Marianne was fuming by the time noon rolled around and Sunny took their place in the recording studio. Roland escorted Professor Plum out of the building still asking for hints and tips about winning back Marianne.
"Here's Sunny" he said, "with your tunes at noon." He gave a small awkward laugh then went straight into playing. Sunny played a good mixture of reggae and hip-hop, keeping the tone light and fresh for the afternoon crowd.
Marianne turned her murderous glare in her father's direction. "Father, may I have a word" she gritted out as calmly as she could.
"Not now sweetie I've got an important business meeting." He said, clearly deflecting.
"You said I could have my own show!" Marianne bellowed at him doing nothing to help her cause.
"I said we would see, Roland really is sorry for the misunderstanding and wanted to give it another try." Her father was grasping at straws.
People liked Roland with his good looks and quaint way with words. He was the kind of young man grandmothers adored. Guys wanted to be him and girls wanted to be with him. He couldn't understand how his daughter had fallen out of favour with him so fast especially when she couldn't give him a reason. As long as people liked Roland their ratings would stay up.
"Misunderstanding? He called it a misunderstanding?" Marianne screeched in frustration.
Marianne stormed from the radio station determined to be anywhere but there. She hopped into her red convertible Volkswagen Beetle and drove off, her short hair whipping in the wind. Tomorrow would be another day, a better day.
Tuesday was not a better day. When Bog got in his car to leave work and head home for the day he had no idea what torture he would have to endure. He was tempted to just turn off the stereo all together but his interest was piqued with the first words he heard.
"I'm here to apologize" Roland's voice came through the old speakers loud and clear, "with a song."
He hit play before the mic's were turned off and there was an awful noise as a slightly country sounding version of Come on Marianne started to play he hadn't heard before.
Marianne actually felt her jaw come unhinged and was left momentarily speechless.
"Oh well done you, how long did it take you to find a song with my name in it?" Marianne asked her voice coming in over the music. She sounded furious.
"Dawn put on a song" she shouted to her sister. Marianne lunged for the tape recorder clutched protectively in Roland's hand as he held it close to the mic.
"Woah now Darlin' just back it up" Roland protested as he slowly inched away from the mic.
Dawn finally found the perfect song and hit play, Kelly Clarkson's Stronger was suddenly blasting through the speakers only Dawn hadn't turned off the studio mic's and the background noise could still be heard by anyone listening in.
"Give me that tape recorder so I can shove it down your throat." Marianne threatened. The pause button must have got hit in the scuffle as Come on Marianne could no longer be heard playing.
"Aw now Buttercup, ya didn't let my song finish" Roland interjected coming back in to proximity with a mic. There was a ruffling commotion and he hit play on his recorder, his own melodic voice floating through the airwaves.
Marianne pushed Roland away from the mic and Stronger could be heard playing again. Marianne forced him up against the wall by the door, she smiled gleefully and gave him a push through it as she waved and said "Bye-bye."
The little display was followed by the sound of a door slamming.
"Now that was fun" Marianne declared as she sat back at the desk, beaming brightly at her sister and father through the glass.
A small sounding "Awkward" escaped Dawn in the impending silence.
"Dawn, honey, were still on the air" came a hushed man's voice that could only be the station manager.
"Oh!" Dawn exclaimed then promptly hit the off switch and set up a commercial break.
Bog wasn't exactly sure what he had just listened to. There was a second of silence then a commercial for this summer's Shakespeare production came on. "Come see the magic and mayhem that is William Shakespeare's A Midsummers Night's Dream" a booming voice declared "running from now until the end of August located in Puck's Corner of Meadow City's Field Park."
By the time a gum commercial played and an ad for some greatest hits CD ended Marianne was back on air and evidently taking calls.
"I thought that was kind of romantic" said some guy who sounded like he was talking through the wrong end of the phone.
You Would Bog thought, he could feel a migraine coming on. It wasn't romantic; no body deserved what had just happened to that poor girl. It was bad enough that idiot had proposed to her on air and now had further humiliated her by trying to apologize for his actions with a song about a cheater.
"Aw, poor Rollie" cooed a teenaged bimbo.
"Next caller please" Marianne said, hanging up on the bimbo. "Hi you're on the air" she said when another call was patched through.
"You go girl!" said a woman with a grating voice.
"Mother?" he asked the radio out loud, shock evident on his features to anyone who may have spied him through his car window.
"You're an independent woman and you don't need no man!" Yup that was his mother; she had one of those voices like Fan Drescher or Meggie Wheeler.
"Oh, well thank you" Marianne responded sheepishly to his mother's compliment.
Two weeks ago she had been their biggest supporter and now she was glad the girl was solo? It wasn't worth it for his lack of sleep brain to process.
The next caller was another woman who after commending her on her style in giving Roland the boot began propositioning her.
"I have a son, he's single too, I'd just know you'd hit it off" the caller gushed.
"Listen lady, I'm sure your son is a lovely person," Marianne began, and Bog could hear the eye rolling, "but until I met a guy who can take me by the hand, look into my eyes, and I don't want to hit him, I'd rather be single." She finished dryly. "And let's face it that's never gunna happen."
Something inside Bog stirred, he liked this girl's spunk and bite back attitude. He never thought he would find someone as cynical and uncaring as him. She was feisty, with a great sense of humor, and emotionally unavailable, exactly his type.
Marianne took two more calls before giving the traffic report and popping on Hit the road Jack. Bog laughed heartily at Marianne's open shaming of her ex, between that and Roland's own faults it would give him excellent fodder for his show tonight.
"I have no idea what I ever saw in him" Marianne shouted in frustration after going off air "that good for nothing liar."
Dawn was giving her sympathy eyes through the glass when their father walked back in with a tall artificially blonde woman in tow.
"Girls I'd like you to meet Mrs. Elizabeth Scales" he said.
"Please call me Lizzy, and it's Miss." She was the most intimidating woman Marianne had ever seen. She looked sharp in a short black pencil skirt and matching blazer, completing the look with a light grey blouse with dark heavy eye make-up and red alligator heels with a matching handbag to pop.
Marianne steeped forward to politely shake her hand and noticed the woman kept her nails long and filed into a point.
"Hi-ya Miss Lizzy" Dawn cooed excitedly, "so are you here to be the new host?"
"Oh, no darling after the fiasco the past two days have been, I'm here to be the program director." She smiled what Marianne assumed was supposed to be a friendly smile but it came off looking like she was going to devour Dawn.
Just then Sunny walked through the door backwards and walked right into Lizzy. He was humming three little birds and carrying a box of vinyl records, wearing his Beats as usual.
The spindly woman spun around with shocking agility and clamped her claws down on his shoulder. "Ah, and you must be Sunny" she breathed down his neck.
Sunny gulped and his eyes widened at the lengthy shellac nails imbedded in his shoulder, "Yes mam" he said, his voice small with a 'please don't eat me' undertone.
"I'm here to change a few things Sunny." She explained, giving a repeat of her man-eating grin causing Sunny to squirm.
After the week she had Marianne just wanted to rock out to some classic tunes and relax for a while. That's why around 9:30 on Friday night she was sneaking back into the radio station. She had waved and smiled at Mr. Pare the elderly nighttime security guard and informed him she just had some paperwork to do and not to worry. Instead of heading to the main control room Marianne found her way to the practice space students used when training. She would play a few girl-power songs about how it was better to be alone and that all guys sucked and then she'd be on her way.
A thought struck her as she sat down behind the switchboard though. This was her chance to prove all those naysayers wrong. She could run a radio show all by herself, she would show Roland and her father how wrong they were. It was her turn to take digs at Swampy. Late night meant no censors.
The longer she sat there the bolder Marianne became. She started turning on the gear, warming up the mic, she was going to do this. As ten o'clock drew nearer and people began turning on their radios to tune into DARK they got the surprise of their lives when a gruff female voice spat out "Welcome to the Bitching Hour" and kicked things off with I'll Never Fall in Love Again. She followed that with Cher's version of Love Hurts and Quaterflash's Harden my Heart.
Pat Benatar's Love is a Battlefield had just finished playing when a bodiless voice from somewhere behind her spoke.
"Would you quit it with the breakup songs already?"
Bog had sat down behind his work station with everything ready to go. At first he hadn't noticed his mother had left her radio on, the one she used to listen to FAE in the mornings. This time of night they were off air and only a faint hint of white noise was leaking through the speakers. It was a sound that brought a strange comfort to him, made him feel not so alone. He got underway with AC/DC's For those About to Rock and thought no more about.
When he went to start his opening monologue though Bog could suddenly hear a strange background noise as if someone was standing behind him with their iPod turned up too loud. He struggled through his set up speech and put on another song until at last he could no longer concentrate. He took off his headphones and spinning around in his chair was shocked to discover the source of the music was in fact the radio.
He was furious; there had been no mention of FAE starting their own late night program he would surely lose all his listeners if Roland was running the show. It quickly became obvious it was not Roland playing the music though. He steadily became more and more annoyed by the playlist until he had finally bellowed at the damn thing "Would you quit it with the breakup songs already?"
Unfortunately his latest song had just stopped playing and his mic had turned back on. People listening in would have heard him and have no clue as to what he was going on about. For a moment there was nothing but white noise, and then it spoke back.
Marianne looked all around in confusion for a moment before realising the voice had come from an old forgotten radio behind her.
"What?" she asked out loud, clearly she was hallucinating from lack of sleep and if anyone was listening to her at all they would think she was talking to herself.
"Are, are you talking to me?" the radio asked slightly surprised, Marianne vaguely wondered if all radios had Scottish accents.
"Do you see anyone else here?" she asked losing her cool, opening her hands in a palms up gesture. Now she was arguing with a radio, maybe she should call it a night.
Bog looked around his own control room wondering if this was some kind of a prank by his co-workers. He thought about calling out for Stuff or Thang, or even Brutus but he was sure he was alone.
"What do you want?" he finally asked the radio raising an eyebrow at it. He had spent hundreds of nights alone here had he finally gone around the bend?
There was a moment of silence in which Bog crept closer to the radio, maybe he had fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing? Bog almost had his ear right up to the speakers when Twisted Sisters I wanna Rock came blaring out of it sending him scrambling back from it coving his ears. Not because he didn't like the song, he just didn't like it at that decibel.
"Well, well" he finally drawled into his mic, "for those of you not in the know it seems we have a new friend over at FAE. A tough girl with a since of humor it seems." He twisted his lip in a cruel smile he knew no one could see; it was time to have some fun.
Marianne couldn't believe the old radio still worked let-alone was tuned into DARK. She hadn't even noticed its din while she was blasting her own music trying to purge Roland from her mind. What did she want? He had some nerve asking her that. She wanted independence, she wanted her own show, she wanted to rock! Instead of saying all this out loud she condensed her emotions into a song.
It wasn't long before she got her reply. A grungy rock version of Elvis Presley's Trouble starts playing, and it's like a response and a warning. So the almighty Swamp King wanted to play did he? She wouldn't disappoint, the next few hours were going to be a lot of fun.