02/02/2018 21:59:24 ¶ ●

## 121 - A Story of Love and Horror, Part 1: “Barks”

The password is “mudwomb”. The username is “mudwomb”.
The website is “mudwomb”. Where did the rest of the Internet go?
Welcome to Night Vale.

I would like to tell you a story. It is a difficult story and I don’t know what it means, but it seems important to me to tell you. It is about two people and a terrible, impossible decision that they found themselves having to make. It concerns Frances Donaldson and Nazr al-Mujaheed.

But first, the community calendar.

This Tuesday evening the Night Vale Football Boosters Club will hold their meeting at the Applebee’s that we’re all pretty sure was a Chili’s just yesterday, but now is an Applebee’s, and all records show it has always been an Applebee’s even though we remember it as a Chili’s. The subject of this week’s meeting will be the timing of football games, which all members agree are too long. “Hey, I like football as much as the next guy,” said Hannah Gutierrez, “but a whole sixty minutes of play? Plus all the breaks and starting and stopping? We’re busy people. Football should take less time.” The Booster Club will be working on their new proposal to get games done in a tight 15, so everyone can get home to watch the newest episode of Stop Chef, in which a group of contestants compete to prevent a chef from cooking.

Wednesday is Love Day at Dark Owl Records. Owner Michelle Nguyen explained that after recent love-focused events, she wanted everyone to understand that love is a laughable concept. And she wanted to highlight its absurdity by selling albums with songs that ruthlessly mock love using subtle irony, like “I Will Always Love You” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”. My former radio intern Maureen, who was in the store too and was holding hands with Michelle, agreed that love is stupid, and funny. And fun and ridiculous, and all-encompassing and revitalizing. Then Michelle said, “What?” And Maureen said, “What?” And then they both got embarrassed and asked me to leave.

Thursday is the Safety Parade, which the Sheriff’s Secret Police hold each year in order to highlight safety. Of course, no one is allowed to march in or attend the parade for their own safety. As Secret Police Mascot, Barks Ennui, always says: “Woof woof! The biggest danger to you – is you! Woof woof.”

Friday is a meeting at town hall to discuss the problem of entrances to other universes, and the question of whether all of us even ended up in the right universe after that whole recent mixup. There will be light snacks as well as blood tests and surprise interrogations about our version of history, in order to trip up intruders from parallel universes. Attendance is mandatory.

This Saturday and Sunday, the Brown Stone Spire will be offering powerful gifts in exchange for great sacrifices. The larger the sacrifice, the more powerful the gift. For instance, if you give it a DVD you got for Christmas five years ago and have never even taken out of its shrink wrap, it’ll give you a well-worn copy of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” that is missing its cover. But if you give it an offering of your own blood and fervent chanting, the copy of “Chamber of Secrets” it gives you will have an intact cover.

And finally, this Monday, Night Vale cinemas will be hosting a showing of that classic comedy caper, “The Grift of the Magi”, in which two con artists run scams in order to get one another Christmas gifts, only to find that they have accidentally each stolen the money from the other.

And now, a story of love – and horror.

Frances Donaldson runs the Antiques Mall in Old Time Night Vale. Long before she took on that job though, she developed an interest in time. As a child, she would stand still and consider that while she had not moved at all in space, something had changed. That she had grown just slightly older, her hair just slightly longer, and this without being able to see the movement at all. She liked to lie in bed and, through her window, watch planes pass very high in the sky. She liked to think about where they had taken off and where they might land. Objects fascinated her, because they too moved through time, on a different trajectory than her. Her bedroom lamp had existed, looking more or less like it was now, since before she was born, and could well exist after she had died. It wasn’t even aware, was too unable to move, and yet it joined her in this mad hurdle through time.

She found this terrifying, and she found this fascinating. And she found this delightful and she wanted it to stop. And she hoped it never stopped, and she felt all of these feelings equally and at once, and without contradiction. What use was there in worrying if all of what she felt about time did not exactly add up? She was too busy feeling it to consider what it meant. And so, of course, she became fascinated with antiques. These objects washed up from the crooked tides of time.

Nazr al-Mujaheed coaches the Night Vale High School football team. Go Scorpions. And this was almost the entirety of his world. He thought about football when he woke up, he thought about it on the drive to work. Of course he thought about it when he ran practices and had meetings with the assistant coaches, and he thought about it at night when he ate take-out dinners on his couch while watching football. This made him happy. And what makes a person happy, if it doesn’t harm another person and doesn’t harm themselves, is OK. Even if it’s not how anyone else would want to live.

But while it made him happy, Nazr was also aware that is more than one kind of happiness. And that perhaps this happiness he found in a life endlessly thinking about football, was less than the happiness he could find in a life with more things in it. This wasn’t about fixing a problem, this was an attempt to improve on a good situation. This was his play for some sort of grace. Other people he knew could provide an outside perspective, and perhaps allow him to be less focused on his work and on the game he coached. And so he decided he would try dating. Without expectations, without a plan, just as a way to see what the world might have for him.

And now, a word from our sponsors.

[masculine ad reader voice] Ford! Our cars are built strong, strong like a rock or a mountain or a bone. In fact, our cars are built out of bones, weird metal bones that were buried in a meteor. What creature did they belong to? How did it live with a skeleton of steel? Are its relatives even now streaking down from the sky, intent on revenging themselves upon the pitiful culture that desecrated their dead and turned them into affordable and reliable pickup trucks? Who knows. We certainly don’t. We barely understand how an engine works. We have one guy who knows, and he builds them all. But in order to protect his job, he won’t show anyone else how to do it. Now that’s smart thinking. Ford: drive weird bones.

There was no great epiphany for Frances that led to her dating life. She had been on the dating app, Void, since it had become available in Night Vale, and had gone on a few casual Void dates. It was not an important part of her life, because it didn’t seem likely to ever lead to anything more. But the occasional company was nice. A night with someone, and then back to her life as it was, which was a life she liked. In this way, her dating was related to her obsession with time. Her bed was always the same bed, and sometimes there was another person in it. And mostly only her. She floated upon that bed as it moved through time. Passengers on and off, and she alone voyaging onward.

And then, Nazr messaged her on Void and they started chatting. For his part, he was unsure of how to date, it having been some time since he had done and certainly before dating happened as a series of written communications, rather than awkward hand gestures. So he had messaged a number of women in town, who had seemed to him like someone he might want to spend more time with. He did this without expectation. He had few expectations that did not involve football. He just performed the actions that might lead to new outcomes for him, and three of the women had messaged back. He was, after all, not a bad looking man, handsome even, although it had been a long time since anyone had told him that. And so it would not have occurred to him that he was handsome, and this in many ways made him even more handsome.

Frances and he agreed to meet for lunch near the high school. This was close enough to her antique store that she could walk, and so the whole thing didn’t feel to either of them like much of a commitment of time.
“So,” he said, once they had sat down with their food.
“So,” she agreed, and for an awful moment it seemed like it would hang there in uncomfortable silence, and a bad date best forgotten.
But then he asked about antiques, because he himself had an interest in old football trophies. And he agreed that might seem a bit weird, but the thing was that their designs were often fascinating. Never having been meant to stand up under scrutiny, crudely carved players, hands like dinner rolls, feet disappearing into the base of the trophy. And this turned into a discussion of all the many old items that would never be valuable from the viewpoint of capitalism, but were more interesting than the ones that were valuable. From this, the conversation spread out into her fascination with time. And then time itself, and their childhoods, and how it was hard sometimes to remember that they themselves were adults. And in Nazr’s case, older than his parents ever lived to be.

On returning to work, Nazr started the afternoon football practice as usual. And as usual, threw himself into the rhythm of drills, spells and counter-spells that make up any football skirmish. But he found, for the first time in his life, that he couldn’t make himself fully focus. There was a part of him still thinking about the lunch, about the way her hands had looked tapping on the table. About the way she talked about time as it were not an implacable force, but an old and fallible friend. He had to continually draw himself back intro practice, and the players wondered if he perhaps was sick.

Frances stood at the window of her antique shop watching the planes fly overhead. When a person entered the shop, she would acknowledge them vaguely with a nod, and then acknowledge them vaguely with a nod again when they left. But otherwise, she kept her eyes on the window. Something in her chest felt tight, but also less heavy. She was both scared and happy, and she wasn’t sure why she was either of those. When later they both messaged and decided to go on a second date, an evening date at a nice restaurant, something with a bit more commitment behind it, neither of them connected it directly to the way they felt after their lunch together. But both of them could not contain their impatience, and had messaged that very evening. Both at exactly 10:55 PM.

Let’s have a look at that weather.

[“Riches and Wonders” by Eliza Rickman & Jherek Bischoff]

There was a second date. And that night, she went with him back to his house. Then a third date, when they went to her house. Then a few more dates where they sometimes went to one of their houses and sometimes just kissed, wild with the feeling of it. Out in the park lot of whatever restaurant or bar they had met at, before saying good night because they had to work in the morning, and they were adults who sometimes had control of themselves.

This was not one of those nights, though. This was a night that she was in his bed and he was asleep. This was a little over a month after their first date. As she lay sleepy and happy, she watched the TV, which was tinting the darkness a soft fickering blue. It was an old episode of “Friends”, in which Joey rolls limply and slowly, over the course of 21 minutes, across the apartment while out of focus in the background, Phoebe searches desperately through every cabinet and screams. Frances had seen the episode too many times to laugh out loud at, but still it felt comforting to watch, like sitting in a room that she liked. The episode had become a place she could go, rather than a story to follow.

There was a commercial break and a PSA from the Secret Police came on, featuring the adorable cartoon spokesdog, Barks Ennui. He capered about, pointing out all the different ways one could break the law in Night Vale and get sentenced to a forever term in the abandoned mine shaft outside of town. She found herself grinning at his bad puns in the section about reporting on your neighbors: “Traitorous activities can be ruff! Go fetch us their deepest secrets!” And then Barks said her name. His cartoon canine face turned directly to the screen and he said, “Frances.” She didn’t know how to respond. A commercial had never spoken to her, and certainly it had never done what Barks did next, which was to step out of the TV screen in a clumsy flopping movement and then sit up, a two-dimensional flickering cartoon dog standing in the bedroom.

“Frances,” Barks said. “You aren’t supposed to be here. This doesn’t belong to you.” He cocked his animated head, the wall of Nazr’s apartment vaguely visible through him, as though through heavy fog. As his head turned, it sagged in the direction of the ground, stretching and distorting his cartoon puppy face until it was a series of drooping ovals. When he spoke again, his voice sounded stretched too. “You will have to make this right, Frances!” he garbled. [muddled] “You will have to make this right!”

She screamed. Nothing happened. She screamed.

Stay tuned next, just – stay tuned. Next.

Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.

Today’s proverb: Welcome to 2018. The year we finally do it. The year we eat the sun.

13/02/2018 14:34:40 ¶ ●

## Donor-only episodes

Just a reminder: if you want transcripts of the donor-only bonus episodes, please forward the email with the episode link to cecilspeaks@outlook.com. You will receive the transcript via email. We trust you to not post it anywhere.

The transcript for episode 3 is available today.

15/02/2018 17:53:21 ¶ ●

## 122 - A Story of Love and Horror, part 2: “Spire”

Do you hear that sweet melody?
That sweet melody on the breeze?
No one else hears that sweet melody,
That sweet melody on the breeze.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Frances did her best to pretend that she had imagined what she had seen that night in the house of Nazr al-Mujaheed. When Barks Ennui, the cartoon spokesdog for the Sheriff’s Secret Police, had come out of the television and told her that she does not belong, and that they were both doomed. This obviously wasn’t an easy thing to forget, but people forget difficult things every day. We are all of us carrying around difficult things like cannon balls rolling, unstable in our heads, occasionally throwing us off balance when they shift too much to one side. But mostly, just slowing us down while we pretend nothing is wrong.

She and Nazr continued to see each other. He let people know at school, and the faculty and administration were happy for him. Everyone felt that he was always too consumed by high school football. Especially Principal Fryman, who grumbled to himself that the team didn’t even have a good record to show for all of that obsession.

Nazr took Frances to a faculty after school drinks meet-up, the first one he had ever gone to, because he always spent his evenings prepping for that week’s practice, studying game film, drawing up defensive schemes, and slithering around his living room on his belly while hissing like a snake.

Frances, in turn, took him to her monthly book club meet-up. This month’s book had been Irvine Welsh’s “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, the controversial follow-up to his classic novel “Trainspotting”. Everyone agreed that it wasn’t nearly as good as the original, since it only shared a couple of the main characters. They also agreed that Frances’ relationship was having a real effect on her. “You hardly seem like the same person,” said Jeremy, who had liked Frances before and was jealous that she might change and grow as a person, outside of his influence. Jeremy was, all in all, being a real shit.

Everyone else agreed that she seemed to be happier and more open to the world than before she had started dating. Frances quietly wondered if changing so quickly, just because you were eating meals with and sometimes sleeping with someone, was a good or bad or neutral thing. She thought that change was hardly ever neutral.

Through all of this, she pretended that Barks Ennui, the cartoon dog, did not appear to her most evenings in her home. But he did. He would crawl out of her television, even if she was watching a channel his commercials didn’t play on, or even if the television was off. The proportions of his body, lovably clumsy interview wo dimensions, seemed a horrifying mistake of nature in three dimensions. And his features were warped and blurred, as though seen through static.

“You don’t belong together,” Barks Ennui said in a goofy cartoon voice that occasionally veered dizzyingly into other pitches. Sometimes a child’s giggle, or a bassy growl for a few seconds before sliding back to the middle. She would hide under her covers, and she would hear from within the hot dark of her blanket, his familiar cartoon voice say: “There is a price that must be payed!” And she would scream and scream and then realize she was alone. And then she would choose to pretend that none of this had happened.

Nazr did not see Barks Ennui. But he was not without his own troubles. He would find, some evenings, that when he looked in the mirror, there were two of him. One of him sitting behind the other. He would stand and the second reflection would stand too. It would follow all of his movements from behind is primary reflection. This went on for days. Then one night, he looked in the mirror and there was only one of him. He sighed, feeling some relief to the tension that had been with him so long as to become his new normal. And that is when, in the mirror, his second reflection into the room, followed by Frances Donaldson.

Nazr whirled. The room he was in was empty. He looked back in the mirror. There was his own face, terrified, and behind that on the bed, there was himself again with Frances. The two of them were kissing passionately. He watched himself kiss, and then his reflection and the Frances in the mirror stopped watching and looked up at him with startled faces. They stayed frozen that way, and he stayed frozen too. After several moments, the mirror couple smiled. Their smiles got wider and wider, and then they were both dead, blood covered and sprawling at irregular angles. And then – they were alive again and smiling at him.

He shouted and stumbled back form the mirror. From them on, he too to covering his mirrors, and that worked for a few days. But then one day, he came home to find himself in his bedroom, already sitting in front of the covered bedroom mirror. The him that was in his bedroom looked up at him who had just entered, with wide eyes and a yawning mouth and Nazr, who believed himself to be the real Nazr, turned and walked out of his house. He checked into a motel and decided to stay there for a while.

Finally the strain broke on Nazr and Frances. At Applebee’s over lunch, she started crying, and he was so surprised that he started crying. And they were crying at each other and didn’t know why the other was crying. And she said, “This is going to sound crazy”, and he said, “You’re not going to believe me.” And then they told each other, and it didn’t sound crazy, and she believed him.

“What does it mean?” she said. “Why are we being punished just because we’re finally seeing someone?” “That’s a good question,” said Barks Ennui. He was sitting in the booth next to them. They both yelled in surprise, and the other people in the restaurant looked over with a mix of confusion and annoyance. None of them could see Barks, and so they assumed the couple must have accidentally ordered the electrolysis nachos appetizer.

“Who are you?” asked Nazr.
“Me?” said Barks, his animation dog face stretching and compressing in mesmerizingly horrifying ways. “I’m a construct!” he said, “in order to allow communication”.
“Communication with who?” said Frances.
“I represent the Brown Stone Spire,” said Barks.
The Brown Stone Spire was a strange monument at the edge of town. It offered great gifts in exchange for even greater sacrifices. It was extremely dangerous, and neither of them had ever heard of it trying to communicate with anyone.
Barks continued: “Everything’s gone strange since you started dating. You know what I’m talking about?”
“Maybe,” Nazr said, thinking of the mirrors in his home.
“Maybe?” repeated Barks mildly. “Maybe it will get even stranger. Maybe your conditions will continue to deteriorate.”
“What do you mean deteriorate?” she said. “We’re two people dating, what’s wrong with that?”
“This town is a point where many universes meet,” said Barks. He was on the other side of the table, next to Frances now. “Recently those universes collapse into each other. When the mess was finally sorted out, not everyone ended up in the right universe.”
“It’s me,” said Nazr, “That explains it. The other me in my house, plus my tongue is like two feet long and that doesn’t seem right. I don’t belong in this universe.”
“No,” said Barks. “It’s Frances. She doesn’t belong here. Frances, you switched places during the collapse with the Frances of this world, and you are coming into contact with a person from a different universe, which has an exceptionally detrimental effect on reality. I believe,” he said to Nazr, “you were saying something about reflections in your house?”

And now, a look at traffic.

The cosmology of the universe is thus. First, there is the sphere. The indications of the sphere are warmth and bristle. The colors of the sphere are blue and yellow. Then, there is the cube. The indications of the cube are touch and lift. The colors of the cube are red and white. Then, there is the expansive plane. The indications of the expansive plane are speed and shadow. The colors of the expansive plane are myriad. And finally, there is the outward fade. The indications of the outward fade are a ringing bell and a rush of water. The colors of the outward fade are none.
This has been traffic.

And now a word from our sponsors.
Mute children perched atop strange formations on desert plateaus. Our eyes gaze toward a horizon that will never change. There is no movement here, no sun, but there is light. No darkness, but there is night. We do not need to eat, but we are hungry. We have no way to drink, but we are thirsty.
We have nothing to sell you. Remember us.
This has been a word from our sponsors.

Frances couldn’t believe it. or she could, but she resolutely chose not to. Nazr thought again and again of the other him and the other her, lying dead on his bed and then smiling. And then dead again. It was true that something was horribly wrong. Perhaps they didn’t belong together. Perhaps they didn’t belong together so much that the universe itself was collapsing around the relationship.

It wasn’t fair. Didn’t both of them deserve happiness?

Cecil here. I’ll go ahead and answer that. They did! But what a person receives and what they deserve is only ever tangentially and coincidentally related.

They decided they should go to the Brown Stone Spire. It had offered to help them. They should at least hear out what it was asking for in return.

Nazr drove them. Cars stop working within a few hundred feet of the spire, as the spire prefers humans to approach on foot. Actually, it prefers humans to approach on their bellies, but it takes humble walking as a compromise. The closest parking lot is the Radio Shack, but of course that one is always full of customers, and so they parked at the Wendy’s and walked.

Her foot started bothering her, but she didn’t know if it was actually bothering her or if she was just afraid of what the Brown Stone Spire would say.

The Brown Stone Spire hummed. They fell to their knees before it.
“Help us!” said Nazr.
“We just want to be together,” Frances said. “I don’t know if we belong together, but we make each other happy. Isn’t that something worthwhile? Don’t we get at least that?”
The Brown Stone Spire heard. It hummed. It already knew the problem and it already knew the solution. And it already knew the price. It told these humans all three by implanting the thoughts directly in their brains.

Frances threw up. Nazr wept. There was a solution, but the price was unthinkable. It was impossible, it was inhuman. Of course, the Spire isn’t human nor possible nor even thinkable.

They walked back to the car in silence. And now,
The weather.

[“Fire Drills” by Dessa]

That evening, they sat in Frances Donaldson’s living room and thought about what to do.
“Impossible,” she said.
“Unthinkable,” he said.
“Then we agree?” she said.
“Of course we agree,” he said. “What else is there?” he said. “We’re not monsters,” he said.
“Right,” she said.
“I want to show you something,” said Barks Ennui. He was on the TV screen so close that whatever backdrop was invisible, just his exaggerated snout and his wild eyes.
“Come here!”
Both of them knew for certain they would refuse, and both stepped forward obediently.
“In here!” said Barks. “Into the TV!”
Frances put her hand on the screen and felt nothing. It was a hollow frame. She put her hand through the frame. Her hand felt like her hand, no different than it had a moment before. She leaned down and put her torso in, and she felt a pull, like gravity. And she fell downwards through the TV screen.

She was in her living room again. It looked very much like her living room, although a few details were different. The framed poster from the International Musée (du Chats) [0:19:33] in Paris was now from the Museo Internacional (de los Gatos) in Mexico City. The taxidermy deer foot penholder on the mantle was now a taxidermy boar’s foot penholder.

Nazr tumbled in next to her. “Oh, cool penholder,” he said. Frances took his hand and helped him up. They looked around, and then out the front window. Frances was outside working in a garden. A different Frances, in the garden being watched by the first Frances in the living room.
“The Frances from your universe, Nazr,” said Barks. His three-dimensional form was enormous this time, taking up the living room from floor to ceiling, although he displaced nothing in it, and Frances and Nazr had plenty of room to stand.
“She ended up in this universe and the Frances from this universe, that’s you Frances, ended up in hers, a silly mix-up. But these things do need to be set right, or else both of you will slip further and further into the gap between universes, until neither of you exist anymore!”

Frances couldn’t take her eyes off herself in the garden.
“Try to stay together,” said Barks, “and you both will cease to exist!”
The Frances in the garden waved to Jackie Fierro, who was biking past. A car drove by. In it was Dana Cardinal and her brother. They waved, too.
“Enough!” said Barks, grabbing them and pulling them upward. They were all back in the couch in Frances’ living room, or the living room she had thought was hers. There was only one Frances here.
“You know the price,” said Barks. He crawled backwards into the TV, staring intently with his droopy animated eyes. “There are only two ways forward. The first is that this Frances returns to her correct universe, and you two never see each other again. The other would allow the two of you to live as long and as happy as anyone can together. It would be simple, but in order for that to happen, the Spire will destroy the other universe and every person who lives within it. That Frances and every other person in that world will cease to exist, but then you would be able to flourish in this universe.”

He was fully back onto the screen, a two-dimensional cartoon dog in a none yellow cartoon backdrop. But his eyes were still huge, like they were inches away.
“You don’t have long to decide!” He gave a silly laugh, the kind he did at the end of his appearance on children’s shows. The laugh that made children laugh back at how silly it was. But this silly laugh did not end. For several minutes, Nazr and Frances stared at him, and he looked back, laughing.

Stay tuned next for decision to be made.

Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.

Today’s proverb: I’m going to give you a piece of my mind. It’s in this clay jar. Please keep it in a cool, dark place and away from cats.