Episode 40 - The Deft Bowman
The riddle says, “He walks on four legs in the morning. He walks on two legs at midday. And at night, he slithers from dream to dream effortlessly, like the air we breathe. And we love him.”
Welcome to Night Vale.
In response to our town’s steadily-declining tourism industry, the Night Vale Tourism Board addressed our town’s complete lack of appealing destinations – like uncensored art museums, hotels with door locks, and snake-free restaurants. NVTB Executive Director Madeline LeFleur said some travelers think they need to “see things, like monuments, or the majesty of nature, or spectacular musicals, or eat regional/cultural foods in order to have a good time on vacation. But they don’t!”
“You don’t need attractions to have a good time!” she added. “Just use your imagination! In fact, come to Night Vale, where ‘we will show you fun in a handful of dust,’ as the new NVTB slogan says!”
LeFleur then became transfixed by the midday sun. “There it is again!” she whispered to a confused crowd. “It’s beautiful! So beautiful! Why do you think it keeps circling back like that?”
Good news, listeners! The telephone service has finally fixed the telephone booth behind the Taco Bell! The telephone that was always ringing and never had a dial tone? You know the one. When you picked it up it clicked, and hissed, and sometimes played notes that seemed to come from a music box. You did not recognize the tune, but…it was familiar, as if from another time and place.
Since no one uses telephone booths anymore, I’m not entirely sure why they did this, but the telephone booth is working!
The telephone service dispatched a crew of men who would not be missed. They wore wooden suits, climbed up the nearby pole, and clattered around like so many bamboo wind chimes filled with hamburger. After several hours, they climbed down, furtively smoking cigarettes, and departed in their unmarked black van, removing the OUT OF ORDER sign from the booth shortly before leaving.
Some say they’ve seen strangers of varying heights and aura magnitudes speaking into the telephone in a hushed tone, in words that might have been Russian, staring at the horizon with cold determination. And as the strangers all departed quickly, all in separate pedicabs, witnesses reported a detached human hand crawling up the inside of the booth.
Was this lone visitor to the phone booth the young Megan Wallaby? Megan was born as a detached hand of an adult man, so…it seems like this was probably she who slowly, but desperately, picked up the telephone as the sun began to set. We may never know for certain, but at least we know the telephone you’ll never bother to use is working again.
Ah! Speaking of telecommunication, listeners, I’ve been receiving some odd text messages. My phone claims they are from former intern Dana, who was trapped in the Forbidden Dog Park several months ago and is now traversing an unknown plane of space and/or time.
Here are some recent texts from her:
Found a mountain. Mountain’s not real? Huh!
Log those!
Dang it, lighthouse!
Sorry, stupid autocorrect.
There’s a lighthouse up on the mountain, and atop the lighthouse a blinking red light.
And then no more texts. And it’s been several days. I tried texting back but my touch screen just displayed a photograph of my face that began to slowly rot, the eyes deepening until they were sunken holes, long white hair growing rapidly, insects crawling from my slackened, decayed maw, and then the words “UNDELIVERED TEXT” in all caps below it.
I decided…maybe this conversation was one not meant to be.
More good news, listeners! A submarine has arrived from Nulogorsk, a tiny fishing village in Russia. Nulogorsk was a long-time sister city of Night Vale. We shared pen pal letters and gifts for many years. But, beginning in 1983, Nulogorsk stopped changing the dates on their letters. By 1997, it became apparent that Nulogorsk would never stop existing in 1983. And without being able to openly discuss the complexities of Michael Jackson’s career arc, Night Vale stopped corresponding.
So, for this single reason, and no other, the arrival of a Nulogorskian submarine in our desert was unexpected.
The Night Vale PTA and the management of the local Pinkberry released a joint statement, saying “The arrival of the submarine from Nulogorsk may represent a renewal of long-ago international hostilities, caused by simple misunderstandings over how to use a calendar properly.”
Seeking to allay these concerns, the Sheriff’s Secret Police’s genderless spokesbeing, with the smoothly beautiful features, explained in that voice that calms animals:
“Decades ago, when you were a child and lived beside the sea, you would go down in the afternoon and stand in the water, warm as blood, and pluck clams from between the rocks. Your grandfather would cook them over his stove until they opened, and you would listen to the radio together. The ships would come in the afternoon, piled high with cod and herring, surrounded by seagulls, carrying tales of adventure and peril in the sloshing boots of every fisherman.
“Some things don’t come back,” the spokesbeing continued. “They can only travel in one direction, like mountains travel through the centuries. Yes, mountains. You were with Grandfather when the voice on the radio rose an alarm. Grandfather stood up. There was fear upon the monument of his face. This was not supposed to happen. Not here.
“Do you remember the light, so bright you could see it through the wall? Then nothing. Then dark, and a ringing telephone. But we are here, and now, and this is not there and then,” concluded the Sheriff’s spokesbeing.
The spokesbeing responded to followup questions by cocking their head and slowly blinking their milk-glass eyes, like an animal watching an insect crawl across the floor.
Further inquiries were directed to the jade statue of a cat who hums almost inaudibly in the Sheriff’s Secret Police’s Secret Garden.
The Secret Police plan to open the hatches of the submarine and look inside at any moment. We’ll report back as we learn more.
Listeners, many of you know I have a bit of a delicate relationship with our new station management. And recent events have caused some concern for many of you. But, rest assured, while management and artists are often at odds about how to run a business, here at the station we all have one thing in common: We love radio.
I just met our new program director, Lauren Mallard. And you know, she’s a delight! In fact, she’s joining me in the studio right now. I thought it would be a good time to introduce you to the kindest, most gentle manager we have ever had at this station.
Lauren, it’s great to have you here!
It’s great to have you here! I know change is difficult, both for the talent and for the listeners, but our focus is always on good radio. And, Cecil, you are the best at good radio!
Aww, thank you. Listeners, please know that I really do think things are looking up. I’m really excited about the new direction we’re under with Lauren!
Well, I can’t wait to be more involved. And I just love your show. I’ve loved every moment of it! I love your informative reports, I love your beautiful voice, I love the way you talk of the town. You clearly love your city, Cecil. It shows in your work. I even love your scientist boyfriend. What’s his name again? With his perfect hair, and teeth like a military cemetery. He’s always looking into the scientific mysteries of Night Vale. He even broke the story, as you reporters might say, of the trans-dimensional oranges our farmers had developed. Well, it sure was a good thing he was looking into our oranges, or…we could have harmed a lot of people on our way to making a ton of money! So very much money. What’s a few lives? So much money! He’s a good scientist you have there. What’s his name again?
Ummmmmmm…..Carlos?
Right. That’s right. Carlos. Okay. Good talking to you! Gotta go. Bye!
Oh, uhh, okay. Well, thank you, Lauren! Goodbye.
And now a public service announcement from the Night Vale Marine Biologists Association:
“The ocean is full of things that would like to kill you. And other things that would ignore or not understand you, and then eventually kill you. Because they do not have the same understanding or valuation of life and death as humans. There are still other things that you would probably kill, simply because you think they are beautiful, and you want to possess beautiful things because you believe that beauty and sentience are mutually exclusive.
“Never go to the ocean. It is a confounding place. It is full of death, and strife, and terror. We’re marine biologists, and we won’t even go to an ocean, so you know it’s bad,” the PSA reads.
“Maybe just take a nap and think about clouds until they find your body.”
This has been a message from the Marine Biologists Association.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police have opened the hatch of the submarine from Nulogorsk. Onlookers describe a curious crack of pressure, as if peeling back the pop top of a can of old soda, and a smell of something regurgitated.
Wisps of steam were observed to rise from the opened submarine. The Sheriff’s Secret Police drew their daggers and a Junior Secret Detective was encouraged to volunteer to be the first to explore the vessel.
There was silence as she climbed through the hatch.
Gentle listeners, the screaming began almost immediately. It was described as a sort of high-pitched shriek that deepened moment by moment, until it was only an agonized moan, then rising back up in pitch again, then falling.
Onlookers remarked that they had never quite heard a scream like that before – not even that time in the barn.
The Junior Secret Detective reappeared after those few harrowing moments, but she was not the woman who went inside the submarine. Her hair was long, and gray, and her limbs were withered with age. She tumbled out of the hatch, and was taken off to the hospital where she is listed in ancient condition, though expected to fully recover.
Further volunteers discovered the body of an enormous bald-headed man, with some faded flower tattoos, and a left arm that stopped in a rough stump just above his wrist.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police also discovered a postcard, depicting the painted houses and beautiful clear water of Nulogorsk. Written on the back was a message, in Russian:
“One adult man. Missing hand. And the other items,” it read, according to Google Translate.
The other items in question included a rotary-dial phone with no receiver cord, a large tin full of hardtack, a wrapped parcel (which was carried away by a man who was not tall), a thick book (which was carried away by a man who was not short), and a front page article from the September 24th, 1983 issue of the Night Vale Daily Journal, written by Foreign Correspondent Leann Hart. The headline of this article was:
Sister City Nulogorsk Decimated By Nuclear Attack -
No Known Survivors
Listeners, this is simply not true! I had intern Svee pull up that very issue, and the front page article is by City Beat reporter Leann Hart, and the headline reads:
City Council OKs Book Ownership For Randomly Selected Students
Which is the truth, listeners? I cannot comprehend what has happened to our old pen pals from Nulogorsk! Who were we talking to for all those years? Were they destroyed in 1983? I’m going to get Svee’s article to the Secret Police. The correct historical truth must be validated, and all false histories brutally repressed.
And until that time, the only truth we will have is the weather.
[“Offering” by Black City Lights]
Well, before the Sheriff’s Secret Police could respond to my news article discrepancy, the unconnected rotary phone on the submarine began ringing.
The unidentified man in the submarine answered the phone, speaking his first words – in Russian, of course. He still has yet to be identified, and no one is certain if he is a survivor or a ghost. But he spoke to someone on the other end.
“Trace the call!” an officer shouted to a group of other officers in a nearby van.
Listeners, they traced the call. And it was coming from the phone booth behind the Taco Bell.
On the other end of the line was an adult man’s detached hand named Megan, the daughter of Tak and Herschel Wallaby.
She was alone. All alone – except for the telephone booth, as forgotten technologies have been young Megan’s only friends.
This broke the heart of the Sheriff’s Secret Police.
This broke the heart of the two men who had skulked away from the submarine.
This broke the heart of the unidentified man from Nulogorsk.
And from this moment came wonderful news, listeners. The unidentified man told the Secret Police in stiff, but practiced, English, “I am a gift from Nulogorsk, in appreciation of Night Vale’s many years of friendship and kindness.”
And the unidentified man offered himself as an organ donor…or rather, a body donor for Night Vale’s very own Megan Wallaby. The young girl, born with congenital hand-bodiness, was rushed from the telephone booth behind the Taco Bell. The unidentified man has been rushed from the submarine in the Sand Wastes. Megan has been surgically attached to the wrist stump of the unidentified man – or, rather, the unidentified man has been surgically attached to the single hand body of Megan Wallaby.
Megan’s surgeons have declared the operation a quick and complete success. After emerging from recovery, Megan even rose from her bed, her face dour, and took a few toneless steps – like a man balancing the weight of a wet overcoat on a failing hanger – before collapsing onto the floor of her hospital room while nurses screamed and called for help.
Megan has a long road of therapy ahead of her, learning how to…everything. But, we believe in her, don’t we Night Vale?
That little girl is going to enjoy the childhood she feels she has missed out on. We won’t mind if she smashes through a few walls, or crushes a few rib cages in hugs. If this is what she wants, we will support her, because she is beautiful.
And the unidentified man from Nulogorsk? Sadly, we will never see him again. Nor may we ever learn why his truth was so different from our own.
But Megan’s truth…is. She is finally happy. Happy in the body she was born without.
Maybe one day, we will see her: six foot ten, and bald, shambling down the street. We will say, “Hello, Megan!”
And maybe, with enough hard work, she will be able to answer back in the sing-song voice of a child, “Hello, Cecil!” as she jauntily waves the hand that used to be her entire body.
Yes, Night Vale, that sounds just about right.
Stay tuned next for live coverage of college basketball, as two universities select a dozen students to perform unnatural physical tasks on a wooden rectangle inside a cavernous scream chamber.
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: You can’t get blood from a turnip. Listen…you need some blood? I can totally get you some blood. Set that turnip down and follow me to the blood. There’s a lot of blood.
Condos (official release)
This is the officially-released version of Condos, recorded on December 18, 2013 in Brooklyn, New York. If you want the version recorded in San Francisco, California on September 25, 2013, you want the Episode 31.5 transcript.
At last, we are alone. At last we are, all of us, alone together. At last, every human, alone together, on this earth.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Thrilling news, listeners! It has come to our attention that there will be condos for sale, right here in Night Vale. Details on them are a little hazy – for instance, we don’t know what these condos will look like, where they will be located, who is building them, and what they will cost. But in the official brochure for the development, it does say
CONDOS
FOR
SALE
in a thick, all-caps, black scrawl.
One local realtor, speaking under the condition of anonymity, and from within the belly of a grazing deer, said that the condos are a great investment.
“Invest your money in condos,” said the realtor. “Invest your time in condos. Invest your life. Invest emotion and hope. Invest your ideas about the future, invest your disappointment with your ongoing ‘now.’ Invest drops of blood. You lose blood all the time on frivolous accidents, now is the chance to imbue it with purpose and verve. Spill your blood for the condos!”
The realtor was then cut off when the deer was spooked by a passing car and ran away.
Listeners, I don’t know much about condos. I…don’t know much about anything at all, honestly. But I do know this: condos are coming to Night Vale. They will be for sale, and this is great and exciting news for us all!
Well, it seems that just about half the town of Night Vale is lined up outside of the Condo Rental Office, which is located in the Abandoned Gas Station on Oxford Street. Everyone is there.
Janice Rio (from down the street), who was practically hopping up and down with excitement over owning a new condo…whatever a condo is…whatever it looks like; Leann Hart, Publishing Editor of the Night Vale Daily Journal, who was holding a bloodied hatchet, in case she came across any bloggers or online journalists who might threaten her grip on the printed word; Carlos the Scientist. Ahh…
Ahhh, Carlos the Scientist.
He was there, wearing a business-casual lab coat, and analyzing those around him with complicated devices he couldn’t explain without eventually just shaking his head and muttering, “Uhh, science.”
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this on this show, by the way, um,…but Carlos is totally my boyfriend! I just didn’t know if I had brought that up before. He’s— he’s very handsome. And into science. And he is learning to be better about calling when he needs to cancel dates to get some experiments done.
Where was I? Ah, yes.
Even the dreaded Glow Cloud was there, hurling dead animals down upon those in line and intoning, to all that would listen, THE SUN WILL NOT SET AGAIN ON YOUR LIVES! ALL THAT YOU ONCE WERE NOW BELONGS TO ME! BURY YOUR FACE INTO THE BREAST OF THE EARTH AND WORSHIP THAT WHICH YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND!
You know, it makes total sense that the Glow Cloud would want one of these condos. I mean, after joining the School Board, and sending your kid to the local school, you know, you need to have a nice place at which to raise whatever strange and terrible creature it is that constitutes your family.
No one could see into the Abandoned Gas Station, so no one knew what the Condo Rental Office looked like. There was only a bubbling, dark movement, like a pot of boiling squid ink, and the occasional pinpoint of light, like distant, dying stars. People began to shove each other, trying to catch a glimpse of what the condos might be. There was shouting.
Roger Singh started to point at every object in his sight – blades of grass, the rust shell of a former gas pump, Janice Rio (from down the street) – asking, “Is that a condo? Is that a condo?” in a high, cracked voice.
And…all right. I know this is out of nowhere, but…at what point in a relationship is it normal to think about living together? Is…let’s say…buying a condo a sign that you want to move to that stage? Is that what an action like that might hypothetically be indicating?
Oh, yes, also, Roger was holding a freshly-severed spine of an unknown animal or possible person, waving it at the bubbling dark window and howling, “Give me a condo! What is a condo? Give me one! Will this buy me a condo?”
As of press time, no one had told him whether a spinewould buy him a condo.
But, do you know what I mean? Like, could this be a sign that he wants to move things in that direction? You know, I just wish he would communicate more directly sometimes, but…scientists don’t communicate directly. Everybody knows that. They communicate using a series of obscure and arcane codes and signals. That is what is meant to be a scientist.
Roger has started flailing at people with the detached spine. Uhh, several people have been trampled. It is still not known whether he will be able to buy a condo with the spine. Probably not.
[Cell phone ringing]
I’m sorry, listeners, I’m going to have to get this.
Uhm, hello?
Cecil?
Carlos?!?
Yes. Scientifically speaking, that is who I am.
Yeah, I’ve been meaning to tell you…you sound different lately.
Yeah, I– I put in new vocal cords recently.
Uh– No– I didn’t know you went in for surgery!
No no, I’m a scientist. I put them in myself, easy. It’s important that a scientist update his or her vocal cords once in a while. Otherwise, you know…throat spiders.
Oh, no, I knew that. I mean, obviously I knew that. I’m very into science. But hey, listen, I’m in the middle of a show!
Yeah, I know, you’re covering the story about the condos. That’s why I called.
Well, I didn’t know you listened to my show.
Every time you’re on!
I–
OK, hold on, listeners. I’ll be right with you.
So…those condos, right? They’re– they’re very exciting, right?
Everything is exciting, particularly existence! Existence is the most thrilling fact of all!
Right. So…are you doing OK? Um, I’m getting reports that it’s even more fatal outside than usual.
By 19 Standard Fatality Units, I know. I have a Danger Meter in front of me.
Listen, Cecil, I called to talk to you about something important, but I– now I don’t think I have time.
But time…
…isn’t real, I know. Neither is anything else. That is the most scientific fact of all, but they’re calling my name and I don’t want to lose my place in line. This is important, uh, because…mmm.
I have to go, I’m sorry. I’ll call you back later, probably. Everything is some level of ‘probably,’ nothing is a promise, it is most likely we’ll survive to talk again.
No I understand, I lov–
Hey, listen, I lov– [talking over each other]
Oh, um, uh, sorry, no no no, you go!
Th– they– they’re calling my name, I have to– I…ha– I’ll call back when I can. Goodbye.
Oh, um. OK. Um…goodbye.
Uh, I’m sorry, listeners. Um, yeah, where was I? Um…
Let’s talk about your health for a moment. Let’s concentrate on your health. Let’s think about your health. Do you feel healthy? Pay close attention to your body and see if you feel as healthy as you thought.
Oh! Was that a slight twinge in the muscle of your arm? That is a bad sign! That’s a symptom of all sorts of diseases. Was that a slight sniffle as you breathed in? Sure, it could just be allergies, or a mild cold…but it also could be the start of tuberculosis. Does tuberculosis even start with a sniffle? You don’t know! And so it might very well.
Listen to your heart beating. Hear your heart beat. Feel it. Feel the one thing keeping you alive. Feel your heart beat. Are you healthy?
Are you healthy?
This has been a public health announcement by the greater Night Vale medical community. Their lines are open for appointments now. Please have a credit card ready.
Ladies and gentlemen, the condos are here! They arrived, silently, in the night. They are thoroughly modern in their design. They are so modern, it is postulated they might actually be from a few centuries in the future, which is the most modern a thing can be.
The condos are featureless black cubes. They are standing, perfect, dark forms, where the ramshackle homes and dust-worn strip malls of Night Vale once stood. And there are so many of them! They are a majestic cityscape. They are a nightmare. And they are beautiful.
Carlos has hauled out his science equipment (of course), and is testing the cubes. The cubes emit a low level of radiation, and some sort of strange, pulsing energy. The energy would be difficult to describe in scientific terms but, if he had to give it language, he would probably use the scientific terms “pulsing” and “strange.”
The cubes do not appear to have any entrance, or windows…so they are similar to many of the old tract homes that were built around here in the 1950s. But, they also do not appear to have any roof or foundation, or yard, or terrace, or patio, or any other vestige of a home.
They only have their sleek lines, their contours, their corners, the sheerness of their featureless walls.
We do not yet know if these condos mean us harm, or well.
We only know of their presence, and so, let us know that. Let us all hold on to that knowledge. The condos, black cubes of enormous size, are here…and we know it.
And now—
Cecil? Cecil?
Um, listeners, there is a voice, but I can see no one in my studio. It is a familiar voice, and also my coffee cup appears to be three inches to the left of where it was.
It’s me, the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. Also, I put your coffee cup where it was supposed to be. For reasons of fate.
Ahh, I see. Um, well, while I have you here—
It is terrible what the condos will do to you. Not ‘to you’ as in ‘you,’ but ‘to you’ as in ‘all of us.’ But, not to me. Nothing ever really happens to me. I am completely safe from harm, and this is a great burden.
Oh, while you were out this morning, I made your dining room table half a foot shorter. I thought it looked better that way. I hope you like it, it took me an hour with a hacksaw and a level.
Well, I’m sure that lower meals means…faster digestion! Um, or not sure, but I’m saying it. And in saying it, I am instantly believing it, and then I’m going from believing it to being violently certain about it, against all evidence to the contrary.
Thanks, that means a lot. Not ‘to me,’ but your words hold a lot of meaning intrinsically. Almost everything we say does. If you looked at any word in the English language close enough, you would see within the great, glowing coils of the universe unwinding.
Right!
Our language holds the key to it – the key to the unraveling of all things. I think that one day, this world will simply talk itself to death, and I will be left to flit about in the void. I will be the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives Nowhere.
Now, you mentioned the condos. Let me ask you, what do you think it means when Carlos says he’s looking at condos? I mean, did he mean that he wanted us both to look at condos together? Or was he communicating independence, like, “You stay here, I’m going off to look at condos alone.”
“Beware the condos, Cecil.”
I mean, do you think he’s looking to just buy one for himself? Is that what you’re saying?
“Beware the unraveling of all things.”
Or is he looking for a shared condo?
…Hello? Hello?
Well, I can no longer see a fleeting image of someone just over my shoulder, no flicker of movement from the corner of my eye, so I guess she’s gone.
Also, there are three slow walking gray roaches climbing out of my coffee cup.
And also, I am out of coffee.
And now, traffic.
Picture a car.
No, you are doing it wrong. Try again.
Picture a car.
…Really? That’s what you picture when you picture a car?
All right, look…we’ll go with that. I’m not happy about it, but we’ll go with your idea of a car for now. So.
Picture that car. And now, picture a road. Are you picturing it? Close your eyes if you have to. If you need to, gently remove your eyes and slip them into your bag.
Do you see the car driving on the road? Good.
Now, picture a destination. Any destination you want.
No, that was incorrect. The correct destination was a clear and placid lake.
So, all of you, out there, picture the car. Picture the road. Picture the clear and placid lake.
And what I want you to do now is put the car in the lake.
It’s very simple. Just imagine the car leaving the road, and now entering the lake.
Leaving the road, entering the lake.
Great.
Are we all picturing the car in the lake? OK.
City Council is notifying me that the test went perfectly, and that we all successfully murdered a lone driver using the collective willpower of our minds. Wow! Wow! The human mind is a powerful thing!
This has been traffic.
Reports are in that the first condo buyers nervously approached their acquisitions, those black cubes, giant, where once stood other places. The buyers edged toward them. They reached out their hands, trembling. They touched the smooth, cold walls of the cubes, and they saw.
They saw.
Janice Rio (from down the street) saw a city. A lost city. A dead city, nestled in a jungle – the kind of jungle that only ever existed in books written by people who have never seen a jungle. The city stood, and Janice stood, in perfect dread, its doors were open jaws. Its windows were open jaws. Its roads and avenues were gaping mouths and open jaws. That dead city teetered. It rotted in its jungle tomb, but…it was not empty. And she started to run. Run through the thick foliage of that absurd place, she shouted and ran.
And then her hand slipped away from the condo, and it was all gone. And she fell to her knees weeping, as though she had lost something, although of course, she’d never had anything at all.
Roger Singh (who had been able to buy a condo with the spine) saw a cave, underwater, in an ocean far to the north. And the water around him was dark – so dark! – that he wasn’t sure even which way led to the surface, to life…and which way led down only to the deep silent. He gasped, but found he had no breath…and no need to breathe. And there was this cave that smoldered with a light, a light that was charged and alive. And shadows moved against the light, cast by…what?…within the cave. And then he swam towards it, uncertain whether he was guest, or sacrifice, or invulnerable dreamer. And he heard a song from the cave, and he knew it, and it was perfect. And he sang along, but at the same time, he had never heard that song before in his life. And what was life? What made it his? It all seemed so small, part of the world that didn’t exist anymore. And then he went backwards from the face of the condo, and the ocean and the cave vanished, and he stared up at the blue sky, as awash with light as the water around him had been dark.
“Was that a condo?” he asked. “Was that what one is?”
Another, Samantha Guzman, only screamed — her eyes bulging wider and wider, her hand clamped to the surface of the cube.
So…it seems that move-in day is going pretty well so far!
Today’s show is brought to you by the generous support of the following sponsors:
- The sun
- All other suns with their own planets and own possibilities
- A trail, winding its way into a thick wood
- The gesture [Cecil smacks the top of his own head — with flair]
- This bit of melody: [Cecil hums a tune not unlike (but also not like) the first few bars of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show theme]
- A&W Root Beer
- The slow disintegration of your body
- Light, in every form: visible, invisible, deadly, hidden
Please help our show by supporting these sponsors, using chants and simple offerings.
And now, more on the condo story.
‘Scuse me, uh, Cecil.
Oh, yes, excuse me?
Sorry to interrupt, but–
CEASE SPEAKING AND TURN YOUR AMUSINGLY SHAPED EARS TO HEED MY BOOMING AND IMPRESSIVE VOICE!
Yeah, thank you, Green Head. Uh, hey, listeners! Hiram McDaniels, here. Mayoral candidate, noted five-headed dragon, and completely innocent of any trumped-up insurance fraud charges.
Hello, Hiram. Uh, it’s great to have you live in the studio, and also you, and you, and you, and you.
Great, yeah. We couldn’t help but notice that you had the, uh, Faceless Old Woman on just a bit ago, and uh, that hardly seems fair.
Candidates must be given equal time on community radio. Says that in Section 12, Clause 3 of the Fairness Code we are all born with imprinted on our hearts.
My apologies, you are perfectly right. That was my failing as a community radio host, but it’s just…hey, listen, I’m just a little distracted. Um, oh! Can I ask you sort of um…a relationship question?
NO, YOU BARELY-SENTIENT SACK OF FLESH AND FLUID!
Sorry, there, Cecil buddy, but we just don’t have the time right now. Anyway, if it’s OK with you, I’d like to exercise my right as mayoral candidate by talking about the important subject of my favorite memory.
Now, my favorite memory was when I was just 30 years old. Hardly half as big as I am now.
We were 43% of our current stature, give or take a decimal.
GIVE IT OR TAKE IT, BLUE HEAD, GIVE IT OR TAKE IT! IT’S YOUR NATURAL RIGHT!
Thank you, Purple Head.
So, there I was, standing on a city street. And not this city, I hadn’t heard of Night Vale yet. I asked a man walking by on the street where a good place to eat was. You know what he said?
I…know very little.
HE HOWLED IN FEAR AND SCRAMBLED TO THE FRAGILE SHELTER OF THE NEAREST BUILDING! I ROARED! FILLED WITH SHAME AT THE EFFECT MY FORM HAD ON THESE JUDGING INSECTS!
It was a real bummer.
We cried, and– and we cried and we were still hungry, and we cried.
Well, that’s a…nice favorite memory!
Oh, no, no, no, no, that wasn’t my favorite memory, that was just, uh…what do you call it? Uh…
CONTEXT!
Yeah, context. Thanks, Green. Now, my favorite memory was when I was standing in a city – THIS city. I was standing in Night Vale. I had heard of it by then.
Whispers! Rumors! Flying through the night on hot updrafts, with vague directions in my mind and nothing but miles of mad darkness all around me!
Uh, right, this place was real hard to find. So I was standing on the street, and I…I asked a man walking by where a good place to eat was. You know what he said?
Nope, again, knowledge very limited here.
He said, well…
He didn’t say anything.
Right, Gray Head, he didn’t say anything! He just opened his mouth wider than a human is physically capable of doing, let out a loud hoot, pointed at the Moonlight All-Nite Diner. He just went about his day. No screamin’, no fear.
IT WAS VERY DISAPPOINTING!
No, Green, it was magical! Finally, a place where what I looked like didn’t matter! It didn’t matter that I have trouble controlling my fire-breathing, or that the diner looked a bit far, and so I just ate the man instead. None of that mattered. Because I had found my home.
We had found our home.
Yeah. Exactly, yes. That is why I want to be mayor. Mayor of the first city that ever made me feel normal. Night Vale. As my campaign slogan says, I am literally a five-headed dragon. Who cares!
I tell you, many many people care, and all over the world. But no one here! That’s all that matters to me.
And me!
AND ME.
AND ME.
AND ME!
Thank you, listeners. Thank you, Cecil.
No, thank you, Hiram. Um, that was a very nice story. Even if I did my very best to learn nothing from it.
GOODBYE, BITE-SIZED CREATURE!
Goodbye!
Wow! Man, what a striking and charismatic dragon. Mm, mm-mm-mm. Where was I?
Ah, yes. More now, on the condo story.
Those people who have been given terrible visions by the condos are saying that they feel they must go back – go back to their condo. That something felt unfinished about what they saw. That even as they feel terrified, they must go back to see what it is will happen next.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police are attempting to stop the condo owners by sending passive-aggressive messages via helicopter-borne loudspeaker.
“Sure,” they are saying. “Go ahead. Touch the cube again. I guess. I mean, if you don’t care about your community, and your fellow citizens, then I guess you probably should. We won’t miss you anyway! Like, no big deal. Touch the cube if you want!”
And they are.
Roger, Samantha, Janice Rio (from down the street) – they are touching the great black walls of the condo cubes, and the walls are rippling and bubbling as though liquid, like a pot of boiling squid ink, with darting lights, like distant dying stars. The hands of the people are pushing through into the space within, whatever that space is, and they are – one by one, and with varying degrees of hesitancy – entering their condos.
Bystanders say that once inside, the human forms are going limp, and floating up into the center of the cubes, where they stay, paralyzed. Faces, slack. Eyes, glazed.
A small sign has appeared outside of each cube that contains a person. The sign is red, and says in simple white lettering:
Condos:
A perfect kind of human
A perfect kind of life
Get yours today!
Listeners, I cannot advise getting yours today. Not until we understand fully what these condos are. And, given our track record, we will likely never fully understand what they are. So it’s best just to stay away.
More on this as it develops. But first, a look at the Community Calendar.
This Friday, the staff of Dark Owl Records will be holding a clearance sale. “EVERYTHING MUST GO!” they will declare on a bright banner with a thick font.
“Music is old! It’s ancient! It cannot tell the stories of our lives, our souls, our societies any longer!” the banner will read. “It cannot mean anything! It cannot give you what you need! Buy this music, and eat this music!,” the banner will say in bright yellows and blues.
“Tear it into plastic shards and swallow it! It knows not what it has wrought on our world!” the banner will exclaim to excited music lovers. “Let it shred you from within as we laugh from without!” the banner will announce.
“40% off all CDs, 70% off all posters! Friday only!”
Saturday afternoon is the opening of the new Kid’s Unlearning Wing at the Museum of Forbidden Technologies. Well, this wing has been built, but no one is certain where. The museum staff says that they kids interested in unlearning all about forbidden technologies, as well as those kids who are uninterested…well, in fact, all children, the museum says, will eventually be chosen during sleep. They will wake up late one night in this new wing, experiencing all the magic and wonder of unlearning.
Sunday morning, the Night Vale PTA will be holding a raffle. Tickets are only $2 each, and the winner (as usual) will never be heard from again.
Monday has been rescheduled to Wednesday, and Wednesday has been doubled.
Tuesday…oh-ho-ho-ho-ho, man. Uhh, you don’t even want to know.
Or, you do want to know, but the powers that be don’t even want you to know, so you can all just be properly surprised.
This has been the Community Calendar.
[phone rings]
Hello?
Hello, Cecil. Are you there?
Carlos? Hi. Umm, I’m on the air. Um, I’m still doing the show.
Right, no, I know, it’s just…I got a condo. A condo for us. I was thinking that maybe we could—
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…for us? That we could—
But it wasn’t what I thought it would be. It’s a giant black cube, featureless, where the vacant lot behind the Ralph’s used to be. I touched it, and I saw…I saw endless rows of Erlenmeyer flasks, and every one held a liquid, and all of the liquids were bubbling, and before each one was a notebook of numbers, and above was a dial with more numbers. I saw all of this, and I understood—
You touched the condo? Don’t! Don’t touch the condo! Don’t touch it again! You know what? Hold on, I’ll be right there!
I need to get to those flasks. Each liquid was bubbling. There were numbers. I’m going into the condo. The condo is perfect. It is perfect, and I understand.
Carlos, no! Don’t go in there! Carlos! Carlos! Hello?
I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, um, I have — Listen, I’ll be back really soon. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
But before I go, let me take you now to the weather.
[“Remember Us“ by Gabriel Royal]
Hello again, listeners. Cecil is still gone. I guess it’s just you and me now. You have no idea how often it is just you and me. I’ve learned this new thing where I can silently skitter along your ceiling. It’s an interesting perspective. I’d show you, but…you can’t see me. And anyway, I think maybe it would upset you to see a Faceless Old Woman skittering along your ceiling.
There always seems to be something upsetting you. You should relax more. It’s not that there’s nothing coming to get you, there’s everything coming to get you…but relax anyway, just on principle.
Lie down and look up at the ceiling – a ceiling on which you can see nothing skittering, even though there is something skittering, there are so many skittering creatures on your ceiling, but forget that.
Lie down, and look up at the ceiling and breathe with those curiously fragile lungs of yours and remind yourself: Don’t worry. Don’t worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don’t worry.
Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time there was a young woman who had a face, and did not live in secret. She had a home of her own, and she always thought her life had some great purpose. “This is not my life as it should be,” she said, indicating her life as it was. “My life is different from this. This is not it at all!”
And so, she sought out changes in her life. She changed careers, and romantic relationships, she changed houses and hair colors and still, her life was not what she was sure it should be. She changed more; she became more secretive. She watched how other people lived. Maybe one of them have a life that should belong to her.
Soon, there was less and less of her. She was not living her own life, and so she was not living any life. It was harder and harder for people to see her, because there was less and less of her to see.
And then she died.
Oh, that wasn’t me. I see the confusion here. No, that was a young woman I watched as I secretly lived in her home. I– I just found her story interesting, as I find so many stories interesting.
Cecil should be back soon. I know you are hoping he is safe, and that the scientist is safe. I know. I’m watching them right now, even as I speak to you. But I won’t tell you what’s happening. That is because I’m also slightly malicious. Sorry about that.
I should go now. I don’t mean ‘go,’ I am always with you. But I am going to stop talking now, let you forget about me. Let you find some reason to dismiss that movement in the corner of your eye. After all, it’s probably nothing. It’s probably nothing, after all.
Look, I’m— I’m sorry, listeners, I’m back. I’m really sorry for…
By the time I got there, Carlos was floating in the cube, and there was that sign, “a perfect kind of human, a perfect kind of life.” Well…I didn’t hesitate, I jumped into that black cube after him, and instantly I saw. I saw great distances. I saw…ugh. Jagged mountains.
I saw a dark planet lit by no sun. I saw shrouded figures standing on a beach in a circle, gently swaying into each other against the backdrop of a roiling, bottomless ocean.
I saw all of this, and I understood!
I understood that the cubes are perfect! I understood that this is how we become perfect. I understood that what I was seeing was the way to perfection. And I don’t know how I understood this. Thinking about it now, nothing about it seems good, let alone perfect.
But inside the cube, within its chambers, it all makes sense. And I understood.
And there was a moment. There was a moment, dear listeners, where I considered it. I considered joining Carlos and becoming perfect. But I’ve come to know something after these months together with dear Carlos.
Perfection isn’t real. Perfection isn’t human. And Carlos is not perfect, no. Even better — he is imperfect.
Everything about him, and us, and all of this, is…it’s imperfect! And those imperfections in our reality are the seams and the cracks into which our out-sized love can seep and pool. And sometimes we are annoyed, and disappointed, and that too is a part of how love works. It is not a perfect system, but…
Oh, well.
And so I resisted.
I fought off the vision of the shrouded figures and the dark planet and all that was perfect and I held close to imperfection.
To my imperfection.
And to my imperfect Carlos.
And I took him, and I carried him out of the cube. And we came up, heaving, into this world that will disappoint us.
Finally, free.
And he said, “Well,”
Actually, I– I recorded the whole conversation. Of course. Because I’m never without my microphone.
He said,
Cecil? I was thinking about the series of ongoing actions that we perceive as the present, and the amassing of memories that we treat as the living record of the past and the hopes and dreams and assumptions that we project as the future. I was thinking about time. And about how it means something to so many people, and about how it’s so finite, and also so infinite.
I was also thinking about space. About how it is nothing, and then, a point which is just a single spot within the nothing, and a line which separates the nothing into two nothings, and how a plane is a patch of nothing and an angle just where two nothings meet, but all those things combined, with an object of points, lines, planes, and angles, an object with length and width and depth that can take up actual space. Until that object becomes something made of nothing – within nothing.
An object can be a wall, a floor, a roof, a bed, a table, a dog, a door, a rug, a…a home.
And then, I thought about how a home is just a group of objects connected by a shared personal experience of time – our past, our present, our assumed future. A home is…I mean, uh, scientifically speaking, speaking form the point of view of mere facts and logic, and um…hmm. You know, what with science, and all…uhhh, I– I– I just thought it was…time for us to…make a home together.
And I said “Yes! Yes! That would be, well, that would be neat!”
"But somewhere else, OK? A duplex, or an apartment…I don’t think a condo.”
And he said, “No, not a condo.”
And then he said…
Listen…he thinks I shouldn’t tell you everything, that…I should leave a little something there that belongs just to us.
So.
The cubes are slowly fading into the earth, taking those who are frozen inside within them. The Sheriff’s Secret Police report that those within the cubes are becoming another thing entirely. That they have become the sound that a certain type of sand makes under your feet, the tone of light at a certain time of day.
Walking through where the condos once stood, you can hear their voices — but distantly, faintly. And if you reach out when you hear that voice, if you reach out and feel for them, you too will get a vision of some far-off place, a place that is, in its own way, in a way perhaps that can never be explained, perfect.
A perfect place that you will never visit. And that is the best news of all.
Listeners, I send you now back out into the night. And it’s dangerous out there, and it’s lonely, and it’s not perfect.
Stay tuned next for a round of applause followed by a round of silence and departure.
Goodnight, all of you here, goodnight, all of you listeners, and goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: All tattoos are temporary tattoos.
Episode 41 - WALK
At a loss for words? Here’s a few you can use:
Welcome to Night Vale.
Hello, listeners. We have some news that will affect your morning commute, so let’s dive right into it.
WALK signals across the whole of Night Vale are malfunctioning. Of course, usually they show either a graphic photo of a run-over pedestrian, indicating you should wait, or time-lapse photography of flowers wilting, indicating that it is safe to cross. But this morning, commuters all over Night Vale are reporting that, bafflingly, they now all have just the word “WALK” in bold, white letters.
Citizens are standing by the side of the road, unsure of whether they are allowed–
Cecil! Cecil, it’s Dana!
Oh, it’s so good to be able to communicate again!
Cecil?
Where’d he go?
*Sigh* I don’t think he can hear me, but…I’ll keep talking just in case.
Cecil? I have been in this desert for months now. Years, maybe. Get enough minutes and you have days, have months, have years, have the whole of your life. There’s never a great shift, only a gradual sliding downwards.
I can see the Blinking Light Up On the Mountain. I looked into it, and my head went one way while my mind went another. A lurch outside of all that seems to be.
I moved my head just a touch to the left, a glance in a world of perspectives, and I was here, in your studio! Well, not here-here.
I don’t know how it happened, or how long this vision in which we all pretend to be real will last. I am pretending as hard as I can.
When I first got here, being a good mountain unbeliever, I turned my back to it and marched directly into the flat desert. And soon enough, I had somehow come back to the mountain. I turned and marched away again, but ended up right back here.
There’s a Blinking Light Up On the Mountain, and I blink in and out of its vicinity against my will.
Occasionally, I see huge, masked figures, warlike, towering, but also distant and listless. They haven’t seen me. Or, if they’ve seen me, they haven’t cared. Or, if they’ve cared, they haven’t done anything with that feeling. I’m not scared of them.
There are so many things in this world to be scared of. Why add to that number when the only cause is you know nothing about them and they are huge? It would make no sense.
I found a door out in the desert, but it was chained shut on the other side. From behind it, I thought I smelled that particular Night Vale smell – the smell of home, like sour peaches and linen. Like freshly-cut wood and burnt almonds. I knocked and knocked, hoping someone from back there would hear it and let me through, but it never opened.
I wasn’t even sure which side was supposed to open. I knocked on both sides, but…nothing.
I kept walking and found myself back at the mountain.
There is a Blinking Light Up On the Mountain. And so there is nothing else for it. It is time for me to climb.
The face of the mountain is steep, and lined with sharp ridges and crumbling ledges. This will not be easy.
I wonder if anything ever will be?
Hopefully I will know something when I am up there that I did not know when I was down here. Elevation must equal knowledge. It must! Because nothing else has.
Cecil, I will keep trying. I don’t have to keep trying, there is no obligation for me to not just give up, just slump down until I fall away and join the inanimate matter of this strange other world. I don’t have to keep trying. Remember that, I say to myself, as I keep trying.
I don’t know if you’ve heard any of this. I’d like to think you did. I’d like to think that I’m home. I’d like to think that mountains aren’t real, even though I know now, without doubt, that they are.
I will see you again, perhaps. From up there, wherever that is. Just me, always me, but from higher up.
Goodbye, Cecil.
–unable to stop walking. WALK, the signals say. And the pedestrians walk. In unison. Arms swinging in a rigid rhythm.
This is the worst malfunctioning of WALK signals Night Vale has seen since the time all their light bulbs were accidentally replaced with poison gas dispensers.
More on this story as it looms closer to us.
And now, a word from our sponsors.
A balding grassland beneath a low cliff side.
There is a monk.
Picture what a monk looks like.
A bell rings. From his hand, maybe. Then he takes a small step. Then there’s that bell again.
It will take him a long time to make it from this bit of grass to whatever there is beyond it. An entire lifetime it will take him. And even then, he will die unfinished. Undone in midst of doing, having gone slowly to nowhere much.
Then a bell will ring. From his hand, maybe. Or from somewhere else.
And then, nothing.
Mountain Dew.
Do the Dew.
And now, back to ou–
Hello, Cecil? Cecil, can you hear me?
Dammit.
Cecil, it is beautiful here. It is empty here. I found a lighthouse up on the mountain. Tall, maybe 40 feet? Built of brown stone and about 15 feet in diameter. Beyond the lighthouse, I found a settlement of sort. It was bound inside the stone walls of a tightly-wound gorge. I hope to find answers in this settlement. I hope to find anything.
Here is what I found:
Dust, mostly.
Emptiness.
A sense of loss as I thought about the distance between myself and those I love.
An interesting rock, but I can’t find it anymore.
I miss my brother.
A sense of loss as I thought about the people who never returned home to the settlement. If they no longer exist to feel loss, then I shall feel it for them.
Also, there were strange drawings along the walls of the gorge. Orange triangles growing bigger and bigger as I traced my way deeper into the spiral. There was a soft light just around the edges of the triangles. When I looked at them, I felt a light in my head and it pounded like a migraine against the back of my eyes. I could not look at them.
I could not look away.
I was lost in the spiral. It was built by good people, but they were gone, taken by something larger and stronger than them. Much larger and stronger than even the masked warriors I saw before.
I worried about what– who would be taken next.
My eyes hurt. So through my subjectivity, the entire world hurt.
And then, a bright blackness, from somewhere beyond the spiral. That was when I realized I had forgotten that there was anything outside of the spiral. It had become the entirety, the totality, all of that.
But I followed the bright blackness, a near-blinding beam of pure darkness, and it led me back out again.
The orange triangles grew smaller and smaller, until they were little dots of freckled rock face.
There is something coming, Cecil. I feel it in the air. It– it’s like a hot wind blowing? But not hot, deathly cold. And not a wind, a vast creature. And not blowing, rushing at us out of the gaps in time and memory with which we hold together our lives.
When I look to the horizon, I see light. Like the light in the spiral. I feel it push against the back of my eyes. It is the unraveling of all things, the great, glowing coils of the universe unwinding.
I wish I could tell you more. Communication is difficult. It is impossible, some say, communicating the idea of its impossibility to others.
I feel myself slipping. I’m getting fainter now.
Or…no. No. You are!
–which I haven’t done, by the way, in years! Or, at least, days. Or at least, I’m not doing it right now!
Thursday is a lost cause, but we will keep on fighting. We will get up, say “Yes! Today is a different day than before!” believing this against all evidence, eating food like that matters. Going to jobs that mean the same thing as they did before, but cast in a new light by our own optimism, which will slowly drain away until all that is left is the movements and thoughts we’ve had before. Echoes of ourselves, underlined to emphasize the lack of emphasis.
Coming home, drifting home. Aimless homeward wandering into a kitchen that is too small for our needs, and eating food that isn’t what we imagined it would be. And watching television that means more to us than our jobs. And, finally, falling asleep – in which we dream of the Thursday that could be…if only we lived Thursday to the full potential of its Thursday-ness, not expecting it to be anything but Thursday, embracing every inch of its Thursday reality, and living each Thursday moment anew, only to wake the next Thursday, and again impose, unsuccessfully, our imagined Thursday onto the unyielding frame of Thursday. Our Thursday. A lost cause.
This has been the Community Calendar.
The crowd amassed by the WALK signals is now marching down Route 800, apparently advancing on City Hall. When reached for comment, the City Council said that they were definitely at City Hall, ready to receive the concerns of their constituents, and not, say, hiding in a hastily-dug hole in Mission Grove Park, keeping as still as possible, and breathing through their dirt gills until this all blows over.
“Incidentally,” their comment continued, “if you happen to see a conspicuous pile of earth in any parks, maybe just…throw some leaves on it, or put a bench over it, to make it less obvious. No biggie, just if you get a chance, that’d be cool,” the Council concluded, their voices noticeably muffled.
Fortunately, the effect of the WALK signals only reaches those who are looking at one, and I myself…hey, what–
How did that get in here?
Umm, listeners, there is a WALK signal in my studio. “WALK,” it says.
I must walk. The signal is saying so.
I will have to leave my desk in order to do that.
And so, before I go, I take you to the WALK-ther…the WeALtKher. The WALK. WALK. WALK. W–
[“What Have They Done to You Now” by Daniel Knox]
I can’t seem to get hold of Cecil. I’m trying to tell him something important, but just as I showed up here again, he announced the weather.
The weather is beautiful here.
Cecil could not hear me, and I do not remember what I wanted to say.
I remember the table at my grandfather’s house. It had carved legs in the shape of a myriad of animals, spiraling around each other, whole ecosystems within each leg.
But it was also well-used. We ate there, we talked there, we lived around it, in rows and columns delineated by chairs and space.
I remember diagonals of sunlight in the late afternoon, drawn across its flat expanse, transversed by my grandfather’s hand as he swept it through whatever story he was telling, to highlight the words with motion, to motion us closer to the words.
I remember my mother, as rapt as I was. I remember my brother, as rapt as I was. I remember that I haven’t seen my mother or my brother for months now.
And in some ways, I miss that table more than I miss them.
We are, all of us, only one life each. But that table is all of our lives added together, a delicate, tangled problem we never wished to solve.
But, life solves all our problems against our will.
I remember, I am Dana. Or, I am Dana’s double. One of us killed the other with the stapler. Even I don’t know which one.
I have these memories, but memories prove nothing. Experiences also prove nothing. There are many proofs for nothing. It is the concept of which we are most certain.
I’m sorry. I’m trying to remember something important, and I am failing.
My grandfather died a long time ago.
A few months ago, I killed my double.
These facts have no symmetry. They are disconnected.
I must find a way back to you, listeners. I must protect Night Vale, and Cecil, and my mother, and my brother, and whoever I am, I must protect them from what is coming: the unraveling of all things!
This winding gorge spirals around itself. An empty ecosystem within the mountain.
Beyond it, the desert is a flat expanse, with diagonals of sunlight transversed by my passing.
I am sweeping through my own story, highlighting the words with motion. Motioning us closer to the end.
This is not what I wanted to tell you.
Listeners, look past the things you think you see. Move your head just a touch to the left, a glance in a world of perspectives, and then…you might see it: an entire universe in the corner of your eye.
I have seen this lighthouse with its red beam rotating out into the desert distance.
I have seen the Dog Park, and its infinite, bland secrets.
I have seen the settlement in the gorge, and I do not wish to see it again.
I have seen Cecil.
But I have not seen my mother.
I have not seen my brother.
Life solves the problems we hope it won’t.
You may hear from me again. I’m afraid…
No, concerned.
No, afraid, that you will not.
I wish I could stay, but the noise of the approaching…ugh, whatever it is, has gotten louder. Closer.
I must go.
This is Intern Dana. Sister, daughter, or not.
Dana? with a question mark.
This is me, or my double, signing out.
I miss you, Night Vale.
Goodbye.
And so, we are all saved again!
I’ll be honest, Night Vale, that was the most worried I’ve been in some time.
And how we were saved was so unlikely and miraculous, that I feel that today will become one of the standard tales told every year on Frightening Day.
Certainly, it is a story I will never forget.
Here is where I leave you. Not to walk away…I think I will avoid walking for a while. But certainly to go somewhere, to see someone.
And I don’t know…if he suggests a walk, I might change my mind. He can be as persuasive as hypnotic malfunctioning city equipment sometimes, as the old saying goes.
Stay tuned next for the noises of my hurried retreat, echoing first as sound, and then as memory. And maybe, then again, as part of tonight’s fractured dreaming.
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: Please move your brain so we can get to the drugs. And stop leaving it there. We’ve talked about this.