Sandi and the Man in the Hole

Vocal+ Fiction Award Shortlist Selection

Sandi had half of Mr. Belle’s yard to finish mowing when the DJs on the local station she streamed started telling a story about a man stuck in a deep hole in the ground. They slipped it in between a couple of the regular bits they often did — a man catching his girlfriend cheating while he’s on the phone with the station to get romancing tips, a woman asking for help evicting her squatter mother in-law — just like it was another nothing story. The previous day’s nothing story had been about shopping carts found miles from their home stores, and today it was a man in a hole.

“And they can’t get him out? Lower a rope, for god’s sake,” the woman DJ, Andrea Belchamp, said.

“That’s the thing,” male DJ Jake Jackson said. “It’s too deep.”

“Use a longer rope, for god’s sake!”

“Yeah, but that’s the other thing. So, say they lower a rope tied to another rope. That’s a long way down, you know? He has broken bones, things like that.”

“Ohh, so maybe he can’t hang on to a rope or use his legs to climb. But, wait, if he’s that far down, how’d they even find him?”

“You know out by those silos across from that neighborhood — or is it a township?”