A fan run blog with transcripts for Fan made transcripts of "Welcome to Night Vale" episodes 1-176. Retired because the official site now offers original transcripts for every episode. Find them at http://www.nightvalepresents.com/transcripts Looking for transcripts of Alice Isn't Dead? Check alicescripts.tumblr.com.
Within the Wires transcripts are at withinthescripts.tumblr.com. If you need transcripts of the introductions and closing credits, I'm posting those at nightvaleintros.tumblr.com. By request, an updated-as-needed list of books and other media mentioned in Welcome to Night Vale is here. If you are wondering about transcripts to donor-exclusive bonus episodes, read this. Quoting a transcript in your own post and wondering if you need to credit me as the source? The short answer is no, because they aren't my words. The long answer is here. var sc_project=11625446; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_security="18079ec3";
I’m genuinely a bit sad, writing the transcripts has been fulfilling and kept me committed to the show for a while now.Â
Little by little, the Tumblr fandom has been dwindling, and maybe it’s time to put this blog on hiatus anyway, but keep the old content up.Â
Thanks to everyone who has been following, reblogging and correcting my mistakes. And above all huge thanks to ahnsael for keeping this blog going for years and trusting me to continue his work. I have really enjoyed writing here and keeping up with this community effort. Â
Lips are the toes of the face.
Welcome to Night Vale.
[spooky theme song]
It’s Halloween again, Night Vale, my favorite day of the year. As a kid, my mother used to dress my sister Abby and I in homemade costumes and take us door to door, vaguely threatening our neighbors until they gave us candy. When I was a teenager, I got a little old for trick-or-treating, so I started going to haunted houses with my friends. A lot of those haunted houses were kind of predictable with all their chain saw killers and Victorian ghost children singing nursery rhymes, who would follow you home and sing by your bed for months afterwards, but they always got to me. I loved the emotional rush of being scared. I still do. Of course, I don’t go out much to haunted houses, but I still love good old fashioned scary stories. I thought today would be a great day to share some of my favorites with you.
I had my new intern, James, put together a few spooky tales that are perfect for putting you into Halloween mood.
But first, let’s have a look at the Community Calendar.
This Saturday night at the New Old Night Vale Opera House, is the annual costume gala. This event is the Opera House’s largest fundraiser and one of the most prestigious costume contests in the region. A panel of judges will be on hand to determine the best costume at the ball. Last year’s winners were Joel Eisenberg and his partner Danny Jimenez, who dressed in a tandem outfit of a stegosaurus. I was there, listeners, and it was impressive! The creature was so realistic-looking. The craftsmanship of the costume was top notch, but listen, I have to confess I’m always more into high concept creativity rather than realistic details when it comes to costumes. Like I remember the 2015 gala, when Amal Shamun came dressed up as the concept of ennui. She made herself 12 feet tall, dressed in a taupe long coat, and created a constant drizzling rain inside the ball room. Anyone who looked at her got super sad and wanted a hug. But Joel and Danny’s stegosaurus was fine.
Sunday afternoon is the fall craft sale in Old Town Night Vale. An inscrutable maze of stalls showcasing the finest products from our town’s artisans. There will be cultural events for children, like finger painting classes, puppet shows, and a visit from the Autumn Specter.
The Autumn Specter returns. It comes to collect its crops, with its great and sharp sickle. [creepily] It will harvest every ripe soul in Night Vale, the Autumn Specter is hungryyyy! It is Octoberr and it is timme to feeeeeee-duh.
Hey James, this Community Calendar doesn’t seem right, it’s just a bunch of stuff about the Autumn Specter. Also this font size, what-what is this 32 point? That’s just much too large. And it’s printed in red ink and that is a waste of our color toner, James. Eww, eww! This red ink is still really damp. OK, plus there’s nothing about start and end times of the craft fair, or anything about the food trucks, like if the Autumn Specter is hungry, surely it wants some falafel or Korean barbeque or tacos. James, could you just redo this story? James?
James?
[clears throat] Well, listeners, I don’t know where James went. Um, I can hear him breathing, but I don’t see him anywhere. Yeah, it’s fine, let’s just get onto our first spooky story.
[static, old-fashioned music]
One quiet moonless night, not long ago and not so far away, a teenage girl sat in a house that was not her own. It was the home of Tony and Sheila McDowell. The girl was their babysitter, and she had just put the two young McDowell children down to sleep. The girl watched TV alone in the dark living room, only the bluish flicker of a scary movie illuminating her face. The phone rang abrupt and loud, startling her. She raised the receiver to her ear.
“Hello?” she said with a slight quiver.
“Have you checked on the children?” came a raspy voice.
The babysitter ran quickly upstairs, opening the door of the kids’ bedroom. She flicked on the light, and there they were, fast asleep. She went back to her movie, but the phone rang again.
“Haave youuu checked on the childrennn?” came the same voice, only more sinister.
The babysitter again hurried upstairs, opened the door, turned on the light, and saw the children still asleep.
The caller called again and again and again.
“Have you checked on the children?”
The babysitter, so scared, barely able to move, hung up the phone before the voice could finish its repeated query.
When the phone rang once again, she answered and shouted: “Stop calling me!” But this time, it was a different voice. The person on this occasion said: “Ma’am, this is the police. We’ve traced the call. The call is coming from inside the house. Get out, get out!”
The babysitter panicked and started to run, but then she remembered: she never called the police! How would they know to even trace the call?
So she crept fearfully upstairs to the children’s room, and the phone was ringing again, the clamoring bell igniting her fright. And she cracked open the door and she saw-
She saw the young McDowell boy and his little brother hunched over a phone and giggling!
They were pranking her, and she felt relieved but embarrassed. And she told them to stop fooling around and go to sleep. And they all shared a good laugh.
Let’s have a look now at traffic.
[papers rustling] Um..
OK, well I don’t seem to have a traffic report from intern James. Also James isn’t here right now, because I sent him out to go pick up lunch a few m-
Oh, hey James, James, James, James – wait, why are you standing in the control booth? You were supposed to go get lunch and also I’ve asked you a couple of times not to wear that burlap bag over your head. I mean yes it looks great, with the Jack o’ Lantern face drawn onto it, I mean the mouth is a bit lopsided and the eyes are a tad uneven,  you know kinda flat and emotionless, but all in all it’s a cool look, but it’s decidedly not allowed in Station Management’s dress code.
Oh, you’re holing a knife, too! So did you get- did you already get that lunch then? Well if that- if that’s the case, you don’t need to cut my sandwich in half, I’ll-I’ll take it whole. And also I need that traffic report, thanks.
James? What are you waiting for, the Autumn Specter to do it for you? [chuckles] Hop to it!
James?
[clears throat] Well, while James is working on that, let’s get back to my favorite spooky Halloween stories.
This one isn’t a story so much as a fun Halloween game.
The legend of Bloody Mary.
According to the lore, if you turn off all the lights, and stare into a mirror, repeating “Bloody Mary” three times in a row, she will appear and tear your face off!
I’ve never tried this because I don’t own any mirrors, but my husband Carlos conducted this very experiment in his science lab. He said he darkened the room and repeated the name and nothing happened for a long time.
But then a figure of a woman appeared, silvery gray and shimmering, and she approached Carlos slowly, her hollow white eyes never blinking. She brought her face only inches from Carlos and said: “Are you for real?”
And Carlos said yes, he was indeed – real.
And Bloody Mary said: “OK because this time of year, I just get a bunch of giggling, screaming teenagers, and I’m really tired of ripping off their faces for no pay whatsoever!”
And Carlos gave her some resources for starting a union and she thanked him and she offered to tear his face off in exchange for the consulting, but Carlos said no, he liked his face, and wisher her luck.
Night Vale, pay your malevolent spirits! They’re overworked especially around Halloween. And a 20 per cent gratuity for poltergeists, phantasms, revenants, and ghosts is standard.
And now for t- what the, oh you- [papers rustling]
Wait, OK. You know, I thought intern James had handed the traffic report to me, but this is just a piece of parchment with a 9-pointed star seemingly drawn by a finger dripped in blood. And then there are a series of ancient runes scrawled around the outer edges.
Now I took runic in college. I mean, most of my friends took Spanish as their language, but I thought living here in the American Southwest, it would be more useful to study ancient Scandinavian and Germanic alphabets. And from what I can make out, these are a message about the return of the Autumn Specter.
Ugh, alright. OK. I love that intern James loooves Halloween and whatever this the Autumn Specter is. In fact, James is still in the break room right now construction a sacred totem out of ash tree branches and twine. He’s been muttering to himself all day in a language that I don’t recognize, and the only words I can understand are “Autumn Specter”. But I still have neither my traffic report nor my lunch!
Wait, do you think James is… Naah, put it out or you mind, Cecil.
Let’s tell another spooky Halloween story.
There once was a beautiful young woman who wore a green ribbon around her neck. She won the affection of a handsome young man. They fell in love and one day the boy asked the girl why she always wore a green ribbon around her neck. She would not tell him.
One day the man and the woman were to become husband and wife. In her white bridal dress, the woman still wore her green ribbon. The man asked her on their wedding night if he could untie the green ribbon, but even on the  most intimate of evenings, she said no, and he respected her answer.
But he longed to know what she was hiding behind the ribbon.
Through the years, the man asked the wife again about the ribbon, but she never removed it, nor answered his questions about it. She only warned him that he would not like what he saw if she were to remove it.
He asked less and less, but his curiosity grew and grew. And they became old, very old, and they knew their time left was short. The man asked one more time: “My dearest wife, love of my life, tell me that I may remove the green ribbon from around your neck.”
And the old woman said: “My adoring groom, here in our room after all these many years, yes you may. But I caution you, as I have many times before, that you shall not like what your eyes behold.”
The man hesitated, but finally reached his weakened, wrinkled fingers to the green bow along her nape. And he tentatively pulled the ribbon, and suddenly it unfurled, falling from her neck, and the man gasped. Upon her neck was a series of ornate letters spelling out “GOTH LIFE”.
The woman said: “I got this tattoo in high school but kind of outgrew it and it’s super embarrassing.”
And the man replied: “It is for sure weird, but also pretty cool. I like it.”
And she never wore the green ribbon again.
You know, listeners, I’d love to bring you that traffic report, but right now, um, I’m facing something much more urgent and more dire. My studio door has opened on its own, and as I turned around, I could see down the long faintly lit corridor of our offices. And at the end of the hallway stands a figure, and he wears a Jack o’ Lantern mask, his head crooked to one side like a dog asking a question or like a hanged man, or both. And it is intern James, and he holds a long knife and he walks, he walks slowly toward me. And he is speaking at first in a mutter, but now louder, a strange shout in an obscure tongue like a magician casting a wicked spell, and he is moving much faster toward me, like a limping run, and his blade is raised high, and James is not an intern, Night Vale, bu the Autumn Specter itself come to reap my soul!
But before he does that,
Let me take you to the weather.
[“Welterweight” by Nels Andrews. https://nelsandrews.bandcamp.com/]
But I was right that the Autumn Specter had come for me. For when I turned to see James running down the hill, I did not notice the Autumn Specter behind me, with its bony hands and scarecrow mouth, and I did not notice its soul reaping sickle, which it had raised high above its oversized head and stick thin body. And James had given his life for the building of our radio station, and in death, gave his soul for the very same cause. And James threw himself upon the Autumn Specter, and he tried to stab the Specter’s neck and chest, but it-it- it did nothing. And the Spectre pushed James aside and then turned its black coal eyes upon me. And it raised its curved blade once again and swung!
I tried to duck, but was too slow. And just as the sickle’s edge reached my face, James dove in front of it and vanished in a burst of white flame, as he was struck.
And the room was empty and the Autumn Specter was gone too.
To the family and friends of intern James, he was… an OK intern. Not always on  top of his writing deadlines, but he literally sacrificed his soul for our radio station. I can’t bring you a traffic report today, but I will live to bring you one tomorrow.  If we find a new intern.
And HR tells me that we have hundreds of candidates, although  most of them are not yet aware that they are candidates.
Stay tuned next for our new cooking competition show, “Flay Bobby Flay”.
And as always,
Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.
Today’s proverb: The road to hell is paved with cobblestone. It’s super bumpy, not at all comfortable, and really bad for your car’s suspension.
[static]
[slightly distorted]
The trees are dying again.
You know it, I know it.
The trees know it.
They have known it for decades, centuries in some cases.
The shiver of cyclic, symbolic death.
A rattle in the cold night air.
A rustle in the footsteps of a hungry deer.
It is October and something is different.
It is October and the trees draw the crackling red and orange curtain in the year’s final act.
It is October, and so listeners, dear listeners,
Night Vale community radio is proud to introduce
The October Monologues. Â
Faceless Old Woman: I am lonely. Oh, I see people. I see lots of people every day. I see you right now. I see you, Caleb, sitting in your rolling desk chair, hunched over your computer. I am a faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home, watching you download yet another video game, Caleb.
But seeing people and being with people are different things. Different ideas altogether. I miss touch most of all. A father’s hand, a friend’s arms. A lover’s chest. I still touch, am touched, but it is not the same. It is not a mutual touch. My touch is unwelcome, unfriendly, unwanted. Yet I touch because I love.
And I love you, Caleb. I do. I know you don’t believe me after what I did to you tonight, but I do. My love is not romantic nor maternal. It’s not platonic, either. I love you the way a deer loves a cornfield. It is safe, it is nourishing. It is in its DNA to want to be there, to hide, to eat, to play. You’re very much like a cornstalk, Caleb. You are loved and you are benign. Better than benign, you are a contribution to this world. The cornstalk is unaware that a deer loves it so much that it will bend it and stomp it until its edible morsels spill out from its crumpled empty husk. The cornstalks, there are so many cornstalks, do not understand that they are so loved by the deer as to be devoured.
You’ve seen a kitten before, Caleb, I know you have. Sometimes kittens are so cute. So so so so cute that you wanna put them in your mouth. Do you understand that kind of love, Caleb, that kind of touch? You do not, no one does. And this is why I’m lonely. But I think you know that. You’re different. You’re lonely too. That’s not what makes you different, we’re all lonely in our own way.
You’re different, Caleb, because you know I am here. You see me even when I do not want to be seen. No one has been able to do that in at least 200 years.
Sometimes you speak to me. Not in terror, not in rage; I’ve heard many of these voices in my life from those who feared and detested my presence.
No, you ask me my name. I won’t tell you, not yet. You tell me about your day, I’m sorry your new boss is so mean, I will rectify this. And last night, you prepared a dinner for me. You’re not a good cook, I can smell that much, but it was your gesture of generosity that touched me. You made cashio e pepe, a recipe you learned from TikTok, and you prepared a bowl just for me. You waited to see if I would appear, and when I did not, you told me you understood wanting to eat alone, so you left it for me on the dining room table, as you went to play the new flight simulator.
Few men have ever been this kind to me before being frightened into it first, or without using their kindness as a disguise. I think you genuinely understand your own quiet desperation among the mass of men. And in turn, you understand others too.
I don’t trust the kindness of men, Caleb. I don’t trust the kindness of women, either. Or anyone else’s kindness, to be truthful, but I especially don’t trust men’s kindness. There are exceptions. Andre, whose kindness was loyalty and honesty, and Albert, although his was a much different kind of kindness.
But Caleb, 23-year-old, unshaven, video game loving, boss hating aimless Caleb, your kindness frightens me. I’m scared of what you want, what it is you plan to take from me. Kind men have stolen my childhood, my morals, my money, my love, my life, and my family. What will you take from me, Caleb, that I have not already lost? I’m afraid. I’m afraid to respond to your gentle bait of friendship, because I am afraid you will take my loneliness from me. I am lonely, and that is a choice I have made for myself.
One day, Caleb, you will die. I know exactly when. It will not be of my hand, although I will do nothing to stop it. It is my fate, my path, to know such things. And in your death, you will return my loneliness to me, and it will be a horror to behold, bloody and misshapen. My loneliness, not recognizing its former owner, will howl an unholy and unceasing cry, and I will not be able to bear it.
This is what I fear, Caleb, and this is why I took the bowl of cashio e pepe you left for me and hurled it against the wall, just missing your cheek. I’m not sad that you screamed at me, I’m happy that you did so. This is how it has to be. We are not enemies, Caleb, no no. I love you deeply. Deeper than you can know. I am your deer Caleb, and you are my corn.
Cecil: The fiery flash of fall leaves stuns us, captivates us. Fireworks in slow motion. Or the crackling embers of a finishing flame. Upon the leaves are written instructions for how to make oxygen, how to give life, with every exhalation. How  to find flair in fading grace, and how to raise new life by falling to your death. The leaves know they will return again, so much will return again. We return now to the October Monologues.
Michelle Nguyen: There’s this new song I like, but I don’t wanna tell you what it is. I find it kind of embarrassing. Usually I love to talk about my favorite music. There was that summer I was obsessed with the new single by Saint Vincent. The single came in the form of a glazed vase containing three blue flowers. Only one was ever made, and I got the only copy. I found it very catchy, but the flowers eventually died. Or the year I spent listening over and over to that new Janelle Monae album. I forget the name, but the cover was a black and white picture of a well, and if you didn’t share it with someone else in 7 days, you would die. Of course no one ever died, because the album was so good, people just couldn’t stop telling their friends to listen.
My favorite song of all time is a blank cassette tape still in its plastic wrapper. It was owned by a man named Gary Joy. He was a real estate lawyer, reasonably successful, but he always dreamed of being a singer/songwriter. He dreamed all the time of quitting his job and writing songs, but he had never even written one song. Then one day, in a fit of optimism and energy, he bought this cassette, intending to make his first memo. But the day got away from him, and then the week, and then the rest of his life, and he never quit being a lawyer, and he never even wrote one song. This blank cassette tape, still in its wrapper, contains the potential of all the songs he could have written but never did, which is better and more powerful than any song anyone’s actually managed to write. The potential of the thing is always more perfect than the reality of the thing. However, and this is the crucial drawback, the potential is absolutely useless and the reality, however imperfect, can be quite useful.
Anyway, I like to hold Gary Joy’s unwritten demo and imagine what it would be like. Hold on, sorry. There’s a customer.
[bell dings] Welcome to Dark Owl Records. What? No, no. No. No! No. OK, bye! [bell dings]
Sorry about that. Some people are so unreasonable. I don’t even know what a Taylor Swift is.
But there’s a new song I like, and it’s not cool like my other favorite songs. It’s not a song that fits the kind of image I like to project. When I put on my mirrored leggings, my extra long jorts, and my really big hat, people expect something from me. They expect me to be on the cutting edge. They expect me only to be into bands that aren’t popular yet, or will never be popular, or that frankly don’t know how to play their instruments very well.
And the song I like now is not any of those things. It’s… ordinary. It’s… popular. I don’t wanna say what it is. Remember when I only listened to the sound of beez buzzing? That was a good summer. Of course I got stung once or twice or 30 times. [sighs] Hold on, sorry, there’s a customer.
[bell dings] Welcome to Dark Owl Records! Hey. Hey! Hey! Hey! HEEEEY!
Thanks, nice to see you again. [bell dings]
Sorry about that.
I’m tired of being cool. I was going to say trying to be cool, but trying implies the possibility of failure, and there has never been a moment when I’ve failed to be cool. But here’s the hard truth I’ve come up against: being cool is a young person’s game. And that’s not because young people are better or more interesting than older people. God no. God no. God no! It’s that coolness itself is a concept tied to youth. Coolness is a reactionary manifestation of insecurity. The more insecure you are, the cooler you need to be. It’s colorful plumage.
But as I’ve gotten older, I no londer need flashy plumage. I just wanna sit in the comfort of who I am, and not worry about what that looks like from the outside.
Anyway, I can’t stop listening to “Karma Police” by Radiohead. It’s just… a good song, you know? Hold on, sorry, there’s a customer.
[bell dings] You! You’ll never catch me alive! [sound of running] [bell dings]
Cecil: An abundance of words, words falling, fluttering to the earth. Words crunching beneath our feet. They were beautiful once, the words. Now they are beginning to rot, to wilt, to compost, to ferment new growth. To fertilize new words growing upon great trunks of paragraphs and chapters, but not now. Those will come later. Now the words sputter and drop in spiraling arcs to the ground. Here, then, are the final few brightly painted words falling upon you now. The October Monologues.
Steve Carlsberg: What does it mean to be believed? I’ve always known that Night Vale isn’t like other places. As long as I can remember, I could see that. I could also see that no one else could see it. I was alone in my knowledge. Knowledge may be power, but power is often lonely. My grandfather knew. He could see that I was like him.
“Steve,” he would say, “us Carlsbergs have always been the town pariahs, but just because they hate you, doesn’t mean they’re right.”
I would sit at night as a kid and listen to Cecil on the radio. He was the same age as he is now, and at the time he seemed so wise. But I would hear him dismiss what I knew shouldn’t be dismissed. I would hear him cover up what should be uncovered, and I would know with a child’s certainty that it was wrong. I loved him still. Everyone in town loves Cecil. It is possible to love someone who you know is doing wrong. It’s terribly easy, in fact.
What does it mean to be believed?
As a teenager, I started trying to express what I saw about the world. I gave a presentation in my social studies class called “Night Vale – there’s literally nowhere like it”, and I thought it was informative. The class all plugged their ears in unison. The teacher stopped me a minute in, glancing nervously at the 8 surveillance cameras monitoring the classroom.
“Are you trying to get us all killed?” the teacher hissed at me. I remember that her breath smelled like Strawberry Jolly Ranchers, and there was a lose crumb of mascara in the sweat of her temples.
“No,” I said. I didn’t know what to say. It’s not the kind of question that demands a sincere answer. The report earned me a trip to the principal’s office, and then the re-education pit, which honestly is not as bad as its name. I mean, almost not as bad. It’s pretty bad. It’s a pit, for re-education.
So, certainly learned something from that re-education. I learned that you’re equally likely to be punished for being right as you are for being wrong.
What does it mean to be believed? I was a young man entering the workforce, and I had long ago learned to hide away what I knew about my city. I had learned the handshake and the smile, the nod and the necktie, all the signifiers that hid what I truly signified. All of life is a code, and I had been thought the key against my will.
I got a job as a bank teller at the Last Bank of Night Vale. I studied with great interest the townsfolk who came and went there. I learned about their lives and their secrets, and what kind of money they made for the whispered deals out back of quiet parking lots just before the sun went down, pulled up next to a black Sedan that contained their handler who they only knew by a false first name. but I couldn’t forget what I knew, even if I learned to playact that I had. What I know shapes who I am. I can’t close my eyes, not to this town I love. This weird and secret town I love.
What does it mean to be believed?
Then I married into the family of Cecil Palmer, host of Night Vale community radio! And he hated me, because he could see that I knew. And after all these years, my mask had slipped a little. I’d lost my interest in hiding. I wanted to speak the truth as I knew it, nothing could be more threatening to Cecil. His life and livelihood depended on speaking the truth as the City Council wanted it. Or as the Vague yet Menacing government agencies crafted it. And here I was, pointing out to him the sky. There are glowing arrows in the sky, there are dotted lines and arrows and circles. The sky is a chart that explains the entire world! I tried to tell him, and this only made him hate me more. I tried to share who I was with him, and this only made him recoil.Â
Abby listened to my stories, but she never shared my enthusiasm for the truth.
“Let it lie,” she would say, “let it lie.”
But that’s he point, I can’t let it lie and I can’t lie! We’ve done that for too long! We’ve let our town sit heavy under the weight of euphemism and half truth, and unless someone just said what they saw for once, we would be crushed eventually by that weight!
And then it all changed. I wasn’t alone. The others saw that we lived in a weird place. And you know what? We kept existing. Our world didn’t end merely because we dared acknowledge it.
Cecil and I are friends now. I haven’t forgotten how he treated me, but I understand it and I forgive it.
Forgiveness and understanding are not the same as forgotten.
What does it mean to be believed?
It means everything. It means all.
Cecil: And as the leaves are done, so are the October Monologues. All that can be said has been said. And all that can be said will be said again.
Today’s proverb: Listen, it might seem like everything’s bad right now.
This is Radio Jupiter calling out to all who hear.
Please respond.
Awaiting your reply.
[different theme song]
This is Radio Jupiter. I’m not sure who is listening. I’m not sure if there’s anyone to listen. I can only verify my own existence. I can only verify the void around me, the apparent fact of stars, the swirling atmosphere of the planet below me. I cannot verify much. I don’t know who I am or where I came from. I woke up here, and all I have to go on is my call sign. So this is Radio Jupiter, reaching out to whoever there is to be reached out to.
It is so beautiful here on my perch, here in my place, in the cosmos and the universe about which I know nothing but feel everything.
I don’t know if everywhere is as beautiful, or even most places. Did I happen onto the one beautiful place in the all of it? Without perspective, there is only what is nearby. Without the burden of comparison, everything is beautiful.
If a person is the sum total of every experience they’ve ever had, is a person without memories still a person? Or are they a different creature altogether, made either limited or limitless by the possibilities of a clean slate?
I am either trapped or I am more free than anyone who can hear this. If anyone can hear this.
There is a framed photo in this room. It is an elderly woman. Maybe my mother or my grandmother or an aunt. Perhaps merely a photo I saw in a magazine once and liked for whatever reason. I have no way of knowing what kind of person I am, what kind of photo I would keep. Perhaps it is a photo of you. Do you present as an elderly woman? Would you like to?
I think perhaps I would like to, even for just a little while. But I only am what I only am, I ever am, whatever I am.
[distortion] This is Radio Jupiter calling all cars, all (species), all… [fades out]
Cecil: Is that any better? Is that better? Can you hear me? [clears throat] OK, my producer is giving me the signal that we are now back on the air. Sorry about that, not sure what that other signal was, but it completely took over ours, which is rude. We’re currently looking for the source of the signal. We’ve narrowed it down to up. Just right up there somewhere, beaming on down to us. But we’re back in control and we do not expect any more interruptions. Of course, we didn’t expect that interruption either. I don’t expect almost anything that happens to me, my life is full of mystery and surprise, as is yours I’m sure, but still, we seem to have this one technical issue addressed. With that settled, I think we can get to the news. Â
Our top story concerns… [reluctantly] Susan Willman. OK. Sure.
There has been a lot of talk in town since the whole incident with the Obelisk, in which Susan Willman learned the name of an immortal all knowing being. This name now exist in her head, an object of great power reverberating through her thoughts. She has withdrawn from her duties as director of the Night Vale Community Theater and the Night Vale PTA. Oh darn, we’ll miss her and her prosaic, muddled staging and grandstanding about home-work life balance.
Susan has instead taken residence in a booth at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. There at all hours, toying with a half drunk coffee and playing with the reflection of the sun in the back of a spoon. At night, the mint light of the sign outside sends strange shadows across her face, and her friends say they sometimes don’t recognize her at all. Steve Carlsberg, who is taking over her role at the Night Vale Community Theater, went to talk to her about some finer details of the casting process, and said that she was less than helpful. She was weeping, and the only thing she said the entire time he was there was that she was afraid to speak, lest the awful name slip past her lips.
“No one was meant to carry such death inside of them,” she whispered, and then said no more.
“Oh sure, yeah yeah, makes total sense,” said Steve, as he (-) [06:51] down some invisible pie.
Well, I think we’ve given Susan enough attention for now, moving on.
In other news, the new beer cave at the Ralphs has been closed for repairs due to occasional time loop issues reported by certain customers. Manager at the Ralphs, Dave Ball, issued a statement by spelling out words with cantaloupes in the parking lot, saying “everything is fine with the beer cave, it’s a great and refreshing addition to Night Vale. Please don’t go inside or even look at it, as we don’t know why it’s doing what it’s doing. Everything is fine, please stay safe and stay away.”
Dave then rearranged the cantaloupes to create complex fractal designs that made me dizzy to gaze upon, but were beautiful nonetheless. When reached out for a comment, Ralphs corporate said they had no records of any branch in a town called Night Vale, and were tired of receiving prank calls with bizarre tales about a made up store. When provided with pictoral evidence of Night Vale, a representative at Ralphs corporate began to bleed form the eyes while shouting: “This can’t be real! My god, this can’t be real!”
More on the story of the beer cave if anything happens [distortion, fades out]…
Agent N-223: [--] out there, out there?
Not sure if any of this is getting thru, but continuing to narrate on the off chance anyone will hear this and come, you know, to collect me.
I’ve been doing some digging through the spaceship, and I’m disturbed by what I’ve found. Weapons. Many, many weapons. Racks of guns, cases of grenades and explosives, radar that I instinctively know is for tracking combatant space crafts, even though I have no memory of receiving that training. I am armed to the teeth and ready to wage war.
But on what? There are no living beings in sight, and for all I know, there are no other living beings anywhere. Perhaps I’m here to wage war upon the planet below me, that swirling gaseous titan. Maybe someone had enough of it and sent me up here to put Jupiter back in its place. If so, I think the weapons they gave me were insufficient. I experimented by shooting off a round or two out the airlock, but the bullets soared into the upper atmosphere of the planet without slowing at all. My attack had no appreciable effect on my victim.
So maybe the planet is not my target. Could it be the stars themselves? I am sent here, a pinprick in the side of God to cast myself as the stars, shouting threats and tossing grenades until the entire (-) [09:42] of the universe cowers and surrenders. Perhaps that.
Or perhaps I am at war with you, whoever is hearing this. Maybe I was given this radio in order to threaten and terrorize before I attack. So be afraid, I am coming. O-once I figure out where you are. I have no idea which direction to start moving and I don’t even know if this space ship has any way of controlling movement or if I’m just stuck in this orbit. Either way, this is Radio Jupiter apparently declaring war. [distortion] Consider it declared and [fades out].
Cecil: Can you hear, they can hear me? OK, I apologize, we’ve been doing all kinds of troubleshooting, including shifting the angle of our broadcasting tower, updating all of our software, and yes before you ask, we did try unplugging it, doing a ritual spilling of blood and plugging it back in. The issue we’re having is that these broadcasts are being sent out on military frequencies, which unfortunately automatically override ours. I’m unclear why the military would be getting into broadcasting, that’s more of a community radio thing, so let’s all stick to what we’re good at. I’ll keep doing radio shows that inform and delight, and the military can spend three trillion dollars on a plane that instantly explodes if anyone tries to fly it.
We have reached out to Rudy DeJardin, the local representative of the military industrial complex. He has a little table set up outside of the hardware shop, and anyone who has any questions for the military can just ask him, and he’ll do his best to answer. Most of the stuff can’t answer because it’s classified or embarrassing, but sometimes he’ll say a few cryptic words. In this case, his only answer was to make “mm-hm” sounds and shake his head frantically, while rolling his eyes toward the heavens. Not clear what to make of that, but I sure love whatever this broadcast is off my frequency, Rudy. Any time you want to get on that.
And now a word from our sponsors. Today’s show is brought to you by Nature’s Caress Fountain of Youth gentle flushable wipes. Did you know in most of the world, they just wash after using the toilet? They have a whole thing specifically for doing that. It takes a couple of seconds, cleans thoroughly, and doesn’t create mountains of paper waste. If you dirty your hands, do you wipe at them frantically with an even less robust version of tissues, or do you use water and soap? Why would it be different for anything else? Because it just is, that’s why. It’s the American way, love it or leave it. Nature’s Caress Fountain of Youth gentle flushable wipes: clog the world with your debris.
This has been a word from our sponsors.
And now, as a special treat, Mr. Lee Marvin himself will perform act 3 scene 5 of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. This is the scene that contains the immortal line “I never knew the meaning of fear until I kissed Becky.” [distortion] OK, Mr. Marvin, take it away!
Agent N-223: This is Radio Jupiter speaking to you from a time of peace. Yes, there was that brief episode of war, and it was regrettable. I fired upon an innocent planet, although that planet seems none the worse for my crimes. In any case, that war is now over, as far as I’m concerned. I have no interest in battles and conflict, especially when I have no memory of what that conflict could involve. I have no interest in killing anyone, and I have no interest in dying quite yet.
So, peace in our time. I’m jettisoning all the guns and other weapons. Let them scatter out harmlessly into the universe, most of them swirling down the gravity well of Jupiter, where the immense pressure of the inner atmosphere will compress them into diamonds. I don’t know if that idea is scientifically sound, but I like the thought of it. All these worthless guns made glittering jewels, swirling in the endless storm of a planet that doesn’t even know they’re there.
As for me, now that I’ve declared peace upon the galaxy, I would like to know what is out there. I have found the controls for the ship and it seems I must have been trained in their use, because whatever I do appears to work as I want it to. I am turning away from the only star I’ve ever known. Because my memory is short and it’s the only star that has been there for the last two hours. I’m turning out to the dark unknown, and I’m casting myself into it.
I hope there is a grander universe out there, I’d love to see it.
This is Radio Jupiter, letting the cosmos know that I am on my way. I’ll see you soon. Or, given the size of space, most likely I won’t see you. But we’ll both exist, and [distortion] won’t that be nice?
Cecil: [clapping] Wow, wow wow wow. Thank you, Mr. Marvin, truly a performance for the ages, and what a treat… What? What happened? When? Oh not again!
This is Cecil Palmer of the Night Vale community radio station. I don’t know if you can hear these words, but if you can, we have identified the source of these intrusive broadcasts. She is agent N-223, sent during the early years of the space program on a secret mission. She was put into hibernation so that she could wake up and serve as reinforcement in the Blood Space War at some point in the future. But it appears that the hibernation damaged her memory, and anyway the Blood Space War doesn’t happen for another thousands years, so eh, she won’t be much use in that battle yet. Ah, thanks to the anonymous tipster who snuck us this top secret info. We owe you, Rudy.
Oh, uh it looks like we might be having more interference due to some
Rough weather.
[“The Faded Red and Blue” by David Berkeley http://davidberkeley.com/]
Agent N-223: This is Radio Jupiter on the tail end of the tail end. If there was anyone listening back near that star, I think I’m getting out of range. I feel you getting out of range. Whatever presence I felt that I was speaking to, that feeling is getting hushed and fuzzy. The way I’m sure my voice is for you now.
You’re gonna have to go on without me, I suppose. Be brave about it. Or be scared. Your feelings are not my problem anymore, if they ever were. I have new problems now, problems of void and cosmos, problems of dark matter and lost memories. I am adrift in a universe that does not know I exist, but then you are too.
I don’t know what is out there, but I hope I live to see it. Won’t that be something, if I get to see whatever happens next? I hope I do.
Well, this is Radio Jupiter signing off for the last time. [echoing] Stay safe out there, I’ll try to stay safe out here. Goodbye.
Cecil: The signal has faded out. It seems she has finally left our world and also left my radio frequency. I’m not trying to speak badly of a strange remnant of a war that has not yet happened, floating out into the nothing beyond the nothing, but come on, please, use a different frequency. It’s just rude. The military, through Rudy DeJardin has disavowed any knowledge of Agent N-223 or her mission.
“Nope,” Rudy said through clenched teeth, “Never heard of her. Iiii certainly wouldn’t just say her name on the radio, after being asked not to. That’s not something I would do Cecil,” he said. So I dunno. Maybe we got the story wrong.
It is something, isn’t it? We are bits of life floating in a whole lot of non-life. The fact is true for us in both space and time, we are brief on any measure. And yet we can reach out our voice and be heard, even if only for a moment. And that has to mean something, doesn’t it?
Doesn’t… it?
Stay tuned next for an angry buzzing from inside your cutlery drawer, but you’ll be too afraid to open it and find out its source.
Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.
Today’s proverb: Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Agate is a girl’s worst enemy. Emerald is a work acquaintance who a girl hung out with once and then it just – never turned into anything more.
Some people have asked about this. The old bonus episodes are still available, but due to my current financial issues, I am not a WTNV Patron, so I don’t have access to any current bonus episodes. Apologies, I’ll let you know when the situation changes.
September 24, WTNV will do a live stream of “The Sandstorm”! That’s right, episode 19 (A&B), with guest roles written. This has never been performed live before. Featuring Kevin R. Free, Jasika Nicole, Symphony Sanders, and of course Cecil Baldwin and Disparition.Â
Pay what you can starting at 5 dollars.Â
This is so cool, I can’t wait! You can still access “The Librarian” at the same link.
Quoth the raven:
[bird noises]
Welcome to Night Vale.
Listeners, some exciting news from the world of theatre!
The 100 year play is about to reach its final scene. Yes, this is the play that has been running continuously since 1920. Written by a brilliant playwright Hannah Hershman, designed to take exactly 100 years to perform. And the tireless volunteer of the Night Vale Players Playhouse have been going through those scenes, one after another, for decade upon decade.
There’s little time to rehearse, for each hour brings new scenes and each scene will only be performed once the play moves on, in order to keep up with the tight schedule needed to execute the entire script before a century elapses.
It is a monumental work of theatre, but like all work, it must some day cease. Today, specifically.
I will be in attendance at that historic moment, when the final scene is performed and the curtain closes on the 100 year play. Â
More soon, but first the news.
We bring you the latest on the lawsuit “The estate of Franklin Chen vs. the city of Night Vale”. As you know, this case has grown so large and complicated that I’ve not had the time to discuss it in my usual community radio broadcasts. But instead, have started a true crime podcast called “Bloody Laws, Bloody Claws: The Murder of Frank Chen”, in which I strive to get to the truth of just what happened on that fateful night when five-headed dragon Hiram McDaniels met Frank Chen, and then later Frank Chen’s body was found covered in burns and claw marks. It’s a confounding mystery. The Sheriff’s Secret Police announce that it seems really complicated and they’re not even gonna try to solve that sucker.
“Oh, what?” a Secret Police spokesman muttered at an earthworm he found in his garden. “You want us to fail? You wanna see us fail? That’s why you want us to investigate this case, to see us fail at it?”
The family of Frank Chen say they merely want the appropriate parties, in this case the city of Night Vale, Hiram McDaniels and an omniscient conception of God, to take responsibility for their part in this tragedy. The trial is now in its 10th month, and has included spirited re-enactments of the supposed murder by helpful Players Playhouse performers in between their work on the 100 year play. 3 changes of judge and venue due to “some dragon attacks and constant interruptions from a local audio journalist, who hosts a widely respected true crime podcast”.
Still, with all this, we near a verdict. Judge Chaplin has indicated she will issue her ruling soon.
“Like in the next year or so?” she said. “Certainly within 5 years. Listen, I don’t owe you a verdict, just because you’re paying me to do a job, you can’t rush me to do it. The verdict will be done when. It’s. Done.”
Chaplin then huffed out of the courtroom followed by journalists shouting recommendations for episodes of their podcast to listen to.
I was present, you know, on opening night of the 100 year play. Ah, how the theatre buzzed! Of course this was partly the audience, thrilled to be at the start of such an unprecedented work, but mostly – it was the insects. The Night Vale Players Playhouse had quite a pest problem at the time, and still does. It’s difficult to do pest control when there is a 100 year long play being performed on stage at every hour of every day.
The curtain opened those many years ago on a simple set of a studio apartment, Â a kitchen, a cot, a window overlooking a brick wall. A man sits in the corner deep in thought. A doorbell rings.
“Come in, it’s open,” the man says.
A woman enters, flustered. She is holding a newborn.
“There’s been a murder!” she says. “The victim was alone in a room, and all the doors and windows were locked.
“My god!” the man says and springs up. “Who could have done this, and how?!”
the woman tells him: “It turns out to be the gardener, Mr. Spreckle. He served with the victim in the war and never could forgive him for what happened there. He threw a venomous snake through an air vent.”
The man sits back down, nodding.
“Aah! So the mystery is solved.”
As a playwright, Hannah Hershman did not believe in stringing up mysteries a second longer than was necessary.
The baby in the woman’s arm stirs.
“Shush, shush little one!” the woman says.
The man looks out the window where he cannot see the sky.
“It might look like rain,” he says. “Who knows?”
Thus began a journey of 100 years.
And now a word from our sponsors. Today’s episode is sponsored by the Night Vale Medical Board, which would like to remind you that it is important to drink enough water throughout the day. Drink more water! Your body cannot function without water. Without water, you are just dust made animate. Water forms the squelching mud of sentience.
Try to have at least ten big glasses of water. Not over the entire day, right now. See if you can get all ten of them down. Explore the capacity of your stomach. See if you can make it burst. You will either feel so much better, or an organ will explode and you will day painfully. And either one is more interesting than the mundane now.
You should drink even more water than that. Wander out of your door, search the Earth for liquids. Find a lake and drain the entire thing, until the bottom feeders flop helplessly on the flatlands. Laugh slushingly as you look upon the destruction you have wrought. The power that you possess now that you are well hydrated. Move on from the lake and come to the shore of an ocean. All oceans are one ocean that we have arbitrarily categorized by language. The sea knows no separation, and neither will you when you lay belly down on the sand, put your lips against the waves and guzzle the ocean.
The ocean is salty. It will not be very hydrating, so you’ll need to drink a lot of it. Keep going until the tower tops of Atlantis see sky again for the first time in centuries, until the strange glowing creatures of the deep-deep are exposed, splayed out from their bodies now that they no longer have the immense pressure of the ocean depths to keep their structure intact. And once you have drunk the oceans, turn your eyes to the stars. For there is water out there too, and you must suck dry the universe.
This has been a message from the Night Vale Medical Board.
20 years passed without me thinking about the 100 year play. You know how it is. One day you’re an intern at the local radio station doing all the normal errands like getting coffee and painting pentacles upon Station Management doors as part of the ritual of the slumbering ancients. Then 20 years passes and everything is different for you. Your boss is gone and now you are a host of the community radio station, and there are so many new responsibilities and worries and lucid nightmares in which you explore a broken landscape of colossal ruins. So with all of that, I just kind of forgot the 100 year play was happening. But they were toiling away in there, doing scenes around the clock, building and tearing down sets at a frantic pace, trying to keep up with the script that relentlessly went on, page after page. And sometimes one of the people working on the play would wonder: how does this all end? But before they could flip ahead and look, there would be another scene that had to be performed and they wouldn’t have a chance. So no one knew how it ended. No one except Hannah Hershman, the mysterious author of this centennial play.
Soon after becoming radio host, during the reading of a Community Calendar, I was reminded that the play was still going on, and so decided to check in. I put on my best tux, you know it’s the one with the scales and the confetti canon. And then took myself to a night at the theatre.
I can’t say what happened in the plot since that first scene, but certainly much had transpired. We were now in a space colony thousands of years from now, and the set was simple, just some sleek chairs and a black backdrop dotted with white stars of paint. A woman was giving a monologue about the distance she felt between the planet she was born on, which I believe was supposed to be Earth, and the planet she now stood on. I understood from what she was saying that the trip she had taken to this planet was one way, and that she would never return to the place she was born.
“We… are… all of us… moved… by time,” she whispered in a cracked, hoarse voice. “Not… one of us dies… in the world… we were born into.”
Sitting in my seat in that darkened theatre, I knew two facts with certainty. The first was that this woman had been giving a monologue for several days now. She wavered on her feet, speaking the entire four hours that I was there. And I don’t know how much longer she spoke after I left, but it could have been weeks. She was pale and her voice was barely audible, but there was something transfixing about it, and the audience sat in perfect silence, leaning forward to hear her words.
The other fact I understood was that this woman was the newborn from the very first scene. Not just the same character, but the same actor. 20 years later, she was still on that stage, still portraying the life to the child we had been introduced to in the opening lines. She was an extraordinary performer, presumably, having had a literal lifetime of practice. And that was the last time I saw the play, until tonight, when I will go to watch the final scene.
But first, let’s have a look at that Community Calendar.
Tonight the school board is meeting to discuss the issues of school lunches. It seems that some in power argue that it isn’t enough that for some reason we charge the kids actual money for these lunches. They argue that the students should also be required to give devotion and worship to a great glowing cloud, whose benevolent power will fill their lives with purpose.
Due to new privacy rules, we cannot say which member of the school board made this suggestion. The board will be taking public comment in a small flimsy wooden booth out by the highway. Just enter the damp, dark interior and whisper your comment, and it will be heard. Perhaps not by the school board, but certainly by something.
Tuesday morning, Lee Marvin will be offering free acting classes at the rec center. The class is entitled “Acting is just lying. We’ll teach you how acting is just saying things that aren’t true, with emotions you don’t feel, so that you may fool those watching with these mistruths.”
Fortunately, Marvin commented: “Most people don’t want to be told the truth and prefer the quiet comfort of a lie well told.”
Classes are pay what you want, starting at 10,000 dollars.
Thursday Josh Crayton will be taking the form of a waterfall in Grove Park, so that neighborhood kids may swim in him. There is not a lot of swimming opportunities in a town as dry as Night Vale, and so this is a generous move on Josh’s part. He has promised that he has been working on the form and has added a water slide and a sunbathing deck. He asks that everyone swim safely and please not leave any trash on him.
Friday, the corn field will appear in the middle of town, right where it does each September, as the air turns cooler and the sky in the west takes on a certain shade of green. The corn field emanates a power electric and awful. Please, do not go into the corn field, as we don’t know what lives in there or what it wants. The City Council would like to remind you that the corn field is perfectly safe. It is perfect and it is safe.Â
Finally, Saturday never happened. Not if you know what’s good for you. Got it?
This has been the Community Calendar.
Oh! Look at the time. Here I am blathering on and the play is about to end. OK, let me grab my new mini recorder that Carlos got me for my birthday. It’s only 35 pounds and the antenna is a highly reasonable 7 feet. And I’ll see you all there.
Ah.
What’s the weather like for my commute?
[Shallow Eyes” by Brad Bensko. https://www.bradbenskomusic.com/]
Carlos and I are at the theatre! The audience is a buzz, with excitement yes, but also many of them are the insects that infest this theatre. The bugs became entranced by the story over the years, passing down through brief generation after brief generation, the history of all that happened before. The story of the play became something of a religion to this creepy crawly civilization. And so now the bugs are jittering on the walls, thrilled to be the generation that gets to see the end of this great tale.
The curtain rises on a scene I recognize well. It is the simple set of a studio apartment. A kitchen, a cot, a window overlooking a brick wall. A man sits in the corner deep in thought. A doorbell rings.
“Come on, it’s open,” the man calls.
A woman enters. She is very old, tottering unsteadily on legs that have carried for her many many years.
“Please take my seat,” the man says with genuine concern.
“Thank you,” she says, collapsing with relief onto the cushions and then looking out, as if for the first time, noticing the audience.
I know this woman. I first saw her as a baby and later as a 20-year-old. It seems she has lived her whole life on this stage, taking part in this play.
“My name,” the woman says, “is Hannah Hershman. I was born in this theatre, clutching a script in my arms that was bigger than I was. My twin, in a way. I started acting in that script of mine before I was even aware of the world. I grew up in that script, lived my entire life in the play I had written from infancy to now.”
And she rises, and the man reaches out to help, but she waves him away. She speaks, her- her voice is strong, ringing out through the theatre.
“The play ends with my death, because the play is my life. It is bounded by the same hours and minutes that I am.”
the audience is rapt, many have tears in their eyes. Even the insects weep.
“Thank you for these hundred years,” Hannah Hershman says. “This script is complete.”
She walks to the window.
“It might look like rain,” she says. “Who knows?”
The lights dim.
Thunderous applause, cries of acclaim, and Hannah Hershman dies to the best possible sound a person can hear: concrete evidence of the good they have done in the lives of other humans.
Stay tuned next for the second ever Night Vale Players Playhouse production, now that they finally finished this one. They’re going to do “Godspell”. And from the script of a life I have not yet finished performing,
Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.
Today’s proverb: Many are called, but few are chosen. And fewer still pick up. Because most calls are spam these days.
Check out “The Librarian”, up now! A lot of fun and also quite moving, it’s all about fears and facing them. Up for a month, pay what you can 5 bucks and up. Much recommended!
“Nothing lasts forever”
is a phrase with two meanings,
and they’re both true.
Welcome to Night Vale.
All of Night Vale is aglow. There is music in the air. You know what that means, listeners: the Obelisk has returned.
It’s been nearly 8 years since the Obelisk last appeared, but it’s right back where it always shows up, in Mission Grove Park over on the east side, right next to the Wailing Pit. But a little bit south of the Memorial Debris Heap.
The Obelisk returns every 5 to 10 years, sometimes as long as 50, and it brings with it joy, anticipation, and a deep fear. A terror so deep in the gut that it feels like you’ve eaten too much ice cream, but in all reality, your body is simply bracing itself for death.
The Obelisk has always behaved benevolently, but so hast he sun, and we don’t trust that thing fully either, so I dunno. Past performance is not an indicator of future results. Unlike the sun, the Obelisk radiates a soft blue light, but like the sun, the Obelisk makes a lot of noise. In particular, music. The obelisk sounds like a Bach concerto played like a French horn and a theramine from inside a refrigerator.
Everyone in town is gathering at Mission Grove Park to see the Obelisk in person, to pay homage to this rare visit, and to confront their fears head on. Hopefully everything works out fine, because there are some cool events I want to get to this weekend, and it would be terrible to have to cancel them over a rogue obelisk.
Let’s take a look at the community calendar, shall we?
This Friday night is opening night of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tony-winning musical “Sunset Boulevard” at the Night Vale Community Theatre. I’m very excited to finally see this show, it’s supposed to be a really lavish production, too. And it’s based on one my all time favorite Billy Wilder films about an aging silent movie star who finds an amulet that lets her travel in time, but whenever she moves through time, she enters someone else’s body and can’t leave until she saves her life. This staging of “Sunset Boulevard” is directed and produced by… oh my god, Susan Willman?? Really?
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrhooonestly, this has been a pretty long week and Iiii might need to just rest at home on Friday. I mean I’m not trying to be rude here, but Susan Willman is the worst! Did you know she once judged the chili cook-off, and I came in third? Third! Behind Joel Eisenberg, which is fine, Joel’s an OK cook, but also behind who else? Susan Willman! You can’t be a judge and win first place. I’m also pretty sure Susan used a prepackaged spice mix in that chili. [laughs oddly] I don’t have that verified through a secondary source, but I can confirm, it was oversalted, again.
I’m not saying, I’m just saying.
Anyway, go see “Sunset Boulevard” on Friday if you want to watch uninspired actors and muddled blocking.
Saturday afternoon is the PTA bake sale fundraiser to send our Academic Decathlon team to a tournament in our state’s capital. The PTA secretary… [sighs] Susan WiIlman, says this money will go toward hotel and bus travel for our brilliant and talented Ac-Dec squad. “Academic Decathlon is about intelligence and perseverance,” says Willman in this overwrought press release. “Ac-Dec is about freedom and fastidiousness. It is a celebration of hard work, and we want Night Vale to show the rest of the state that blah blah blah blah blah,” God she just runs on! I mean yes, Ac-Dec is very cool and I wish our kids well. But chill with the grandstanding!
Anyway, go buy a cake to support those amazing students, even though I’m sure Susan will still manage to mess up a box mix.
Sunday is Youth Reprogramming Day at the Night Vale Museum of Forbidden Technologies. Does your child love learning about new gadgets and advancements in technology? Well, come on down to the Museum of Forbidden Technologies on Sunday for a day-long reprogramming event. Docents and curators will engage those curious kids through hands-on unlearning. They’ll take their patented mindwipe beam and point it right at each child’s forehead until all interest in forbidden technology has been removed. Kids love the mindwipe beam, because it smells like grapes, and they don’t feel any pain for weeks after.
Youth Reprogramming Day is a family friendly day of discovering that you know too much, and knowledge is treason.
Today’s appearance by the Obelisk is the 19th in recorded history. Little is known about what the Obelisk is, who controls it, or what it wants. Most scientists and historians agree that it was created by subterranean gods millennia ago, and they think its purpose is a type of census for life at ground level. The Obelisk is about 25 feet tall, it is oily and soft like a fresh brick of parmesan cheese, and when it appears, everyone in town carves their name into one of its four sides. We do not know why or when this practice began, it’s simply how it’s always been done. And to question tradition is to admit weakness.
When the Obelisk eventually disappears, perhaps today, perhaps several days from now, it will take our names with it. And when it returns, those names will be gone and we will begin the tradition anew. No one knows what happens to those names. Are they simply erased, or are they read and recorded? Is this data mining for some ancient technology startup, or does the Obelisk truly belong to the gods? We only know what happens to one of the names carved on the Obelisk, and for that person, we feel both envy and pity. For while the Obelisk has always behaved benevolently, past performance et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Let’s have a look now at traffic.
Route 800 is shut down until 4 PM today, as it has turned into a river. No cars are on Route 800, it’s just water. Rough and choppy, spiking white rapid caps atop nearly black rushing death. Highway officials are investigating the sudden appearance of this river, perfectly overlaying our main thoroughfare in and out of town. Beneath the quickly moving rush of the river, a single fish, probably a bass of some sort. Highway officials are uncertain because they don’t think about fish. Why would they? Highway officials are annoyed that you think so little of their awareness of fish species. They can tell a salmon from a marlin from a mackerel. “See what you made us do?” one highway official said. “We could have been repairing route 800, but you started picking on us for not knowing if that’s a bass or a mackerel or a whatnot. In fact,” the official continued, “we just looked it up on Wikipedia and it’s a bass. And fun fact,” they added, “did you know that bass can grow up to 25 pounds, have four rows of human teeth, and speak Spanish at a first grade level?”
The river is now branching out down sides of streets and into neighborhoods. Pavement everywhere is a network of fresh water capillaries through town. Expect delays of up to 10 or 20 minutes, as you try to get to Mission Grove Park.
This has been traffic.
The whole town feels like a carnival now with the flashing lights of the Obelisk and it’s crescendo of lively music filling the cool twilight air. We dance, we sing, we revel in togetherness and share our  fears of what will happen next. What will the question be? And more importantly, what will be its answer?
When every name has been placed upon the Obelisk, then the blue glow of the towering monolith will die away. The entire structure will turn black. All except one name. One name will remain lit on the Obelisk, and that person shall be sent forth to ask their question. They may ask any question they choose and the Obelisk will tell them and only them the answer. No one else will hear this communication. If the receiver wishes to share what they now know, they are allowed to do so.
Many years back, this ritual was more organized. Early Night Vale townships planned a democratic approach to this opportunity: a committee of the Obelisk was formed to decide on the single most important question to ask. This approach came about in response to the super blunder of 1932, when a 6-year-old boy named Bartholomew Thomason was chosen to deliver the question. He  asked the Obelisk if he was, quote, “gonna have corn for dinner”. The obelisk apparently said no, because little Bart started crying and the Obelisk quickly disappeared, not to return for almost 10 years.
By that time, the committee of the Obelisk was established and they chose the question: “how do you cure cancer?”
Ah, this is a good and noble question. But the citizen chosen by the Obelisk was a farmer named Barry McKenney, who tried his best to take careful notes, but a lot of the detailed medical jargon was just too complex for him. The committee tried this question again 6 years later, but the Obelisk refused to respond to any question it had already answered. So Sidney Laynord of Old Time Night Vale, not having a backup question from the committee, asked if his wife Jessica was cheating on him with Gerald Framingham, and the Obelisk said no, but it only said that because Gerald’s actual last name was Framington, so Sidney just messed up.
Over the decades, the committee of the Obelisk asked: “Is God real”? And the Obelisk said yes, but nothing more. After that, they tried to ask questions that would elicit more detailed response. Um, one year they asked: “who planned the assassination of JFK?” and were disappointed to learn that it was a CIA - Fidel Castro – Frank Sinatra triumvirate that conspired to murder our 35th president. This was the most boring answer, but at least it verified what everyone already knew.
By the 1990’s, though, the committee of the Obelisk had kind of fallen out of fashion after years of corporate funding and corruption. See, this controversy exploded in 1997, when the question put forth by the committee, which at the time was headed by the CEO of Pepsico, was: “what’s the best tasting carbonated soft drink on the market today?” The Obelisk’s answer, to the chairman’s great disappointment, was Surge.
Today, whoever is called on by the Obelisk is given free reign to ask whatever they choose. However many news outlets regularly publish lists of recommended question, but there is always the risk that someone will ask something frivolous like “what’s Jason Mraz up to these days?” or “where is the body of my missing fahter?”
Please, God please, just don’t call on Susan Willman. She will blow it.
And now a word from our sponsors.
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Tide pods. Remember when we seemed like a big problem?
Oooooooo listeners, the Obelisk has gone dark. The music has ceased. The whole town encircles the tower waiting for its declaration for who shall ask the question. In the quiet night, under few start peeking thru the purple sky, we can hear only the sounds of crickets. The Obelisk, so black as to appear cut out from reality, suddenly shines a small blue line. It is a name, it is on the south face and is it… Oh no! No no no, listeners, I don’t know if I can stop this but I will try. Uuuh, let’s go now to the weather.
[“Pros and Cons” by Sugar & the Mint https://www.sugarandthemint.com/]
Welllll it’s too late. She’s asked her question. I’m not sure how I could have stopped this disaster, even if I made it over there before she could ask it. OK, as you know by now, the Obelisk lit up with Susan Willman’s name, and she grinned smugly and did that fake like “who me? What, oh my god!” gesture and then walked on up to the Obelisk. The crowd was calling out questions to her like  game show audience trying to help a contestant, no single phrase discernible above the others, and Susan just looked around, her big goofy eyes scanning the people around her, as if she would actually lower herself to listen to their questions. [scoffs] She thinks she’s so high and mighty with her PT officer status and her hit Broadway musical. No no no, Susan’s above us all, just as important as she can be. She waved her arms like wings for quiet, and the audience obeyed, she’s so self-important, so attention seeking.
And then she asked her question. The one question we as a town get only every decade or so, and Susan said: “Hey, so what’s your name?”
What’s your name?!! God! What a waste! Did she forget we only get one question? The crowd began to boo, or at least I did. I started booing and I am part of the crowd.
The obelisk began to speak only into Susan’s mind and Susan listened closely. She giggled at first, like a little girl hearing a silly joke from a grandfather, and then her tear-filled laughs turned into tear-filled breaths, which eventually became tear-filled sobs. After about three minutes, the Obalisk vanished, and Susan stood alone on the small hill between the Wailing Pit and the Memorial Debris Heap, and she told us what she heard. Or [scoffs] she told us some of what she heard.
Susan said, in an unusually booming authoritative voice: “Whosoever speaks aloud the name of the Obelisk shall become the Obelisk. Whosoever becomes the Obelisk shall live forever. Whosoever lives forever shall know all things. Whosoever knows all things shall be damned. And whosoever hears the name of the Obelisk spoken aloud shall perish.”
The crowd parted for Susan as she left the park. They mumbled their disappointment in both the question and its answer. Some spoke with pity, some with disdain, while some thought it was all pretty cool and now.
“Much better than last time, when Dave asked who would win the 2013 NBA championships,” said one person.
“Dave won a lot of money on that answer, though,” responded another. “He has a yacht now over at the Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area.”
But most everyone whispered their fear for Susan’s power itself. I mean, Susan received a gif today, a cursed cursed gifts. You know what? I think I might go see that “Sunset Boulevard” after all and I love it. I don’t get to tell Susan very often what a visionary theatrical director she is, but I, I, [chuckles] I might even put some stacks down on her cakes Saturday too. Really support that academic Decathlon team. And the spirit of American ingenuity and perseverance, and all that.
Good question, Susan. I’d like to never learn the answer, but good question nonetheless. You’re one of, if not the, best person I know. Thumbs up.
Stay tuned next for our newest game show, “Nothing will ever be the same”.
[Updated version with most of the backwards speech added - huge thanks to kurofae!]
[particularly scary version of the theme song]
Do you ever stare at yourself for so long in the mirror that you no longer understand what you look like?
[Are you losing consciousness?]
Is this the same effect as thinking about someone you miss so much that you forget the shape of their face?
Why would you do that? Why would you refuse to maintain order?
[Why would you refuse to maintain order?]
Are you refusing? Or are you a victim of your own mind?
Do brain cells dictate souls? Is thought matter?
Does thought matter?
Can the person looking back at you from the mirror tell you the answer?
Just because you can see a person, does it mean that person exists?
Is it you you are looking at?
Or is it someone else?
[(backwards) Does inscrutability scare you?]
How many hairs do I have?
How many did I have yesterday?
Are they the same color, the same length? Are these the same hairs I had when I was a child?
[(backwards) Their eyes expressing nothing]
Should I be high if I’m going to ask myself these questions? Can you get high by behaving high?
Are you a good person because you do good things?
Does a qualitative assessment mandate empirical evidence to support its truth?
If I point at something and declare it –good-, will I be cross-examined?
And if so, am I to be held in contempt for refusing to answer?
Narrative is everything, right?
[(backwards) Are you? Are you? Are you?]
Has anyone else been feeling this way, that you don’t recognize yourself?
Have you told anyone? Does it help?
Is it helping now, hearing me talk about it?
Basically, why do I know I am me?
How many times have I seen myself in the mirror?
[How many times have I seen myself in the mirror?]
Is it bad that the answer is “rarely”?
Shouldn’t we all be afraid of mirrors, or is it just me?
[(backwards) Strange… and scary]
How many times in a fit of disassociation do we see someone else-
[Or someone else?]
-behind us?
Are you, too, too afraid to turn around?
Do you really want to challenge the veracity of your eyes?
Do you think disbelief in death will make it disappear?
Are awareness and manifestation one and the same?
[(backwards) But isn’t it strange?]
So, what did I see in the mirror today?
[(backwards) If you look into the mirror that you just smashed do you see that the creature is gone?]
Don’t we all see the same thing, isn’t it a person who looks exactly like ourselves?
[(backwards) Mirror]
And weren’t they making the same physical gestures and behind that person in the reflection, [(backwards) Are you?] did you not also see just over your shoulder a pair of eyes, the curve of a head, and did you notice how that head was human in shape – but maybe only a third of the size?
And did you make the same mistake as I?
Thinking that because the head was so small, it must have been some distance away?
[(backwards) Are you? Are you? Are you?]
But you stared so long into those tiny eyes, didn’t you?
And then you saw it.
[And then you saw it.]
Right?
Did you see little spiny fingers reach up in front of its miniature, this passionate face, and [whispering] touch your shoulders?
[(backwards) Are you losing consciousness?]
Did you scream inside, when you understood?
Did you really truly understand that it was climbing, right there, on your back?
[(backwards) What do you want from me?]
Are you still screaming, like I’m still screaming?
How can you know how I feel?
What - do you want - from meee?
[long pause, music]
Where was I?
Who is behind you in the mirror?
[(backwards) What do you want from me?]
Or what is behind you?
Should I speak in present or past tense?
Is there a face there or is the face gone now?
Are you no longer at the mirror?
Do you feel safer?
Why do you assume that because you aren’t looking in the mirror right now, that the tiny face and spiny digits – are not still behind you?
Do you feel it?
[(backwards) Is this like when-]
Are you, reflexively, touching your shoulder right now?
[(backwards) Are you scared?]
Or are you too scared?
[(backwards) Are you, reflexively, touching your shoulder right now?]
Is this like when the ATM asks if you want to check your balance before withdrawing money and you decline, because you just don’t want to know?
It doesn’t change the fact of your bank balance, does it?
Again.
You think awareness and manifestation are one and the same, don’t you?
Don’t we all?
So what of that little face with its inexpressive eyes and flat, lipless mouth?
Didn’t it look like…
Didn’t it look oh so familiar?
Where have you seen that face before?
Is it a ghost, a monster
Or your own imagination?
Are you starting to forget exactly what it looks like?
Do you want to go to the mirror again?
Do you want to stare and stare at it, until you can comprehend what it is?
[(backwards) Do you want to go to the mirror again? Do you want to stare? And stare at it? Until you can comprehend what it is?]
Why? What will that accomplish?
Are you being honest what yourself? Isn’t the real danger your won face?
Could it be inferred that you invented the creature to distract yourself from the real horror?
And what if we went to the mirror together?
If we don’t feel alone in our feelings, could we conquer our fears?
Are we in agreement, you and I?
What are you even looking at?
Is your focus drifting to your shoulder?
Can you not do that?
Can you resist the urge?
What will staring directly into your terror accomplish?
You see the face again, don’t you?
Are you as scared as before, or have you steeled yourself for this?
Is your mind more free to think critically about what it is and what it – wants?
Is it attacking, or defending?
Is it friend or foe or – indifferent?
Why is it so familiar?
Is it something from childhood?
[Were you sad?]
Or was it a dream you once had?
If you think about a memory long enough, doesn’t that mutate the truth?
Isn’t every act of remembering another log on the fire of lies?
When was the last time you saw your mother?
It’s been since childhood, hasn’t it?
Didn’t she warn you – about mirrors?
Didn’t she tell you they would be your demise?
[(backwards) Didn’t she warn you – about mirrors? Didn’t she tell you they would be your demise?]
Or was that just a popular bedtime story?
Do you see a flickering behind the tiny face?
Is that sunlight oscillating behind swiftly moving clouds, or is that the creature creating that effect?
Is it getting closer?
Is the flickering less like a strobe effect and more like a hand-drawn flip book?
Now that we’re looking with clearer eyes, is it just me or does the creature look like – a drawing?
Do you suddenly remember a swing set? Why swing set?
You were on the swing set, weren’t you?
How high did you go? Was it possible to do a full loop?
Would you have fallen out at the top of the circle, or did you understand centripetal force without knowing the term?
And when you let go at the apex of your arc, did you predict correctly the pain of a broken leg when you landed?
Do you still remember the sound of the snap?
[backwards) Do you still remember the sound of the snap?]
Do you still shudder when ice cracks in warm water, or when someone pops a knuckle?
What did your mother tell you about swing sets?
What did she say to you when you yelled to her for help?
Did you lean over your sobbing face and ask you:
“Why are you crying when you don’t even exist?”
Did she tell you again about the mirror?
[Sad.]
Do you still see the flickering creature climbing up your back?
Is the little hand reaching up again?
Do you notice it wears black rings?
Are those talons?
And what is it opening its mouth to say?
Do you see how it rises up behind you, how long is its torso?
Is it some kind of snake, but with human skin?
Why does it have so many teeth?
How long can a tongue be?
What is it doing, why is it crying, is it a child?
What unholy monster cries like a child, what does it want,
Why won’t it stop?!
[music stops, eerie noises]
Is it gone for you too?
[whispers] Why did I not look away?
[Did I not look away?]
Did you?
How were you able to do that?
[long pause, music]
Did you figure it out?
Could you see past your own mental inventions?
[Who out there-]
Who out there looked beyond the long gape-jawed figure and its inexplicable whinesss?
Did you see the table?
There, in the mirror image-
[mirror image of your hou-]
-of your house, did you see the table?
You hadn’t noticed the table before, had you?
What of the table, of its chipped corners?
What of the mismatched wood stain on the tiny drawer at its center?
What of its tarnished, yet ornate brass bulb knob?
Did you turn around to see if the table was in your home too?
Were you sad when you realized it was not?
Or were you relieved?
Why was the table only in the mirror, why isn’t it real?
But isn’t it, though?
You didn’t ask for any of this, did you?
But what have you ever asked from the universe that you could not get yourself, and when has the universe ever obliged?
What’s inside the drawer of the rickety table in the mirror?
What other uncanny discoveries await you if you could just break through?
Is it as simple as breaking through?
Do you find that the simplest problems require the biggest efforts?
Have you ever decided you wanted a lightweight wool button-up coat, all black?
Did you go shopping for it and did you find one?
How disappointed were you to learn that this design was not available in any of the five stores you went to?
Did you ponder the idea that such a coat was so basic, [angrily] so unassuming, so without frill or feature that no one had ever thought to create it?
[angrily, scarily] Do you want to know what’s in the drawer below the table?
Shouldn’t it be as easy to obtain as a lightweight wool button-up coat all black?
But nothing, nothing easy ever is, is it?
How do you get to a table that’s right in front of you but only visible innn a mirror?
Shouldn’t you take a break from this?
Wouldn’t some – fresh air – be good for you?
What’s the weather like outside?
[“Flower Lane” by Funbearable https://funbearable.bandcamp.com/]
[anxiously] What are you not getting?
Besides the creature and the table, what are you not noticing?
Do you see yourself?
[very fast] What is different about the you you are and the you you see before you?
Are you paying close attention to the color of your eyes?
Are you watching for any deviation in the movement of your reaction?
[(backwards) Now that we’re looking with clearer eyes-]
Are you able to ignore the creature over your shoulder?
Now that it has revealed itself, do you find it less frightening?
[(backwards) -ignore the creature over your shoulder? Now that it has revealed itself do you find it less frightening?]
Do-do-does it, does its cry kind of sound now like the high-pitched howl of a Siberian Husky puppy vocalizing its hunger, isn’t it less scary and – more just weird?
Did you see the movie “Signs”?
Did you feel less creeped out once the aliens were shown on screen?
[(backwards) Are you? Are you?]
Isn’t all fear fear of the unknown?
Are you concentrating on the table now?
And you’re sure it only exists in the mirror?
Double checked?
Do you want to know what’s inside the drawer of the front of the table?
[softly] Are you willing to break something?
[Are you-]
Are you willing to break the mirror, yes but so much more?
[(backwards) Do you feel the pain? -your flesh - is that why you’re screaming?]
Are you willing to go-
[Are you?]
-to a place from which you cannot return?
Are you willing to learn things you cannot unlearn?
Do you have a hammer?
Or if not, can you find something heavy that you can lift?
[(backwards) What is different about the you you are?]
Will you smash the mirror?
Will you do it quickly?
Why are you hesitating?
Have you let your comfortability lapse into carelessness?
Why did you take your eyes off the creature on your neck?
Did you see the blood, or feel the pain first?
Is it tearing into your flesh, is that why you’re screaming?
Can you still break the mirror?
[(backwards) Are you?]
Are you losing consciousness?
Are you?
[(backwards) Are you willing to break something?]
Are you?
Are you?
[Scary]
Are you OK?
Did you do it?
Huh.
If you look into the mirror you just smashed,
Do you see that the creature is gone?
[quietly] Cool, right?
But isn’t it strange that all about you on the floor are shards of the mirror you shattered, yet in front of you, the mirror remains, fully intact?
[Scary]
Strange. [echoes]
Or scary. [swallows, echoes]
Wouldn’t you think that the mirror being simultaneously broken-
[broken and unbroken is strange while the fact that you have no reflection-]
broken and unbroken is strange while the fact that you have no reflection is scary?
Is that true though?
Do you have a reflection?
Do you see yourself on the floor of the mirror’s world?
[Are you losing consciousness? Are you?]
Is your body crumpled on the floor like a wet towel?
Is your lower jaw hanging open because you died screaming?
Or because of gravity?
Do you have a blanket of some sort?
Why don’t you cover that mirror up?
Why don’t you cover all the mirrors, in fact?
While you are walking about your home, do you notice the antique table by the door with its tarnished, yet ornate brass bulb knob?
Was that table always there?
Did you –
Enter the mirror world?
Or were you always in the mirror world?
What else is different around you?
Do you remember why you never opened that door?
You do, don’t you?
What was it about the book inside that frightened you so?
Was it – the handwriting that matched no known language?
Was it the drawings of serpents with human faces, but innn-numerable teeth?
Was it the disorientation you felt from seeing these faces contorted into a scream, yet their eyes expressing nothing?
Does inscrutability scare you?
What was it your mother said before she left home when you were a teenager?
Did she tell you she was an oracle?
Did she tell you to read the book til you understood its alphabet?
Did she make you promise to never tell another soul, and did you keep that promise by burying it so deep, so so deep?
Now what?
Will you cover the mirrors and sweep the floor and pretend it never happened?
Will this prevent it from happening again?
Are awareness and manifestation one and the same?
Who can say?
Will you stay tuned next for sound of a muffled… crack!
Presented without context or commercial interruption.
Could that be an egg, or a twig, or a leg?
Narrative is everything, isn’t it?
Won’t you
Have a good night,
Night Vale?
Won’t you have a good – night?
Today’s proverb: Call me old fashioned, but I believe dance is the only true language.
This was my very first WTNV live show, I saw it in Helsinki in October 2014 and it was a magical fun time. Looking forward to the live stream! Tickets in the link!
The WTNV cast are performing “Condos” in a live stream on July 9! Tickets at the link, 6.50 or pay what you can. The stream will be up for a month.
“Condos” is the first live show, originally premiered in SF Booksmith in San Fransisco in 2013. Joseph and Cecil did a mini tour of it the same fall, and the first bigger performance of it was in New York in late (December?) 2013. That was Dylan Marron’s first performance as the voice of Carlos.Â
The upcoming live performance is a revised version, including Symphony Sanders and Meg Bashwiner. The weather will be performed Danny Schmidt and Carrie Elkin, who have worked with WTNV since 2014.Â
Love the winner, hate the win.
Welcome to Night Vale.
I start today with sad news. I must inform you of the passing of Intern Victor. To the friends and family of Intern Victor, we extend our condolences.
Oh, that reminds me. Our intern program has a new open spot available. Hours are flexible, as is time itself. You must be fluent in at least three languages, although one of those can be your own dream language, and another can be a future language that doesn’t yet exist.
This is an entry level position. All applicants must have 30 years experience in the field of community radio, and have been the managing director of at least 2 radio stations, or equivalent unregistered stations broadcasting coded messages to our brave spies in the field.
This is a non-paying position, but we do give you 4 credits to the institutions of your choice.
Please apply in person by groveling before the Station Management door and crying: “Choose me! Choose me!” as their tendrils draw you slowly toward them.
I look forward to meeting whoever is hired. Always so fun when we get a new intern.
And now for a look at the day’s news.
The Night Vale Medical Association has ordered a review of the management of Night Vale Asylum, after a number of irregularities have cropped up involving a transdimensional missing plane and a pilot who could control people’s thoughts. “Honestly, we had a lot of cases like that back in the 60’s,” said Lonnie Chapman, chairman of the Medical Association. “Mental institutions used to be cruel places, where the fragile rift between dimensions was regularly breached and telekinetic powers were exploited. And people were treated as less than people, for the simple crime of having an illness that could not be found in the blood or the bile.”
Lonnie settled back into the sagging comfort of his old arm chair, sighed and rubbed his forehead.
“We endeavour to help, not to other,” he whispered. “It should be common sense, this kindness. Why is kindness not common sense?”
He said this last so quietly that no one heard him.
Dust motes circled tirelessly in the afternoon sun through the window. The Night Vale Medical Association is looking to shut down the outdated asylum and replace it with a brand new state of the art treatment center, located near Grove Park. More on this story as the story has more to it.
I guess I should get into a little more detail about how Intern Victor died, since some of you might be curious. You know, I think the story starts back in my very first days as host of this radio station. After the previous host, Leonard Burton, after – umm… ehhhh.. Once I took over as host of this radio station, Victor was one of my first interns. Eager and earnest and always helpful. He was first in the station in the morning and last one out at night. His research was impeccable.Â
“That’s not true,” he would say every time I said something that wasn’t true.
“That’s not true either,” he would say.
He would say stuff like that a lot. He was very diligent.
It kind of felt like we were starting this great adventure in radio broadcasting together. I thought that some day after I… after… ehhhhh.. ummm… once I was no longer host of this radio station, perhaps Victor would be the one to take over. “Some day, Victor,” I would murmur in the quietest hours of the night shift, “Some day maybe you will be where I am now.”
“Maybe, Cecil,” he would say back into the intercom from the producer’s booth, “But for now, please stop murmuring that into the mic. We’re live right now.
Then one day he told me he was leaving. That he appreciated all the time he had spent as an intern, that he had learned a lot, but that he felt his place in the world was not with radio after all.
[sputters] “Not with radio?!” I sputtered. I simply did not understand the concept.
“If there is not community radio, then what is there? What is there besides that? Will someone tell me what else there is?”
“Thank you for our time together,” he said gently, and then he left. It would be the last time I saw him for many years.
And now a word from our sponsors. Today’s sponsor is White Claw’s new line of non-alcoholic alcoholic Seltzer beverages.
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This has been a word from our sponsors.
I didn’t finish with the story of how Intern Victor died, I guess. Ummm, let me quickly wrap that up.
So, a few years after he left, he came back again. He was older than me now with salt and pepper hair and a stiffness to his walk. When he had left, he had been several years younger than me, but time changes us all, I suppose.
“Cecil! I didn’t know if you’d still be here,” he said.
I bristled at this, hearing a perceived implication that I should have gone on to something larger, that by staying put I had allowed him to be pull ahead of me in some intangible way. So I responded with manic friendliness to compensate.
“Still here!” I shouted. “Great to see ya, buddy wo-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-how! What have you been up to?”
He told me that he had left Night Vale, gotten an apartment just outside of somewhere called Fresno, that it was difficult at first, and that he felt lonely much of the time. But that he had slowly made friends, so many friends, and had found a job that became a career that became part of his life. He worked with teenagers who were going through a tough time, seeing them through to better times. He was very well liked for what he did, and he was very good at it.
“But I’ve decided to retire,” he said. “I’m getting up in the years, you know? But wow, you don’t look like you’ve aged a day.”
“I haven’t,” I said. He was so much older than me then. I wondered where the years had gone and what I might have accomplished, if I had aged as well.
He had retired to Night Vale to be with his family and friends and the people who knew and loved him best, and relax into the soft years of his latter life. So that… wait. Well, that’s not how he died, but I have to get to this next report. I’ll finish it in a second.
And now traffic.
There was a song once sung by sailors of an island in the west,
where the sun would shine forever and not a minute less.
They say that on that island a sailor could find their rest,
finally let slip shut their eyelids on that island in the west.
But I’ve been searching, and been searching all my life, as though some cruel test,
and have never found my way to that island in the west.
There was a song once sung by sailors and I believed it, I confess.
A foul lie I still believe in, my sweet island in the west.
This has been traffic.
Intern Victor lived in Night Vale for many years more. He was active in charities and volunteer groups, continuing to offer counseling to students at the local high school. He lived in the Hefty Sycamore Trailer Park, watering a garden of flowers that he kept in pots around his trailer. It seemed that Victor was even more busy in retirement than he had been in his long career. Returning to his community seemed to invigorate him.
He helped Carlos with experiments at the labs, donning goggles and lab coats and writing down numbers with hearts around them, all of that science stuff. Carlos said he was surprisingly good at it for someone without training.
He worked with Dana at City Hall, creating the No More Pit initiative, which strove to keep one teen a year from entering that pit on Clement Street and disappearing forever. Now, the initiative was unsuccessful and the pit continues to devour but they, it was the attempt that matters.
He acted as a volunteer lifeguard at the Waterfront Recreation Area, at which he saved a record five people in one day from drowning! A truly astounding record when you consider that there is no water at the Waterfront Recreation Area, Night Vale having an entirely arid climate.
Yes, Intern Victor was accomplished and well liked. He would have made a fine host at this radio station some day, but he never showed much interest, which is a pity. Because after I… After, well… Who will take up that mantle? Not Victor, not anymore.
Well, I guess I still haven’t told the story of how he died.
Uh, let me do that just
After the weather.Â
[A List for Spring” by Joseph Fink https://josephfink.bandcamp.com/]
Victor was in bed. The curatin over the window shifted slightly in the breeze, so the sun flickered in the room, shadow and bright, like a message from the world outside that he would never live to understand.
His breath felt like a finite quantity, slowly drawn out of his chest. He knew that the last of it was coming soon. He wanted to use the drags of his breath for words that would sum up his life, but he couldn’t think of any. He could only think of “I am tired”. He could only think of “Thank you for being here.” He could only think of “I wish I had more time”, although eh didn’t know what he would have done with that time if he had any.Â
Around his bed were the people who had known him throughout his life. There was his sister Carly, and his brother Herman, and his aunt Ronnie, ancient and brittle but apparently destined to outlive him. There was his friend from college, Norm, whose hands shook as he looked into Victor’s eyes. There was former mayor Dana and her brother, leaning into each other in sorrow, keeping each other upright as a family creature of grief. There was Carlos in an understated lab coat, frowning. There was nothing more scientific than death, and yet Carlos hated the fact of it. And he wrestled with the contradiction within himself.
Some natural processes feel unnatural, no matter how many times they occur to us, they are a surprise that our whole life spends telegraphing.
In the corner was Rosario, one of the teenagers Victor had worked with back in Fresno, who had eventually moved to Night Vale after getting lost in the shelves of a strange antique shop and waking up in the vacant lot out back of the Ralphs. She was middle-aged now, her face glistened with tears.
“Everything I am is because of you,” she said.
Victor snorted. “Don’t blame me,” he said with one of those last precious breaths. And she grinned despite herself.
“You were the first person that cared about who I was,” she said. “I’ll never forget you.”
“Already I’m in past tense,” he said, but he grabbed her hand and clasped it in a fervent silent thank you. Because she was testament that he had been useful, and there was nothing more important in a human life than to be useful to other people.
I was there too, and I stepped forward.
“You were the best intern I ever had,” I said.
“I know,” he said, and he winked.
It can be… strange when we first meet someone when they are young and just started out, and are in the entry positions in the career they want, to realize they have the potential for an entire life. Victor ended up a great man. A man with deep roots in the community. A man who went from 10 years younger than me to several decades older than me. And I… well, I still think of him as an intern, and I suppose I always will, but his potential was realized upon the lives of everyone in that room, and many other lives still.
A strong breeze came through the window and the flickering of light increased, as though that incoherent messenger was getting more frantic to be understood. Victor knew that his finite breaths had reached their last few. And he did not use them to say anything at all. He smiled, and met each of our eyes, and then…
And then after…
To the family and friends of Intern Victor.
To the family.
To our families, blood or chosen.
They are the net on which we can fall again and again.
To the friends, to our friends.
The people who make life worth living. Who help us when we need help. Who we help when we need to help.
Intern Victor was a good intern. He was a good person.
He is gone. We are here.
Let’s make ourselves useful.
To all families. To all friends.
Stay tuned next for a tall glass of water greedily, drunk by a person who did not realize they were thirsty until the liquid hit their lips.
Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.
Today’s proverb: Earth is technically a sandwich, where the upper bread is stars and the lower bread is stars and the filling is rock and lava and a few incidental humans.
Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out
Against the sky
And pick up some Dell Taco for dinner.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Beyond our town, past the Sand Wastes, in the Scrublands, sits the old general store. An oaken cabin style A-frame with boxed windows and a covered patio. On the porch there sits a swinging bench and upon that bench sits an elderly man, his face crumpled like a discarded letter, his eyes like tire tracks hidden beneath the shady brim of a straw cowboy hat.
The old man holds a block of Elmwood the size of a potato in his right hand, and in his left, a carving jack. He whittles away at the knot of food, shaving off small corners, making detailed lines and indentations. The wood is all his world. And this world is quiet in his lap, on his bench, on his patio, before his general store amid the Scrublands past the Sand Wastes, which curl about Night Vale like the gentle but calloused hands of a father holding a newborn.
As the old man whittles, he whistles sad songs with no words. But all those who hear the notes know they are bout loss. That they are about loneliness. But no one hears those notes. Not yet. No one sees the old whittler, nor his general store far out in an uninhabited stretch of desert. Not yet. If they did, they would wonder how an old general store, which was not there yesterday, was suddenly here today, a shop that by all accounts had weathered decades of abusive heat, wind, and isolation. They would hear his sad song, and the universal language of wistful sorrow would hide from them their understanding of time.
Let’s have a look now at sports.
This Saturday night, the Night Vale High School Scorpions basketball team begins the district tournament. The Scorpions, having finished the season 18-2, earned the number 1 seat this year, but face some tough competition in their bracket. In the first round, they must battle another basketball team. This is logical, because most basketball tournaments feature other basketball teams. But the other basketball team is considered weaker than the Night Vale Scorpions, because a series of accumulated numbers indicates this is so.
Should the Scorpions make it out of the first round and into the semi-finals, they would likely battle the number 4 seed, Nature. A tougher matchup to be sure, as Nature is unpredictable and ubiquitous. Nature’s style of play is best described as capricious and random, sometimes showcasing an array of flashy skills like sunny days, crystalline lakes, and otters. But Nature is a lockdown defensive force with effective momentum stoppers like lightning, quicksand, and poison ivy.
And in the finals, the favorites to compete for the title are Night Vale High School versus themselves, perhaps the toughest battle of them all, as each player must confront their harmful secrets, painful pasts, and darkest nightmares. Themselves are able to match the pace and power of Night Vale’s offensive and defensive sets, and we expect an excellent game.
Good luck, Scorpions! Â
Most days the Scrublands are absent of humans, unapproachable and hostile. Today is not most days, as a line of Night Vale citizens has formed outside of the general store to see the old whittler and his wood menagerie. Parents ask for photos of their children with his work, and he only whistles and nods nearly imperceptibly. It could almost be interpreted as a slight twitch of the neck, rather than an affirming nod, but interpretations grow liberal when want is high.
Fathers and mothers snap pictures on their phones of children accepting gifts of wood figurines from the old man. The kids stare into the thin black ellipses that pass for his eyes, searching for the charming smile of elderly approval. But instead, seeing every single constellation of the night sky inside slits as thin as thistles and as black as tar. The historic expansion of the universe cannot be fully understood in words or even human thought, but it can be comprehended in the eyes of the tanned, wrinkled stranger.
The old whittler does not charge a penny for any of his work. He does not smile nor accept the many thank-yous coaxed out of the young ones by their manner-minded handlers. Nor does he accept requests. Children have many mascots, heroes, and cartoons that they love to possess via keepsake totems, and they repeatedly ask the old man for whittled representations of their favorite things, like Pokemon characters or one of Pixar’s anthropomorphic cars, or even Ted Allen, host of Food Network’s long running cooking competition “Chopped”.
But the old whittler only carves what he carves. And he carves tiny horses, little cowboys, old-timey wagons, armadillos, tigers, tractors, almost anything you can think of. He finishes his sculpture of a koala bear and hands it to Amber Akinyi, who looks at her husband Wilson Levy, who is holding their sobbing, screaming 16-month-old baby Flora. The couple smiles together, never knowing that this balsa koala is everything they could have ever wanted beyond a loving family. Wilson begins to cry at the simple beauty of this craft. Amber begins to cry at the feeling of being understood, and young Flora stops crying as she fawns over the 6-inch tall antipodean marsupial, cartoonishly gnawing on a eucalyptus leaf.
The whittler also carves people. Small human figures, yes, like firefighters and ballerinas and clowns, but also actual people. Harrison Kip told the old man he wished to be happier in his own skin, and the old whittler grabbed Harrison’s cheeks and brought Harrison’s round, soft face before his own crinkled countenance, and Harrison screamed. He screamed in fear of what the old man was about to do. He also screamed in joyous anticipation, and the two screams were discordant like adjacent keys pressed simultaneously on a church organ.
The old whittler pressed his knife against Harrison’s chin and began to pull the blade back, using the force of his thumb and the trunk of his forefinger. He repeated throughout Harrison’s assenting and defiant shouts, and after a few moments, Harrison stopped yelling and stood. His jaw squarer, his nose thinner and longer, his shoulders broader. And Harrison smiled.
Soon, the whittler began carving houses, roads, and city buildings. They were larger than the koala, much larger, for they were full-sized renditions of these things. He sliced and sawed away at block after block of red oak, hackberry and peachwood, forming new arteries of city travel, whole blocks of residences, and even cultural landmarks and venues. And the town of Night Vale, in a single late morning, began to expand into the distant and uninhabitable Scrublands of our desert.
Let’s have a look now at horoscopes.
Gemini. Bury yourself in your work today, Gemini. Pile that garbage high and rest your weary head beneath its odorous, but comforting weight.
Cancer. No more Mr. Nice Guy, Cancer. Today you are Mrs. Disinterested Lady. Get out there and be uninvolved in everything.
Leo. You’re the talk of the town, Leo. Word after word is about you, and it is juicy! Like a rare steak, like a blood orange. Juicy like 2008 coutoure. Whew! You should hear what they’re saying.
Virgo. You are not what you seem to be, Virgo. You seem to be a blackberry shrub, overreaching and prickly. But really you are a human, squishy and small. Continue to be the thorny fruit-bearing bush, though.
Libra. You seek balance, Libra, but you are as lopsided as wealth disparity graph in an economist’s classroom. Share your worth, distribute your value fairly and compassionately, Libra, for the villagers are sharpening their tools.
Scorpio. Hey Steve, love you pal!Â
Sagittarius. Your (-) [0:10:42] in relationships is going to be your downfall, Sagittarius. You’re an obsidian monolith, towering over everyone, absorbing all light, except the faint reflection of those who want to know what glows inside your stony façade. You don’t have to be a diamond, Sagittarius, or even quartz. Just try for salt lick, OK? I think you can achieve that.Â
Capricorn. Oh the games you play, Capricorn, you wicked little sea goat! You naughty caprine ocean dweller with your horns and scales, vexing us with your riddles and labyrinthian logic! The stars offer no advice for you, Capricorn, only envious praise.
Aquarius. Put your money where your mouth is, but wash that money first, Aquarius. It’s been in so many other people’s mouths, ever since we added Jolly Ranchers as legal currency.
Pisces. You’re swimming upstream, Pisces. Figuratively speaking, of course. I mean you are a human who does not need to actually swim upstream for food or a mate. Get out of the metaphorical stream and avoid the damage you’re going to do to your body and soul. Except for you, Tim. You’re a woodchuck, who is literally swimming upstream. I don’t like you, Tim, because you are eating my tulips. You can drown.
Aries. Fake it til you pretend to make it, Aries.
Taurus. Don’t hide your feelings, Taurus! Frame them! Display them ostentatiously on the wall. Mount them on plinths behind velvet robed (-) [0:12:33]. Curate an exhibit of your feelings, Taurus. Charge admission.
And now the news.
The Night Vale City Council deliberated today on whether the old whittler in front of the old general store in the Scrublands was friend or foe to our town. Those voices arguing in favor of the old man celebrated the huge municipal expansion he was creating so quickly onto undeveloped land.Â
“This new infrastructure would have taken us dozens of years and millions of dollars to deploy, and he has accomplished it all in half day!” these voices said in unison. “Plus,” they added, “he whittled a little army man for my kid, a bracelet for my wife, and a sweater for our cat. It’s everything we ever wanted!”
The dissenting voices, and they were few, could only argue that he failed to acquire proper permits for any of this construction, let alone an outdoor vendor’s license which is mandatory even for giveaways. Excepting restaurant samples, marketing promotions, and military dispersion of chemtrails.
The many-voiced, uni-bodied creature that is the City Council, huffed in nearly unanimous support for this old man. His sad whistling, his prolific whittling, and his beneficence to our city.
“Did you see?” said there of the voices, “that inside the general store there’s everything you could ever need. Cans, boxes, shelves, counters! Walls. It’s amazing. Everything is craved from a single block of wood, and it’s all connected! No glue or bolts or rivets anywhere.”
“He’s a deft hand,” concurred four other voices.
“How does he even find single blocks of wood that huge?” wondered a solo voice aloud.
“Whatever!” the entire City Council roared in unison. “That old man is a superb whittler!”
And now financial news.
[hysterical laughter Ha ha hahahaha hahaha every-everything’s fine! It’s just dandy! Uh, thank you for asking.
And now back to our top story.
Out in the Scrublands, an entire wooden suburb has grown from the withered hands and sharp knife of the old whittler, who has for the first time today, moved from the porch of his general store. He stands now upon a stage, a round platform on the center of a great amphitheater, which he personally carved deep into the cracked, red rock of the desert floor.
The people of Night Vale gather and sit on wood plank rows, which curve in a semi-circle around the old man on the stage. Each person in attendance holds in their hands a whittled object given to them as they entered the audience space. The items are all different, esoteric, and unique, each item and unexpected gift of the whittler. Each item the very thing they have always wanted, even if it was never what they thought they wanted. They hold gently their presents, protecting them with their very lives.
The whittler, with his straw hat still shading his keyhole eyes and riverbend mouth, stands before the people of Night Vale who sit in an arena of his own making, each cradling a beloved statuette of his own making.
The old man reaches out and takes the hand of his bride. She, of course, is of his own making as well. She is craved of weeping cedar. Her veil, though entirely wood, is somehow translucent, and her sorrowful eyes are faintly visible behind the intricate work of the whittler’s blade.
The old man whistles once again, and the crowd whistles along with him. They know the song now. It lives in them like longing, like blood. Like a soul. They know every word of the wordless (-) [0:16:51], and the notes of loneliness spread across the Scrublands to the mountains’ edge and echo back in the key of hope, with a lilt of contentment and satisfaction. They will only be happy when he is happy and he is, indeed, happy.
As the whittler clutches the hand of his newly carved betrothed, the clouds part, revealing the happiest thing of all:
The weather.
[“Embroidery Stars” by Carrie Elkin http://carrieelkin.com/]
Into the Scrublands I went, myself already as happy as I could ever be for I was with my own true love, my husband. I journeyed to see the whittler for myself, as an effort of journalism, a chronicler of interesting events. I wanted for nothing. My happiness cannot be improved. Or so I believed.
When I arrived, the whittler more than 100 feet a way, and through a mass of thousands, greeted me with a nod so unobtrusive, I believed it to be a trick of the eye. But from the distance, I could see the whole of the universe in those dark eyes under dark shadow, behind the final violet of sunset. I knew he meant me.
Carlos and I stepped to the podium, and the old man opened his palm to reveal an original carving just for me. I had hoped it was a Nintendo Switch, but it was a [sea plane] [0:23:05]. Carlos, like a child on Santa’s lap, cooed and asked the old man for a superconductive supercollider. And the old whittler, his burlap cheeks heavy with gravity and history, reached into the breast pocket of his (-) shirt and handed Carlos a tiny wooden rose. Carlos hugged his rose to his chest, and I my (sea plane). The whittler took the hand again off his bride and gazed upon her, her veiled eyes met by his boundless stare. They stood like that for more than an hour, not speaking. The only sounds were the cicadas chirping and the crowd whistling.
But the tune faded, and soon only the cicadas cut through the silence of a still desert twilight. And one of us, Larry Leroy, stood and walked on to the stage. He touched the old man’s shoulder. The old man did not turn. He did not speak. He collapsed into black ash. Then his bride, then the seats beneath us, it all gave way to crumbling nothing. Then the buildings and roads and even the general store turned into ash. Finally, every one of our object dissipated, like Eurydice almost free from Hades. A gentle cool breeze arrived to sweep our hope away.
We returned home, wordless, with occasional whistles of the whittler’s tune, once again in a sad and lonesome key. Our cherished gifts, we told ourselves, were nothing more than baubles, ephemera, however blessed or magical. They were mere things, not love, not family, not true love, they were objects, toys. Props. Distractions. They were everything we have ever wanted, because we could hold them, see them, touch them. We can no longer do that, but we can remember what it was like. The rough of the wood against the soft of our hand.
Stay tuned next for our new game show:
“Name all the nouns!”
And as always,
good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.
Today’s proverb: Give a man and a fish and he’ll wonder what your deal is. Teach a man to fish and he’ll ask you once again to please leave him alone.
Life is 10 per cent what happens to you
And 90 per cent false memories of what you think happened to you.
Welcome to Night Vale.
In an effort to bring more transparency to the Sheriff’s Secret Police, a chronicle of one night’s dispatches will be released to the public. This action comes at the behest of the City Council, who voted unanimously on a resolution to ban plastic bags.
Now, OK, while those two things may not seem related, Sheriff Sam misunderstood the vote as a rallying cry against tyrannical surveillance and a personal threat, involving being thrown to the pit of vipers behind the bowling alley. Sheriff Sam, who has a paralyzing fear of vipers, proposed a compromise in which Secret Police dispatches would be temporarily divulged, so the public can get a better idea of what agency does and how tax dollars are being spent. A plan which was readily accepted by the Council, though they continued to roll their eyes and gnash their teeth and chant softly: [creepy voice] “Viper pit! Viper pit! Blessed be the viper pit!”
Which is just how they express a “yay” vote on procedural issues.
As a result, Night Vale has its first ever police blotter. Let’s dig in.
9 o’clock PM. Missing person reported inside the Ralphs. Night manager on duty says employee went to stock some cases of Lime-A-Ritas in the new walk-in beer cave and never came out. Reporting officer thoroughly checked beer cave and confirmed it was deserted. Three cases of the beverage were left haphazardly in the middle of the floor, and a loading dolly had tipped over onto its side. Manager states employee originally brought in four cases. Manager added one missing case of Lime-A-Ritas to the report. When asked if this kind of thing has happened before, manager changed subject and asked if officer would like to look at some of the children’s drawing contest submissions. Officer was amenable to this request.
9:16 PM. Noise complaint. Dog barking in an unknown language annoying residents. Dirty white fur, human face. Gone when officer arrived on scene.
9:25 PM. Two underage residents attempted to sneak into an R-rated movie by pretending to be one tall person in a trench coat. When confronted by officer, they turned into a swarm of flies and dispersed.
10:01 PM. Noise complaint. A sound resembling television static was being emitted from a shower drain out in the Hefty Sycamore trailer park. When recorded and played backwards, it turned out to be a broadcast from a 1952 episode of the game show “Beat the Clock”, where contestants competed to see how many pieces they could smash a clock into. A plumber was called.
10:15 PM. A resident of Desert Creek searched for “easy tortellini recipes”, but none of them were easy enough. It was so late already, and they needed to get to bed soon, but they were also very hungry and needed to eat dinner first. They wanted something quick, but they also wanted a real dinner, not a false dinner like… cereal? They became hyperaware that the more they deliberated on what to make, the longer it was all taking. And factoring in the decision-making time on top of the meal prep time was becoming additionally stressful in relation to the desire to get to bed soon.
11:30 PM. A Coyote Corner’s swimming pool filled with blood and began swirling furiously in a counter-clockwise direction. Home owner appeared distressed. Officer advised home owner to drain pool.
11:31 PM. Multiple residents awoke in a cold sweat from the same dream. It wasn’t necessarily a nightmare, but it was definitely not pleasant. The only thing they could recall afterwards was that it was showing, and that there was a tree with seven limbs.
12:00 AM. Witches.
2:00 AM. That time of night when everything starts getting hazy. Were you headed to a crime? Checking a surveillance station? Listening to a wiretap? Going home? Returning to headquarters? Signalling an invisible helicopter? Sometimes you lose track. An old local legend comes into your mind, and you try to recall the details. It’s been so long since you heard it. You watch the headlights bounce along the dirt road ahead, and your eyes begin to play tricks on you, sensing movement in the dark margins where the light doesn’t penetrate. You turn off the lights and slow the vehicle. They weren’t tricks after all. There is movement here, a dark writhing mass entering the roadway.
You are forced to stop the car. Eyes flesh open in the dark. Many sets of eyes. This isn’t part of a half-remembered legend. This is something very, very real.
More of the blotter soon. But first, let’s have a look at traffic.
You’re hunting in a pack near the Old Highway. The smell of blood is in the air. Headlights bounce over the rise and your stomachs rumble. The moon flees behind the clouds and you fan out, along both sides of the road, moving parallel to it like a lazy river. The car approaches and slows. It shuts off its headlights, as you knew it would. Some of you push ahead to the car, blocking its path. Others move to the rear and others remain at the sides boxing it in. You converge, surrounding it more tightly the door opens, then closes again, the fleshy creature inside cursing softly.
You hear a crackle of radio static, but you know it is inconsequential to you. You consume the metal shell first. There are explosions of air and the hiss of leaking fluids. Then the glass, crunchy and cool in your collective gullet. And finally, the screaming delicacy in the center, the cloth-wrapped package of meat and bone.
There are other things afterward, less enjoyable, but consumable nonetheless. Papers and electronics, and the pleather, and cold French fries in the back. Nothing must remain.
By the time the moon emerges from the clouds, the old highway will be deserted once more.
This has been traffic.
And now a word from our sponsors. Today’s show is brought to you by TickTock. The only app that tells you exactly how long you have left to live. The sleek countdown display synchs easily with all of your devices, so that you can check your mortality at a glance. The premium edition provides additional details, such as manner and location of death, and updates to the minute, as you make different choices throughout your day. You’ll find yourself asking questions like, why did returning a library book just subtract 4 years from my life? How did leaving late for work change my final outcome from drowning in gulch to birds of prey? Why does it say “tomorrow” all of a sudden? [panicking] It must be some kind of glitch, right? OK, OK, I’ve updated the app but it still hasn’t changed. It still says “tomorrow”. I just got checked out by a doctor and they said I’m in great shape, I’m staying home from work, I’m not answering the door, I’ve closed the blinds and I’m sitting on the couch, surrounded by pillows, not moving, not even blinking, I’ve done everything dammit, EVERYTHING!!! WHY DOES IT STILL SAY “TOMORROW”???!!
Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.
This has been a word from our sponsors.
Back to the Sheriff’s Secret Police blotter.
2:30 AM. Responded to an officer distress call on the Old Highway. No sign of officer or vehicle found. Must have been a false alarm.
3:15 AM. Nude man ranting in middle of old highway, carrying a case of alcoholic beverages. Identified as the night shift stocker at the Ralphs. Claims he entered the walk-in refrigerator at work, reached up to place the case of beverages on the shelf, and abruptly found himself in a network of ice caves. He eventually climbed up a snowy mountain where he met a robed figure he refers to as “The Oracle”. “The Oracle” foretold of a hungry darkness with a thousand eyes and urged that the portal must be cloooosed. The Ralphs employee also reported that “The Oracle” had slurred speech and seemed unsteady on its feet, and may have been inebriated. After this exchange, he then found himself standing in the Sand Wastes nude. He does not know where his clothes are. Officer escorted man back to the Ralphs to finish out his shift.
3:35 AM. Domestic disturbance.
“He won’t stop practicing the flute!” a Cactus Bloom resident reported, indicating his dopplegänger who stood in the corner of the bedroom, staring unblinkingly at the wall and playing the same halting scale on a wooden flute. Officer advised resident to take a melatonin and try to get some sleep.
“If he doesn’t stop, I can’t be held responsible!” the sleep-deprived resident threatened.
“Sounds fair,” the officer agreed and left the premises.
4:00 AM. An alarm clock went off in Old Town. A woman attempted to get out of bed, but her cat walked sleepily onto her person and began purring, preventing her from rising. Her cat is elderly and the woman knows its number of purrs are finite and must be honored. Eventually, she put on coffee and took a shower. She used Herbal Solution shampoo for a lifelong dandruff condition, though she has not seen any improvement after years of using the products. She continues using it, because she likes the way it smells. It smells medicinal, like it’s helping, and it does tingle, like the label promises. The tingle means it’s working, the label says. So it must be working.
And now a break form the police blotter for some sports news.
Night Vale High School – go Scorpions! – has added a concession stand to be used during sporting events. The parent-teacher association proudly unveiled the new stand at last week’s baseball game, dedicating the plywood structure to the memory of favorite AP auto shop teacher, Nick Teller. Teller reacted with confusion at this news, as he is still alive. “Oh, of co-, no, of course you are,” the PTA responded awkwardly, “but we just wanted to honor – your memory, as in what a great memory you have. You-you know how you’re really good at remembering stuff? We just wanted to, yeah uh, honor that,” the PTA went on, seemingly unable to stop explaining themselves, whilst standing in front of the dedication plaque, which featured several doves, a Celtic cross, and an image of clasped hands. Teller admitted he does have an excellent memory and is very honored.
The following concessions are available at the Teller memorial stand:
Special allowances, the granting of rights, the acceptance of certain things as truth, the yielding of certain other things as untruth. Also, RC Cola and popcorn.
Oh, which reminds me, we actually have another word from our sponsor, Royal Crown Cola. Invented by Ferdinand the 1st, king of Naples, who built a museum of mummies inside his palace to house the bodies of his slain enemies. “I am parched from building this museum of mummies,” he famously said, and the rest is history.
RC Cola – the drink of ruthless monarchs.
In local news, I have the results of the Ralphs drawing contest. Local school children were encouraged to submit a drawing to the store this week, depicting their favorite Ralphs product. I’ll start with the runners up.
The third place drawing comes to us from Ella Snider, a student from Night Vale Elementary, and it shows a large black scribbled mass with a lot of eyes on it, with the Ralphs building on fire in the background. Very creative, Ella!
The second place drawing comes from Jace McCoy, also from Night Vale Elementary, and this one also shows a black mass with many eyes and a big bright red splatter of blood across the page. Nice use of color, Jace!
And the grand price winner comes to us from Heather (Fathusam) [0:16:52] of Daggers Plunge Charter School. Her drawing features a beautiful black mass with lots of lovely eyes, and it’s holding a box of store brand frozen pizza rolls. Congratulations, Heather!
Back to the blotter.
4:01 AM. Distress call from the Ralphs. Upon arrival, officer was pulled into the manager’s office. The employee from the earlier incident was also present, huddled under a desk. Manager frantically indicated the surveillance window that looks out into the store, which he normally uses to spy on shoppers and report on what they are wearing for his Customer Fashion newsletter.
Shelves of products were being knocked over and consumed by a vast dark nothingness. The back of the store then burst into flames.
The manager implored the officer to quote, “Do something, please, or we’ll all be killed!”
Officer used the intercom system to tell the nothingness to vacate the store immediately, and advised it of trespass and vandalism laws. The nothingness took the form of many dark shapes with many eyes. A tank of fresh seafood exploded and numerous shellfish were damaged. Officer advised the shapes that they were all under arrest.
“Stop talking to it!” the manager cried and knocked the intercom mic out of the officer’s hand.
Approximately 1000 eyes turned to look at the office window.
Interesting. Well.
Let’s have a look at that weather.
[“Best Friends” by Curtains: https://curtains.bandcamp.com/]
4:35 AM. Situation escalated at the Ralphs. Officer, manager and employee embraced one another under the office desk amid the shattered glass of the surveillance window. The building trembled around them, products flew through the air, half the inventory was sucked into oblivion, and a great fire blazed, spreading to the bakery section. After doing an estimated 200,000 dollars worth of damage, the darkness and its many eyes entered the beer cave and did not come back out.
Officer investigated the beer cave and found it to be empty.
“You have to shut down the cave!” the Ralphs employee implored the manager. “That’s its doorway to our world!”
The manager hedged and responded that a big heat wave was coming and if they hoped to recoup any of their losses, keeping the beer cave open was going to be instrumental to the store’s survival.
“People will spend big on frosty cold beverages,” the manager responded. “Not to mention they’re gonna like standing around in there for a nice cool-down.”
The employee wrapped his robe tightly around himself. Oh, the manager had lent him the robe, one of the many fashion items the manager kept in his collection, since the employee still didn’t know where his clothes had gone.
“OK,” the employee said. He picked up a Lime-A-Rita and guzzled it down in one continuous gulp.
Then he said, his voice already a little slurred: “I’ll have to try to shhhhtop it myself.”
He ran into the beer cave and promptly vanished.
5:40 AM. Tree with seven limbs seen growing out of a hole in the vacant lot out back of the Ralphs. Snow observed on the branches, which melted off quickly as the sun rose.
5:45 AM. Real pretty sunrise.
Well, that concludes our Secret Police blotter. I dunno about the rest of you, but I personally feel a lot more safe and secure getting a closer look at what our Secret Police do. On behalf of Night Vale Community Radio, thank you for your service. I’m sure we will all rest a lot easier knowing that our fate is in your hands.
Our sleeping bodies are under your watchful eye, and our every thought and action is being monitored for the greater good.
As Secret Police mascot Barks Ennui always says:
Stay tuned, stay, vigilant, report your neighbors.
Woof. Woof.
Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.
Today’s proverb: Six out of seven dentists have no idea where that seventh one disappeared to. Honest, they all have rock solid alibis and that blood could have belonged to anyone.
Spring reveals nature’s secret
That death is reversible.
Welcome to Night Vale.
The worst part is not the tall plumes of smoke. Nor the destroyed cars and buildings, nor the armed desert cult marching through the streets. It is the silence. The absence of sirens echoing across the valley. The absence of help. the absence of hope that help will happen. And now the absence even of screams.
The clan of passengers of Delta flight 18713 prowls the streets of our town, seeking those who hide, those who resist. They know there are few of us left who have not been subsumed by their leader’s commands. And those of us who do remain will be captured and eventually killed. They must know I am here, hiding, talking, resisting. They must see our radio antenna, our station sign, hear our broadcasts.
The pilot knows who I am, delights in having inhabited my mind a couple weeks go to speak his foul truth. He holds out some hope that he can re-enter my brain, squeeze it tight with his calm convincing voice. I remain alive because the pilot wants me in my job. Wants me on his side.
I hope for solution. I hope my own voice empowers those who are still free to rise up, to fight back, but so far – nothing. I no longer hope to find Amelia Anna Alfaro who was always the best at everything and who disappeared eight years ago to loo for Delta flight 18713. I no longer hope that Amelia Anna Alfaro will be found or that she will save us because she is found. She will not save us.
Amelia stands at the top step of the Night Vale City Hall. Behind her is the multi-headed, single-bodied entity that is City Council. Amelia and the City Council are both fully under the control of the pilot. Amelia Anna Alfaro found the missing passengers of flight 18713, and then was enjoined by the pilot to join them.
When the pilot makes contact with your brain, he does not speak to you at first. He does not begin with a plea, with a mission, with a request or command. He first forces you to hear the lives of his passengers, innocents who boarded Delta flight 18713 from Detroit to Albany on June 15, 2012. You hear a mother calming her child, you hear giggling teenage boys, you hear middle-aged men telling each other the same stories they have told each other for years on end. You hear about vacations and jobs and families and favorite books and unrealized dreams, you hear it all until you accept the mundane comfort and intimacy of community, until you are lulled into a willingness to hear anything – and then you hear the pilot. And you hear his message. The words of his message are about nature’s beauty. The words express loving respect that all nature is beautiful. But the message is not the words. It’s what’s encoded within them, the message is that all who are not beautiful are an affront to nature.
His power of unspoken oration, of invisible influence, allows his hatred to metastasize, to become an active assault rather than an idle grumble. It is difficult to stop his voice from entering your head. Nearly impossible. I am not able to do it on my own. Carlos sits with me still in my studio. When I talk to Carlos, I do not hear the voice of the pilot nor his passengers. Charles Rainier, the former warden of the Night Vale Asylum, went fishing to keep his mind clear. Tamika Flynn has taken to listening to the audio book of Emily St. John Mandel’s bestselling novel “Station 11”, which is narrated by Night Vale’s own Lee Marvin who, by the way, turns 32 next month. Happy early birthday, Lee, if you can hear me.
I have found that Carlos calms me, centers me, silences the echoes of 100 different people, 100 different thoughts in my head, none of which are my own. If you know what centers you, do that immediately.
The streets are quiet, Night Vale. I hope some of you can hear me. I hope some of you are staying out of sight, out of reach. If you can, come together, find each other. Perhaps we can overpower these invaders of our peace, but the pilot hides from any potential counterattack, and if we can’t stop him, can’t cut out the brain of his insurgency… I believe our hopes are lost. Our end is near.
The last hope I had stands on the top step of City Hall rallying her mindless clan on a ruthless scouring of our city. Amelia Anna Alfaro was always the best at everything, and the pilot knows that. It is why he chose her as his chief strategist, his general, his right hand.
They will push beyond Night Vale soon. To Red Mesa and Pine Cliff, and to the rest of the state, and beyond.
More people are brought to City Hall as I speak, and Amelia flanked by Doug Biondi delivers their sentence, their punishment for resistance. Their fate for lacking beauty in the eyes of a truly hateful man. Their sentence is to be tied together and held in the rock garden lining the outer lawn of City Hall. Once every person in Night Vale has been gathered in one place, the pilot will make one last attempt to overtake our minds as a group, to grow his army tenfold. He may succeed with some and the remainder – will be executed.
The pilot believes in his own specific definition of beauty. He believes those who fail to be good enough specimens of nature, of humanity, must be removed from the genetic pool. Every few hours, another group of prisoners crouches before Amelia, and another group receives immediate conviction.
As Amelia stands in judgment before the most recently indicted, she pauses. One of the captured is standing in defiance. In response to this rebellious act, Doug Biondi, still wearing his asylum-issued coveralls, raises a handmade curved blade, but Amelia stops him. The one standing is Yvette Alfaro. It is Amelia’s mother. She begs Amelia to recognize her own family and to have mercy. But Amelia’s eyes show no hint of relenting.
Yvette tells Amelia she always loved her, was always proud of her, but that her motherly pride was sometimes a selfish price.
“You were a story I wrote for myself to tell my friends,” Yvette says contritely. “I did not let you tell your own story. I should have been proud of you for what you achieved, for yourself. Happy for your happiness. But I saw you as a way to better me. I’m sorry, Amelia,” Yvette tells her only child, and then hands Amelia a note. “Please read this. It’s all I ask that you do for your mother. Read what I wrote,” Yvette says.
Without even glancing at the paper, Amelia crumples it into a ball, her face reddens, and her eyes blacken, as she pushes her mother back down to her knees.
With a nod of Amelia’s head, the brainwashed and ever growing clan of flight 18713 ties up the new prisoners and pushes them into the rock garden, until every remaining person in town has been drawn together for the pilot. And the last who resist his voice will be destroyed. A rotten harvest to be composted for a more promising crop.
If you can hear my voice, you are one of the last left. We cannot see the pilot, but he can see us, and it is not long until his minions are here with me, or there with you, Night Vale. We are the last to be reaped, the last to be gathered.
They stalk outside my studio now! Climbing the walls, smashing in windows, knocking down doors. I-I can hear them in the hallways behind me. Carlos is barring the door to the studio, but I know it will not hold! Carlos, do as you promised and run! I will stay focused, I will keep my head safe, I will take us all
To the weather!
[“The Stolen Century” by Ellen Beizer: http://ellenclairebeizer.com]
I am captured, Night Vale. So is Carlos.
I can’t see where they took him, so I keep my eyes closed and imagine Carlos’ face.  I keep talking to this image of Carlos to protect my thoughts from the pilot’s voice. The ragged, empty-minded clan of flight 18713 pushes me into a larger group of captives. I still do not see Carlos, but I see the violent hungry faces of those under the pilot’s control. I see two teenage boys who are secretly mad for each other. I see a middle-aged man who either went to New Orleans or heard about New Orleans so much that he might as well have gone.
I see the people who inhabited my mind. Whose voices were used to hypnotize me, to lay the psychological groundwork for the pilot. And I hear them. I hear their voices coming from their mouths, live, in real time. But I hear them in my head too! Separate from their bodies. And I think of Carlos again, trying to stop the echoes, [very quietly] return to silence and clarity.
They lead our group. I with my head down, eyes closed, quietly conversing with an imaginary Carlos, to the steps of City Hall. To the feet of the ruthless Amelia Anna Alfaro.
Ohh, [quietly] but she’s not ruthless. She is compromised. I do not know how to convince her of this, if her own mother could not. Even still immediately we are denounced as resistors and tied up with the other uncooperative prisoners, wriggling uselessly in their bindings along the rock garden. The last of those who refused to join the 18713 have been gathered together. Amelia knows she has quickly and thoroughly sorted out entire town into the recruited and the renounced. She was always the best at everything.
At this moment, the pilot emerges from the front doors of City Hall. Amelia and the rest of the 18713 look on him with awe. And it occurs to me they have never seen him in person. Only heard his voice. The enormity of his legend is evidence in the gaping maw and sparkling dark eyes of Amelia Anna Alfaro.
The pilot does not visibly speak, yet I can hear him in my head. Each of us can her a personalized appeal from him in our minds.
[deep creepy voice] “Cecillll,” he says to me. “You have a beautiful voice. Think of how much beauty we can share together. Think of your voice, carried miles through the air like dandelion seeds. Spreading our message of nature’s true beauty to everyone in the desert. To everyone beyonddd the desert. You are chosennn Cecillllll. Beeeeeee. My. Voiccccce.”
I think of Carlos’ face. I say aloud to my imagined Carlos: the first time you called me, I knew you liked me. Even though you avoided my flirting. I thought you were trying to be professional, Carlos, playing ignorant, but you weren’t. you were shy. You didn’t know how to ask. And I knew I loved you.
My mind remains clear as I talk, but I see several of the remainders sturgling to ignore the pilot’s voice permeating their every thought. A few lose the fight and join his clan. He is too far from me, too far from any o the rest of us to reach him, to subdue him, to kill him, to get back my mind, to get back my town, to get back my Carlos.
When the pilot’s final pleas and patience expire, he walks down the paved path and stands next to Amelia Anna Alfaro. Then he says, for the first time using his mouth: “None of them are beautiful! None of them are nature! None of them can live!”
Amelia stares at him like a star struck fan in the presence of a Hollywood celebrity. Doug Biondi, next to her, holds up his crooked blade. The angel of death wears electric blue coveralls, and the 18713 raise their weapons too, glaring at the last of us tied up a the rock garden. I search in vain for Carlos one last time, battling the sick truth that we are born and we will die alone. And Amelia Anna Alfaro raises her hand.
Inside her hand is a ball of paper. Seeming confused about how it got there, she unfurls it. Smoothing out the wrinkles with her fingers, she examines the paper. There is a long silence.
“Should I do it or what? Amelia?” Doug Biondi asks, anxious to get to the killing part.
I now see what Amelia sees. I cannot read what is written on the paper, but I know what is there. They’re words from her mother, written in code. In a puzzle. The one place Amelia’s mind can hide from the voices, from the voice of the pilot, is in puzzles.
Amelia says: “It is my responsibility to destroy that which is not beautiful. Give me the blade, Doug.”
Doug, reluctantly, does so.
Still staring at the paper, she pulls the blade behind her shoulder and says: “You come from nowhere, and that is where you shall return.”
She splashes the blade into the pilot’s throat. I see his hands clutch at his neck. I see Doug Biondi lunge for Amelia, to protect his beloved leader, but as his arms crash down onto her shoulders, he relents. Doug’s mind is free now too.
I see the pilot convulse one final time. I see the emancipated Amelia run toward her mother.
Other members of the 18713 surrounding us drop their weapons, their eyes vacant and lips white. The rush of mental agency is blinding them, staggering them. One of them cuts the ropes from my hands. I help free the others, one by one, still searching for Carlos and then – I find him. He is in the very back, the last of the last of Night Vale.
Those who are free are running or embracing or helping those who are still bound or drunk with confusion, and on the ground where Amelia stood moments before, I find the wrinkled note from mother to daughter. It is a series of numbers, not words. I show it to Carlos.
“A cryptogram puzzle,” he says. “I love those.”
I ask him if he can solve it.
He screws up his face. “We should get out of here first,” he says.
“Please,” I say.
He looks at it for a couple of minutes, until finally he says: “It’s a basic alphanumeric code. It reads: Amelia, I am proud of you, no. matter. what.”
Carlos and I hold each other through the town. Passing two teenage boys dressed in scraps of airplane upholstery, gripping tightly each other’s faces. We help a lost toddler find his parents. We clear broken glass from streets. We walk home.
We shade our eyes from the setting sunset, which kindles through a hilltop cliff. We talk nonstop about today, about tomorrow, about yesterday, about every possible moment, just talking and talking, because we almost lost our talk forever. We do not hear the returning echo of sirens across the valley. We do not hear anything but ourselves.
Stay tuned.
Next.
For a silence that is all your own.
Good night,
Night Vale
…
Good night. Â
Today’s proverb: Did you know the Germans have 31 different words for beer? Well they don’t, that’s wrong, you’re wrong
