Breaker Whiskey

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I’ll be next if what? Fox, if you’re trying to tell me that I’ll be next if I go seeking out Junior, if you’re trying to tell me that there’s a next to be, that he already got to Harry—

Shit. Fuck, what the fuck—

[click, static]

And what was with the long tone, huh? Is that you, Birdie? I get the feeling you two don’t like each other, but blocking out each other’s messages or talking over each other is not helpful to me, so keep that to your own time. Communicate on a different frequency, I don’t give a shit. Just stop getting in the way. I’m not interested in whatever petty sci-fi overseer timeline bullshit rivalry you two have going on. 

[click, static]

Is that what you meant, Birdie? When you said you betrayed your job and hurt people? Was Fox one of those people you hurt? Because, jesus, that sure would be a fucking weird coincidence, wouldn’t it? Both of us trapped in some kind of weird locked horns battle with the one person who betrayed us and ruined our lives. 

Are you and Fox also—

[click, static]

This is a distraction. It’s just my fucking luck that the moment you two start chiming in again—the moment I start to maybe fucking understand what the hell is going on here—

I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Clearly. 

I don’t want to be next. Not if Harry…look, I’m not saying I’d go in her place, I’m not saying I’d die for—

[click, static]

Why does anyone have to die? Why can’t we just talk like human beings? Do you really want to kill the only two people you know to exist in this world, Junior? Is getting revenge worth being alone for the rest of time?

[click, static]

Then again, maybe you’re having the thought that I’ve had—that if you just kill what got you here, remove me from the board, and Harry too for good measure, you’ll go to bed, your deed done, and wake up the next morning right back in the world. Maybe you think spilling our blood is the only way to right the ship. 

And you know what? I can’t even tell you you’re wrong. 

[click, static]

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Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Please—please—

[click, static]

Junior, if you—I’ll come to wherever you are right now if you get on the radio and tell me—

[click, static]

I found my Carhartt. I—I wasn't even looking for it, not really. I was getting some more supplies, at one of the last grocery stores in the area that we hadn’t completely depleted of non-perishables and in the parking lot there was—

[click, static]

I’m not there anymore, just in case you’re hearing this. But I’ll go back. I’ll go back right now and you can do whatever you want to me, just please tell me that she’s alive. 

There’s blood on the coat. A lot of it. Too much. And it still smells of cigarette smoke and the woods behind our house, but it smells of chamomile and turpentine too, and also iron, metallic and turning the fabric stiff, the entire right side of the jacket like tarp under my hands—

If she’s—I mean, if she’s really—I don’t know what I’ll do—

[click, static]

I’ve felt no ill will toward you, Junior, even after you attacked me, but if you did anything to Harry I swear to god, I’ll—

[click, static]

I’ll—

[click, static]

Please just tell me she’s okay. 

[click, static]

[beeps and then a tone that distorts the rest of the message]

-.-- --- ..- .-.. .-.. / -... . / -. . -..- - / .. ..-.

Youll be next if

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I don’t know what to do here. I don’t know how to find Harry, I don’t know what to do about Junior, I don’t know if any of this can be fixed. 

Can a timeline be corrected? Can we go back? Back to the real world, I mean, not back in time, though I guess…

I actually have no idea if I would go back in time. I mean, of course, if I could undo what I did, I would but would that mean—it’s not like I want to go to prison. 

Then again, according to Harry, that was never going to happen. I’m still  not sure I believe her. I’m still not sure it wasn’t a rotten situation all the way through. And would that alternative really have been better?

[click, static]

I don’t mean that, of course it would have been better. But, no matter what Harry says or thinks, we would have had to—she said only she would have had to—

I don’t think I could have betrayed Pete and the guys like that. I don’t think—

[click, static]

Wait…if we’re not there…if Harry’s not there, that means she wouldn’t have—and without her, they could—

[click, static]

Holy shit, I’ve got to go to New York. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

What if he’d killed me?

[click, static]

I mean it, Harry. What if I hadn’t been fast enough, or what if he’d been able to truly catch me by surprise. What if he’d gotten the upper hand and he’d killed me? 

It isn’t…it isn’t hard. Or— well, it isn’t easy. But the gap between keeping the upper hand in a fight and the other person getting it is razor thin. The tables can turn in a millisecond. All it takes is one mistake, or moving the tiniest bit too slow, or slackening your grip by an inch. I know this. You know this. You watched it happen. 

I hadn’t even planned on—I didn’t have a grand escape plan. And I know you didn’t, you were so infuriatingly calm when they loaded us into that van and told us we were being transferred to god knows where. And of course now I know why you were calm, but at the time, I thought you were just trying to imagine you were somewhere else. But I wasn’t, I was stuck in the present, terrified of where we were headed, scared of how dark the world was around me, the further we got from civilization. I half thought we were being taken to the woods to be shot. 

But I still didn’t have a plan. It was just…when we got that flat tire and he had to open the back to get the spare, I saw a window and—

Part of me thought it would be good just to run. Leave you behind and run into the pitch black forest. But I couldn’t— I couldn’t do that, especially not when you were shouting at me to stop, but I thought you were shouting at him, because he’d gotten his arm around my neck and I didn’t think that dragging him to the ground like that would’ve—I didn’t realize how close we were to the bumper, how little it takes to crack someone’s neck at just the wrong angle. 

[click, static]

It wasn’t lucky. That’s not—it was terrible. But then it was done, just like that, and it could’ve happened just as quick with Junior at the house. 

Would you mourn me? We’re not in the same place anymore, no longer each other’s sole conversational companion, so would me being dead and gone make a difference to you? Would you think about all the things you never said, never did, and have regrets? Or would you be relieved that you didn’t have to think about any of it anymore. That you would never have to make the choice of how to behave toward me, ever again. 

I can’t think about the other side of this conversation. I find myself furious at imagining what your reaction would be to my death—to coming home and finding my body in the front hall—because I can’t bear to turn that question on myself. 

If you’re gone—

[click, static]

Junior…Billings, I don’t know what you would want me to call you. But, if you’re listening, I know what I want to ask. Not that you—you don’t owe me shit, obviously. I don’t know how long you’ve been listening to me, what you know about me, but I can’t imagine much—if any of it—has made you more sympathetic to me. 

But if I could ask for one thing, it would be to leave Harry out of this. If we meet again…I won’t hold it against you if you still want to kill me and succeed this time. 

But please. Please. She’s not the one you hate. She’s not to blame. I am. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Look. A lot…a lot has happened in the last few weeks. And I’m…well, I think I’ve found an okay place to stay safe for a few days, catch my breath, figure out what my next move is. A house that’s got some clothes that look like they might fit me, some canned goods, woods around it that should be good for setting up rabbit traps. Plus the gas stove still works, so I’m…well, I’m really cooking with gas. (a weak laugh) Sorry, I’m…I’m fucking tired.

Setting Harry and Junior to the side for the moment—not like I ever really can do that, they’re on my mind constantly, a merry-go-round of thoughts and fears that never stops—but. Setting them to the side for a moment. 

I’ve been putting my thoughts in a row. Organizing the disparate threads of morse code messages and evidence and Asimov books and…

I am somewhere else. We are. We are in a time of our own, separate from the world we knew. I killed Billings and we…branched off. I took Harry with me because she was there, Junior because it was his father I killed, and Leann because…the random rippling of chance. 

And if there was one ripple big enough to affect Leann, then that means there must be other people out there. I’m sure of it. But maybe they have no way of reaching me—maybe they’re not hearing me at all, even though it seems like my transmission radius is a lot bigger than it should be—and that’s a mystery I don’t feel particularly inclined to solve at the moment, bigger fish and all—maybe they’re just all spread out so much that the odds of us running into each other are vanishingly small. 

But there are others. I know that. And that’s enough for now. 

So. The photos. I’ve been looking at the Denver ones again and I had a thought…the weird watch, the slightly strange clothes…what if that’s—

What if it’s 1975, but just…over there. What if that’s where the sounds come from too? A collision point of timelines, some overlap that bleeds through in sound and in polaroids, for some reason. And the reason that Junior didn’t show up in the photo I took is because he wasn’t standing there in normal 1975. Because he’s here. But the people in Denver were there, just…unreachable. The camera is a little window into the real world. 

I don’t know, it’s just a theory. But it’s got me wondering—why me? Why this choice? If time and space split every time someone accidentally killed someone—

Well. Maybe that is what’s happening. Everyone in their own little pocket of punishment after making a choice. But we make thousands—tens of thousands—of choices every single day. What makes one choice more potent than another? Is there some preordained “correct” order of things we’re supposed to be following, just like Eternity?

That’s really the ultimate question isn’t it—Birdie and Fox and what they both seem to know. The way they seem to be able to communicate with me no matter where I am. The way they only communicate through morse code. Are they…they’re not god, I refuse to believe that, but are they Eternity somehow? Are they…monitoring me, monitoring everything, to make sure things are just right? But if that’s the case, then what are we still doing here. Why hasn’t Andrew Harlan come and repaired what I did to put everything back in its place. 

It really does all sound like science fiction. Maybe it’s all true, maybe I’m right on the money, or maybe none of it is. And I’m not sure who I would believe if anyone told me which it was. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I was going to—I was going to write him a note. And leave him the watch. That’s what I was doing when I was at the house. I was leaving a note for Harry, with instructions about the car and the radio, and I was also writing a note to Junior to say…

Well. I hadn’t gotten very far yet. I started with “I’m sorry” but then I got stuck because just those two words looked so…hollow on the page. Incomplete. Insufficient. I’m sure he’d agree. 

The boy doesn’t know how to fight. Not that I—I mean, I sure as shit had never gotten into a fight before, but Don taught me some basic self defense. He was into that…kung fu stuff. Bruce Lee movies and all that. And he was always so worried about me walking through the city late at night which was sweet in its own way, but…

Anyway. I’d never been in a fight, but I’d been in plenty of high stress situations, and had Don’s voice in my head, so I think I—I mean, I guess you don’t know how you’re going to react when you get into that kind of thing, but the fight instinct took over and I—

Junior wasn’t operating off of fight instinct or staying focused under pressure. He was all rage. I’m not sure he had a plan on how to ki— If he did, it flew right out the window when he saw me because he just went for me without thinking twice. And the thing about being all rage…you can definitely land some body blows—and he did—but you’re vulnerable to distractions. You’re vulnerable to showing your weaknesses. And with his slight frame…

I don’t think I hurt him too bad. I was careful this time. I guess having that one prior experience of fight or flight…I don’t know, I just wanted to get him off me and get out, and just thinking about that gave him enough opportunity to give me a black eye and bruised rib. 

I’m lucky. I know I am. But I’m—it’s the stupidest thing, I’m mad I didn’t get to finish my note. To Harry, sure, if she ever goes back there and if he didn’t destroy it—

He probably destroyed it. That’s what I would do. If I were him. I’d make it impossible for me to find the one person who might be an ally, and I’d…I’d think about how can get a second swing at killing me. 

I am sorry. I know that’s not enough. I know that being apologetic about killing your father is the shittiest consolation prize anyone has ever received. But it’s true. And it’s what I have to offer. 

I don’t know if it makes a difference that I didn’t mean to. I don’t know if it matters that I just wanted to escape and that, for a split second, I thought I was going to die. I know you probably see me as some immoral criminal who destroyed your family, your future, your life. And…

I’m not sure I have a defense against that, actually. I am a criminal and I did destroy your life. But I don’t like to think of myself as immoral. Am I…complicated? Yeah. Do I have, perhaps, a slightly different view of what’s acceptable than the average person? Sure. I made my living breaking the law, I’m not trying to argue for Citizen of the Year here. But I’m not a bad person. I’m not. 

I’d never hurt anyone before. Not ever. That’s not the kind of criminal I was. Hurt some property, some pocketbooks, but never a person. And what I did to your father has stuck with me every single day since it happened. It was the biggest thing to ever happen to me, and that’s before I knew that it…caused all of this. 

And that has to say something, right? I’ve spent the last…nearly seven years living in a world that was empty and apocalyptic, with no explanation as to why, and that still didn’t loom as large in my head as taking a man’s life. 

I’m not…I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m not asking for absolution. I’m…

[click, static]

I actually have no idea what I’m asking for. I’m not sure I’m even asking you to spare my life. I—

I’m not sure. 

[click, static]

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(sigh) So. I think I should probably explain some things. Again. 

I’m—if I sound different at all, it’s because I’m on a new CB. I tried to broadcast yesterday but I don’t think I was coming through at all—the radio kept spitting static back at me and it took me a second to figure out that something was wrong with the push-to-talk button. The mechanism inside kept slipping and—

Anyway, this isn’t important or interesting. Other than to say…I’ve got a new radio. And a new car. And…no other supplies really. It’s like I’m starting from scratch again, like we did in ’68 and I’m—

[click, static]

I’m trying not to be scared by it—daunted, I’ll allow, but there’s no room to be afraid of the circumstances I find myself in. Not when everything else is so fucking terrifying. 

He—

[click, static]

I shouldn’t have been broadcasting from the house. Even for a few minutes, it was foolish. Arrogant and risky and—

He found me. He walked through the door to the garage and he—

There was a moment, when we just looked at each other. And I could see his father in his face. The same eyes, the same ghosts of dimples on his cheeks. Even more prominent than on Billings face, actually, with the way that Junior’s face is sunken. Like he’s been underfed for years. Which, I suppose, he probably has been. Especially if he’s been alone. 

I wanted to ask, wanted to say—something. There’s so much I want to say to him, so much I want to ask him, but we stared at each other for that brief moment and then, before I could even open my mouth, he was lunging at me. 

It is the same cologne. As his father. I wonder if he wears it because it reminds him—

[click, static] 

Well, if there was any doubt that Junior wanted to kill me…I have my answer now. 

[click, static]

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(a lot of static and cutting in and out) Breaker breaker, this is WAR1974 calling out for anyone on the line. 

[click, static]

Does anyone read?

[click, static]

Does anyone read?

[click, static]

Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me?

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I probably shouldn’t be doing this, but I’ll be quick, I promise. 

I came back to the house. I staked it out for a good three hours first, to be sure that no one else was here, but it’s clear that someone has been here. The house is torn apart since I was last here—I don’t know what Junior is looking for…maybe nothing. Maybe his father’s watch. Maybe he heard my broadcast the other day. Maybe he just wanted to break anything and everything in his path, just because he could. 

A lot of our supplies are gone too—I don’t know if Harry took some when she left or if he’s taken them, but I just hope they’re being used by someone. I’m still not sure how to feel about the whole Junior thing—I’m mostly trying to not think about it at all if I’m entirely honest—but I’d be happy to inadvertently be feeding him or helping him survive somehow. Mi casa es su casa, I guess. 

I’m not thrilled about my Carhartt jacket though—that seems to be missing as well. I’d been hoping to…I don’t know, I didn’t really pack all that many sentimental objects when I left but I wanted to—I don’t know. I liked that coat. And coming back here made me realize how much I missed—

[click, static]

Well, I fucking miss cigarettes that’s for sure. If I ever have a garden again, I wonder if I can figure out how to grow tobacco and roll my own. Though, at this point, with everything I’ve been dealing with, I might have to resort to smoking the seven year old packs lying around. 

Anyway, the jacket is gone. It wasn’t on its usual hook and I searched the whole house and its…gone. I’m assuming Junior didn’t take it, but I can’t remember if it was here last week when I came back to the house for the first time. Maybe Harry threw it out the day I left. Maybe she took it with her when—

(scoffs) Probably not that. More likely she just tossed it. Or cut it up into scraps to line the chicken coop. 

I should get going, I think. It’s not good to linger. But I—well, I left Harry a note. On the off chance that she does come back here. It’s got the same info I’ve said on the radio, with a new meeting place in case…

Well, in case. I also—well, I wrote—I know he probably wouldn’t want to hear what I have to say, so maybe I’ll just keep it and—

[click, static]

(sigh) I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know if there’s anything I should be taking with me from the house. Any other bits of sentiment, any remaining supplies. 

I have this feeling…I don’t think I’ll ever be back here after this. I think—

[a creak of the door opening behind her] 

(gasps) Wh—

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Harry, if you can hear this, I’ve fixed up another car for you. It should run just fine, and there’s two canisters of fuel in the trunk, so you shouldn’t have to siphon any of your own for a while. There’s also a radio hooked up in it. So…

Well, that’s sort of pointless isn’t it? I put the radio in there in case you haven’t found another working one, but in order for you to find this one, you’d have to have a working radio to hear this message. 

It took me the better part of two days to put it all together and get it to where I thought you might find it. It’s near where we used to go to get firewood. Not that far from the house, but far enough I think it’d be a pain for Junior to find, especially considering all the other cars that are in that area. And it’s—I made a point to find a car that was your favorite color, to make it easier to find and also in the hopes that…I don’t know, maybe you’ll happen to walk past where I've left it and you’ll see it and some instinct will tell you to see if it works and—

[click, static]

I’m grasping at straws, I know I am. I’ve been searching all over, every single day and I don’t see any sign of you. There have been a few times where I thought I heard another car, but I have a feeling that probably belongs to Junior. I was too afraid to follow the sound and double check. Every time, I just go in the opposite direction. 

There’s one other thing I’m going to try, but it’s a long shot too. But what else am I supposed to do? I can’t stop trying. 

[click, static]

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