15/12/2013 14:58:00 ¶ ●

## Episode 37 - The Auction

Velvet darkness. Silken light. The rough burlap of evening. The frayed cotton of daybreak.

Welcome to Night Vale.

First off, welcome back! Everything is fine. Nothing happening, if you know what I mean. You shouldn’t know what I mean. If you do know, you should forget. I’m not going to mention anything, and you’re not going to hear anything. And both of us will fail to remember. No one will be named. Nothing will be referenced. And so…

Listeners, today is an exciting and important day in Night Vale. The Sheriff’s Secret Police are holding their annual Auction of Contraband and Seized Property to benefit their purchase of balloons, birthday candles, yellow cake, and a piñata. They hope to raise $7.3 million dollars, and they say the piñata is armored, and will be used to crush rebellions.

Personally, I love the annual auction. You never know what sort of fun stuff might come up. The catalog has so many interesting items! Umm, let’s see…

Lot 1 is an all-clad dinnerware set. Eight pans, in cast aluminum for perfect distribution of heat. New in the package. It’s just waiting for you to season it with a dollop of olive oil and start cooking for friends and family – regardless of how no one comes over anymore after the last dinner party, when your mother drank all the Chianti and announced you never lived up to your potential.

At least, that’s what the description of the lot says.

Lot 2 is a glowing coin with the image of a grim, horned god on the obverse, and a half-collapsed panopticon on the reverse. It’s been graded MS-45 by the Sheriff’s Secret Police Coin Grading Service, which in no way colludes with the Sheriff’s Secret Police Auction House to inflate the grade, and thus the value of the coin.

Lot 3 is a silver candelabra that once floated across a series of dining rooms-turned-abattoirs, to better illuminate the flying daggers that accompanied it.

Lot 4 is a set of flying daggers, with maniacally-detailed designs on the shaft collars. Knife collectors and maniacs alike will want to bid on those. Don’t get in the way of that bidding war! Haha.

Let’s see…

There are also carpets, and some mid-century modern furniture. Oh! These are very stylish.

And look! Lot 17 is a near-mint copy of Uncanny X-Men #3, 1964. It has slight foxing on the back cover, perfect registration of the color separations, off-white pages, rustless staples, high cover gloss, and no Marvel chipping, and it features the first appearance of The Blob – not the Blob who lives in the housing development out back of the elementary school, the fictional one.

What else?

Lot 37 is…umm…Cecil Palmer. There is no description.

Listeners, we’ll have more on this auction as it develops.

On the lighter side of the news:

Today, an invincible, all-powerful alien presence with telepathic powers came to Night Vale to enslave us all. It planned to bend every sentient being to its will, ending violence and conflict by subjugating all of us to its omniscient, telekinetic powers. Hilariously, this all-powerful but bumbling alien presence didn’t know we were already subjugated to the omniscient force that’s been controlling our thoughts for years! We’re guaranteed to continue our violent and irrational ways, so…in your face, inept newcomer presence!

Toddlers of Night Vale! The Night Vale Community Pre-School invites you to fulfill your potential! Commit to a new and demanding educational curriculum, while exploring your ultimate dream – the same dream that every toddler has: economic opportunity. That’s right! You too can learn to be a chimney sweep. Clean the many, many chimneys of leading citizen – and friendly billionaire – Marcus Vanston. What a good man Marcus Vanston is!

Every one of his houses, from his smallest penthouse apartment atop the dirigible hangar, to his 46-room hilltop estate, has multiple chimneys. He has built chimneys even in places where he has no houses, so his well-deserved carbon credits can go to good use. There are numerous chimneys on his shopping mall, his office buildings, his dirigible, his moon rock-plated recreational vehicles, and – due to new and creative laws that allow eminent domain for the generous Marcus Vanston – every other house in town as well.

He has strapped traveling chimneys onto the pushcarts of festive peddlers, whose rags, hunched shoulders, nagging coughs, and forced tin-whistle merriment accompany the sad antics of their emaciated vest and marching band cap-wearing capuchin monkeys holding tin cups, rattling with a single penny from some defunct, outmoded currency, asking us to contribute to their upkeep, as we turn up our collars, clear our throats, and make convenient excuses to walk a little faster until, instead of embarrassment about their fates, we find our way to feeling superior about our fragile position on the economic ladder.

Marcus Vanston understands. He doesn’t want you to be a lowly peddler! Or a capuchin monkey! He wants you to be a chimney sweep.

So, little ones, lower your standards! Smother your dreams in carbon, and enroll in the Pre-School Chimney Sweep Academy. Make good-old Marcus Vanston happy, for a few brief moments.

An update on our earlier story:

Violence has broken out among bidders in the Sheriff’s Secret Police auction. Bidding has been frantic, and angry. It is confirmed that there has been hair-pulling. Unfortunately, attendees have been using their bidding paddles to slap each other across the face – a motion the auctioneer has been repeatedly mistaking as indication as a new bid. Thus, Lot 1, the all-clad dinnerware set, sold for $175,000 – and that’s before the buyer’s premium.

Listeners, I have been in touch with the auction staff about Lot 37, which is of a certain interest to me. I want Lot 37! I want it badly! I asked if they might take a photograph and send it to me. Well…the peals of laughter that broke out in response were a cross between sleigh bells and the cackles of hunched, gray-faced court jesters. You know how that sounds.

Listeners, in order to learn more about Lot 37, it’s likely I will need to visit the auction myself.

More as it develops.

The Night Vale mayoral race is heating up in preparation for the mayoral election this next June. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home has taken to leaving leaflets inside the wiring and pipes of your appliances, to be found when the sparking and the shaking become so much that you must hire, or capture, a repair person.

The leaflets are tastefully designed, with an anatomically-detailed drawing of a sparrow’s heart, and the simple slogan: “You are fragile, and blind, and wanting, and stepping alone into the great darkness of the future.”

It also has her five-point policy platform, which is mostly interesting facts she has learned about bees.

Meanwhile, Hiram McDaniels, in the interest of saving time, has taken to standing on corners giving five different campaign speeches – one with each of his heads. His heads have radically different personalities, and agendas, leading to some discord in their messages. But they all agree that they would like to be elected, that youth sports programs are important, and that the Time of the Lizard will soon be upon the helpless human race.

Oh! And speaking of the good-hearted and great-walleted Marcus Vanston, he has also thrown his hat into the proverbial ring. He actually constructed a special proverbial ring in the middle of town, with an LCD light display and a fountain with hourly waterspout show, and commissioned a gold-plated hat, with remote-controlled hat launcher, for just that purpose. As the hat flew into the ring, a 40-piece children’s choir sang a song composed for the occasion, titled, “Hi, I’m Running Too, I Guess. Oh, I’m Marcus Vanston, Whatever. Anyway, I’m Going to be Mayor, Thanks.”

Many tears were shed by onlookers – due to civic pride, and some helpful gas Marcus had added to the air supply.

Well, this is starting to look like a mayoral campaign for the ages!

When reached for comment, outgoing mayor Pamela Winchell showed us a collection of mosses, and explained the songs that must be sung to each of them for proper growth.

Hey kids. Ever go walking in the woods and wonder whether a fairy ring of mushrooms is poisonous? Well, look at its center. If there is a body no older than yourself lying there, the ring is perfectly fine. If the body is also screaming, the ring is perfectly fine. Everything is perfectly fine! There is nothing under your bed, there is nothing in your closet. Your parents are, most likely, actually your parents, regardless of what the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home might tell you.

Do not fear the black helicopters, or the black windowless school buses that circle your block at night. You need not be afraid of the bogeyman. There hasn’t been a sighting of a bogeyman for several months – or at least a couple weeks.

And yes, you will die – but probably not until everyone you know is already dead, too. Your parents, your friends, your pets…each death leaving a small but irreparable scar on your not-yet-still, still-beating heart.

The living tell the dying not to leave, and the dying do not listen. The dying tell us not to be sad for them, and we do not listen. The dialogue between the living and the dead is full of misunderstanding and silence.

There’s nothing to fear in oblivion – unless, of course, your consciousness survives death. If so, it would be reasonable to fear the sensation of consciousness without senses, suspended alone in the cosmos, with no one to hear you, and no way to make yourself known. No reference point for counting time – a count that does not matter anyway in a literal eternity.

You might wish that you still had a corporeal form, only so that you could make your mouth move to express your terror, to make the universal form of a terrified scream, the form of a letter O. But you won’t be able to. You just won’t!

This has been the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner, brought to you by shame, loneliness, and the letter O.

I have been told, listeners, that the auction has descended into chaos. Michelle Nguyen, owner of Dark Owl Records, having bid on a sealed box of Elvis Presley 45s, opened the box to find it was in fact a box of Elvis Presley’s .45-caliber revolvers. The upended box has made bidding much more treacherous.

Mayor Pamela Winchell, interested in Lot 28 – a gently-used 5-cup coffee maker – has begun laying down suppressing fire over the ducked heads of anyone trying to outbid her.

Despite this, I must enter the auction house myself, taking my life into my hands even more than usual.

Lot 37. Cecil Palmer.

I must know. I must bid!

I go now, listeners, to await the crying of Lot 37.

As I go, you go, to the weather.

[“Absentee” by Jack Campbell]

Listeners, many complications ensued during my attempt to bid on Lot 37. First, in registering for the auction, I had to indicate my current income – which is made difficult, as our new owners (who I have been asked to stop talking about) are now paying us in scrip, redeemable only at merchants they own, like Dust Hut or the Ralph’s.

Luckily, the Sheriff’s Secret Police turns out to be one of those select merchants. I was able to get a paddle, only moments before the bidding on Lot 37 began.

When confronted with destiny, there are external events to record, yes…but also internal. I would say, time slowed down even more than usual. The edges of the room went blurry, and then went, completely. There was a deep throb of distant machinery that I realized was my own heart propelling inadequate amounts of blood through my parched and aching body. If I did not win Lot 37 I would be…unraveled.

Perhaps I would be unraveled either way. The dull ache I felt was a primal ache of incompletion, the separation an infant feels when pulled too soon from its mother’s embrace. My cheeks flushed with the irrationality of desire. I needed Lot 37.

I counted my breaths. I judged myself for wanting, and judged myself wanting. I focused on those parts of my life completely out of my control in order to calm myself down, drowning my fears in pleasant helplessness.

The upshot is, I forgot to raise my paddle. Oh! Oh, foolish Cecil! And through the tears that came then to my eyes, I couldn’t see who won Lot 37 with only one bid!

Winner of Lot 37, if you’re listening, on one hand I wish you good luck with your prize. On the other, I will be using the mightiest bully pulpit of all, community radio, to strike back at you and destroy you!

But also, congratulations. Also that.

I am authorized to tell you that the Sheriff’s Secret Police have declared the auction a resounding success. In celebration, they deployed the piñata to the screams – presumably delighted – of everyone in attendance. The winning bidders walked away grinning, laden down with trinkets and trophies that reassured them with the cleverness of sheer acquisition.

The Sheriff’s Secret Police went on to say that objects are invested with mana, magic power caused by the dangerous ideas of property and ownership. And holding onto them is our attempt at having something that will never let us down, even though eventually all will.

People leave. Parents leave the room. Lovers leave your life. You leave the world.

We clutch teddy bears first, then dolls, then sports jerseys, and automobiles with hand-sewn leather and excellent gas mileage. As if that were something permanent.

The Sheriff’s Secret Police gave a great cheer in honor of constant decay, and the inevitability of abandonment.

Listeners, accumulating objects is just a way, we hope, to turn back the grim specter of death. Thank you for your participation in this auction, and for your hope that making a certain purchase – all-clad cooking ware, a candelabra, a comic book, a community radio show host – would render you anything more than mortal.

I go now to find myself, or to find who has myself, or to find someone that might make me feel better about what has happened today.

I’d take that last one, honestly. I’d take that honest, last one.

And so, dear listeners, and whatever unknown person or entity that is now the owner of Lot 37, I bid you a farewell – the fondness of which is determined by your place relative to mine in my heart.

Stay tuned next for our popular home medical program, Yes, That’s Probably Cancer.

Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

Today’s proverb: Listen, I’m not a hero. The real heroes are the people that point out to us when protesters have smart phones, thus invalidating all concerns.