the flames back into glowing fragments that dissolved into invisible ashes. The host pressed, seeking a trace of residue, a mark left behind that could be measured or examined in any way.
“Overseas, no—no residue at all,” she replied, choosing her words with care as if weighing a delicate balance. “Where then?”
“In my heart,” she admitted, soft but resolute. “My heart is full of gray ashes, ash that presses on every heartbeat, ash that gradually dulls the rhythm inside.” She spoke of a quiet, creeping sorrow that gathers like ash in a quiet corner after a long night. She felt the colored flames leave behind memories that settled as dust, a slow burial of feeling that threatened to smother the life within. From this would come a certain end, she warned, not a dramatic blaze but a slow, persistent extinguishing by the ashes left in the soul.
When the call ended, the line went quiet and the room returned to its ordinary dimness, as if nothing had happened, yet something had shifted inside the listener who heard the story. The show continued in its familiar cadence, but the image of gray ashes kept hovering at the edge of the bright display, a reminder that even the most comforting glow can hide a quiet, consuming chill beneath the surface.