01/06/2018 19:46:25 ¶ ●

## 129 - A Matter of Blood, part 3

We make our own luck.
Which is to say, things randomly happen and we apply our personal ideas about luck to that randomness.
Welcome to Night Vale.

Everything has changed. There was a before the blood matter from space and an after. Our town is still our town but it is altered and can never be the same. It is difficult to interpret what has happened as a matter of history. We are not enough removed to be able to understand every facet. It is better, instead, that we listen through the event as it happened in the moment. On that day, the day of the blood matter from space.

So, I take you back two weeks. Mayor Cardinal had just activated a new program routing most power and surveillance through the Mayor’s office. At the same time, she was wanted for murder. Because her double had come to town and killed many people. Her double went to her family’s house in order to draw Dana Cardinal out, and it worked. As Dana approached her family’s house in order to face this other version of herself, the blood matter from space descended upon us. Here’s what happened next.

Other Dana: This is not a story about a good Dana and a bad Dana. I how satisfying such a story might have been for you, but I am not a bad Dana. Just a Dana who was willing. A Dana who does what is needed. Because the Dana that you are tempted to call good, just because you have spent more time with her than you have with me? She killed her own double years ago. She killed her, our, blood. And so I have come to call her to account in the name of all Danas in all universes. Mine is a righteous cause.

This Dana’s mother, who looks exactly like my mother, sobs in the corner, clutching her hand from which I have now removed three fingers. A countdown of sorts for my other Dana. Next, I will murder her – my – brother. I will show her that I cannot be dissuaded from my mission. And apparently, I have shown her, because as the blood starts to pour down outside, streaking the windows in vivid red, I see myself standing outside and calling our name.

Dana: Dana! I shout. Dana! Leave our family alone! Come out and face yourself. I’m waiting. I brought no weapon. I am not there to fight and kill yet another version of myself. The first struggle has left me with such shame that I have sought great good for my town in order to atone. But apparently that has not been enough. My fallen double will haunt me forever. The blood gains quickly on the streets, and by the time that other me comes smirking out of the door, we are knee-deep. The sky is a heaving mass of strange clouds. Everything smells like blood. I can smell nothing else.

Other Dana: We face ourselves in that lake of red, our faces streaked, our eyes steady on each other.

Cecil: While this was going on, the blood space matter viewing party here at the station was going swimmingly, in that we all had to start swimming. None of us, not even Carlos, had been aware of just how deep the blood matter was going to get. Apparently the station is a bit of a low point in the local geography, and so we flooded significantly more than the rest of town. Still, we all made the best of it, having ourselves something of a macabre pool party. Unfortunately my life in the desert had not prepared me for swimming much, or at all, but fortunately my broadcast equipment floats. So I sat astride my radio desk, bobbing about in the blood. Oh Night Vale, what are we going to do?

The Mayor’s new plan of centralized power is still in effect. The Mayor is in charge of everything, and not much can be done without her say. Which is a huge problem now for obvious reasons.

Other Dana: I eye myself over. This other me, she is weak. I see no strength in her. She thinks she has seen hardship. She thinks she has experienced responsibility. But now I am her reckoning. I am the proof that she is unworthy of the name Dana Cardinal.

You are guilty, I proclaim. This is a sentencing, not a conversation. I continue: you have murdered one of us, and you have been found guilty by your other selves. You must pay for your crime.

She bites her lip. The blood we both standing in is soaking into her jeans. She shakes her head, she draws herself up. A fight, then. Very well. I had hoped for some backbone. There are worse places to find it than in myself.

Dana: This Dana from some other world? She is not wrong. I killed my double. Or, I am the double who killed the original. That is true. And I have felt, every day, sorrow and guilt and confusion over that. I have punished myself in my thoughts and in my nightmares.

But now there is this external avenger, come to see to it that I suffer even more. I had no choice that day of the sandstorm. It was me or that other me, and I chose me. That is what happened. It was survival, plain and simple. With a slight pre-shuffle of luck, there could have been that other Dana standing here, knee-deep in the blood, under clouds that looked like angry boils.

Or, I think I had no choice? I think it was a matter of survival. Maybe things could have been resolved peacefully if I had made different decisions. Or if I was a different person. But I am only me. Of course, now I know there is not “only me”. And seeing my resolve, the Dana from another world bellows like a predatory animal. It is chilling to know that somewhere in me, that bellow lives, even though I’ve never brought it out. And the other Dana comes for me, abrupt and violent.

Cecil: Cecil again, again from the present. And what a chaos this present is! Because even though the town’s power and decision making runs entirely through the Mayor’s office, there is no Mayor now to make those decisions. The Mayor’s chair has sat empty for two weeks, and it may well be that no one will ever sit in that chair again. This is metaphorical. The chair itself will be collected by janitorial services and assigned to a new location on municipal property, in which an impressive chair is needed. But we still will be a town with no leader.

Oh, Mayor Cardinal. Oh, Dana.

Other Dana: I stride forward to kill her. It is a simple operation, like turning on a car. There are a few easy movements and then it is done. So it has been with everyone in this soft universe. But the Dana of this world? She is not soft. She meets my lazy killing blow with a turned shoulder and is already punching me in the gut. I’m not prepared to this, so I fall backwards into the blood, sinking below it for a moment before rising out, a scarlet creature.

So this is how she was able to murder one of us. This is how she was able to survive multiple attempts upon her life, from that erstwhile dragon Hiram. She has a deep well of strength and an absolute instinct for continuing to breathe. I had wanted a fight that would make me struggle, and it seems I have found it. we are now waist-deep in the blood. I shout and rush forward and we clash once again.

Dana: I am prepared to fight for my belief that there is good in this town. That this town deserves to exist, and by extension, the people who live in this town deserve to exist. And by extension, I deserve to exist.

She strikes at me, now with a knife. I grab her arm, redirect her momentum away from my torso, but I feel the blade slip through the side of my hand, as easily as a thought slips through a mind. I know I am bleeding, but I have no way of gauging how bad the wound is when I am already covered in blood.

Meanwhile, this other Dana is already swinging again, this time for my throat, or my face, I can’t tell. But the outcome would be equally catastrophic. I reach inside, looking for a response, some instinct. And I find that bellow. The same one that had come from her. It was waiting for me my whole life, and I bring it out now. I bellow, guttural and deep and cutting through the sound of falling blood. as she swings the knife, I wrench her arm back toward herself, stabbing the blade into her shoulder and then heaving forward with a wild kick, sending her sprawling back under the blood.

Other Dana: A circumstance I could never have imagined. I have failed. I have never failed before, and so I saw no warning signs. I wouldn’t have been able to imagine what those warning signs would have looked like.

The blood stings my eyes and worms its way down my throat. I came up coughing and gasping. The knife is in my shoulder. The Dana of this world? She yanks the knife out, and I gasp with a horrible searing pain. She wields the knife before her, and I hold up my hands to acknowledge my defeat. I wait for death. After all, it has been waiting for me my whole life.

But Dana. She does not kill me. She cries and the tears make clean tracks across her bloody face. She tosses the knife away and it is lost into the blood. She lowers herself to her knees before me. In doing so, she goes neck-deep, just her face peering at me from the surface. We are both at the same level now. Both almost submerged.

Cecil: The conclusion of what concluded two weeks ago in just a moment. But I really do need to check in
On the weather.

[“Mariposas” by Yva Las Vegass, https://www.youtube.com/user/UncleYva/videos]

Dana: I am guilty, I say. Everything you say about me is true. I killed my double. Or I am the double and I killed the original. Either is a grievous crime against a person who was and was not me. And I should stand accountable for that. That crime has haunted me ever since. I present myself to you, who is also me, for judgment. I am ready for me to judge myself.

Other Dana: I look at this woman. The blood lapping at her ears, soaking into her hair. I flinch toward her and she makes no move to defend herself. In her eyes, I see anguish, I see guilt. It would be an easy set of three movements from this moment to her death.

But I do not take any of them. She does not need to stand any more accountable than she has already made herself. She does not need any more punishment than that which she has already given to herself, every hour of every day. She has not forgiven her crime any more than any other version of her has.

I rise and stride away into that downpour of blood and return to my brutal, familiar world.

Dana: I watch her leave, and I am not surprised. How could I be? She is me. I am her. I stand, and make my way slowly, sometimes swimming, sometimes wading, to Radon Canyon. The blood rushes over the sides, a torrent. The voices from Radon Canyon chose me as Mayor four years ago, and I accepted their choice. But now I see. The power I have endowed to the Mayor’s office should not be given to someone like me. Someone whose judgment is so flawed, who has made mistakes so human.

“I give up my position,” I shout at the voices. “Choose another!”
“NO, the voices echo back, “YOU are the Mayor.”
“I refuse!” I say. “I-I won’t do it!”
“We will not choose another,” the voices say. “Until you complete your service as Mayor.
“Then you will never choose another,” I say and return to my mother’s house.
I embrace her and I embrace my mother. I will live a life that is not perfect, but also not perfectly unhappy.

I’m not a bad person. I just am not a good enough person to wield that power. And I think perhaps no one is. Night vale doesn’t have a mayor, and it never will again.

I am Dana Cardinal. I am the double, or I am the original, but I am Dana either way. I have stood accountable for my crimes, and now I come out the other side, ready to live my life as a fellow citizen. As a fellow human being.

Cecil: So ended the day of the blood matter from space. Cleanup has been underway and will go on for several weeks more. It seems that everything in town will be tinged just slightly red for the foreseeable future. As there really is no way to get that much blood matter off of a town.

We have no Mayor, and it seems we never will again. All of the authority in Night Vale, thanks to Dana Cardinal’s new system, runs through the Mayor’s office. An office that will forever remain empty.

Already there is chaos, as agents of the vague yet menacing government agency and the Sheriff’s Secret Police both wander about town, seeking orders, but finding no one with the authority to give them. The City Council howls and whines, but we don’t know if they have any power anymore. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Everything is uncertain.

Except that Dana, my friend and a friend of many of yours, is healthy. And perhaps for the first time in years, truly at peace. And maybe for now that is enough. Soon though, we’re gonna have to figure out this whole government thing, because it is a mess out there. Literally. Lot of blood matter still.

From a town turning and turning in the widening (dire), I say to you:
Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.

Today’s proverb: My name for the pony I have been planning to get one day has been Ponye West, for years. But for obvious reasons, I have recently changed it to Janelle PoNeigh. This wasn’t written for me by Joseph, these are the actual names I’ve made up for my dream pony. Thank you.

15/06/2018 14:25:22 ¶ ●

## 130 - A Story About Us

This is a story about us, said the man in the radio.
And we were pleased, because we always wanted to hear about ourselves on the radio.
Welcome to Night Vale.

This is a story about us.
We live in trailers out near the car lot, next to the house where the angels reside. We live in homes near a poorly secured library, hiding and shivering, fearing an escape. We live in apartments below heavy-footed neighbors. We live on streets, removing ourselves from a world that refuses to learn how to love us.

At night, we can see the red light blinking on and off on top of the radio tower. A tiny flurry of human activity against the implacable backdrop of stars and void. We sit out on the steps of our trailer, on the balcony of our apartment, on a bench in Mission Grove Park, on a tree swing in our yard. With our backs to the brightness of the moon, watching the radio tower for hours. But only sometimes. Mostly we do other things.
This is a story about us.

We eat together in the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. One of us is philanthropist Thomas Charles Fleming, who once caught a hog and showed it to a local radio host, who happened to find hogs adorable, and just wanted to pet one and speak in high-pitched voices to it, and name it Gary or Dolores, and listen to its snorting breaths I order to feel alive. Especially on that particular day, where that radio host’s intern forgot to buy coffee. Anything to start the day with a charge.

Thomas Charles sits in the Moonlite All-Nite eating his skirt steak, and he begins to choke. We are alarmed, because we feel empathy. Selfish, selfish empathy. We feel our own necks (cease) up. We hold our hands to our own throats gently, choreographed mimickry, a moder dance around the themes of mortality, as Thomas Charles heaves forward gasping, his eyes bulging. We look to the OSHA-mandated choking assistance poster near the cash register. We begin to recite the instructions to each other and demonstrate the moves required to complete this life-saving (–) [0:04:34].

One of us, dinosaur expert Joel Eisenberg, stands and wraps his thin arms around Thomas Charles. Joel pulls his hands into a central fist under the victim’s sternum. Joel yanks his hand back and up, and we shout, “Harder!” and some of us shout, “Softer!” Thomas Charles thinks of the new Night Vale botanic gardens he created. His mind wanders to the pride he felt opening this cultural institution, and secretly, the guilt he feels about the frightening people he partnered with to fund it.

He knows he must warn us, but does not know about what, exactly. In dying, we often find that the lists of what must be done evaporate, and there is nothing left to be done, and there never was. Needing to do this was an illusion we built to keep ourselves busy.

We panic in our efforts to free Thomas Charles’ esophagus. One of us, Laura, a waitress in the diner, breaks off a heavy branch that is growing out of her hip, and begins poking Thomas Charles in the chest. We frantically fumble for our phones typing in “Heimlich Maneuver”, all unsure how to spell it. Some of us saying, “It’s H-I-E”, others saying, “H-E-I”, one of us even saying, “Manoeuver has an O in it somewhere, I’m sure of it”. We find an article headlined “Save a Choking Victim with One Surprising Move”, but become frustrated by the amount of pop-up windows.

Thomas Charles grabs a pen and a napkin and scrawles a single word. We argue about what exactly it says. “Maybe he wrote ‘swan pups’”, we say. “That’s not a word,” we reply. “What about ‘sound-roos’?” we interject as we stare at ourselves wondering who would think that made any sense.
“You know, like children’s pyjamas made from audio frequencies,” one of us says. “It could work,” that same one says to the quiet room, then continuing: “as a technology startup, like an app on your phone that makes…” before trailing off, running out of words to protect the judgmental silence.
“Oh it’s a great idea,” we all agree in order to ameliorate the situation. And we pat Thomas George on the back to congratulate him on his multimillion dollar idea of audio-only children’s sleepware.
We think for a moment that it is this companionable swat of the choking man’s ribs that will finally free the steak from his throat. We have read enough short stories to know that this is a sensible narrative resolution, requiring an unforeseen solution to an impossible problem. And given that we are hearing our story on the radio, we know that this is the perfect culmination of a tale about a collective we, a coming together, a climactic comradery.

But it does not work. Thomas Charles sinks to his knees, eyes wet and resolved. In the commotion of choking hazards, clickbait, and startup dreams, we fail to notice two men who have entered the diner. One is not tall. One is not short. They are not part of us, so we know that this story is not about them. The one who is not short moves Joel Eisenberg aside and then grabs Thomas Charles’ shoulders. The one who is not tall punches Thomas Charles in the stomach, as a piece of beef shoomps out of his mouth, a rope of spit and a soft weeze tailing it. the piece of unchewed meat arcs perfectly into a waste basket, and we cheer. These strangers saved a man we barely knew. Thomas Charles inhales loudly and finally shouts, “It says ‘stone crops’. Stone crops!”
“Shut up,” says the man who is not tall.
“Come outside,” says the man who is not short.
“Please,” Thomas Charles pleads. “I’m sorry I told them about stone crops.”
“Everyone is sorry you did that,” says the not-short man.
“This is not how I wanted to spend my day,” says the not-tall man.
We hear the radio describe two men of indistinct heights, walking another man out of the Moonlite All-Nite. We hear the man on the radio describe a muffled pop of a handgun from the parking lot, the slamming of a trunk, and the fading Doppler effect of a vehicle speeding away.

We sit in our booths, poking hashbrowns with spoons, imagining we heard a car backfiring instead. We leave the diner and find a blood stain on the asphalt by our truck, or our sedan, or our motorcycle, and we pretend it is a spilled drink.

Let’s have a look at the Community Calendar.
Last Saturday at noon, we all went to the Botanic Gardens, for the opening of the new exhibit called (Sedum Fields). One of us who is a dosent at the gardens named Halla Darwish, explained to us that these succulent plants are excellent for private gardens, as they are affordable, easy to maintain, beautiful, and require little water. Sedum are often referred to as “stone crops”, Halla tells us before it means anything. She then thanked Thomas George Fleming and an anonymous benefactor for funding the Botanic Gardens.

On Monday, we attended an emergency press conference at the site of City Hall, where no mayor currently presides. Before an empty mic, reporters asked questions and then tried to transcribe the occasional sounds of wind and crickets onto their notepads. One of us, Pamela Winchell, uncharacteristically tamped down her usual bluster and allowed someone else to speak for her, in this case the incidental sounds of nature.

On Tuesday, we took a longer than usual lunch break to go look again at the Sedum Fields exhibit at the Botanic Gardens, and we saw the sunny summer blooms, which are elongated pink tubes billowing at the top, looking ready to burst. But in the middle, there are asymmetrical bulges, like small crouching humans inside. A dosent who was not Halla Darwish, and who was not any of us, and who was neither tall nor short, told us to look at another plant. These were not for us. As we got back into our vehicles, cranberry spinach salads with sesame vinaigrette only half eaten, we caught a glimpse of this new dosent plucking the unopened blooms and placing them gently into crates. We heard one of us on the radio say this aloud, as we scattered back to our desks and counters and warehouses and trucks and kitchen.

This has been… a… oops. That was last week’s Community Calendar. Well, this has been Community History.

Disturbed by the presence of the men who carry crates, who possibly kill philanthropist hog catchers, and who hurry us through our garden visits, we anxiously eat our daily meals. Absent-mindedly do our jobs and mutter angrily during showers about our own inaction in the face of brutality by those who are not us.
“We are people of action. This is a story about us,” we say aloud in unison from our couches. We stand and walk and look at each other in the streets and join hands. We join hands and sing. We sing “Angel is a Centerfold”, because some of us had just attended a minor league baseball game and could not rid themselves of the sexist earworm.
We walk past the Scrublands and the Sand Wastes to the edge of the desert, and we surround a cargo truck filled with crates. There are two men, neither tall nor short. They do not move.

One of us, who is a sheriff named Sam, places the men under arrest for the murder of Thomas Charles Fleming. The man who is not tall says, “He was not the man you thought he was.”
The man who is not short says, “Do they still have HBO in the abandoned mine shaft out of town?”
“This is not a story about you,” we shout. “This is a story about us.”
Sam places the two handcuffed men into a white police car with “Undercover Police” with bold lettering across the sides, and a stylized rhinoceros holding a night stick painted on the hood.
We turn to each other and celebrate with smiles and eye contact. Diane Crayton tells Nazr al-Mujaheed: “We saved our town.” Nazr groans and does not respond. He has talked little in recent months.
Susan Willman tells Simone Rigideaux: “What a happy ending.”
Amber Akini tells Wilson Levy: “This is a better world now, Wilson. For our son.” She pats her belly, and Wilson begins to cry.
Steve Carlsberg, who can sometimes be a killjoy, but whose intuition is not often wrong, says: “Look! The truck!”

We look at the truck. “This is not a story about a truck,” we say, as six-foot-long pink blooms burst from tiny crates. They stumble and squirm, like humans swaddled in plastic wrap, toward us, under a clear predictable afternoon sky and in the face of terror.

The last thing on our minds
is the weather.

[“Space and Time” by Joseph Fink]

The protagonist of a story must have agency, must use their skills against their antagonist. This is a story about us, and so we actively confront our predicament.

Nilanjana Sikdar attempts to communicate with the beings. They make no noise. Pamela Winchells shouts at them through a bullhorn, but they do not react. Josh Crayton changes his physical form into a great white shark, but they show no fear. And he finds it hard to breathe on land, so changes back into a hummingbird. Henrietta Bell throws her co-worker, Sarah Sultan, who is a fist-sized river rock, at the creatures but they do not flinch. 16-year-old Tamika Flynn loads a crossbow with an explosive-tipped arrow, and we question our lackadaisical weapons laws in this state.

Overwhelmed, we back against each other, surrounded by the writhing featureless beasts. A flower monster reaches out, its arms stretching, elastic under the petals and touches former mayor Dana Cardinal. Another touches Harrison Kip, and another touches Leann Hart, just as she reaches for the hatchet she keeps in a waste holster.

The top of the flower opens up, and inside it is you. Yes, specifically you.
We all recall many years ago, there once was a story about you, right here on this radio station. Now your eyes are open, but empty. Your face swollen and teeth shattered in places. Part of your right ear is gone.
And we remember you died in that story. We all felt bad. But here you are, again, inside a flower, staring crooked and blank at our screaming faces. Another flower opens, and another broken face of someone who once lived in Night Vale. And another, and another. And as the last flower opens, the face of Thomas Charles Fleming emerges, his head split right where his hair once parted. This lips in the final hiss of an S, like a man whose last word was “stone crops”.

Sheriff Sam returns with the two men and releases them from their handcuffs, ordering them to take those monstrosities away from here and then come back to be arrested. The men gently lift each writhing bloom into the back of the cargo truck. They say nothing. We ask: “Who are you?” They say nothing.
“What are these crates?” They say nothing.
“These are people you have killed.” They pause briefly, but say nothing.
“Are the crates always filled with bodies which are also flowers?” The men shake their heads no.
The man who is not short says, “We are only doing our job.”
“And what is your job?” we ask.
“We handle the crates,” says the one who is not tall.
“Are you hiring?” says Trish Hidge, who recently lost her job at City Hall.
“The Botanic Gardens are closed to the public,” the not-short man says.
“It is better that no one involve themselves with this,” the not-tall man says.
They climb into the truck and drive away with their broken crates and human flowers.

We look at each other, relieved to know we completed another day, alive and together, but bereft of solutions or answer.
“We have defeated gods!” we say. “And dragons!” we say. “And librarians!” we say. “And despotic corporate overlords!” we say and kind of high five each other about that one in particular.
“But these men,” Missy Wilkes says.
“Maintenance men,” Leann Hart says, already writing a story in her head.
“Mafia,” Sheriff Sam suggests.
“They’re kind of cute,” Michelle Nguyen says, as her girlfriend Maureen nods in agreement.
“Not everyone gets to know everything,” we tell ourselves. “We have limitations,” we say, stumbling upon a new truth. “And when we know what we cannot know, we can believe whatever we want.”
“Flower mafia,” Sheriff Sam insists.
“Cancer is actually more inexplicable and frightening than those men,” Lorelai Alvarez says from great and terrible experience. And we sigh and, yeah, collectively nod. Culminating in a town-wide understanding that we not only touched the sky, but pushed against it. We know more about what we cannot know, and we are less afraid, even if we are still quite afraid. But in a productive, positive way. Like knowing not to put hornets in your mouth. We learned this, all together.
Tough luck about you, though. Hope you’re doing OK at the gardens, I mean it didn’t look like you were, but we do wish you the best.

We walk to our homes, turn on our radios and hide. And we listen to a familiar voice say: “This has been a story about us.”

And we are pleased, because we always wanted to hear about ourselves on the radio.

Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.

Today’s proverb: Anything is a piñata if you hit it hard enough.