“I think I heard the Walrus in the radio static last night.”

“I think I heard the Walrus in the radio static last night.”

No-sleep style horro fiction

By BR.Giga

Look, I know how this sounds.

But I swear I wasn’t high — not this time, anyway.

It was late, maybe close to two. I was out in my garage, fooling with that old ham radio my uncle left me when he passed. The thing’s older than I am — walnut panel, warm tubes that hum when you hit the sweet spot between stations. I like the sound of it, that soft hiss that feels alive somehow. Comforting, like wind through the trees on Route 2 in November.

Anyway — I caught a signal. Not music, not chatter. Just… something.

A string of noises that almost made words, like someone whispering through a fan.

Then, through all that static, came this voice — soft at first, then clearer.

"I am he as you are he as you are me..."

My gut went cold.

I knew that line. The Beatles. “I Am the Walrus.”

Only it wasn’t being sung. It was being said, like a reading from a strange book.

I turned the dial up, trying to catch it again. The tubes cracked and spat. The air changed — got heavy, the kind of pressure you feel before a thunderstorm. My tongue tasted like metal, like when you bite a filling.

And then — another line.

"See how they run like pigs from a gun..."

I laughed, out of nerves more than anything. I figured it was some college art kid playing tricks on the shortwave. We get that sometimes around here.

But the air… it kept thickening.

The light over my workbench dimmed to this sick yellow color. And for a second — just a second — I saw something move in the reflection on the radio glass.

Not a shadow.

Not quite a person either.

Rounded shape. Wet.

Like skin that didn’t belong on anything I could name.

Then the next line came through.

"Sitting on a cornflake..."

And I swear to God, I felt something lean close behind me.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t.

The static deepened, like ocean waves pulling back before a crash.

And that’s when I heard it — low and slow, right beside my ear.

"Goo goo g’joob."

Not sung.

Spoken.

The tubes blew out in a flash, and I went blind for a heartbeat. When I came to, the wall clock read 4:44. My skin smelled like ozone and salt, like I’d been breathing the Atlantic all night.

The radio was gone.

All that was left on the bench was a wet smear — clear, thick, and faintly warm.

I shut the power off, went upstairs shaking. My wife said she’d been dreaming of a choir — low voices repeating something over and over, a word she didn’t recognize.

She asked if I’d been playing records again.

I told her no. But when I looked this morning, Magical Mystery Tour was sitting out on the turntable. I haven’t played it in years.

The cover looked wrong.

Sky was green instead of yellow.

And the walrus’s eyes — pure white. No pupils.

I don’t even own that pressing.

Anyway — if anyone near Gardner picks up weird transmissions on the 3.4 MHz band, don’t tune in. Especially if it sounds like a Beatles lyric underwater.

They say Lennon wrote that song to mess with people who look for meaning where there isn’t any.

But maybe there was meaning — something that slipped through, like a code that shouldn’t have been heard again.

The signal came back last night.

Only one line this time.

"I am the egg man."

Then came the knocking.

From inside the radio.

If this post disappears, don’t try to fix the signal.

The Walrus is still listening.