It is almost complete. It is almost complete at last.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Hello, there.
As you well know, faithful listeners, it is Night Vale History Week, in which we all learn a little bit about what made our bustling little town what it is. Or, as the official motto released by the City Council goes, “Poke about in the black recesses of the past until it devours our fragile present.”
In the interest of civic participation, Night Vale Community Radio will be pitching in with short lessons about some points of interest from our town’s history, starting with 4000 B.C.
Archaeologists believe that this is the earliest date of human settlement in Night Vale. Little remains of these ancient inhabitants except a few cave paintings of their towns and their hunting practices, and of the dark shapes that would watch them in the distance. Inhuman, shimmering shapes that never came closer or farther away, but whose presence could be felt even with eyes shut tight, huddled in fur and the company of another human’s naked skin.
Or so I’m extrapolating from the evidence.
The cave paintings mainly resemble smudges now, after their original discoverer attempted to power-wash them off the wall because he, on religious grounds, did not believe in the past.
And now the news:
The Night Vale Tourism Board asks that whoever is telepathically assaulting the tourists please stop.
According to the NVTB executive director, Madeline LeFleur, there were two separate incidents in one week of entire tour buses suddenly shrieking in unbridled terror and trying to blind themselves using rolled-up “Visitable Night Vale” brochures – all to the utter confusion of the bus drivers.
LeFleur added, “We just had those brochures printed.”
LeFleur claims that tourism accounts for tens of thousands of dollars annually for Night Vale, and the town prides itself on hospitality. She said that if good-hearted families travel to Night Vale only to find their subconsciouses besieged with unforgettable revelations, horrors buried so deep as to be completely indescribable, revealing wholly unbearable new truths, then we certainly can’t expect these people to return…let alone leave good Yelp ratings for local businesses.
The city is asking residents for help in determining who, or what, is causing these psychological infractions. The tourism board is offering puppies as a reward for information on this case.
Or, even if you don’t have information, the city asks that you come get a puppy or two anyway.
Seriously.
Downtown municipal offices are overrun with them. In the trees, walls, carpentry…the exterminators are completely stymied by this infestation.
Please help.
It has been several weeks since anyone in Night Vale has seen the Apache Tracker – that white guy who wears the inaccurate and horribly offensive Indian headdress everywhere. He has not been seen since he began investigating the Great Screaming heard at the post office, and the words written in blood inside.
Also the entire structure of his house has vanished, and the lot where it stood is now a bucolic meadow that neighborhood kids will not ever enter for reasons even they are unable to explain.
I think I speak for everyone in the community when I say good riddance to that local embarrassment. He made the whole town look ignorant and racist.
And now, let us continue with our Night Vale History Week special feature.
The year 1745:
The first white men arrived in Night Vale. Which was not Night Vale then, but was rather just another part of a large and featureless desert. I think we can all agree, though, that even as large and featureless as the desert was, the part that would eventually become Desert Bluffs was still probably awful and drab in comparison to our part.
In any case, the story goes that a party of explorers came to the area that would be Night Vale, looked around, and immediately left to go find somewhere with more water, and maybe some trees.
Then another three parties of explorers did the same thing.
Then finally, one party of explorers all looked at each other, shrugged, and plopped down their stuff…and thus was a proud city born.
And now, traffic.
Crews from the Department of Public Safety will be repainting highway lane markers this week. The common white dashes and double yellow lane dividers will be replaced with colorful ceramic mosaics depicting disgruntled South American workers rising en masse against an abusive capitalist hegemony.
The protective steel barriers along curves in the road will be taken down to make room for some really lovely and provocative butcher-paper silhouettes of slavery-era self-mutilation, reflective of several centuries of slow genocide and dehumanization by Western imperialists, designed by contemporary art darling Kara Walker.
Also, Exits 15 to 17 along Route 800 will be closed for the next two Saturdays because of the biennial Lee Marvin Film Retrospective. So please watch for working crews this weekend, lower your speed, and don’t forget to tip the DPS shift leaders. 20% of your current mileage is standard. Lack of tipping is the leading cause of sinkholes in the U.S.
The year 1824:
The first meeting of the Town Elder Council, predecessors to the City Council. Picture them: crimson robes and soft meat crowns (as was traditional at the time), setting the groundwork for the splendor of today’s Night Vale.
A number of elements of our modern civic process were invented in that single three-hour meeting, including the City Council membership (since unchanged), the lovably Byzantine tax system (as well as the system of brutal penalties for mistakes) and the official town song, chant, and moan. All records of this meeting were destroyed, and…according to a note being passed to me just now, I am to report to City Hall for reeducation effective tomorrow morning.
Oh, dear.
The results of a recent survey of Night Vale residents came to light this week. The study found widespread dissatisfaction with our town’s public library. And, when considering the facts, it’s easy to see why.
The public computers for internet use are outdated and slow. The lending period of 14 days is not nearly long enough to read lengthier books, given the busy schedules of all our lives.
The fatality rate is also well above the national average for public libraries. The library bloodstone circle does not appear to have seen any maintenance or cleaning in some time. There are reports of a faceless spectre moving about the Biography section, picking off lone browsers one by one.
And that Biography section, by the way, is far too small and has been oddly curated – containing 33 copies of the official biography of Helen Hunt, and no other books.
From top to bottom, the public library is a disgrace to our fair city and I can only hope that our City Council does something about that soon, or I may find myself hoping that the faceless spectre puts the library to the same mysterious, violent end as its many victims.
Night Vale High won the grudge match against the Desert Bluffs Vultures last night. Two-headed quarterback Michael Sandero credits the win to help from Angels! The Angels have made an adamant denial of any involvement whatsoever in the game. The school district ethics committee has announced that they will look into any possible “Angelic interference”.
Speaking of which, Night Vale High School is adding metal detectors, and parents and students alike are outraged. Several parents we talked to said that NVHS students have long been recipients of shadow government-issued Uzis and rifles, as well as tasers and armor-piercing munitions. The School Board’s decision to put up metal detectors, according to parents, impinges on the clandestine operation’s rights as a vast underground conspiracy of giant megacorporations and corrupt world leaders to bear arms via teenage paramilitary proxies.
The School Board countered that studies indicate that weapons distract from educators’ ability to educate, and that students who bring firearms to classrooms are more likely to use firearms than students without firearms. The School Board says that school shootings can only get in the way of a quality education.
Well…at the risk of becoming too much a part of this story, dear listeners, might I say that the Night Vale School District is overstepping its bounds by telling us whether or not our children can be armed by undercover militants? Should it be a school’s job to say, “No, child, you cannot have grenades or assault rifles in the classroom”? I think not!
Beginning November first, all students at NVHS will enter the school through metal detectors. Any firearms or weaponry found will be confiscated and held in the counselor’s office until after school, when the students can pick them up again.
Seriously, listeners, what’s next? Removing the line “Praise the beams, praise, o ye knowing beams that guide our lives, our hearts, our souls; praise o highest to ye all-powerful beams” from the Pledge of Allegiance?!
Let’s return to another key moment in Night Vale history.
The year 1943:
As part of the war effort, Night Vale citizens dedicated themselves to chanting. The young, the old, men and women alike gathered around their bloodstones and chanted for the victory of the United States.
While some credit must be given to the strategic planning of U.S Command, and to the brave fighting of American soldiers, most reputable scholars believe that Night Vale’s chanting was the deciding factor in America’s eventual victory over the Axis powers.
The City Council erected a seven-story monument in Grove Park saying so in large, neon letters…until a federal lawsuit forced them to take it down.
And now, a word from our sponsors.
That word is carp.
This next installment in our exploration of Night Vale’s storied past takes place in the future.
The year 2052:
The scion of the Dark Order will descend, realize he mistimed the prophecy, and re-ascend. The Seventh Siege of the Great Night Vale Temple will rage on. The plague of buzzing boils will kill thousands, and annoy thousands more, with its buzzing.
The City Council will reveal its true form and eat half of Night Vale’s population.
Approval ratings for the mayor will hover in the low 40s…which will be surprising, as there will have been no mayor for over thirty years.
The Night Vale Business Association announced today that the Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area was not actually something that ever existed in reality, but was instead a shared hallucination of the entire town’s population. As such, they are proud to declare that they have never suffered any sort of disastrous business failure, and the reportedly massive amounts of money lost on building waterfront facilities in a desert are fabrications of our collective consciousness.
They recommend consulting your dream interpretation manuals to determine exactly what this “Night Vale Harbor” vision could mean. They also said that if you happen to stumble on the Waterfront buildings out in the desert exactly where you remembered them, and they seem completely real, standing as vacant and useless as the day they were built, that’s because you are still hallucinating and should seek medical treatment immediately. Or have a member of the City Council howl at you if you are of the Olden Faith, and do not believe in modern medicine.
For our final story in this week’s featured look into the history of Night Vale, let’s look at the very recent past.
Yesterday:
I had cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, steak for dinner. Cars were driven, cars were not driven. The sun gave a great shout of light and then, after several hours of thought, quietly retracted the statement.
Old Woman Josie dug up a box in a shady corner of her yard and carried it, cradled in her arms like a baby or a delicate explosive, to another part of her yard where she buried it again.
An unknown person did something that no one else saw, the nature and extent of which is impossible to determine, and the result of which will be lost in the chaotic chain of causation and consequence that is history.
But most importantly, all of us – all of us here in Night Vale, in America, in the world, in the secret orbital bases – all of us got through another day. We passed the time from one end of twelve to the other without stopping once.
Well done, us! Good job, people who experience time! Time experiencers! Good job!
And, from this moment in history, the one that’s happening right now…
Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: It must be 3:23 PM somewhere. Maybe space?
Silence is golden. Words are vibrations. Thoughts are magic.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Next Saturday is the big lottery drawing, listeners, right out in front of City Hall. And your community radio station has put together a few helpful tips for winning.
The lottery is, of course, mandatory, but how can you get the best odds for drawing a blank white paper, and not one of the purple pieces that means you’ll be ceremonially disemboweled and eaten by the wolves at the Night Vale Petting Zoo and Makeshift Carnival?
I know to some of you young people this lottery seems like a barbarous, outdated tradition. But if not for a municipally-planned citizen sacrifice each quarter, how else would we find satisfactory meats to feed those sad, scrawny animals?
So here now are the “Three I’s” of playing the lottery:
“I” one: Identify. Learn to sense colors. Purple has a grittier emotional aura than white.
“I” two: Ignite. Set fire to your home. While it’s not true that wolves refuse to eat arsonists, it’s a scientific fact that they’re unable to detect the presence of one.
“I” three: Imitate. If you happen to draw a purple piece, impersonate someone who drew a white piece. You might be mistaken for a person who is color blind. This, of course, will lead to months of painful color re-education at City Hall. But, in most cultures, that’s better than being eaten by wolves.
Also, make sure to visit the Food Truck Festival, which will be downtown as part of the lottery festivities. Popular truck treats include Korean barbecue, vegetarian chili, and veal ice cream.
Carlos, this station’s favorite scientist (no offense to Dr. Dubinski in the Night Vale Community College chemistry department) dropped by our broadcasting station earlier this morning for a little chat.
Sadly, dinner or weekend plans were not among the topics.
However, Carlos did request that we ask listeners for anyone who saw a series of bright, colorful flickers coming from Radon Canyon this past weekend. These flickers would also have also been accompanied by unintelligible noises – possibly some form of coded communication or signal-jamming technique.
Carlos suggested that there could be some very sinister forces at work here. He declined to be interviewed live, claiming only that he was scared for us. Scared for all of us in our strange town. Then he drove away quickly in his economical but attractively sporty hybrid coupe.
If anyone out there knows anything about these otherworldly lights and sounds, please contact us immediately.
Night Vale school superintendent Nick Ford, announced today that the Glow Cloud has joined the School Board. The Glow Cloud passed over the entirety of Night Vale several weeks ago – dropping small and large animal carcasses, controlling our thoughts and tertiary muscle groups, and erasing every last recording device. We’re still unsure the Glow Cloud even existed, as no one remembers it, nor has any digital record of it. If not for a few intrepid citizens who used old-fashioned pens and pencils to record the event in their diaries, we would have no remaining knowledge of that day.
I, of course, can only thank those journal writers anonymously here on the air, as the Night Vale City Council long ago banned writing utensils – along with margarita glasses and bar code scanners – and I don’t want to get my fellow reporters in any trouble with the Sheriff’s Secret Police.
According to Superintendent Ford, the Glow Cloud’s visit on that nearly-forgotten day was simply an effort to find a nice neighborhood with good schools to raise a child.
Now what kind of progeny a powerful, formless cloud formed of noxious nightmares and spiritual destruction might produce, I dare not even speculate. But I do know one thing: that little cloud is going to get one heck of an education in the Night Vale School District.
And isn’t it heartening to hear that that little puff of despair’s father, or mother, will serve on the School Board? I mean, no matter how good the school, a student can only get out as much as the parents put in. We should all take such an impactful role in our children’s scholastic lives.
Especially you, Steve Carlsberg. You don’t do anything except bring unacceptably dry scones to PTA meetings and take grammatically disastrous minutes on your shifts as meeting secretary. Get it together, Steve!
Superintendent Ford offered the following statement of support for the newest school board member:
“All hail! Kneel for the Glow Cloud. Sacrifice. Pestilence. Sores. All hail the Glow Cloud!”
And now, traffic.
This morning, I saw a running man. He passed by my home. Panting. Limping. Running desperate. I tried to stop him, but he would not meet my eye.
This noon time, I saw a running man. He was coming down from the mountain, holding a bag. His knees were bloody, and face covered in tears.
This evening, I saw a running man. He was leaving town, legs pumping like a terrified heart. I think he was missing a hand.
Is it that he wouldn’t meet my eye, or that he had no eyes? Now I wish I could remember. There are many things I wish I could remember.
This has been traffic.
New billboards have appeared all over town, bearing the image of a turkey sandwich and the single word “HARLOT” in large, block letters.
These billboards have caused some confusion – both due to their ambiguous message and to the fact that the entire structure of the billboards materialized overnight in places billboards are not usually constructed, such as the living rooms of local homes, the middle of busy thoroughfares (causing multiple car accidents), and, in one case, directly through a living dog, who does not appear harmed by the addition to his body, and has carried the entire billboard around town while going about his usual canine business.
The Department of Health and Human Services recently claimed responsibility for the billboards, saying that they were part of a campaign to promote nutrition and healthy living among children. The original draft of the release also mentioned something about an offering to a long-dead god, but this was altered to “fun, active lifestyles are important for kids of all ages” in a subsequent addendum.
We’re receiving several phone calls from listeners, and from the Parks Department, that those flickering lights and unintelligible noises we reported on earlier were coming from the Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular. I contacted Carlos about this, and he said that the situation is even worse than he imagined.
He, again, did not mention weekend plans.
A sports scandal has shook our quiet little town. The Night Vale Scorpions have faced multiple allegations of possible game tampering this football season. Representatives for the Desert Bluffs School District, speaking in unpleasant and high-pitched voices indicative of weakness of will and character, complained to the Regional Football and Traffic Code Authority that Night Vale quarterback Michael Sandero’s recently-grown second head counts as a twelfth man on the field, thus invalidating the wins brought on by his also recently-acquired superhuman agility and strength.
The RFTCA said that they would look into these allegations with the utmost seriousness, along with their concurrent investigation into whether Night Vale’s “invisible crosswalk” policy is actually a desperate bid to save town funds at the cost of pedestrian lives.
Meanwhile, the School Board is due to announce its decision in the ongoing hearings as to whether appealing to Angels for a win constitutes illegal game tampering. Several Angels agreed to testify at the hearings, however their testimonials were cut short when it became apparent that the hearings were actually elaborate traps set up by the City Council to finally capture the Angels, whom the Council does not recognize as actually existing.
Fortunately, the Angels easily escaped from their cages in a blaze of Heavenly light, presumably returning to Old Woman Josie’s house, out near the Car Lot, which has become something of an informal shelter for local Angels.
When asked about the controversy over his team’s winning record, Coach Nazr al-Mujaheed said, “Our boys are good boys. They’re good boys at football. We win ‘em. With the boys. The football.” Then he smiled vacantly, waved at no one, and wandered off in the direction of the woods. More on this story as it develops.
And now, a word from our sponsor.
Step into your nearest Subway restaurant today, and try their new 6-inch mashed potato sub! Top it with a delicious assortment of fresh vegetables, like french fries and Nutella. They’ll even toast or poach it for you! There are several Subway locations in Night Vale, all easily accessible through witchcraft and chanting. And between now and November 30, buy nine reverse colonics and get a free 40-ounce soda or freshly baked tobacco cookie.
Subway: Devour your own empty heart.
Exciting news about the Abandoned Mine Shaft outside of town, where people who vote incorrectly are taken by the secret police: HBO On Demand will be made available to prisoners during their indefinite detention. All your favorite shows, such as The Wire, Sex and the City, and even new hits like Game Of Thrones, will be available in every cell.
Additionally, the secret police announced that they will be randomly executing one prisoner a day until all incorrect votes are corrected.
This just in: We’re receiving word from the City Council that there was absolutely not a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular this weekend at Radon Canyon…that there was never a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular ever near Night Vale. “Pink Floyd is not even a thing,” said the Council in a very stern, but quiet, statement just received by me, here, via phone.
The Council…and this is strange…the entire Council – not just a representative of the Council, the entire Council – issued this statement, all speaking in unison, just now, over the phone: that Night Vale citizens are prohibited from discussing any lights or sounds coming from Radon Canyon this past weekend, and that they should just stop remembering Pink Floyd shows altogether.
The Council reiterated that there is no way that they are huge Floyd fans, privately using public funds on a laser-powered seance to talk “hard-rockin’ classic jams” with the ghost of original front man Syd Barrett, and that Syd “wouldn’t even say anything juicy anyway, because he is such a gentleman, and an artist.” This did not happen at all.
So, listeners, we urge you to look away from Radon Canyon. Avert your eyes, ears, and memories from that which is no longer allowed you.
Comfort and distract yourselves with dense food and television programming. As the old adage goes:
“A life of pain is the pain of life, and you can never escape it – only hope it hides, unknown, in a drawer like a poisonous spider and never comes out again, even though it probably will, in unexpected and horrific fashion, scaring you from being able to comfortably conduct even the most mundane, quotidian tasks.”
Or, at least, that’s how my grandparents always phrased it.
Teddy Williams, over at the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, has an update on the doorway into that vast, underground city he found in the pin retrieval area of Lane Five.
He says that every window of the city is now glowing both day and night. And he heard the shouts and footsteps of what sounds like an army marching upwards toward the world above. He also said that, given that nothing really matters now, bowling is half-off and each game comes with a free basket of wings.
Mmm, nothing like those Desert Flower wings!
Let me leave you with this, dear listeners.
We lead frantic lives. Filled with needs and responsibilities, but completely devoid of any actual purpose. I say let’s try to enjoy the simple things. Life should be like a basket of chicken wings: salty, full of fat and vinegar, and surrounded by celery you’ll never actually eat, even when you’re greedily sopping up the last viscous streaks of buffalo sauce from the wax paper with your spit-stained index finger. Yes, that is as life should be, Night Vale.
Stay tuned next for a special live broadcast of the Night Vale Symphony Orchestra performing Eugene O'Neill’s classic play The Iceman Cometh.
It is a good night, listeners.
Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: We are living in an immaterial world – a ghost world, and I am an immaterial girl – a ghost.
Weird at last, weird at last! God almighty, weird at last!
Welcome to Night Vale.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police are asking the public’s help in catching a dangerous fugitive on the loose in the greater Night Vale area. They say he is armed, and should be approached with extreme caution.
For everyone’s protection, they are keeping the name and description of the fugitive secret, but indicate that all strangers should be mistrusted and avoided…as well as friends and loved ones, because how well do you know those people, anyway? Are you aware of their location every second of every day? Who among us does not have secrets?
The fugitive is wanted dead or alive and vigilante justice is, as always, highly encouraged.
Our top story today:
A large Pyramid has appeared in the center of the Beatrix Lohman Memorial Meditation Zone, destroying over half of the Zone’s state-of-the-art meditation equipment and paraphernalia. Experts have been contacted as to what could cause sudden Pyramid existence.
However, as it turns out, there are no experts in Pyramid materialization. And the town’s other experts offered up merely shrugs, followed by panicked conjectures, and finally, screams and moans, all of which fell uselessly upon the City Council’s merciless ears.
The Pyramid has been described as “a kind of triangle shape, only three-dimensional.” It has made no movement, despite repeated taserings by the Sheriff’s Secret Police.
Many suspect that this may be a publicity stunt pulled by our own local cereal company, Flakey O’s, who are launching their new line of nighttime-only cereals next month.
An angry mob has formed outside of the cereal factory, just in case.
Telly.
You remember, the deceitful barber with a shriveled soul who. just a few weeks ago. cut perfect scientist Carlos’ perfect, beautiful hair very short – so very, very short – thus depriving our community of our only remaining pleasure.
Well, Telly was seen recently, wandering the Sand Wastes, howling at the sky, and holding up Carlos’ shorn locks as though begging God to reverse the crime he has done. Reports indicate that his skin was blistering, that his eyes were bleary, and that he was recently seen trying to give a cactus a haircut, whispering and cooing into what he seemed to think was its ear.
Listeners, I am not one to stand aside harshly and say that a man deserves the punishment that comes to him, but I also am not sorry to see Telly in this state, given his crime.
In any case, if your cactus is in need of a haircut, try Telly, out wandering the Sand Wastes.
Ladies and gentlemen, I must say that I am not a cat person. But I have really grown to love Khoshekh, the stray cat that has made his home here at the radio station. I discovered Khoshekh several weeks ago, hovering in a fixed location in the men’s bathroom – and he’s remained there ever since.
The men at the station, of course, have taken to keeping the sink at a light trickle, so he can get water, and we even take turns buying Science Diet Low-Calorie Cat Food. It turns out little Khoshekh is getting a bit chubby, since he can’t actually exercise in his unmovable, levitating state.
Oh, and thanks to our new intern, Brad, we’ve finally solved the litter problem. Brad is very excellent at both carpentry and dark magic, so he rigged us up a fine-looking litter box that our floating feline friend can reach. He’s just adorable, that cat! As a life-long dog lover, I’ve really turned the corner. Khoshekh is wonderful!
I know several others here at the station who feel the same way. After meeting Khoshekh, McKayla, who works in sales, put her three-year-old Weimaraner to sleep and then adopted six tabby kittens. She’s that much of a convert! Make sure to take some cute videos, McKayla!
And for others of you interested in getting a new cat, the Night Vale SPCA strongly recommends that you have your cat spayed or neutered, bring them in for their shots and, once the cat reaches 18 months, begin using the little beast to harvest human organs for those “just in case” moments.
The SPCA has several one-sheets on preventing heart worms and using pets to grow small replacement organs. To get your copy, go online or simply make up your own informative facts.
An update on the Pyramid reported on earlier:
Word is in that the Pyramid has spoken. It is broadcasting, on low-wave frequencies, a repeated message. The message is the following:
“I will place within some of you questions. Within others, I will place answers. These questions and these answers will not always align. The questions I provide may have no answers, and the answers I provide may have no questions. I will study the effects of these questions, and these answers. Some of you will hurt others, and others will heal. Grow my seeds inside you, and let them flower.”
The Flakey O’s marketing department must be complimented for the best use of viral marketing in Night Vale since Stan’s Pawn Shop released a virulent strain of Ebola back in ‘98. And, as a communicator by trade, I applaud their ingenuity.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police has responded with surface-to-surface missiles which, they say, will “silence the dark heart of the beast.” So far, they have not so much as created a smudge on the Pyramid’s broad, shiny surface.
Home handymen, fix-it vixens, ladies and gentlemen who love to get their hands dirty, let’s talk about home repair.
Certain jobs are fine for the amateur, and certain others should be left to the professionals.
Leaky sinks, sticky windows, minor exorcisms, and bleeding doors – all these are the kind of 'quick fixes’ that a toolbox and a quick search on the internet should allow you to take care of.
On the other hand, structural damage, major remodeling, seeping darkness, major exorcisms, roof boils, and lawn care – these are all the kind of work that should not be attempted by anyone without years of expertise and a valid Hammer License from the City Council.
Finding the right professional for the job is easy. Just look at the Yellow Pages. Or head down to the squatter shacks by the edge of the Sand Wastes and ask around among the homeless.
And now, a public service announcement from the Night Vale medical community.
Being in the desert, we get a lot of sun, and doctors are encouraging Night Vale citizens to do regular skin checks. You may think that freckle or mole is harmless, but you never know when it will grow into something much worse.
Surgeons at Night Vale General Hospital are noting an uptick in dermatological growths related to sun exposure. Doctors describe these growths as “15-inch spiraled horns.”
The horns mostly protrude from the lower back or knees. Unchecked, these horns can develop a glistening shine, small leather saddles, and bright red lips on the very tip.
So check your skin at least once a week in the mirror. Dermatologists recommend a three-step process.
Search meticulously for 15-inch horns protruding from your body. Don’t overlook anything.
If you find any suspicious growths, mark them with a chalk pentagon.
Gently remove the affected skin area with a sterilized razor blade, or similarly clean crafting blade.
If you are not one of the 53% of our community that was born without pain-sensing nerves, you should first consult your primary care electrolysist for tips on how to numb yourself to the nigh-unbearable pain of existence.
The Department of Public Safety announced that all street signs in Night Vale will be replaced with Traffic Cops wielding semaphore flags. Drivers will be required to learn this physically expressive maritime alphabet.
This decision is not without its controversy, as the existing street signs are entirely in braille. One critic, Paul Birmingham, says removing these signs will deflate the Earth.
As a member of the Air-Filled Earth Society, Paul believes that Earth is a precariously-inflated orb that could pop or sag at any moment.
“We’ve gotta stop teaching all this religious propaganda in our schools and start teaching real science,” Paul shouted from his lean-to behind the library.
I have to admit, listeners, he makes a valid point.
And now, a word from our sponsor.
Today’s program is brought to you by Audible.com, your online source for recorded books.
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I use Audible to catch up on best-selling titles like “The Help” and “Vango-Notes for Technical Communication 11\e.” I’m on their website right now, and I’m typing in a search for “Dog Park,” because I was thinking about this town’s beautiful new fixture, and how I will never, ever take my dog there.
Let’s see what Audible comes up with.
Huh. It’s a flashing black-and-red screen that says “THOUGHT CRIME” in all-caps.
And below that, a little animation of two digging workers: “Under Construction.”
That’s adorable!
So check out Audible.com. New Audible members can get one free audio book just by smudging their computer monitors with baby’s blood and humming the Spanish translation of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Audible.com: “You can’t burn what you can’t even touch.”
Update on the Pyramid situation. Flakey O’s Board of Directors are vehemently denying – some of them at gunpoint – that they have any part in the Pyramid that is stubbornly continuing to exist in our town.
They are sneaky ones! I hope the new line of cereal turns out to be worth the hype. Meanwhile, the Pyramid itself has altered its broadcast, sending out a second message, which is as follows:
“Everything you do matters except your life. Death will be the last action you undertake. I do not live, but I exist. What is my purpose? I will not tell you. One day you will discover your purpose, and then you will tell no one. And then you will die.”
Now, I’m not too good at this ’viral marketing’ thing, so I can’t see all the codes and hidden web addresses that I’m sure are all through that message. I’ll leave that to all the dedicated amateurs out there in the listening world.
Sheriff’s Secret Police are now attempting to charge the Pyramid with resisting arrest, on the grounds that they couldn’t figure out how to arrest it. More as the story develops.
Well, listeners, it seems the Pyramid has disappeared – as mysteriously and suddenly as it arrived. Too late, I’m afraid, for the Flakey O’s Board of Directors, who have all been taken to the Abandoned Mine Shaft outside of town for processing by the City Council.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police are declaring victory in their standoff against the Pyramid…because, they say, it’s about time they won something.
Meanwhile, the Pyramid has left behind a much tinier Pyramid, a mere souvenir of its looming, inscrutable mass. This tiny Pyramid is broadcasting one final message – a farewell from the geometric shape that stole our hearts.
So let us wrap up our show today with its words:
“Somewhere there is a map. And on that map is Earth. And attached to Earth is an arrow that says your name and lists your lifespan. Some of you die standing, others sitting. Many of you die in cars. I can never die. It is difficult for me to understand the concept that I am attempting to convey. I cannot show you this vision, but you may imagine it. Step forward and tell someone of it, please.”
You heard it here, folks. Tell people. Tell people about Flakey O’s new line of cereals for nighttime only. Do it in memory of its Board of Directors.
Stay tuned now for an hour of dead air with the occasional hiss and crackle.
Speaking of the nighttime, I truly hope you have a good one, Night Vale.
Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: "Nice bolo tie" is the greatest compliment a person can ever receive.
Regret nothing, until it is too late. Then regret everything.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Our top story today:
A roving pack of feral dogs has been terrorizing Night Vale for the past several hours. The dogs have been described as mostly mutts, possibly pit bull mixes. Witnesses say their apparent leader is the three-headed one wearing dozens of decorative service medals and chevrons.
Sheriff’s Secret Police confirmed that the dog pack has already attacked a group of elementary school children this morning, around eight, as they were getting on the bus. Injuries were minor, as the children protected themselves ably with their school-issued nerve gas canisters and automatic pistols.
The dogs’ motives are not yet known, although authorities believe it could be meth and/or gang related. More on this story as it develops.
This Friday afternoon, the Parks Department will be spraying pesticide in all public park areas, and in neighborhoods with dense foliage and predominantly Irish heritage.
Night Vale is making a strong effort to reduce the mosquito population, and the dangerous diseases that they carry. Last year, mosquitoes were responsible for outbreaks of West Nile, influenza, panache, elephantitis, and Fanny Brice Approximation Syndrome.
Please stay indoors from 1:00 PM Friday until 10:00 PM Saturday to avoid dermal contact with the pesticide – which has been known to cause skin abrasions, epilepsy, super epilepsy, and organ inversion. The Parks Department also notes that the pesticide has a half-life of 2,100 years, which means we’ll be safe from those annoying mosquitoes for a long time.
We just received word from Wayne Tyler, Assistant Shift Manager at the new Pinkberry, that the pack of feral dogs was seen this morning rooting around in the dumpsters behind the library. They made off with some discarded Chinese take-out containers, a rusty futon frame, and two homeless men – likely to become henchpeople to the wild dogs. If you are near the library, be warned that these dogs are dangerous.
Also, be warned that penalties for overdue books have skyrocketed to fifty cents per day and, after thirty days, jaw mutilation.
The Night Vale Medical Board has issued a new study indicating that you have a spider somewhere on your body at all times, but especially now. The study said that further research would be needed to determine exactly where on your body the spider is, and what its intentions are. Only that it is definitely there, and that it is statistically likely to be one of the really ugly ones.
Let’s go now to Community Health Tips.
Listeners: Are you suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome? Are you enjoying carpal tunnel syndrome? Are you surprised by carpal tunnel syndrome? Are you enraged by carpal tunnel syndrome? Do you feel a throbbing sadness that you almost cannot stand from carpal tunnel syndrome? Do you feel a bounty of love and appreciation for your fellow human beings traveling through this confusing and finite lifetime with you from carpal tunnel syndrome? Do you get sexually aroused by carpal tunnel syndrome? That would be weird.
Not to be judgmental, but…it would be weird.
This has been Community Health Tips.
Listeners, we’ve just learned that the drawbridge construction site has been hit by graffiti vandals. The sheriff’s Secret Police suspect the feral dog pack to be responsible for the giant spray-painted lettering along the bridge scaffolding that reads:
GOLD STANDARD IS OUR STANDARD
and
READ YOUR CONSTITUTION
There was also a very elaborately painted portrait of Alexander Hamilton wearing Groucho Marx nose glasses, with a caption that reads:
FEDERALIST PAPERS
…but where FEDERALIST is crossed out, and TOILET is written in red.
Actually, you should see this. It’s truly stunning. All that with spray paint – I’m impressed! These guys are really good artists!
Nevertheless, these dogs are possibly armed, and possibly rabid. They are definitely Libertarian street artists, and that has police and city officials working double-time to solve this problem.
If you have any tips that could lead to the capture of this roving band of dogs, please, keep them to yourself.
We’ve also received word that they have tapped your phone and computers, so best not leave the house or talk loudly.
Let’s have a look at the Community Calendar.
This Sunday afternoon, the Night Vale Fire Department will be holding its Bi-Weekly Fire Person Appreciation Parade. All of the town’s firefighters will be riding through Main Street on their bright red engines, which will be turned into floats depicting some of the greatest fires in Night Vale’s history.
One of my personal favorites is the 1983 Earthquake Dust Fire, when tremor-initiated fires became so intense that the airborne sand burst into deadly flames. Nearly the entire city population was lost, and the FDNV does a fantastic job capturing the drama with streamers and paper mache.
The Fire Department would like to remind Night Vale citizens that the parade is free, and to check your coffee makers and gas stoves before you leave home, because they will not fight any fires while the parade is happening.
On Monday, the staff of Dark Owl Records will be wearing sweater vests.
Tuesday night is the Boy Scouts’ Court of Honor. The BSA will name its first-ever Blood-Pact Scouts – the rank just above Eagle Scout. So far, no scout has attained the coveted position of Eternal Scout, but we have heard that two local boys, Franklin Wilson and Barton Donovan, have earned the Invisibility Badge, which is a prerequisite for the rank. Well done, Frank and Barty.
Wednesday afternoon is the City-Wide Fitness Fair at the Rec Center. Last year’s event was canceled, as it was held on the same day and at the same time as the Fried Chicken and Cigarette Fair.
This year’s event, however, promises to be a huge success, as they have secured a large corporate sponsorship from The Intelligence Group International – who will provide free prostate screenings, mammograms, and surgically-embedded government monitoring devices.
Thursday morning, the National Weather Service and National Security Agency have scheduled a giant sandstorm.
Friday is an oasis. Only a metaphor for something unattainable. A haunting dream of meaning for our lives, but don’t look! Turn your head. Your life is here. Stay here. You are alone. You are so peacefully alone. That’s it. Yes. Goooood.
We’ve contacted the Night Vale Zoo, hoping to find out more information on how dogs behave in packs. Perhaps these skilled animal experts could give us some insight into how to catch these dogs, or at least understand them.
Night Vale Zoo Director Emily Munton told us that all animals prefer tiny cages and scheduled food pellet consumption, and that it didn’t make sense that any animals would want to wander freely about town. She added a high-pitched roar, followed by a watery gurgling sound, and then our conversation was ended by repeated, cloudless thunderclaps.
A reminder to anyone looking for fun on a budget today in Night Vale: it’s free admission day at the Night Vale Museum of Forbidden Technologies.
As always, the museum features many fascinating permanent exhibits, including the cheap, pollution-free source of energy created by Nikola Tesla, multiple time machines (some of them not yet invented), and pocket calculators (which were outlawed by the City Council 22 years ago for undisclosed reasons).
Along with that, there is a temporary exhibit demonstrating the many exciting and extremely dangerous uses for lasers.
Be sure to splurge on the guidebook at the Museum Store, as the exhibits themselves are entirely shrouded with thick burlap at all times, and all explanatory plaques have been blacked out with permanent marker.
The Museum of Forbidden Technologies. If you don’t know about it, we may or may not have it!
And now a word from our sponsor:
You come home. The lights are off. You get an uneasy feeling. Suddenly, the phone rings. You remember that you do not have a phone. It rings some more.
You do not know what to do. Then you remember that, yes, you do own a phone. Why wouldn’t you own a phone? Everyone owns a phone!
The phone is still ringing. Ha ha ha ha ha! How silly to think you didn’t own a phone. It rings again. You smile, and shrug, and answer the ringing phone. It is still dark.
“Hello?” you say.
“They are waiting for you,” a whispery, gender-indeterminate voice tells you. “It is your time,” it says.
You turn on the light. You laugh again, wondering why it took you so long to turn on the light. “Gosh, it was dark!” you think.
“Hello?” the voice asks.
You hang up, glad you remembered to buy Tropicana Orange Juice, at least.
Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice is made from the freshest oranges, with no added flavors or preservatives.
Also, you should get caller ID! It’s the 21st century; how do you not have caller ID? Really.
Tropicana.
This just in: two more schoolchildren were attacked by the wild dogs this morning near the playground at Night Vale Elementary School. One of the boys was taken to Night Vale General with treatable leg injuries.
The other boy, we understand, was unharmed, because he was a better boy, and more loved by the Angels.
We’ve also received confirmation that a handful of mangy curs broke into the Senior Center, stole their televisions, and made the internet stop working.
This has gotten out of hand, ladies and gentlemen. We simply cannot live in fear for our safety because of wild dogs. Allow me a brief editorial here, if you would:
First off, please, have your pets fixed. It’s an inexpensive and quick process. You can take your dog or cat to the Night Vale SPCA, to your local veterinarian, or to Big Rico’s Pizza. Rico studies taxidermy as a hobby, so he’s happy to help out in whatever way he can.
Second, many of these dog packs are formed by dogs that are not raised to be loved, but bred to fight. Trainers are teaching these dogs everything from jujitsu to kickboxing to knife work. This is simply unacceptable. Dog fighting is illegal, cruel to animals, and a danger to society when these dogs are untethered.
But we are a strong, united community here in Night Vale. We must stand up to violence!
Our town was founded by peace-loving imperialist conquerors who, to escape taxation, overwhelmed a potentially violent race of indigenous people and founded this beautiful city on principles of family, fortitude, fence-building, and friendly propaganda.
Let’s not forget our long-standing town motto: “We have nothing to fear except ourselves. We are unholy, awful people. Fear ourselves with silence. Look down, Night Vale; look down, and forget what you’ve done!”
That is the motto of a determined, unified community.
Ladies and gentlemen, good news! Mayor Pamela Winchell called a press conference moments ago, declaring an end to our dog pack terror.
The mayor announced that the dogs were not actually dogs, just some plastic bags caught in the breeze that people mistook for wild dogs.
“There are no wild dogs in Night Vale,” she said. “And if there were, they’d be sweet little dogs with big, meaningless eyes and tongues like flypaper!”
The plastic bags, meanwhile, have been safely returned to the Dog Park from whence they came, and which is to remain unknowable and unremembered.
Journalists asked about the injuries and aftermath of this morning’s dog pack related crimes; the mayor responded with a hollow stare. She promptly shook the podium off its base and whispered through gritted teeth, “Plastic bags. Plastic bags.”
The Sheriff’s Secret Police then ethically kettled the pool of reporters, gently coercing them with pepper spray. Most were taken away peacefully in handcuffs and black hoods.
Thank goodness it was all a misunderstanding!
Dear listeners, I don’t want to say I told you so, but wasn’t I right when I said we were a determined, resilient little town? In the face of wild beasts, we did not crumble, we did not back down. We stood eye to eye with violence, and it blinked first. Stand proud, Night Vale!
Be afraid on the inside, of course – you are, after all, your own downfall – but stand proud against those predators that would harm your family.
And, that is our show! Thank you for listening, listeners!
Stay tuned next for the popular advice program Dr. Brandon. This week, Dr. Brandon offers a step-by-step on how to remove your own appendix without surgery.
The sky tonight is a soft, quivering green. The wind is calm, but prepared. Get your sleep, Night Vale, and don’t forget to dream.
Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: Eating meat is a difficult moral decision, because it’s stolen, that meat. You should apologize.
Representatives from the greater medical insurance community announced this week that major insurance providers would no longer cover government-disseminated illnesses. These ailments were created to control undesirable populations and include: AIDS, most cancers, irritable bowel syndrome, telekinesis, tingling, and any kind of food allergy.
Doctors advise that the best way to avoid acquiring any of these conditions is to limit questionable public activities. Try not to be in a lower economic class, and give regularly to an approved religious organization. Take these precautions and you should live a healthy, or at least medically-insured, life.
In other health news, the Night Vale Council for Commerce reminds you to regularly consume wheat and wheat by-products. By doing so, you are directly supporting the local Night Vale farmer, as well as the local Night Vale commodities conglomerates.
Looking for a snack? Try wheat, or a wheat by-product. Dinner? Wheat and/or its by-product. Trying to patch a leaky roof? We have just the thing for you, and we also have its by-products.
Wheat and wheat by-products. By Americans, for Americans, in Americans, watching Americans.
New information on the Apache Tracker, who you might remember as that white guy who wears the cartoonishly inaccurate and offensive Indian headdress, and who disappeared some weeks ago after investigating the strange occurrences at the Night Vale Post Office.
Well, word is in that he has reappeared, except it now seems he is actually Native American. Witnesses say his features are still recognizable, but during the disappearance he has transformed into that which he always absurdly claimed to be.
More explanation, of course, is needed – but the Apache Tracker is also now only able to speak Russian, and I did not bother to get his statement translated.
Apparently, he has been taking to leaning on the hood of an old Honda Accord in the parking lot of the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, shaking his head slowly and checking his watch.
Does his complete racial transformation make his previous actions less offensive, listeners? Write us a letter telling us what you think, and then put it away in a drawer for ten years. Reading it again, you’ll get a little pang of nostalgia for the person you used to be, once upon a time.
The City Council today issued a strong warning against the manufacture and sale of discount bloodstones. They say that these bloodstones of inferior design and construction have the potential to cause major accidents in even common day-to-day chanting rituals. These accidents have included, in just the past few months: locust swarms, pus tornadoes, and the creation and subsequent obliteration of a mirror version of Night Vale, forcing all of us to watch our identical counterparts perish – and thus confront the inevitability of our own futures.
Anyone caught selling these bloodstones will be put into the Dark Box, pending erasure from recorded history. The lesser charge of buying or possessing them will be met with mere summary execution.
Critics charge that the City Council is lying about all of this, due to the fact that the Council owns the only certified bloodstone factory in town. But, the Council has vehemently denied this charge by gibbering, howling, and knocking over microphones.
…..
Oh, dear. I apologize, listeners. We at Night Vale Community Radio are experiencing the following technical problems: the need for air, eye movement, and gooey stuff inside. Please, stand by.
…..
Thank you. These problems have been corrected.
An update on our previous message about wheat and wheat by-products. You should not eat wheat or wheat by-products, say several frantic scientists, waving clipboards in our studio.
As it turns out all wheat and wheat by-products, for unknown reasons, have turned into venomous snakes, which are crawling all over our small city, causing even more chaos than is normal. These snakes have been described as terrifying, loathsome, and “probably from the bowels of hell itself!” – also, green and three feet long.
If you have any wheat or wheat by-products in your home, you are almost certainly already dead.
Sorry about that.
Property taxes are going up again, Night Vale. Several citizens are justifiably upset over this latest increase, but municipal services do, after all, cost money. Schools, public transportation, parks and recreation facilities, and of course, the multi-billion dollar pulsar development facility.
Speaking of which, scientists say that they are on the verge of developing the first ever human-made neutron star. Usually the aftermath of a supernova, this pulsar would be roughly four miles in diameter, but with a nearly incomprehensible density that makes it about half the mass of our own sun.
And to think, this rapidly rotating sphere of radioactive matter will be right here under the sands of Night Vale, producing enough energy to power the earth for billions of years.
The City of Night Vale plans to use the pulsar to light the high school football stadium, which still uses whale oil lamps.
John Peters – you know, the farmer – is particularly upset…not only about the pulsar development, but also about the higher taxes. As owner of more than 150 acres, John will certainly have to pay a large share.
And given that John is a peach farmer in a desert, he hasn’t actually raised a successful crop ever. His only income is his half a million dollar annual subsidy for imaginary corn, which has been one of Night Vale’s greatest exports. People come from all over – even Desert Bluffs, unfortunately – to buy his imaginary corn. I like to butter up a piece of bread and then rub the imaginary corn along it, and then sprinkle it with a little bit of salt and cayenne. Boy, is that a delicious and low-carcinogen summer treat!
But even our town heroes like John Peters – you know, the farmer – have to pay their fair share. No citizen is above paying taxes.
Well, except Marcus Vanston, but that’s understandable because he’s so wealthy. When you’re worth as much as Marcus Vanston, you have proved your value to society through hard work and determination, and are no longer required to show anyone any further proof that you care about anything or anybody else, because you obviously do. Look at all your money!
According to some, Marcus is worth over five billion dollars, and that’s five billion reasons Marcus is our town’s greatest citizen.
Further updates on wheat and wheat by-products:
The good news is that they are no longer poisonous serpents. The bad news is that they have transformed into a particularly evil and destructive form of spirit.
Please, be aware that wheat and wheat by-products are now malevolent and violent supernatural forces, capable of physically moving objects up to 200 pounds and entering human souls of up to Soul Strength Four.
The frantic scientists, who are now hopping up and down just outside my recording booth, indicating various charts and figures, recommend creating a simple lean-to out of animal bones and mud, such as you might have made and played in as a child, and hiding there until the spiritual forces of wheat and wheat by-products have passed.
A reminder to all Night Vale citizens that the annual Sorrow Songs Sing-Along is this Thursday. There will be a potluck lunch, and the softball team will be selling refreshments to fund things that each of them individually want to buy for themselves.
Anyone who has their own Sorrow Song they’d like to add to our communal vocal malaise should submit it to City Hall by Tuesday, at the latest.
Remember that low moans and minor-key chants do not count.
The composer of the best Sorrow Song, as indicated by our audience participatory Weep-O-Meter, will be ritualistically drowned in a pool of our own townspeople’s tears. Good luck!
Listeners, the City Council, for national security reasons, have replaced the following report with the sound of a burbling brook, followed by the sound of a running blender.
Friends, listeners, there’s a… [Sound of a burbling brook] [Sound of a running blender] …what it does.
City Comptroller Waynetta Barnett received a $1.5 billion check from the federal government this week. The check was to support rebuilding efforts from this past week’s massive earthquake, reaching 9.7 on the Richter scale, the epicenter of which was directly below Night Vale.
Of course, we experienced absolutely no damage to the town, and nobody reported feeling any effects at all from this enormous seismological event.
Comptroller Barnett says that she suspects that FEMA just saw the meter reading, declared this a disaster area, and sent a check. She doesn’t think they have any interest in visiting Night Vale, so we can probably just spend the money however we want.
Barnett added that those new Mini Cooper sedans are really cute, and wanted us all to look at their website.
We asked Carlos about our inability to experience tectonic shifts. Carlos, lovely Carlos, had previously recorded other massive tremor activity underneath our city.
His response was a few seconds of stammering followed by a sigh and slow head shake. His eyes were distant – distracted, yet beautiful.
I asked him where he got his shirt. It fit him so well. He said he would look at his notes and computer models and see if he could figure out what was going on.
I don’t know if he listens to me sometimes.
Ladies and gentlemen, I take you from an unreal disaster to an un-unreal one.
It is my sad duty now to announce that the City Council is officially putting Night Vale under an emergency state, due to the ongoing and life-threatening wheat and wheat by-products situation. The Council states that anyone who has come into contact with wheat and wheat by-products, and has by some happy miracle survived, should consider themselves infected and proceed to the usual quarantine area, just behind the playground in Mission Grove Park – there to spend the rest of their days in quiet contemplation and weaving.
Everyone else should head immediately to the Wheat and Wheat By-Products Shelter that has been sitting unused for decades under the public library.
When asked why a Wheat and Wheat By-Products Shelter already existed, the City Council answered, simply, “Prophecy.”
May you all be safe. May you all be well. May you be strong and flexible with ruddy cheeks and legs like tree trunks.
News from Old Woman Josie, out near the Car Lot. She reports that the Angels have gathered in a circle in her living room, blocking her view of the television. They are shoulder-to-shoulder, facing each other, radiant with holy light.
“The Bowling Alley,” they are chanting. “The Bowling Alley.“
She says that a repeat of The West Wing she had really hoped to watch is on, and she is quite annoyed by her usually considerate Angelic house guests.
More on this story, maybe…if there ever is more.
And finally, some good news. All wheat and wheat by-products have mysteriously vanished from Night Vale, and the City Council promises that they will be gone forever. This scourge, this siege upon us, this salvo of food-based warfare is finally over. Nevermore will be we threatened in our homes by this enemy or its by-products.
We also will never eat bread again, and that’s a pretty big bummer.
But this is the balance that must be made between what we desire and what we fear, between pain and pleasure, between wheat, dear listeners, and its by-products.
Many of you are huddled now and forever in the quarantine behind the playground in Mission Grove Park. For this community-minded sacrifice, we thank you.
I know you were forced there by martial law, but still, you should be commended for your brave action. Terminal quarantine might seem scary now, but I understand they have a well-stocked supply of canned lentils and the Silver Screen Edition of Trivial Pursuit.
And of course, you have the radio. I hope you will let my dulcet voice and our humble community station into your ears and hearts until your final wheat-loving breath.
Dear listeners, stay tuned next for a live broadcast of a man, locked in a recording booth, silently staring at the microphone with intense suspicion.
And as always, since always, and for always, goodnight, Night Vale.
Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: Today is the last day of your life up to this point.
The policeman in that intersection is not directing traffic. He’s coding an urgent message to all of us.
Welcome to Night Vale.
First, the news.
Old Town Night Vale residents are complaining about extremely noisy sunsets. Several agitated citizens are pushing for the City Council to do something about the solar shrieking every evening for the past few weeks.
One homeowner described the sound as “the parched cries of sad buzzards, or perhaps even the unholy voice of Old Scratch himself.”
The City Council, speaking in unison at a televised press conference, said that the noise is just the windmill farms that litter the unfortunate wastelands of Desert Bluffs, and that the noises do not fall under Night Vale jurisdiction.
Walton Kinkade, president of the community group Soundproof Old Town, said that the windmills can’t possibly be the source of the noise, as they are non-existent and also don’t work, because of Desert Bluffs’ staggering incompetence. The City Council called a second press conference, wherein they all wordlessly stared down Kinkade for fourteen uninterrupted minutes. Their dark eyes tore holes straight through the community spokesman (metaphorically speaking), until his soul was compacted into what looked like a partially chewed black-eyed pea (literally).
To date, only Old Town residents have reported hearing these inconceivable noises every evening as the sun crosses the indifferent horizon.
And the noises seem to be taking their toll; there have been two heart attacks, twelve cases of significant muscular atrophy, and at least two dozen claims of folks growing third eyes – including Kinkade himself, who had an arachnid-like eight eyes when he spoke before City Council yesterday morning.
No other neighborhood can hear the sounds.
I spoke to Simone Rigadeau in the Earth Sciences building at Night Vale Community College about this scientifically fascinating story, and she called it a simple case of celestial just desserts.
Full disclosure, listeners: Rigadeau does not work in Earth Sciences. She is a transient living in the recycling closet of the Earth Sciences building, and she collects cans as pets.
There is another hearing scheduled at 4:00 AM tomorrow, on the highest ledge overlooking Skeleton Gorge, which can only be accessed by government helicopters. All previous endeavors to scale the cliff-side by rock-climbing enthusiasts have failed in extravagantly gory fashion.
The Council issued a statement wishing Kincaid luck in attending this mandatory meeting.
Breaking news: we’ve received confirmation from the Sheriff’s Secret Police that fugitive Hiram McDaniels was finally apprehended. McDaniels has been on the lam since August. He was wanted on several counts of insurance fraud, falsifying identification papers, evading arrest, and assaulting a police vehicle with fire.
McDaniels was spotted near his Earl Road apartment early Saturday morning by several alert neighbors. The neighbors said they were able to identify McDaniels because he matched police sketches of an 18 foot tall five-headed dragon that had been posted across Night Vale. Fingerprints later confirmed that McDaniels was definitely a dragon.
Secret Police are still unsure of McDaniels’ motives for returning home. And, well, listeners, our station intern Stacey just handed me a photo of Hiram McDaniels. He’s a very dynamic-looking dragon. The raw power. The intensity in those five faces, those many sets of piercing blue and red and black and green and yellow eyes. I can certainly see how he charmed his way out of an arrest. He must never get tickets.
What a guy!
An unsigned press release I found under my pillow this morning announces the following:
“There is a free party this Friday at the Abandoned Missile Silo outside of town. The purpose of this party is to celebrate! There will be no sign, or music, but the party is inside the silo. This party takes place at 3:00 AM and will be over at 3:05. It will be dark, both inside and outside the silo. Grope blindly towards happiness. Keep your mouth open and your teeth together to indicate you are at a party. You will hear noises, and later, you will not. This party will feature special guest Bon Jovi, although he does not yet know it. See you there!”
An interesting note on Hiram McDaniels: intern Stacey tells me that she’s been googling the roguish dragon. Did you know that he has a blog? He’s a very smart fellow, some really groundbreaking ideas. Here’s one post from last week:
“If I were mayor of Night Vale, I would give incentives for small business development, and focus on youth physical fitness programs. Human youth are the human future, after all.”
Well, it seems a certain multi-headed fugitive wants to become mayor of Night Vale. You have my vote, Hiram!
Thursday night, the City Council is voting on a new measure that would prohibit breathing as an involuntary muscular action. Historically, the human body has been able to control breathing without the brain needing to consciously activate the diaphragm. Under the new rule, all residents of Night Vale would be required to make the physical choice of whether or not – and when – to breathe.
The City Council said that we have too long taken the receipt of oxygen for granted, and that the sense of entitlement must cease. If the vote passes, residents will have until March 1st of next year to learn to control these involuntary muscle groups during lucid sleep.
Detractors say that it is our constitutional right to breathe how we want, and that it is not the government’s job to legislate breathing. The Council responded by waving a brick in the air at reporters and shouting “We learned to beat our own hearts! We taught ourselves to wet our own corneas! We have pulled ourselves up from nothing! It is the American dream.”
Then, they took a deep breath all together, lowered the brick, broke it into pieces, and devoured it.
And now a word from our sponsor.
We all want to live forever, right?
Wrong.
Think about watching your family die as you selfishly carry on, your children aging and passing, your grandchildren, and so on. Think of all the friends you’ll make, but eventually lose.
You don’t want that! No!
You know the earth is eventually going to be swallowed by the sun, right? And one day, you would be present for this greatest of all apocalypses. As fascinating as this would be, scientifically speaking, this excitement would fade as the pain of thousand-degree flames engulfed your tender body, and your aged mind would be so alone in this interminable torture.
Does this sound like something you want? We didn’t think so.
Immortality is stupid. Think before you wish.
This message brought to you by Direct TV.
Dear listeners, right after we reported on Hiram McDaniels’ interest in becoming Night Vale mayor, the dirty campaign tactics came into play – stirring up bad feelings, and slinging the old municipal mud. Incumbent Mayor Pamela Winchell issued a statement citing township bylaws that prohibit prisoners from running for public office.
Now, isn’t it just like a career politician, such as Mayor Winchell, to make such unethical, ad hominem attacks on a great reptilian beast, simply because he is in jail? It sounds to me like the mayor is feeling McDaniels breathing down her neck! Breathing dragon fire, that is.
Give ‘em hell, Hiram!
The following is a test of the Emergency Dream Broadcast System. In the event of an actual emergency, you would just now be experiencing a dream in which you were in the neighborhood where you grew up, only all the houses are now black, featureless cylinders. Just row after row of these blank dark cylinders, stretching out around you. You are home…but you are also somewhere from whence you will never find home again.
There is someone waiting for you at the end of the longest street. You know that, although you do not know who. You try to run down the street and it grows longer and longer. You pass by one cylinder in particular and know that it’s your house. You stop running. You approach the blank face of the cylinder, its surface seeming to devour light and sound. You reach out and you are inches from touching it. Just then you hear a ding. You look up to see words in the sky.
POSSIBLE FLASH FLOODS, they say. ALERT VALID UNTIL 3:00 PM.
Once again, this has been a test of the Emergency Dream Broadcast System.
The Night Vale Mall is having to deal with angry calls from parents, after the Santa they hired for Christmas photos was once again a no-show. Mall public relations officials said that the missing Santa is actually a performance art piece, meant to show people how our capitalist idols are truly nonexistent, ghosts of materialistic ideas that we have embraced as replacements for true spiritual meaning. A long line of upset parents and crying children stretched from Santa’s empty chair to just past the Hollister.
The mall PR officials added that they have a really cool idea for Valentine’s Day. They’re thinking, like, moving pictures of actual beating hearts projected onto a large teddy bear? Which has been stretched open like a vivisected frog from seventh grade life science?
Officials added, “It’s going to be monstrous and beautiful. You don’t even know what art really is. You don’t even know yourself.”
They concluded by chanting and pumping their arms in unison, like a lower, Paleolithic version of the YMCA dance.
And now…the weather.
[“The Brightness” by Anais Mitchell (On the band’s Discography page, this song is titled “Of a Friday Night,” but it is listed elsewhere as The Brightness)]
During the break, I received a message from Mayor Winchell’s office responding to our previous reports.
According to the mayor, mayoral elections aren’t for another three years, and Hiram McDaniels is ineligible to run – not only because of his jail stay, but also because he is neither a Night Vale resident, nor a human being. There is, she says, no precedent for a five-headed dragon as elected official.
Mayor Winchell also pointed out that writing the throwaway phrase “If I were mayor of Night Vale” on a blog is not an official declaration of candidacy.
“There is paperwork!” Mayor Winchell shouted into my voicemail. “You can’t just…argh!” she continued, trailing off slightly at the end.
What followed was about ninety-five seconds of loud stomping, and what sounded like wood chopping in the distance, before the message finally ended.
Allow me a retort, dear listeners, with this brief editorial:
With all due respect, Madame Mayor, have we not had enough dragon-bashing? Our great country once held to some terrible old customs, but we grew up. We learned. We abolished slavery. Women won the right to vote. Ghosts can now marry (but of course, not have children – I mean, that would be a real slippery slope).
And our own little burg is on the verge of becoming the first city in this great nation to legalize time travel. So let’s loosen our collars! Let’s march into the reptilian future, not cling to the narrow past. Just because a dragon is a dragon, and has five heads, doesn’t mean he can’t lead our community.
Sure, critics will say, “Oh! But Cecil! What if his five heads don’t agree on something? What if one’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s build this school!’ But another’s like, 'No more schools!’ And the others are drunk or sleepy or something? How can we agree to elect five heads that can’t agree with themselves?"
To this, I say shame on you for your negative stereotypes of multi-headed beings. Free your mind! The rest, as our official town song says, will follow.
The song also says, "Lap deeply of the scarlet mud, after the blood rains of the apocalypse,” but I don’t think that quite applies here.
So with this, I am proud to offer my endorsement of Hiram McDaniels for Mayor of Night Vale. Sure, the election isn’t for three years, but it’s never too early to affect change. And in that time, we will rally. We will petition to get what we want. And soon, a great leader will rise. Lead us to that future, Hiram!
Ah, but that is later. Now, it is dark. It is quiet. Just you and me, dear listener. Just my voice, traveling from this microphone, traveling silent and immediate across sleepy homes and lost souls to your ears.
You curl under a blanket, protecting your body from the world – excepting a few clever spiders – and you are listening, hearing me.
Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you now. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first, and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us, we can cope with that. We can do this together, you and I. Drowsily, but comfortably.
Stay tuned now for our two-hour special, Car Alarms and Their Variations, brought to you commercial-free by Canada Dry.
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: Does the carpet match the drapes? No. It doesn’t. You’re the worst interior decorator. Please leave my home.
“This is a story about you,” said the man on the radio. And you were pleased, because you always wanted to hear about yourself on the radio.
Welcome to Night Vale.
This is a story about you.
You live in a trailer, out near the Car Lot, next to Old Woman Josie’s house. Occasionally, she’ll wave at you on her way out to get the mail or more snacks for the Angels. Occasionally, you’ll wave back.
You’re not a terrible neighbor, as far as it goes.
At night, you can see the red light blinking on and off on top of the radio tower. A tiny flurry of human activity against the impeccable backdrop of stars and void. You’ll sit out on the steps of your trailer, with your back to the brightness of the Car Lot, watching the radio tower for hours. But only sometimes. Mostly, you do other things.
This story is about you.
You didn’t always live in Night Vale. You lived somewhere else, where there were more trees, more water. You wrote direct mail campaigns for companies, selling their products. “Dear resident,” you wrote often. “Finally, some good news in this dreary world! At last, a reason not to kill yourself!” Then you would delete that and write something else, and it would be sent out, and it would not be read by anyone.
You had a friend, and then a girlfriend, and then a fiancee – the same person. She cooked dinner sometimes, but sometimes you cooked.
You often touched.
One day you were walking from the glass box of your office to your old Ford Probe, and a vision came to you. You saw above you a planet, of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep turbulent oceans.
It was so far away.
So desolate. And so impossibly, terrifyingly dark. And that day, you did not go home. You drove instead. You drove a long time, and eventually you ended up in Night Vale, and you stopped driving.
You have been haunted ever since by how easy it was to walk away from your life, and how few the repercussions were. You never heard from your fiancee or your job again. They never looked for you, which doesn’t seem likely, or maybe it’s that in Night Vale, you cannot be found.
The complete freedom.
The lack of consequence.
It terrifies you.
You have a new job now. Every day except Sunday you drive out into the Sand Wastes, and there you find two trucks. You move wooden crates from one truck to another while a man in a suit silently watches. It is a different man each time. Sometimes the crates tick. Mostly, they do not. When you are done, the man in the suit hands you an amount of cash, also different each time, and you go home.
It is the best job you’ve ever had.
Except, today…it was different.
You moved the crates. The man in the suit, a stranger, watched. But then, as had never happened before, the man in the suit received a phone call. He walked off at some distance to take it. “Yes, sir!” he said, and “No, sir!” Also he made hawk shrieking sounds. It wasn’t terribly interesting.
You moved crates.
But then, an impulse…an awful impulse came over you, and for no other reason than that you are trapped by the freedom to do anything in this life, you took one of the crates, and put it in your trunk.
By the time the man came back from his phone call, you were done with your job. He gave you the money (it was nearly five hundred dollars today, the second highest it had ever been), and you drove home with the crate in your trunk.
When you got home, you took the crate into your trailer and left it in the kitchen. The crate did not make a ticking sound. It made no sound at all. Nothing made a sound except you, breathing in and breathing out.
You cooked dinner (you always cooked dinner), the red light on the tower blinked on and off in your peripheral vision, a message that was there and then wasn’t, and that you could never quite read.
You wondered how long it would take them to miss the crate. You did not wonder who ‘they’ were. Some mysteries aren’t questions to be answered, but just the kind of opaque fact – a thing which exists to be not known.
Which brings us to now. To this story.
This story about you.
You are listening to the radio.
The announcer is talking about you.
And then you hear something else, a guttural howl out of the desert distance, and you know that the crate’s absence has been discovered.
The crate – well, it sits, That’s all. On the kitchen floor. That’s all.
It’s warm, warmer than the air around it. It smells sharp and earthy, like freshly ground cinnamon. And when you put your ear against the rough warm wood, you hear a soft humming – an indistinct melody.
It does not appear to be difficult to open. All you would need to do is remove a few nails.
You do not open it.
You decide, instead, to go to the Moonlite All-Nite Diner, and have a slice of pie.
The wind is hot, like always, and smells like honey and mud.
Night is your favorite time.
Daylight brings only a chain of visual sensations, none of which cohere into meaning for you anymore. Life has become out of focus, free of consequence. As you drive you turn off the headlights, for a moment. At that moment, you feel again, above you, not even far away now, that planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans. You see nothing but the faint moonlight on your dashboard, but you know the planet is out there – yawning in the unseen spaces.
The moment passes.
You turn your headlights back on, and all you see is a road. Just asphalt. Just that.
And you pass a man waving semaphore flags indicating that the speed limit for this stretch is 45.
The Moonlite All-Nite is radiant green; a slab of mint light in the warm darkness. You squint when you see it, like it hurts your eyes, but it does not hurt your eyes. You park near the front door.
A man rolls by on the ground, his eyes bleary and sightless, whispering the word “mudwomb” over and over. But you don’t have the money to tip him, so you go inside.
You order a slice of strawberry pie, and the waitress indicates through words and movements that it will be brought to you presently.
The radio speaks soothingly to you from static-y speakers set into a foam tile ceiling.
It is telling a story about you.
Your story, at last.
A man slides into the booth across from you. You recognize him vaguely, although he looks considerably different now. It is that man who appeared to be of Slavic origin, but who dressed in an absurd caricature of an Indian chief and called himself the Apache Tracker. Except now, it’s difficult for you to miss, he has actually transformed into a Native American.
You wonder if the pie will get there soon.
The Apache Tracker smells of potting soil and sweat. He leans across the table and touches your hand lightly.
You do not pull the hand away, because you know that there will be no consequence for any of this.
“Вы в опасности,” (1) he says, “Они идут.”(2)
You nod.
He taps the table. Then, bringing his thick eyebrows together and pursing his lips, he leans down and taps the ground.
You nod again.
“I think my pie is here now,” you say unnecessarily, as the pie is quite visibly placed in front of you. You did not order invisible pie. You hate invisible pie.
He looks at the pie for a long time, and then lets his breath hiss out slowly through his nose.
“Они придут снизу. Пироги не помогут.”(3)
He leaves.
What an asshole that guy is!
You finish the pie and ask for the check. “Check please,” you say, whispering it into your drinking glass as is custom, and then lifting the tray of sugar packets to find it, filled out and ready to be paid. You drop a few dollars onto the check, place it back under the sugars, wait for the sound of swallowing, and leave the diner. The waitress nods as you leave, but not at you. She nods slowly and rhythmically to music only she can hear, her eyes riding the curved line of neon lights above the menu.
As you start the car, the man on the radio says something about the weather.
The crate is in your kitchen, where you left it, and you get down on your knees to embrace it more fully. It has grown warmer – even hot.
It still is not ticking.
It had taken you no time to get back home. Now that you think about it, were there any other cars on the road? Where did all the cars go? The man with the semaphore flags explaining the speed limit – he wasn’t there either.
Your heart pounds.
Without allowing another stray thought to wander through your mind and delay you, you grab the crate and throw it in your trunk. You turn the ignition, and your car radio comes alive with a pop – just as the announcer says that your car radio comes alive with a pop.
Where to now?
You don’t know, but you go there anyway.
A pair of headlights, a pair of eyes, and two shaky hands, speeding through the silent town.
Behind you, you see helicopter searchlights sweeping down onto your trailer.
There are sirens.
A purplish cloud hangs over the town, glittering occasionally as it rotates.
The whole works.
You drive past the Moonlite All-Nite – still aglow and full of people slowly eating what sounds good only late at night, and Teddy Williams’ Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex – which has taken to not only locking but barricading its doors at closing time. You pass by City Hall which, as always, is completely shrouded after dark in black velvet.
Moving farther out, following the pull of the distant, uncertain moon, you pass by the Car Lot (where the salesmen have been put away for the night), and Old Woman Josie’s house (where the only sign that the unassuming little home could be a place of residence for Angels is the bright halo of heavenly light surrounding it, and the sign out front that says Angels’ Residence).
And the town is behind you, and you are out in the Scrub Lands, and the Sand Wastes.
By the road you see a man, holding a cactus in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. He shakes both at you as you pass, and howls.
And then, you are alone.
Just you, and the desert.
You stop the car and get out. Pebbles crunch in the sand in response to your movement. The radio murmurs behind the closed doors of the car. The headlights illuminate only a few stray plants, and the wide dumb eyes of some nocturnal animal.
Looking back, you see the bulge of light that is your Night Vale. The Purple Cloud, now floating over the heart of the city, reaches its tendrils in and out of buildings.
You hear screams, and gunfire.
You open the trunk and lay one hand on the crate. It pulses with some kind of life.
Still no ticking though.
You look back.
Several buildings are on fire. Crowds of people are floating in the air, held aloft by beams of light, and struggling feebly against power they cannot begin to understand. The ground shifts, like it was startled.
It’s so quiet, when it finally comes. You see the black car long before it arrives. It comes to a halt nearby and two men step out.
You don’t run. Neither do they.
“How did you find me?” you ask.
“Everything you do is being broadcast on the radio for some reason. That made it pretty easy,” says one of the men, the one that isn’t tall.
“Yeah,” you say. “I see that now.”
“You have the item?” the man who is not tall asks.
You say nothing.
The man who is not tall signals the man who is not short, and he walks past you, looks into your trunk, and nods.
“Even easier,” says the man who is not tall.
There is an unexpected click. One of the rear doors of the black car has opened, and your fiancee has stepped out. Her eyes are wet, like it was the night you left. She does not appear to have aged, but then, you can’t actually remember how long it has been. Could it have been last week? Or was it ten years ago?
“Why?” she says. “Why? Why?”
You don’t know what to say.
The man who is not short steps up to you, puts a knife against your throat. Nobody says anything. Your fiancee shakes her head. Her eyes are empty. Broken. Gushing.
The radio is saying all of this as it happens. You hear it dimly through the car door.
You can’t stop smiling.
All at once, the consequences. All at once you are no longer free. It’s all coming back around.
All at once.
Life – bleary, washed-out – snaps back into focus. The red light on the tower still blinks in the distance and every message in this world has a meaning. It all makes sense and you are finally being punished.
You can’t think of a time you have ever been happier.
Your fiancee abruptly gets back into the car. Neither of the men seem to notice her. One opens the crate with a couple quick taps, and pulls out of it an intricate miniature house.
The hours that must have been spent building it! Every detail is accounted for! Inside the house you think you see for a moment, lights and movement.
“Undamaged,” says the man who is not tall.
You beam at him.
The knife presses harder against your throat, but it doesn’t hurt. Your eyes wander up and you see above you the dark planet of awesome size perched in its sunless void, an invisible titan all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans.
A monster.
Spinning.
Soundless.
Forgotten.
It’s so close now.
You see it just above you. Maybe even if you tried very hard, you could touch it.
You reach up…
This has been your story.
The radio moves onto other things – news, traffic, political opinions, and corrections to political opinions. But there was time, one day, one single day, in which it was only one story.
A story about you.
And you were pleased, because you always wanted to hear about yourself on the radio.
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: I’d never join a pen15 club that would allow a person like me to become a member.
Translations: (1) You are in danger. (2) They’re coming. (3) They will come from below. Pies will not help.
Russian phrases pieced together using information from the Welcome to Night Vale Wiki, and adding minor variations in Google Translate until the audio preview on the site sounded, to my ear, more or less like what I was hearing in the episode. Then solorwind was kind enough to send me the actual phrases. Any errors are 100% my fault.
Look to the obelisk. We don’t know where it came from, but it’s attracting a lot of cats.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Happy New Year, Night Vale!
Last night’s fireworks extravaganza at the Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area was beautiful! This is despite the fact that the Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area never really existed, and was in no way a multi-million dollar failure of municipal planning.
And just because the only things remaining on the premises are several large piles of rubble and a red sign reading
“NOTHING IS HERE. NOTHING WAS EVER HERE”
does not mean that they failed to correctly use tax dollars to build a harbor, a waterfront, or a recreation area.
Anyway, the fireworks over the city-made sign were lovely. Happy 2013!
Ladies and gentlemen, surely you have noticed…there’s a Man in a Tan Jacket. Countless residents have seen him, but no one can seem to remember exactly what he looks like; just that he has a tan jacket and a deerskin suitcase, and he has been spotted all over town. But no one can quite recall specifically where they saw him, or what time of day it was. Just that they saw him.
Frances Donaldson – the tall woman with the green eyes who manages the antiques mall – thinks maybe the Man in the Tan Jacket is simply a shared dream. But I know I saw him, Night Vale. I know what I saw. This man couldn’t possibly be a dream. He was so vivid. His eyes were…well, his nose and his chin…oh, I can just see! I just can’t remember! The man was clear as day! He had a tan jacket, and a deerskin suitcase.
He can’t be a dream, can he? Please, call in, listeners, and let us know if you can remember anything else.
This Monday through Friday is the annual Night Vale Career Fair at the Downtown Convention Center. There will be dozens of booths, representing phony local businesses that will take your resumes and photos (via hidden surveillance cameras) and conduct sample interviews designed to badger you into implicating yourself in nefarious activities.
First-generation Night Vale residents – particularly those whose parents were originally born in Maine, Massachusetts, Canada, Micronesia, and Suriname – are strongly encouraged to attend.
This year’s keynote speaker is an audio tape of droning moans leaden with subliminal tips about achieving personal prosperity and how to come clean about the terrible things you have done, you cretin.
Last year’s fair featured several very high-profile arrests, and exciting door prizes. Tickets are $25 – or $15 if you still have working retinas to scan.
Over the weekend, Teddy Williams – owner of the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex – sent us some security camera footage of what he believes to be the first-ever glimpse of citizens of the Underground City deep below Lane Five.
Early Saturday morning, Fun Complex cameras picked up blurry motion near the soda machine. The footage is quite fuzzy and difficult to discern. Perhaps it is merely rats or raccoons, digging through an uncovered supply of junk food. But it is, of course, much more likely that a lost nation of people, living in the bowels of a small-town bowling alley, are finally revealing themselves, taking our food supplies, and preparing for war.
Teddy told us that he believes this city to be thousands strong and ready to move into Night Vale. Ready to take arms against the “Upper World” (as they probably call us). Ready to conquer this heaven and become the righteous owners of our sun-soaked precious land…we assume.
It takes very little extrapolation to believe that they worship a god named Huntokhar, who demands sacrifice to keep their Underground City thriving in the absence of nourishing sunlight.
And a fair assumption is they are ruled by a Child King, recently coronated, who is too weak to rein back the generals intent on marching upon us in war.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you care for your community, your town, your Night Vale like I do, you will arm yourselves. You will rally your neighbors to militia. You will point fingers at those who do not wish to fight and have them rounded up into pens. This is no time for the weak. We are at a presumptive war with a projected enemy whom we cannot yet see, or even be certain of, but who are probably bloodthirsty giants.
If you would like to learn more about starting a militia, simply learn to be a true American. That’s how you’ll know. And remember, Night Vale is at war. Your careless talk costs lives. They know we are here, and it seems somebody talked.
Who was it, Night Vale?
Was it Steve Carlsberg? Did Steve Carlsberg talk?
Maybe a group of good citizens should go have a “chat” with Steve and find out what he’s been saying, and to whom.
Stay by your radios, listeners. We will report further as events warrant.
More now on the Man in the Tan Jacket.
Old Woman Josie called to tell us that her Angel friends are saying that the deerskin suitcase is full of flies. The Angels would not tell her more, explaining that knowing more would jeopardize her Eternal Soul, as well as their own statuses as Angels. They did not want to mess with that!
Old Woman Josie added that she thinks the Man in the Tan Jacket is just a salesman of some sort. A fly salesman, she bets, wandering from town to town with polished shoes and a suitcase full of flies.
“Oh, I just can’t stand those fly salesmen,” she said. “Ringing my doorbell at 3:00 AM, wanting to show me samples and asking for glasses of orange milk!”
The Night Vale Daily Journal has announced that, despite cost-cutting measures and mandatory subscription laws, it is facing a huge budget shortfall this year.
“We cannot pay back our printers, or our delivery crews,” said editor Leann Hart, in a prepared statement whispered through my mail slot late last night. “And we have already had to banish much of our staff into the Sand Wastes of the desert.”
She went on to explain that this “budget shortfall” has nothing to do with the reported lavish birthday party she threw for herself in Night Vale Stadium, featuring a lazy river made entirely of champagne and a birthday cake topped with very thin slices of moon rock.
In an addendum she tapped in Morse code on my bathroom window, she said that the Journal is considering all new sources of income – including creating additional advertising space and mugging Night Vale citizens, and that I shouldn’t mention the whole birthday party thing after all, because she was never even born, so how could she have had a birthday party?
She spent the rest of the night tapping out the phrase “birthdays are a fake idea,” which actually was a pretty relaxing sound to fall asleep to.
Hey, kids and parents! Time once again for our Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner!
Today we are exploring common birds and their meanings. An eagle indicates that an important phone call is impending. A sparrow says that you should beware the sea, and sell any stocks invested in food-based companies. A pigeon means that your mother has died – or that all is well. It’s a bit uncertain.
A hummingbird tells us that the physical constants of the universe are slowly degrading and may someday shift, invalidating the laws of physics and instantly wiping out the universe as we know it while simultaneously creating an entirely new universe in a single transcendent moment of genocide and genesis.
As for hawks, well…no one knows what hawks mean, or if they are real. Have you ever even seen a hawk? Of course not. No one has.
This has been our Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.
And now a word from our sponsors.
Today’s program has been sponsored by the physical act of gulping. For thousands of years, gulping has been there for human beings when they needed an expressive gesture of the throat. Whether you want to indicate nervousness about an upcoming test or appointment, fear of the Faceless Old Woman who lives secretly in your home, or just want to ingest milk faster than with regular swallowing, gulping is the way to go. Forget sweating! Never mind shivering! Sneezing? Ugh! When you think physical actions, think gulping! Gulp now and receive a complimentary prize package, which will be conveniently buried in an unmarked spot somewhere in the Scrublands. Find it, and it’s yours!
Gulp!
This just in:
The Sheriff’s Secret Police has just issued an important request related to our earlier story. They ask that all Night Vale citizens be on the lookout for a Man in a Tan Jacket, carrying a deerskin suitcase. He is about five or six foot something, probably with hair, and normal human features.
He was last seen early this morning on the unlit, gravel-paved stretch of Oak Trail, near Larry Leroy’s house out on the edge of town. The Man in the Tan Jacket was reportedly seen in the moonless black, standing next to a refrigerator engulfed in flames.
He was smoking a cigarette.
Witnesses claimed he stared at them as they slowly drove by on the darkened country road, but despite the prolonged eye contact, the witnesses still could not describe his face to police.
Two days prior, the Man in the Tan Jacket was seen standing in a park. No one can remember which park, but they’re fairly certain it was a park. Or, maybe, it was in the Old Navy Outlet Store or near the invisible clock tower…it wasn’t quite clear.
Either way, the man was definitely standing with his deerskin suitcase, and staring up at the sun for hours. He followed the bizarre glowing orb, which is somehow the source of all light and life, and –
“Oh god, the sun, are you kidding us with this thing? We don’t even have time for that mystery!” the Secret Police then interjected.
Secret Police officials added that if you see a Man in a Tan Jacket carrying a deerskin suitcase, write down what you see immediately.
The City Council has temporarily lifted their ban on pens and pencils, so that citizens can help law enforcement on this matter. Once you write down your encounter, call 911 immediately, or simply say, “Hey, police!” out loud. We’re all being monitored almost 24/7, so they’ll probably hear you just fine.
Let’s go now to traffic.
There is a car.
It’s not in Night Vale, or even in the desert that cradles our little town. It’s out somewhere beyond that. There are many cars there, but I’m speaking only about one. Blue, square-ish, with tires and windows and an engine that works…most of the time.
A woman is driving it, and she is also glancing whenever she can at the child in the passenger seat. He is a child, but he is 15.
You understand.
She is glancing at him, but she is not saying anything. And he is not saying anything either.
She wants to cry…
…or, she wants to push him out of the car…
…or, she wants to go back in time and insist on using a condom…
…only she would never do that.
She wouldn’t change any of this, really. Not for all the money – piles of money, some of it defunct money from defunct and absent governments – she wouldn’t give any of this back.
So she drives her car. Blue. Square-ish. With tires, and windows, and an engine that works…most of the time. And she glances at the 15 year-old child. And neither of them speaks.
Ladies and gentlemen: During the break, I received a call from someone claiming to be an Angel.
Now, I don’t know if this was a prank or not, as no one has ever actually proven that they’ve talked to an Angel. Even Old Woman Josie’s word is just that, her word.
But listeners, I think this had to have been an Angel, because my face became hot, and the voice filled every part of my body, and tears were flowing down my face the instant I touched the phone receiver, and the whole room was lit up in – well, how can I describe this? – a bright black beam illuminating every atomic detail!
And the Angel – if that is indeed who called – the Angel said that the Man in the Tan Jacket with the deerskin suitcase was from a place underneath the earth.
Underneath our knowledge.
A vast world, right below our feet.
I asked for more, but the Angel – if that is indeed who called – whispered only, “A flower in the desert.”
And it filled me with ecstasy and dread.
Then the call ended, and the black ray of truth was gone, and I was breathless and alone. And dear listeners, the silence…well, it was unlike any silence you have evernot heard.
So our mystery man remains un-found.
And I’m still not sure why an Angel would have to use a telephone.
But, for now, we can only know what we know. And that is that we don’t know.
Thank you again for listening, listeners. I look forward to another fine year. A new year, well-spent with all of you out there.
Stay tuned next for two commercial-free hours of E♯.
Goodnight, Night Vale. Be alert, and write down everything you cannot comprehend.
Until next time.
Today’s proverb: Biologically speaking, we are all people, made up of smaller people.
Bananas are hardly that slippery. But watch your step anyway.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Ladies, gentlemen, you. Today is Street Cleaning Day.
Please remain calm!
Street Cleaners will be upon us quite soon. We have little time to prepare.
Please remain calm!
The City Council has issued a statement in 20-point all-caps type saying:
RUN! RUN! FORGET YOUR CHILDREN AND LEAVE BEHIND THE WEAK! RUN!
We have contacted those experts who have not already gone underground or changed their identity, and have been told that Street Cleaners focus on heat and movement, and so the best strategy is to be dead already.
Then the experts all swallowed pills and fell, mouths frothing, at my feet.
If you have doors, lock them.
If you have windows, board them up.
If you still have ears, cover them, and crouch wherever you are.
It is Street Cleaning Day.
Please remain calm!
John Peters – you know, the farmer? He reports finding an old oak door standing unsupported by any other structure out in the Scrublands. He says he’s sure it wasn’t there yesterday…or pretty sure, anyway. As sure as he can be since the accident.
Apparently there is knocking from the door, as if there were someone from some other side that does not exist in our narrow, fragile reality trying to get in.
He has added several deadbolts and chains to the door on both sides, unsure which direction the door opens. Which is, by the way, a huge design flaw. One should always know which way a door opens merely by looking at it if the designer has done their job. And this holds true whether it’s a bank of glass doors at the mall, or an unspeakably old wooden door leading to other worlds than these.
John, meanwhile, says he will keep a sleepless vigil upon the door, as any sleep merely leads to dreams of blurry shapes in the dim distance, advancing, hissing, upon this vulnerable planet.
He also says the imaginary corn is coming in real good, and we should have a nice crop to choose from soon, especially now that it will be available for sale at the Green Market.
The staff at Dark Owl Records announced today that they are only listening to, selling, and talking about Buddy Holly. If you want to buy music at all, you had better like Buddy Holly. If you dress like Buddy Holly, that’s cool too.
They also announced that Buddy Holly will be performing live there this Saturday night at 11:00 to promote his newest album, which is called “I’m Trapped In Between Worlds, Existing Only In the Form That You Knew Me. This Is Not Who I Am. Leave Me Alone And Just Let Me Die, Please!”
Organized crime is on the rise, Night Vale.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police and the Night Vale Council for Commerce are cracking down on illegal wheat and wheat by-product speakeasies. Two months ago, the City Council abolished forever all wheat and wheat by-products. But a black market appears to have formed for those depraved addicts who can’t get enough wheat, nor its by-products. Big Rico’s Pizza was cited this week for hosting an illegal wheat and wheat by-products joint in a hidden basement space.
Big Rico’s, in light of the new laws, has had to alter its menu to mostly just bowls of stewed tomatoes, melted cheese wads, and gluten-free pizza slices. His storefront seemed to be the model of a wheat-free and wheat by-product-free society. But even the most honest businesses can turn to crime when their livelihood is on the line.
Fortunately for Big Rico he is a very nice person, and apologized to the City Council in a way that did not include blackmail, or secret campaign contributions, or special favors. Big Rico is just truly sorry for what he has done.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police say that they are upping their efforts to stop these illicit wheat and wheat by-product manufacturers. They are mostly just sniffing in the air until they smell bread. “It’s pretty easy, actually,” the Sheriff said from his hover-office in the clouds.
More information now on Street Cleaning Day, which has come upon us just as we always feared it would.
The information is that Street Cleaning Day is terrifying, and that we should all perhaps fall to our knees, letting out moans and rubbing our forearms absently.
The City Council has issued a statement indicating that they forgot they had vacation plans this week, and so are currently on a plane to Miami – as they had been planning and looking forward to for some time. They said their vacation, since it was definitely planned, has a pre-established end date, but that they cannot tell anyone what that end date is until the Street Cleaners are completely gone.
In the meantime they are leaving Paul Birmingham in charge. Paul, the vagrant who lives in a lean-to behind the Library, could not be reached for comment – as he has faked his own death in an elaborate scheme to escape Street Cleaning Day unscathed.
More, if there ever is more for any of us.
And now a word from our sponsors.
Today’s broadcast is sponsored by Target. Target is a great place to shop, and they would like you to consider the variety of silence in this world.
The deathly silence when an argument has reached a height from which neither party can see a safe way down.
And the soft wet silence of post-coital breath-catching.
Silence in a courtroom moments before a man’s life is changed completely by something so insignificant as his past.
And the silence of a hospital room as a man, in front of everyone he loves, lets the heat from his clenched hands dissipate into the background hum of the universe.
The quiet of outdoor distances.
Of wilderness.
Of the luxury of space.
And the quiet of dead air on the radio.
The sound of a mistake.
Of emphasis.
Of your own thoughts when you expected someone else’s.
Shop at Target.
From time to time, listeners, I like to bring a little education to our show. Throw out some interesting facts or “mind fuel.”
Today I’d like to share some fascinating facts about clouds. Clouds are made up of [CENSORED]. Rain clouds are formed when [CENSORED] air. When the density of the humid air, AKA “the cloud,” becomes [CENSORED] that’s when it rains. Lightning is [CENSORED]. And it’s important to [CENSORED] can kill you, or at least cause you a great deal of body-altering pain and regret.
But take some time to stop and look at the clouds. They are beautiful, wondrous creations!
Wait. I’ve just been handed a piece of red paper by one of the Sheriff’s Secret Police officers. I can tell that’s what he was because of his short cape, blow dart chest belt, and tight leather balaclava.
Dear listeners, I’ve been told to inform you that you are to stop looking at the clouds immediately. Stop knowing about the clouds.
Intern Stacy tells me in my headset here that they’ve also been censoring my broadcast. Well, I back our public protectors, and if they say to stop knowing about…whatever it was was talking about, then I’ll stop knowing about it.
Let’s go now to the sounds of predatory birds.
[Sounds of predatory birds]
Sirens have been going off in Central Night Vale as a warning about sirens going off in Old Town Night Vale. These sirens indicate that sirens might occur in the general Night Vale area over the next few hours – which would be a declaration of a current Siren Watch. Please check that your siren preparedness kit is fully stocked and easily reachable.
Lieutenant Regis of Unit 7 of the local National Guard Station and KFC combo store said that, “It always seemed that the only way to live without regrets was just to never regret anything you did. And that seems to be the only hope for the future, anyway. Regrets just bear us down. Regrets just bear us down.”
This wasn’t related to today’s siren watch. He said that a few years back, and it always just…stuck with me.
And now, traffic.
Southbound HOV lanes of Route 800 near Exit 15 have large, glowing arrows. Drive over the arrows and get a boost in speed! Save time and gas, and get your high-occupancy vehicle to work on time!
There’s a stalled car at the downtown off-ramp of Eastern Expressway. Tow trucks are on the scene to euthanize the vehicle and chase away scavenging vermin.
There are several accidents to report. In fact, infinite accidents. Everything is an accident.
Or at least, let us hope so.
This has been traffic.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is not possible for us to exactly do another news report on Street Cleaning Day, as no information can get through the barricades and seals that are keeping us safe within our broadcasting bunker. Instead, we offer the following impressionistic list of what we believe is happening outside our secure perimeter:
Screaming
A slow movement downwards
The crunch of items made of wood and items not made of wood
A quick movement upwards
Char
A smell like rotting seaweed, or a poisoned ocean
The song “La Bamba” only faster
You know that feeling when you realize you’re not alone? Only more so
Screaming
Screaming
Screaming
Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, the Street Cleaners are upon us! What can we do? What is there to do?
Besides, perhaps, taking you in a haze of terror and heat to the weather?
Street Cleaning Day, as so many other days, is behind us.
We emerge from hiding spots, from secret locations, from places under other places. We step out into the street, and it is as though it is brand new to us.
Certainly, it is cleaner now, but that is not all.
We have survived all the way from birth to this very moment, and we look at each other, and some of us start laughing, and others start weeping, and one or two of us break out into a wordless humming song. And all of us mean the exact same thing.
Look at us! Look at us out in the honey light of the finished day! Look at us and rejoice in our sheer being!
One of us turns to another, clears his throat, and puts a gentle hand upon the other’s gentle arm.
“I’ve never told you this,” that one says.
“What is it, Wilson?” says the other.
“Amber, you are all to me. Will you marry me?”
“Wilson! We’ve spoken maybe twice! Do you think we could start with dinner instead?”
“No…Yes – No, you’re right. I was confused,” says the one, although he was not confused.
“Think nothing of it. It’s forgotten,” says the other, although she thought many things of it, and had forgotten nothing.
And then a gradual movement towards Mission Grove Park. No orders or even suggestions given, and yet we all file to that central meeting place, put our arms around each other, grip tight, and then grip tighter.
Some of us are not here.
We leave space for them, space that has been emptied by time.
“I…suppose I should say a few words to mark the occasion,” says one of us – tall, towards the front.
He says nothing more.
The City Council arrives, back from their long-planned Miami vacation, nudging those near them and talking about silver sand beaches and the food, oh, those Cubans know how to do it!
Even they are accepted into the gathering, despite our usual fears, and we grip them too, as friends.
Night has arrived, ladies. Night is here, gentlemen. Night falls on our weary bodies. And night falls on you, too. You too have survived, survived everything up to this moment.
Grip tight!
Hum!
Laugh!
Cry!
Forget nothing, and think many things of it.
Goodnight.
Goodnight.
Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: One incorporeal being said to the other, “I’m not here, too. Make friends?”
Your existence is not impossible, but it’s also not very likely.
Welcome to Night Vale.
In light of the ever-declining sales of newspapers, and the rise of competition from digital media, the Night Vale Daily Journal announced that it has developed a new business model. Publishing editor Leann Hart, speaking to television and internet reporters outside the burned-down shell of the Journal’s former distribution plant, said their new mission, as a newspaper, is to kill news bloggers with hatchets.
In this bold new initiative – a game-changing strategy by one of the industry stalwarts – the Daily Journal plans to just go to bloggers’ homes and places of employment (with hatchets) and then chop them up (the bloggers) until they (the bloggers) are dead.
She added that the Journal still plans to use the AP Style Guide and they are working to design a newer, more modern-looking masthead.
Several Journal reporters and ad reps then began swinging blades at the non-print reporters in attendance.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police is issuing an urgent message to all citizens:
ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS:
Memorize this list. Memorize it now. It will not now, nor ever, be repeated. Memorize this list for your safety and protection. We cannot tell you when or where you will need to know it but when you do, you will be safe. Here is the list.
Memorize. Now.
Hazelnut
Mystify
Cuttlefish
Lark
Lurk
Robert
Anglican
Pheromone
Halter top
Marmalade
Hardware
Laser
Pepper
Release
Kneecap
Falafel
Period
Chase
Chaste
Leggings
Wool
Sweater
Heartbeat
Heartbeat
Heart
Beat
Heart
Beat
Beat
Beat
Beat
Beat
Memorize that list, citizens, in order.
Secret Police warn that if you miss even one word, or transpose a couple of worlds like “lurk” and “lark,” there could be unpleasant consequences.
This has been a special announcement from the Sheriff’s Secret Police.
Listeners, guess who called me this weekend. Well, hey, I don’t like to talk too much about my personal life here. This is your community news station, not Cecil’s Personal Life Station, right?
Okay, fine. I’ll just say it:
♫ Carlos! ♫
Carlos, the dark, delicate-skinned scientist who came into our little town and our littler hearts several months ago.
Well, I gave him my home phone number quite a while back, and he never called, and I didn’t think anything of it, right? I mean, sometimes people just don’t call, and that’s okay. Well, to the point:
Carlos calls, and I’m like, “Hello?” Like I don’t even have caller ID!
And he’s like “I need to talk to you. This is important.”
And I’m like, “Umm, OK.”
I mean, that’s pretty forward, right, listeners? But I can’t tell exactly what he wants yet.
And he said “Cecil.”
Just the sound of his caramel voice!
“Cecil,” he says. "Cecil. I think time is slowing down in Night Vale.“
And then I said, after a slow sip of Armagnac, "Oh?”
And perfect Carlos said, “Last week: seven days, 24 hours each day, 60 minutes in each hour. That’s 10,080 minutes in a week, right?”
“Uh huh? Go on…” I said, trying to sound like someone with a normal pulse whose palms were not sweating.
“Well, I ran some figures, and during that same amount of time in Night Vale, 11,783 minutes elapsed everywhere else in the world. That’s more than a full day longer. I don’t know what’s happening.”
So that’s what Carlos said! Listeners, what do you think? I feel like time always slows down when we’re together, Carlos and I. Is that what he’s trying to say? I feel that way too!
But I didn’t say it, I just said, ohh, this is bad…I just said, “Neat!”
Ugh! How embarrassing!
I mean, Carlos is so smart, and he says so many smart things! And I’m not dumb! I like science and municipally-approved books just as much as the next guy, so I can’t believe that’s all I could say to him.
“Neat!”
But…I did manage to ask if he wanted to get together sometime, and talk some more about this really fascinating subject. He said no…but he needed me to help get the word out and see if anyone has noticed a massive time-shift, so that’s what I’m doing now. Anything for the scientific community; I’m very into science these days!
Wow! Can you believe he called me?
Update on the impending invasion from the underground city:
The Sheriff’s Secret Police has reviewed Teddy Williams’ grainy security footage from the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, and they say that the nearly-indiscernible grey blotch making a slight movement near the cheese dispenser definitely proves that a lost city is moving toward war with Night Vale.
A balaclava-clad man wearing a mitre, cloak, and a giant silver star, and speaking through a vocoder – you know, the man we all believe to be the Sheriff of Night Vale? – announced this morning that all citizens should prepare their town for war.
This includes: fortifying porches with sandbags, training children to detect land mines, and not taking off our gas masks for meals (even though it is considered polite).
We talked with Teddy himself. He told us that during last night’s league bowling tournament, the jukebox malfunctioned and would not stop playing “Mister Brownstone.” Teddy says this could be a code, some kind of threatening message, or maybe even a subtle call for peace.
He also asked that Night Vale citizens learn their shoe sizes. Shoe rentals are taking way too long, and it’s really not that hard to memorize a one or two-digit number.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police also asks Night Vale residents to please help in their neighborhood watch program. Secret Police are in every neighborhood, watching everybody, so here are some tips on how you can help this invaluable community surveillance program.
Keep all windows open during clement weather, and if you must close them during rain, dust, or coal storms, please keep them clean, and stand near them, so cameras and microphones can clearly identify you.
When having any private conversation, whether via phone or with those in your home, turn down the TV and radio to cut back on noise pollution. Also, please try to keep your conversations lively. Maybe some local gossip, or polarizing sports opinions. Too much boring talk about plans for your garden or where to buy good laser discs can make the Secret Police tired and less effective at their jobs.
Do not wear tinfoil hats. This hackneyed technique doesn’t work at all. Helicopters could mind-scan you through twenty feet of lead. You shouldn’t wear these homemade hats because it draws unnecessary attention to yourself. It’s pathetic and paranoid. The Secret Police are embarrassed for you.
And as always, if you see something, say “something.” That’s the code word to call a special raid on a neighbor or stranger.
If you see something, say the word “something."
Now, in the news. After several months of protests from ordinary Night Vale citizens of stout and sturdy character, the City Council has announced several improvements for the Public Library. These improvements are the following:
An entrance is being constructed at the front of the building, so we will no longer have to enter by waking up between two shelves in a dizzy haze, unsure of how we got there, and then wandering around, trapped, until we wake with a start in our own beds, covered with sweat, and with a few books we checked out on our nightstand.
Drinking fountains are being installed in the lobby, as well as dunking chambers, and a state-of-the-art fainting pool.
Librarian repellent dispensers are being placed throughout the building. Remember, if approached by a librarian, keep still. Do not run away. Try to make yourself bigger than the librarian.
Finally, the children’s section is getting beanbag chairs.
That is all.
Is it?
Yes!
But is it?
Yes.
And now, traffic.
All roads lead to somewhere, and all roads come from somewhere. And in between they are a snarl and curve, a twist and a bend. Where are we going? I mean, metaphorically? Where are we coming from? I mean, literally. Is it possible to stop, or turn around, and if not, what does that mean for the latest polls and economic reports?
Ladies and gentlemen: ladies and gentlemen, Route 800 is looking clear in both directions. The old dirt road to the small wooden shack is backed up at least thirty minutes.
There. Now you know. Has that filled an emptiness for you? Are you any happier now? I hope so.
This has been, and will always be, traffic.
Listeners, I can hardly stand it any longer! During the past few stories, my phone has been silently buzzing. You guessed who!
Given that I am a radio host and it is therefore my duty to read you the news, it would be completely inappropriate for me to answer my phone – regardless of how much I want to soak my ears in the oaky tones of our community’s most significant outsider. But…well…he left me some voice mails. This may be a bit unorthodox, but I need your help, dear listeners, to determine where Carlos is going with all of this. Let’s listen to these together, okay? What do you think he’s trying to say?
First saved message:
Cecil, sorry to bother you. I need you to get the word out that clocks in Night Vale are not real. I have not found a single real clock. I have disassembled several watches and clocks this week and all of them are hollow inside. No gears, no crystal, no battery or power source. Some of them actually contain a gelatinous gray lump that seems to be growing hair…and teeth. I need to know if all clocks are this way, Cecil. This is ver–
There’s something at my door, Cecil. I need to go, okay? I’ll call you back in…well, I don’t know.
End of message.
Next message:
There’s a man in a jacket holding a leather suitcase outside my door, Cecil. He’s not knocking, he’s just standing in front of my door. I can’t make out his face. I’m peering through a crack in the living room blinds – Oh no, he saw me!
End of message.
Next message:
Sorry about that, Cecil. I forget what I was doing. I think somebody came over…but I don’t remember who or what for.
Anyway, I need to meet you. Are you free tomorrow afternoon? You have a contact number for the mayor and someone with the police, right? It’s important that I find them. And again, can you get the word out on your radio show about the clocks?
End of message.
Did you hear that, listeners? A date! Let’s go to the weather!
Well, I just got off the phone with Carlos, listeners, and we have a date! Tomorrow afternoon! It’s just coffee, but maybe it’s more! Maybe lots more. Who knows?
You know, they always say if you’re trying to meet someone, you may never find them, but it’s when you’re not looking, that’s when they find you. I’ve always heard this in reference to government agents, but I think it applies to dating as well.
Carlos did want me to ask if anyone has ever actually seen the Night Vale Clock Tower. I told him that it was invisible, and always teleporting, and that’s why he can’t ever see it. I mean, that seems sort of obvious.
Okay. That was unfair. Carlos is a very smart man, and I shouldn’t roll my eyes just because he doesn’t comprehend basic architecture. He obviously has a lot of other intriguing interests, though…like clock making, and seismology. And who knows what else?
Oh happy day, listeners! Thanks for listening, and for helping me through this. I’m so very excited!
Before we go, intern Stacy just handed me this:
The Sheriff’s Secret Police would like to issue a correction to their earlier special alert. In their warning, they stated that memorizing a very specific list would keep you safe. This is incorrect. According to the new statement, quote:
"We are not safe. We are all being hunted by time and our own deceitful bodies. Memorizing the list will merely prevent additional external pain beyond that which you experience daily just by being alive. The Sheriff’s Secret Police regret the error.”
End quote.
That’s it for our news. Stay tuned next for a community-wide frisson of cosmic fright. Thank you again, Night Vale! May you, too, find love in this dark desert. May it be as permanent as the blinking lights, and as comforting as the dull roar of space.
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: If I said you had a beautiful body, would it even matter because we are so insignificant in this vast, incomprehensible universe?
Hello, citizens of Night Vale. I bring you now to our ongoing coverage of the Valentine’s Day aftermath. Emergency workers have been at it since early this morning, starting the long task of cleanup and recovery.
Reports are still hazy, but we believe that the housing developments of Marshall’s Gorge and Golden Dunes have both been wiped completely off the map, while Coyote Corners and Cactus Bloom are reporting extensive damage to structures and power lines.
Please, if you are not directly involved in the recovery and cleanup from Valentine’s Day, stay off the roads to make room for those who are.
This Valentine’s Day, as all Valentine’s Days, will not succeed in bringing our city down. This Valentine’s Day, as all Valentine’s Days, will soon recede into painful memory, fading with time, until another foul Valentine’s Day is upon us again.
In other news, the Randy Newman Memorial Night Vale Airport has announced some schedule changes due to multiple severe weather conditions, including the existence of an atmosphere, and that strange fiery orb that appears for approximately half of every twenty-four hour period. Many of today’s flights will be delayed for several hours while the rest will be moved into the past and will have already happened last week.
All arriving flights have been canceled except those from JFK, LAX, and XTA, which will continue on the usual routine of unscheduled arrivals that are a complete surprise to both the pilots and Air Traffic Control – based on routes that appear to violate the simple laws of physics and geography.
In addition, Martin McCaffrey – local TSA representative – reminded all travelers that security measures are in place for their own safety, and we should respect the sacrifice needed to keep our lives and our country secure.
Martin said, “I know going through both a metal and full-body scanner, as well as crawling through a lengthy pitch-black tunnel while a recording of a monotone male voice lists possible ways of dying are all inconveniences, and I know that many travelers are concerned with privacy issues involving the voice of a small child that comes through strategically placed ceiling grates asking them to name every person they have ever kissed. But these are all necessary evils.”
Mister McCaffrey then went on to draw a quick sketch of a strange, elongated, dark figure crawling out of a kitchen refrigerator – after which he immediately insisted he had no memory of creating the picture and no idea what it could mean.
More on this…eventually. Probably.
Hey, here’s a health tip from the greater Night Vale medical community!
It’s possible you won’t be able to kill it. If it manages to burrow under your skin, stop fighting, because it has already become part of you. Welcome your new bodymate! Listen to what it has to say. And see where the new symbiotic lifestyle takes you!
Emergency workers report that the damage from Valentine’s Day is worse than previously projected. They describe bodies strewn upon the ground, covered in glitter and paper cupids. Entire buildings collapsed, leaving only rubble and chalky candy hearts.
And, of course, there is the sad fate of those chosen to be another person’s Valentine. Little can be said to help the families of those unfortunates except that the process is, while exactly as ghastly and excruciating as feared, apparently not as horribly slow and drawn out as it appears to outside observers.
As usual, no aid has come our way from either the state or national government. The state House even went so far as to send a formal reply, the entirety of which reads:
“Sorry…we can see what you were going for, but maybe we just don’t ‘get’ that kind of thing. Anyway, creative stuff! And have a happy Valentine’s!”
Those monsters!
If you or anyone you know has any footage or photos of the events of Valentine’s Day, please send them directly into the station so that we may put the images and video on the radio. Thank you, and be safe.
The City Council recently moved to name “dance” as the official town language. This measure has been met with tense debate and raised voices over the past several weeks. Proponents say we need a unified language, as it will save money on municipal signage and documentation – not to mention bring us together as a community.
“The poetry of the human body,” they said, while quickly pulling in their elbows and turning their bowler hats down over their eyes in an obvious tribute to Bob Fosse, “mates physical being with mental necessity; a marriage that brings purpose to our quickly rotting living corpses.”
Opponents say that this move, if voted into law, is discriminatory against the physically handicapped. Also, less than 10% of Night Vale citizens have ever taken a single dance lesson – let alone achieved lifelong mastery of one of the most ethereal and difficult-to-grasp art forms.
One opponent, who asked to remain nameless out of fear of retribution, told us the bill was entirely funded by lobbyists from Cheryl’s Little Princesses Dance Studio. “Just follow the money,” they said.
Then the anonymous insider’s pupils grew until they eclipsed the whites. Their tongue slid out from their knife gash of a grin, and their hair would not stop graying and growing.
A final vote is expected on Tuesday.
And now, traffic.
A representative from the Sheriff’s Secret Police, waving vaguely at a map in our studio, said that there are street closures, quote “all over. Just all over the general area,” the representative said, tapping the edge of the map with two knuckles. “A bunch of 'em, in…different places.”
We asked if he could be more specific, and he nodded, but did not say anything more. We tried naming a couple of streets to see if any of them were included on the list of closures, but the representative only replied with a, “Oh, yeah, I mean…probably!” and an ambiguous head waggle to each one. He added that anyone caught on a closed road would be dealt with in the usual manner, and then he winked and gave me a thumbs-up.
It is possible he was merely a vagrant who wandered into the studio. We didn’t bother to check his credentials. Just to be safe, though, look out for road closures all over in the general area, listeners. They’re in a bunch of different places…probably.
This has been traffic.
And now for corrections. We offer the following corrections to previous reports broadcast on Night Vale Community Radio.
Blue, not green.
A low whirring sound was heard only by those to the west of it.
The witness’ name was Henry Greggson and not, as we reported, Crystal Souleater.
We were feeling, at best, fine…and not, as we stated on the record, “Pretty good, thanks!”
No. No. Do not do what we advised. We were so terribly terribly wrong. If you have done it already, well…our heart goes out to those who miss you. Please forgive us. Please forgive us!
This has been corrections.
More post-Valentine’s Day news:
The Night Vale Mall’s planned Valentine’s Day art installation, involving footage of actual beating animal hearts projected on a vivisected teddy bear, was canceled due to the entire mall being flooded with poisonous gas.
The gas was described as “difficult to breathe,” and “a major cause of death to those who stood in it.”
Mall PR officials expressed regret at the cancellation, saying, “Man! It’s like every time an artist has a bold new idea, the system has to come in and shut them down!" They concluded by muttering, "It stinks man! It stinks!” before going off to sulk in the Red Cross medical tent.
Emergency workers, meanwhile, report coming across a stash of un-activated Valentine’s Day cards – forcing them to cease operations until a specialized team could be called in to deal with the danger. Three workers died before they could retreat.
Also, Night Vale Community Radio intern Stacey died, a couple of months ago, soon after our last mention of her. Our sympathies go to the loved ones of those who are lost, especially Stacey. Sorry that I didn’t get around to telling you until now, that was totally my fault.
Mayor Pamela Winchell issued the following statement today in regards to the increasing public support for her ouster and replacement by dashing inmate and blogger Hiram McDaniels.
Winchell said, “The Mayor smells of olives. The Mayor burns like a match tip and casts her flickering light on the darkened path of fate. The Mayor does not have keys to the Stone Door; the Mayor is the Stone Door and all that quivers behind it. The Mayor is forgiving. The Mayor makes no mistakes. The Mayor clutches tightly to your lungs, all six arms embracing your savory breaths. Let the Mayor out. Let the Mayor out. Let the Mayor out.”
There were no follow-up questions, but the press pool did let out a simultaneous “ohmmmmm” as fire burst forth from the podium, and the conference room ceiling flew away revealing a midday night sky that had grown cancerous with blinking stars.
McDaniels is still in jail, awaiting trial for insurance fraud and evasion of arrest. He has previously announced interest in becoming mayor of Night Vale and is a 3,600-pound, five-headed dragon.
In other news, several alert citizens have reported that the Night Vale Post Office – closed since the strange and probably supernatural attack that it suffered several months ago – now appears to be open for business once again. This is good news for all of us, as we – as a city – have been unable to send or receive letters and packages since the closing. All private delivery companies of course refuse to enter the greater Night Vale area because, a FedEx spokesperson explained, “It is cursed.”
Witnesses say the post office has opened its doors and looks to be full of activity. There have been a few changes.
For instance, all clerks behind the counter are now strange cloth-wrapped figures who hum tunelessly and turn in place instead of doing any sort of official postal business. In addition, the entire customer line and lobby area is full of more of these cloth-wrapped figures, all similarly turning and humming. Those who have tried to enter the building have reported an immediate wave of dizziness and nausea, followed by visions of strange jagged peaks and a churning black ocean.
Also, they say, stamps now cost two cents more than a few months ago. It is not enough, apparently, for the postal service to violently assault our minds with visions, but they are also intent on bleeding our wallets dry. For shame!
But hey, at least everyone can get Amazon deliveries again. As their slogan says, “Amazon.com – The only website now. Where did the rest of them go? Do not ask. Do not ask.”
Ladies and gentlemen, emergency workers report that they have reached Old Town Night Vale, and further report that it is a scene out of a nightmare – assuming you have had the usual nightmare in which Old Town received minor structural damage and debris, with no serious injuries.
Emergency workers report that they have treated those who need treating, and have cleared away what needed clearing away.
They report that the usual stress of day-to-day life was worse…but now it seems better. And that later, they project, it will be worse again.
Emergency workers report that they are feeling good about stuff in general, for once.
Emergency workers report that they are smiling, and they don’t even know why.
Emergency workers report a cloud. Just that. A cloud.
“And isn’t it funny how we often don’t notice little things like that?” they report.
Well, listeners. It seems perhaps that we have come through this day and reached some other side. Not unaffected, no, not unchanged, but here. After all, this Valentine’s Day, as all Valentine’s Days, will not succeed in bringing our city down. This Valentine’s Day, as all Valentine’s Days, will soon recede into painful memory, fading with time until another foul Valentine’s Day is upon us again.
Stay tuned next for me saying “Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.”
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: Werner Herzog is the most interesting person.
The optimist says the glass is half full. The pessimist says the glass is half empty. It is only the truth seeker who wonders, why is the glass there? Why is there water all over the floor? Why is it covering every other surface of the house? Who or what is doing this to us?
Welcome to Night Vale.
Listeners, a new traveler has arrived in Night Vale. This is not uncommon, perfectly located as we are between several vertices, but this Traveler is not one who will be mistaken for those other travelers – you know the ones.
This Traveler is said to have a foreign face and a handsome, but terrible, beard. He is reportedly wearing a uniform with silver epaulets, golden braid, and buttons of a metallic alloy not describable in our limited color language. This is all very similar to the marching band uniform of the Desert Bluffs Cacti prior to The Incident, but The Traveler’s uniform is not scorched and soaked with blood.
“I cannot say that I trust this interloper very much, and his actions do not give me reasons to trust him,” suggests the Manual on Interlopers, published by the Sheriff’s Secret Police. According to the manual, citizens are advised to not speak with The Traveler, and to dig a shelter in their garden. Or, if they do not have a garden, to make themselves into a metaphorical shelter through vigilance and a positive outlook.
Who can say what agenda The Traveler might have? He drives a large and expensive truck, he digs in the desert late at night, he does not seem adequately respectful of Forbidden Areas, and he has already married Night Vale’s third most beautiful woman: Cactus June. He persuaded her to come down from her cactus, and he has married her. I am looking at a photograph of the wedding in the newspaper at this very moment. Now, I am drinking something. [slurps] Now, I am eating an enchilada [mumbles with mouth full] that was just handed to me.
Mayor Pamela Winchell called an emergency press conference today, her fourth this week. After the usual crowd had gathered around, minus those arrested at previous press conferences, she began proceedings by vibrating slightly and staring at the sun for five straight minutes. Once these usual pleasantries were over she read her statement, which was the following:
“The fences in the caves. A heart throbbing for what it cannot have. A heart not having what it needs to throb. The fences in the caves. Heat from below and above, but all is cold betwixt. The fences in the caves. The fences in the caves.”
Then she vanished in a puff of green smoke.
Several follow-up questions were asked, but since no one was at the podium, none of them were answered. Many of the questions were rhetorical anyway. After the round of questioning, a few arrests were made, and the chosen journalists were led away to wherever journalists are taken when they disappear forever.
All in all, a relatively uneventful press conference.
And now, a public service announcement:
The Night Vale Psychological Association recommends that you spend at least 30 minutes each day believing what you see. The NVPA cited a study showing that more than 60% of all working citizens live in a self-created dome of obstinance, distraction, and surreal fantasy. When confronted with actual things outside of their own understanding – referred to by the psychologists as “real life” – most test subjects closed their eyes and pretend there was a spider or something on the ground.
The study does warn that trusting your own eyes can lead to some dangers. For instance: poltergeists, robots, and humidity may create visual illusions, tricking you into unsavory activities like gambling, and eating non-foods, so that they can gloat at your misfortune.
But the NVPA assures us that taking what you see at face value, even if only for a few minutes daily, is the most efficient way to live. It saves the mind from the emotional stress of self-fiction and skepticism.
The NVPA statement adds that “you look good in that shirt, and that you should wear tighter clothing. People want to see what you look like under there!” They also ask you to just touch their back. “You don’t have to rub it. Just touch it. Just put your hand…there. God, I miss you so much!” the report concludes.
This just in: The Traveler and his wife, Cactus Judy, were seen shopping at the Ralph’s just moments ago. He was shaking his head at the fashion of our clothing, and clucking derisively at our telephones and grocery scales.
“We have much better when I am from,” said The Traveler according to one report, which I am choosing to believe. He added, “That’s right, I said when and not where.” He then winked.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police, meanwhile, are more than a little interested in the sudden reopening of Jerry’s Tacos, located on the corner of Ouroboros Road. You will recall that Jerry’s Tacos was encased in amber last summer, with Jerry inside. Now it is as if Jerry never transgressed against nature with his enchiladas.
The Traveler has been spotted in the vicinity of Jerry’s Tacos. If I were you – and I do not believe I am – I would be very careful about ordering anything off the Secret Menu at Jerry’s. Definitely do not order anything off the Forsaken Menu.
And now for corrections.
In a previous report, we at Night Vale Community Radio were talking about the commonly held belief that there is such a thing as “mountains.” We scoffed at this belief, and bellowed repeatedly, “It is flat all the way ‘round. It is flat all the way 'round.”
We wrote lists of friends we knew to believe in mountains, and sent the lists to the City Council, recommending that all of them be put into indefinite detention. We got physically violent with an effigy labeled “Mountain Believer,” punching it repeatedly before burning it in our station’s bloodstone circle. In fact, we devoted a full day of our programming to getting together the entire station staff and screaming in unison, “Mountains? More like nothings!” into the microphone.
Recently, one of our previously mentioned friends – who thankfully had not yet been apprehended by the Council – took us for a drive out to a mountain. We looked at the mountain, and even touched it, and it was definitely real. Therefore we are forced to admit there is indeed at least one mountain in this world, and we apologize for our previous energetic assertions to the contrary.
I’m still not completely sold on there being more than one mountain. It’s possible that the mountain apologists built a single mountain in order to prove their skewed world view.
Not certain listeners, not certain…but possible.
This has been corrections.
Here now is an update. We’re getting reports that The Traveler was just seen, standing on the tailgate of his truck and addressing a small crowd of curious people.
“I have traveled here from the future. I have saved Night Vale from destruction, and I will save it again!” The Traveler reportedly said to the crowd. “You do not know this because your memories have been changed, along with the course of events. Now that I have altered the past, I cannot return to my own time. I am staying here. I will show you the way. I hope you enjoy my enchiladas.”
The Sheriff’s Secret Police said they can bring no charges against The Traveler, as Night Vale recently voted to decriminalize time travel.
Just what did The Traveler mean when he said he saved our town? How will he save it again? We have always trusted in the unknowable purposes of the Hooded Figures. Can we afford to abandon what we presume is their wisdom, and follow this new prophet of tomorrow?
And now, a paid editorial, sponsored by Yelp.com.
[humming and whistling – the sort which would probably receive mixed reviews on Yelp.com]
This has been a paid editorial sponsored by Yelp.com.
Here’s a look at the Community Calendar.
8:00 PM Thursday at Dark Owl Records, Curtis Mayfield reads from his new book, Where Am I? I Cannot See, Cannot Feel, Do Not Know Who I Am Or How Long I Have Been Here: A Memoir.
Friday afternoon is Free Admission Day at the Children’s Science Museum. After school take the kids to the newest exhibit, Frogs: Truth or Legend? They’ve also installed a new Interactive Learning Room, where young scientists can play freely with such scientific items as paint thinner, nail polish remover, glass cleaner, and a half-empty bucket of grout starter.
Saturday has been merged with Sunday to create Superday!
Monday will not harm you…but you should stock up on latex gloves, nonetheless.
And Tuesday is hornet-free dining at the Olive Garden.
Ladies and gentlemen and those of you not clearly falling into either category, it is my ambivalent duty to report that The Traveler is suddenly gone. His photograph has disappeared from the front page of the newspaper. His truck is missing. Some who reported seeing him have called back to say that they must have been mistaken, and that they have never seen anything; that they don’t even know how to open their eyes.
Perhaps he has leaped again through the stream of time, or passed to an alternate dimension created by the changes he has made to our world.
Or perhaps he was surrounded suddenly by the Hooded Figures, speaking in voices that only The Traveler could hear. Perhaps they closed in on him and he panicked as their circle tightened and tightened around him until all that could be seen by horrified onlookers were the Hooded Figures.
And perhaps, just as suddenly, the Hooded Figures were gone, and nothing remained of The Traveler except for a pile of indescribable buttons from his uniform – left scattered around the hole in the vacant lot out back of the Ralph’s.
Whatever happened, I can only say, “Farewell, Traveler.”
In other news, Jerry’s Tacos, now and forever, shall be under the management of the Hooded Figures. Plants in the vicinity of the restaurant have already begun to wilt, and animals and insects are avoiding the area. The restaurant has been renovated to resemble a nine meter-high black monolith with not visible entrance. If we learn of any change in the menu or pricing, you will be the first to know.
Finally, we are pleased to end today’s broadcast with some happy news from Night Vale’s hospital. There have been several additions to the community.
Tak Wallaby’s wife, Herschel, has given birth to an adult man’s detached hand, which they have named Meghan.
The black Dauphin has given birth to a smooth metallic pellet of astonishing density. It joins three previous pellets, with similarly curious properties, currently being kept inside a safe in the Sheriff’s Secret Police’s secret police vault.
And the beautiful widow, Cactus Jane, whose husband we no longer remember at all, is glad to bring into this world a baby boy she has named Champ. The birth was attended by several agents from a Vague, yet Menacing, Government Agency. Champ is said to be a child with a foreign face and a handsome – but terrible – beard.
Well, listeners, this has been another day, another night, another bit of time in this bit of space. I’m sitting at my desk, feet planted on old, thinning carpet, but in my mind I am anywhere but. I am above, in the sky above, looking down at our little Night Vale. I see the lights, in grids and curves, and the places where there are no lights, because they are off…or missing…or invisible.
I see roads with cars and the cars have people in them. And the people are traveling through the dark in the comfort and light of the cars, and I see all of this from above. I see where the town gives way gradually to the desert; the last few lights from the last few homesteads, like stray sparks from a campfire, tossed out into the absolute black of the Scrublands and the Sand Wastes.
I see the orbit of citizen around citizen. All these ordinary Night Valians, about their ordinary lives, in this singular, extraordinary place we call home.
Moving higher into the cold, thin air of the upper atmosphere, I see below me the criss-crossed lines of contrails and chemtrails, the signature of air machines that have long since moved on; the footprint of our civilization upon the night sky.
And looking up I see only the stars, and the void, all a little closer than they were before. All still so un-reachably distant.
I have something of urgent importance to tell you, but I will tell it to you later. Or I will tell it to you not at all. Certainly I will not tell it to you now. Now I merely look, from the vantage point of my own imagination, down at a town busy with its own existence.
And, for now, existence is enough. Stay tuned next for an exact word-for-word repeat of this broadcast, that will seem to you imperceptibly but unshakably different…although you will never be able to explain why.
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: Find more ways to work “plinth” into daily conversation.
Blinking red light in the night sky. The future is changing, but it’s hard to tell.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Listeners, the City Council announced moments ago that a sandstorm will be arriving Night Vale in just a few minutes. They apologize that they did not announce this sooner, but they just kind of let their morning slip away from them.
“You know how it is,” they said in unison. “You think, ‘Oh, we should announce this dangerous sandstorm. That’s priority one.’ But then you have to get some coffee, and you run into your coworker friends, and then you check your email, and maybe a glance at Facebook…and you just lose track of time. You know…” they concluded.
The sandstorm is projected to be the largest in decades, and meteorologists warned that high winds and debris from the desert could cause millions in damage. They also said that if you’re not already inside with windows closed, doors locked, and eyes shut tight, then your future will probably be very different.
Meteorologists then warned that raccoons are actually pretty dangerous animals despite how adorable they seem, and never, ever feed baby raccoons, because the mother raccoon will definitely attack you.
“Have you ever had rabies shots? Oh, it is the worst,” the meteorologists continued as the press corps got restless and hoped that the meteorologists would just shut up soon.
“God, meteorologists just don’t know when to stop!” the entire press corps moaned.
So, take cover, Night Vale. Hide in your homes and offices, and pretend that mere walls are enough to protect you from nature’s might and life’s brevity and meaninglessness.
Keep your radios tuned in here; we’ll keep you up to date.
Hey, sports fans! Assuming we’re all still here after today, it’s time for baseball season. This Saturday is the minor league home opener for the Night Vale Spider Wolves. They’ll be taking on bitter rivals, the Desert Bluffs Sunbeams.
The Spider Wolves are fielding a very young but promising pitching staff this year. Fans are especially excited to see 20 year-old hometown hero Trevin Murphy get his first chance in the starting rotation. Murphy graduated Night Vale High School two years ago and immediately joined the Spider Wolves – just after they discovered that he could use his telepathic powers to cripple batters emotionally, often sending them into weeks-long slumps and fits of crying, even while playing in the field.
The Sunbeams have some changes in their team as well. This off-season, they got a new owner and a new manager, because they’re terrible. Just terrible. Who even cares?
And now, traffic.
Highway officials are warning all Night Vale residents to stay off the roads. The sandstorm is making travel nearly impossible. We are told that several cars have stalled near the southbound off-ramp at Exit 6 on Route 800. Traffic officers reported that each car screeched to a halt, and through the rushing sand they could see dozens of drivers and passengers running into the road, pairing off, and then fighting. They noted that each fighting pair seemed to be of the same build, gender, age, and were wearing the exact same thing.
Also, unrelated to the sandstorm, all stop signs and traffic lights have been taken down for their bi-monthly polishing. They’ll be back from the cleaners on Tuesday, officials said.
Listeners, thank you for your calls and emails. We’re getting word that the sandstorm has already begun to hit. Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town, called moments ago to say that the sand was thick and really flying fast – but that when it touched his skin, he could hardly feel it. He could hardly feel a thing, that the past was a fiction, and that consequences were a choice.
He saw colors and shapes instead of familiar things like stoves and ponies. He shouted a bright confirmation of life up toward the sand-covered sun before gasping and screaming, “No! Not you! Not you!” and then hanging up the phone.
Well, thank you, Larry, for that informative report. We’ll certainly keep that in mind.
Old Woman Josie has not called, but intern Dana said that Old Woman Josie updated her Facebook page with an Instagram of some rune stones. Dana has been furiously translating these symbols, and her best guess is that they say “They come in twos. You come in twos. You and you. Kill your double!”
There’s also a link to this amazing cat that keeps jumping in and out of boxes and oh my God, that is the cutest thing I have ever seen! Dana, you have got to post that on my wall! Oh my God, he loves those boxes so much!
And now, a look at financial news.
A fallow wheat field, gray sky, cut by black Vs of black birds.
There is a child, dragging a hatchet. His eyes cast down. His eyes tight. His eyes white and red and superfluous. He knows not what he sees, but he knows what is there.
A single black winged beast – beak cracked, feathers rotting – alights roughly on the child’s shoulder. They stop. The bird picks at the cartilage of the boy’s ear as if biting secrets into it. The boy groans, not unpleasantly.
Heavy slow clouds roll and rise, starkly contrasted against the flickering daguerreotype hills, which stoically keep the poisonous rains at bay.
A sudden little river, partially walled by palsied shafts of grain, rolls by. The boy walks into it. He bends forward. His blank eyes stare into his reflection. Neither he nor his mirror knows the other is there, but the bird…the bird knows. The bird cackles, or perhaps cries. Even the bird is uncertain. The boy takes a palm full of the dark water. Most of it runs out through his long, zigzagging fingers. He licks the remainder from his dusty skin.
A sound – like thunder, like drums, like steps. The boy turns and hurls his hatchet behind him. The bird flies up and away. There is a hideous thump. The boy knows not what he has hit, but that it has been wounded. He waits for its retort.
This has been financial news.
This just in, Night Vale: Mayor Pamela Winchell has declared a state of emergency. She has asked that if you are still outside, you return home immediately!
A second announcement, shortly after, says that she was lying and that “you shouldn’t listen to her. She’s not the real mayor! I am!”
A third announcement followed, requesting that you “give me the microphone and get away from the podium! This is my press conference, you replicant clown!”
The press conference then erupted into shouts of “Phony!” and “Impostor!” as the press corps suddenly doubled and began fighting itself.
Night Vale, do be careful. I fear the sandstorm to be quite a terrible event. Please, stay safe inside, and should you see yourself, I cannot condone murdering yourself. I just don’t believe violence is ever the answer. It is a question. The real answer is far more terrifying. So, make peace with your double, Night Vale. Do not be tempted to draw swords or guns. We can get along.
Oh, dear. What…what was that noise? Dana? Is everything okay in there, Dana? Who are you fighting? Dana, put down that letter opener! Dana, put away the– I’m coming in there.
Um, let’s go to a word from our sponsor.
Got a home improvement project? Need help?
Incomplete?
Having feelings? Strange feelings? Feelings you’ve never felt?
Incomplete?
Is your body filled with hot blood, waving curves of sinew, and skin? Can you feel all that blood? Is it even your blood? How can you be sure? Incomplete? Are you dizzy from it all, all of this? What are your hands doing?
Incomplete?
Where are your hands now? Where have they been? Where are they going? Where are you going?
Have you ever broken the surface of something with a hammer? Ever channeled sublime thought into sandpaper? Ever wanted to touch something because you feel things, because touch is the only sense you trust?
Incomplete?
What is trust? Is making a thing proof that you exist? Is fixing a thing proof that you have transcended mortality? History?
Incomplete?
Feel things? Feel things?
You can do it. We can help. The Home Depot.
Listeners, I have some bad news and some, uh, good news. Dana is dead! But the other Dana is alive, and I don’t know which is the original and which is the double. Right now, one of the Danas is standing above her own corpse, panting. I cannot tell if she is grinning or grimacing.
When I went in she had, clutched in one hand, a broken stapler…and in the other, a printout of this email from…oh, God. This is the bad news I was talking about. An email from Steve Carlsberg! I don’t even want to read an email from that jerk, but if printing it out was one of the Dana’s final actions, I must honor her efforts.
Steve– ugh! Steve writes: “The sandstorm is clearly a cover-up. I believe this was a government-created project. Our government has long been participating in cloud-seeding experiments, and trying to suppress the people with pharmaceuticals. I believe that this government will stop at nothing in order to–”
Now you listen here, Steve Carlsberg!
You’re not saying anything new, Steve. Of course the sandstorm was created by the government! The City Council announced that this morning! The government makes no secret that they can control the weather, and earthquakes, and monitor thoughts and activities. That’s the stuff a big government is supposed to do! Obviously, you have never read the Constitution!
Okay, sure, government can be very inefficient, and sometimes bloated and corrupt, but the answer is not to complain about everything that they do. Without government, we would never have schools or roads or municipal utilities or helpful pandemics or black vans that roam our neighborhoods at night keeping us safe.
So please, Steve Carlsberg, I’ve had enough of your government-bashing!
And with that, dear listeners, let’s go to the– …oh, my. Look at that.
Listeners, there is a black – almost indigo – vortex that has formed along my studio wall.
Listeners, words fail me. It is so beautiful!
I can’t leave you, as our show is not yet over, but…there must be something beyond this something, Night Vale. I must see what it is! I must go! I will try not to be long, listeners. I will try not to be long…
Hello? Hello, Desert Bluffs? What is this studio?
Hey there, Desert Bluffs! I don’t know if you can hear me. Kevin here. I don’t’ know where I am. It’s a radio studio, but the walls are darker. The equipment looks much older. Certainly much drier than it should be. The microphone was made…when? Have I gone back in time?
Vanessa! Are you in the booth?
Listeners, if you can hear me, I am in a strange place. I do not know if I am in Desert Bluffs, or if anyone can hear me.
The sandstorm rages outside. The vortex is still there, only it’s black – almost a deep blue. There’s a low hum. I do not know if this is the portal, or the storm, or my own body.
There is a photo here on the desk. It is a man. He is wearing a tie. He is not tall or short, not thin or fat. He has eyes like mine and a nose like mine, and hair like mine, but I do not think he is me.
Maybe it is the smile.
Is that a smile? I can’t say.
I do hope he is safe, whoever – wherever he is. I hope I am safe, wherever – whoever I am.
It is night. I think it is night. It is night.
You may not know me, nor I you, but we have this mic, and this voice, and your warm ears blossoming open to hear comforting secrets in the vibrations of a voice that pulse so deep into your body, your heart relaxes for a time.
And we have this, sitting right here on this odd and bloodless desk. So now, dear listeners, whoever you are, I give you the weather.
It took longer than I thought, but I have returned from whatever horrible place I have gone.
Along the way, in the vortex, I saw a grotesque man. A foul devil of a man. And he attacked me! I tried to choke him to death, but I remembered. I remembered what I told you, and I let him live. I let that woeful beast live. I am sure he is not without his wounds and bruises, and I pity that he must return to that awful, awful place from whence he came and to where I most unfortunately visited.
But somehow, I am happy he is alive.
That I am alive.
That you are alive.
That we are alive.
Outside the winds are subsiding, the sun sweeping away our pains. I am sure there is blood staining the streets – the graffiti of our sins, the writings of an immoral but necessary battle, I presume. The bodies of some replaced by others who were – we were – all the same to begin with.
And we are healing.
Those of us, whoever we are, who survived. Those others of us, whoever we are, who conquered.
Whoever you are now, you are home.
We are home, Night Vale! You and I are together again! My mouth, your ears, we have each other!
And for now, and always, goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: Step 1: Write down the names of everyone you know. Step 2: Rearrange the letters. Step 3: This will reveal a great secret of time.
The future is what you make of it! Just know that your supplies are limited.
Welcome to Desert Bluffs.
Good afternoon, Desert Bluffs! This is Kevin, bringing you all your news and good spirits for another gorgeous day in the Bluffs.
But before we get too comfortable, there is some news about that gorgeous day. We’re getting word that a sandstorm is moving in toward us. Authorities are telling us that it is a doozy, and that we should all stay indoors.
Nothing to worry about, just stay out of the way. It will pass. As with life, and as will all things, it will pass. The sun will be upon us again, and it will be like two mornings in a day. Yes! A two-morning day! A rebirth. A reawakening. What do you think of that, Desert Bluffs?
Intern Vanessa did point out that sandstorms can do a lot of damage to cars, and if you have access to a garage, you should bring your car in.
Also get those pets inside, Desert Bluffs! We don’t want all those cute little puppies and spiders and baby raccoons getting lost out in the sandy breeze. Bring those loved ones inside.
A little factoid for you: Ted, our staff weatherman, says that no one really knows what causes sandstorms. God, he thinks. Or maybe they’re just big gusts of wind that carry big things of sand.
How much sand do you think there is in the world? There’s got to be a lot. A lot of sand. Who even counts it all? Wow! Big questions today, Desert Bluffs. Big questions.
So keep your radios tuned in here, as we’ll bring you all the latest reports from today’s sandstorm and how you can make up for all this lost time. Hiding from nature is taking away a lot of business productivity, Desert Bluffs, but I’m sure you’ll find time to get done what needs to get done. You won’t disappoint your town – your home. I believe in you. So mark down the time you spend cowering from the weather, okay? And we’ll work that time back into your schedule. Great!
And listen! Get all that time in before the weekend, because this Saturday, it’s baseball season again! Desert Bluffs has just a great team this year. New manager Samantha Figgins is not only the first manager to get hired straight out of business school, but she also brings a powerful ethos of teamwork, fun, and responsibility.
Last year’s Sunbeams team had some excellent games, but they spent a lot of time just sitting on the bench with nothing to do, because only one person gets to bat at a time. This season, Figgins plans to keep her boys active with customer orders and accounts receivable spreadsheets.
Baseball is not an individual sport. They’re all in it together. As Figgins says, “It’s not about winning and losing or who you’re playing. It’s about building the strongest possible team brand.”
The Sunbeams also welcome a new owner in 2013:
StrexCorp Synernists Incorporated. Look around you: Strex. Look inside you: Strex. Go to sleep: Strex. Believe in a Smiling God: StrexCorp. It is EVERYTHING.
Let’s have a peek at traffic!
The highway department says all roads are running smoothly. Smooth roads. Smooth concrete. Smooth tires. The slow undulating buzz of cars over slight hills. Hardtop streets gently gliding us all to our jobs and back home. The beat beat beat of society’s healthy heart as we all play parts in its exquisite body.
Oh! I’m getting one report that there are several stalled cars in the northbound lanes of Route 800, near Exit 66. Police are on the scene dealing with fistfights in the middle of the road!
Now, I can’t imagine why, in a beautiful town with so many kinds of yogurt stores and pony-petting stations, anyone would want to fight his neighbor. So hopefully that gets cleared up soon with a song and a hug.
I wanna thank all you listeners for your calls and emails. The sandstorm came to town more quickly than expected. Lawrence Lavine, out in the edge of town development, called in to say that the sand was like sand, but slightly different, that if you touched it, you could feel it…twice. Lawrence said took a scoop of sand into his soft right hand and it was if he had two right hands. He then held the sand with both soft palms and felt four hands, like one of those foreign gods, or radioactive four-armed deer that seem to be attracted to the new StrexCorp distribution center.
Lawrence said he was making a sand angel, and then he saw himself. He said he just walked right up to himself and started making two sand angels. He said that there were two of him, just making sand angels, and that he would happily double his sand angel production today. He hung up the phone laughing like Vanessa had never heard him laugh.
Well, thank you, Lawrence. That was a useful report. Intern Vanessa also tells me she’s keeping an eye on Facebook to see if our other neighbors have news of the storm. I see Grandma Josephine posted a photo of a lovely bouquet of white lilies outside her door. Very pretty! Oh, and look at this video, Vanessa! This cat just jumps in and out of boxes! That is adorable! Vanessa, can you tweet that to me?
Let’s have a look at financial news.
The markets are jumping today, really jumping. The markets are up and down, but then back up again, like gravity and our fight to break it. The violent force of impact, ground to heel, heel to shin, shin to knee, and then back up again. Muscular might and the threat of flight.
A young boy heals his wounds as quickly as they form, jumping and pounding and hitting and soaring. He reaches skyward. The drift of the body disconnected from its earth gives the flutter of wings, not just on the back, but in the belly.
The moment between knowing you’re mortal and bound to the ground, and then dreaming you have awakened a great power to fly, like those hollowed-out rodents that clog our skies with feathers and fluids – it’s in that moment of knowing and unknowing, consciousness and bliss, that the boy sees all that can never be.
Upon his return to the flat hard truth, he sees things. Himself. Others, as they should be seen. As his equals.
He gives the jumping one more go, but the magic is gone. Another. Still none. One more, for old time’s sake. No. It will never be the same. Well, maybe. One more. Still another. He jumps and jumps and jumps! The jumping makes a sound, like thunder, like drums, like steps.
Soon he is old. The ups and the downs lack even the memory of the magic. They have replaced nostalgia with creaking, painful bones. He is old now.
Still jumping.
This has been financial news.
This just in, Desert Bluffs: Mayor Pablo Mitchell has declared today Sandstorm Day. This massive sandstorm has already damaged several apartments and malls in the northwest part of town, and it seems to be on course for even more costly wreckage, so Mayor Mitchell announced that we can all take today off of work. Today is a citywide holiday!
A second announcement, coming from a man that looked and dressed like the mayor, said that we can make up some of our lost hours by teaming up with our doubles! The two joined together for an inspirational call to work together with these magical doppelgangers.
Is this true, Desert Bluffs? If so, what a blessed and wonderful event, to bring us doubles of ourselves! I am stuck inside – doing a job I very much love, of course – but if I were you, I would run outside into the sandy afternoon air and try to meet your other. How exciting!
So make friends with your mirrored colleague, Desert Bluffs! Think of what we could accomplish if there were two of all of us!
Oh dear. What was that noise? Vanessa? Is everything okay in there, Vanessa? Who are you talking to? Vanessa! Oh! There are two of you! What are you– …oh, you’re building a new shelving unit. Lemme help you with that! I’m coming in there.
Let’s go to an important message from our parent company.
Got something to say? Need to say it? Unfulfilled? Never made sense of what you are, who you were, who you will be?
Unfulfilled?
Do you forget sometimes about your own skin, your own hair, or other people’s hair and skin? Can you make more hair, more skin? Do you need more hair and/or skin?
Unfulfilled?
Are you satisfied with it all? Do you see it all? What room are you in? What room do you want to be in? How big is your room?
Unfulfilled?
Have you ever said a thing inside your brain, and then sent it to your hand to move a pencil to write it into symbols onto a paper, which used to be a tree, and then used your eyes to translate those symbols back into the thing you just said inches away in your brain, and then re-said it with your mouth into an ear? Whose ear was it?
Unfulfilled?
Ever eaten things that made you think differently? Breathed things?
Unfulfilled?
Feel things? Felt things?
We are you. StrexCorp.
Welcome back! Listeners, I have some bad news and some good news. Vanessa and her other Vanessa broke one of the parts of the new shelving unit and I don’t think we have anything to replace it. One of the Vanessas cut her head pretty badly. When I went in, Vanessa – I think our original Vanessa – was standing over her with a staple gun and a clean wet rag.
She also handed me a printout of an email from one of our listeners. Well, I presume he’s a listener. I’ve never heard of him. He claims to live in Night Vale. I had no idea those folks down in Night Vale could get our tiny little radio station, Vanessa. How wonderful!
You know, in all my years, I have never gone to Night Vale! I bet it’s beautiful. Really, this whole desert is beautiful. I mean, when it comes right down to it, why would you ever leave Desert Bluffs? How can it get better, really? I wouldn’t risk it.
So Steve writes, “This sandstorm is clearly a cover-up. I believe this was a government-created project. Our government has long been participating in cloud-seeding experiments, and–”
Let me stop you right there, Steve Carlsberg!
You have hit the nail on the head. Say no more! The government is indeed covering up their involvement –or should I say, lack of involvement in this sandstorm.
Honestly, I don’t think the government even knows how to orchestrate a project of this magnitude, and of this quality. You need a well-run private business like, say, StrexCorp, that has not only the faculties and materials to execute a massive geologic and psychedelic storm, but to do so inexpensively, and without tax dollars.
Why, without StrexCorp, and companies like it, we wouldn’t have trade schools, or regulated behaviors, or insurance, or helpful pandemics, or black helicopters!
Thank you for your email, Steve. What a great guy!
And with that, listeners, let’s go to– …oh my. Look at that.
Listeners, there’s a white, almost pink, vortex that has formed along my studio wall.
Listeners, words fail me. It is so beautiful!
I can’t leave you, as our show is not yet over, but…there must be something beyond this something, Desert Bluffs. I must see what it is! I must go! I will try not to be long, listeners. I will try not to be long…
Hello? Hello? Night Vale? What is this studio? What is this damnable studio?
Night Vale? I do not know if you can hear me. This is Cecil, and I do not know where I am. It is clearly a radio studio, but the walls are covered in blood, and instead of dials and buttons on the soundboard, there is just animal viscera, glistening under the green LED lights. I hope this microphone works. Am I in hell?
Dana? Dana, can you hear me?
Listeners, if you can hear the sound of my voice, please contact the Sheriff’s Secret Police. There is so much blood, it is seeping into my shoes! There are – oh, masters of us all, no! – teeth scattered across the floor. The window into the control booth is shattered and there is a swath of skin and a fistful of long clumping hair hanging from a sharp glass point! I do not know if this is even Night Vale.
I know that I can hear the sandstorm raging outside. There is a low buzz and deep hum that might be my own heart ready to tear itself from my chest in horror or grief – I cannot know which.
There is a photo, a single photo of a man on the desk here. He is wearing a tie. He is not tall or short, not thin or fat. His hair and nose are like mine, but his eyes…his eyes are black as obsidian and his smile–
No. It is not a smile!
He must be wicked, this man!
Dear Night Vale, please pray in your bloodstone circle for me and pray, too, that no one should ever have to meet this vicious wretch of a man.
I want to be home, Night Vale! Oh, Cecil, you fool! The vortex…the vortex is still there. But here, it is white.
Okay. Dear listeners, from this vile, vile place, I leave you to your prison, but before I go, because I am a radio professional and it is sitting right here on this blood-spattered desk, I give you the weather.
Hello there, Desert Bluffs! It is Kevin again. I told you I would be back.
I don’t know where I went, but I think that I met my double.
The vortex is gone now, but as I was returning, I passed a man. A man who looked just like me. I smiled and said, “Hello there, friend!” I hugged this man, and he hugged me back. We shared a moment in this other world.
I am not sure to where that spiral of space and time took me, nor through where I traveled, but I am certain that there must be more to us than just us, and that there is another place, another time, where things could have been different. Better. Worse. But let’s not think on woulds, coulds, and shoulds.
I am just happy I am alive.
I am happy my other is alive.
You are alive.
We…we are alive.
Outside, the winds are subsiding. Our doubles have left us as the sand has left us. The sun is rising again just as it is setting. Our second sunrise collides with the sunset. Let’s reflect on this.
Let us reflect on our lives, and where we will be tomorrow. We lost our other selves, Desert Bluffs, but we gained new perspective. Tomorrow, we’ll wake again, work again, live again.
We are home, all of us, together. My mouth, your ears. We have each other.
And as always, until next time, Desert Bluffs. Until next time.
Today’s proverb: Step 1: Separate your lips. Step 2: Use facial muscles to pull back corners of mouth. Step 3: Widen your eyes. This is how to be happy.
