Silent

June 5, 2018·24 min·2 clips

A narrator details a childhood terror of mirrors, theorizing that reflections may be windows into a completely alien world.

The episode opens with a narrator commenting on someone named Leeds who is clearly in crisis, surrounding himself with Christmas lights, sealing doors with gaffer tape, painting over mirrors, and using furniture as barricades. The narrator catalogs each action with a mixture of wry observation and genuine concern, noting that paint, unlike the other barricades, is permanent damage that others will see. She observes that he is overdosing on ibuprofen and hasn't slept. She attempts to get him to sit down, then begins a long second-person monologue addressed to Leeds, reconstructing a recurring childhood memory. Every other Friday, as a child, Leeds was driven to his grandparents' house in the mountains while his father stayed in the car. The grandparents' kitchen is described as warm, brick, and comforting. The grandmother is depicted as quietly judging the father's parenting and compensating for his failures. The grandfather is stern but kind in a way the father was not. After ice cream, Leeds would play in the yard and watch his grandmother work while the grandfather prepared dinner. Leeds would sit on a fence at the edge of the property and deliberately imagine frightening scenarios in the forest beyond: being swallowed by the earth, a living toy, an unseen pursuing figure. The narration frames this as a testing of the safety of the grandparents' property, a way of measuring how far the protection extended. The best part of the evening was watching Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes with both grandparents, but it was also painful because the better it was, the more Leeds dreaded its ending. After the grandparents went upstairs, Leeds was left alone in the guest room, which had multiple mirrors: a sliding closet door, an armoire mirror, and a standing corner mirror. The narration becomes a detailed theory about mirrors, arguing that reflections cannot be confirmed to show the same world on their other side, and that any twitch of the reflection would confirm they are windows rather than copies. The narrator describes lying in bed unable to sleep, watching the mirrors, afraid to make noise or move. The narration returns to the present as the narrator begs Matthew to say something, admitting she is tired of being alone. The episode ends with Matthew apparently trying to leave, and the narrator shouting after him.

As heard by us

A bleak station story where makeshift fixes deepen the unease.

Station Blue's "Silent" keeps the station feeling sealed tight, with bad lighting, taped-up gaps, blocked doorways, and improvised barricades turning ordinary repairs into something loaded.

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Why you'd press play

When you want Antarctic dread wrapped in dry, bruised conversation.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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