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No cell in your body was the one you are born with, and no thought in your head is one you have had before. Your eyes have never seen the world the way they see it now, and by the time this sentence is done, you will be inexorably changed from the person you were when it started as every moment of your existence bears you away down a darkened path from what you were to what you may yet become, and no matter how still you stay, the heart beats, the mind snaps, and the world spins on through the dark void. We outgrow definitions in the time it takes to think of them. You are not you, not anymore. This is not Night Vale, not as it once was. And I am not Cecil nor have I ever been.
Literally. I am plainly, dear listeners, not Cecil. This is Jessica, head intern of the Night Vale Community Radio Station, filling in and biding you welcome, as best as I can, to Night Vale.
This week’s top story, listeners, is—and trust me, this is weird for all of us—me. Or rather, I should say, the story that I am sitting here today, my voice flying out through the ether and into your ears, rather than that of the Night Vale institution, Cecil. I know, I know, this must be alarming to you. I’m alarmed, believe me, since my entire career at the station has involved me making myself as invisible as possible. Plus, even with Night Vale Public Radio’s diverse and round-the-clock schedule, it seems to me that I have never actually heard another voice on the radio besides his. And I work here! In fact, I often think that Cecil is so much a part of the tapestry that makes up Night Vale that I remember lying in my bed as a child listening to him narrate the news, that smooth, undulating voice of his making even the bleakest of tragedy into a sweet bedtime tale. Of course, listeners, Cecil is only a few years older than me so…he couldn’t have been on the radio in my childhood. And though my mother and my mother’s mother swear they remember him in their girlhoods too, we all know that’s impossible.
Regardless of what our false, deceiving brains may tell us that we remember, we all know that it’s not a week in Night Vale without a slice from Big Rico’s and Cecil’s voice pouring into us, taking the incomprehensibility of everyday life and explaining it to us in small, bite-sized portions that will gradually replace our own memories of the event. And yet, Cecil is not here. At this point in time, we don’t know where he is. Our intrepid interns are pursuing a number of plausible leads, but we have no information at this time. Cecil is simply…gone.
But don’t worry! We have his notes and airspace to fill, and since Studio Management has ceased its wretched, voiceless cries now that I have stepped in and is now only shaking the walls of the sound booth a little bit, I can only assume that this is the right path to pursue. And listeners, isn’t the news more than just the man who reads it?
Well—we’ll see if that’s true.
The Night Vale Astronomy Club has announced today that stars are just a rumor. The pinpoints of light that have hung over the Earth since its creation billions of years ago are, in fact, not distant suns nor watchful eyes but just an urban legend. “Sorry, guys,” club president Jean Porter said at the press conference this afternoon. “I made up that rumor as a joke, and I never expected things to get so out of hand. It was just a prank, you know how it is.”
“So there’s no reason to ever look up again,” she added, her hands gripping the podium as a drowning woman grasps a lifesaver. “Don’t look up. Stare straight ahead. If you really must angle your head, I recommend looking down, at the indisputably solid earth that hides you from the ravenous abyss.”
A representative of the Night Vale Geological Society then stood and shouted, “Don’t look down! For God’s sake, DO NOT LOOK DOWN.”
As of press time, we are still waiting on confirmation that looking ahead is still alright. To be on the safe side, the Station recommends that you just don’t look. No matter what you see or hear or touch or sense, just. Don’t. Look.
I personally think sight’s overrated anyway. Listening—that’s where it’s at.
The City Council met secretly this morning to discuss the—hmm. Well. Here’s the thing, listeners. Do you know how you become head intern of the Night Vale Community Radio? If you answered journalistic integrity, a natural sense of curiosity, and a go-getter attitude, then congratulations! You are a normal intern, and you will die in about a week. You become head intern by possessing none of those traits, actively shirking investigative work, and making really good coffee. I make really good coffee. Do you feel me? I understand my abilities and my restrictions in the world, listeners. I know how I am. I know what I am allowed to be. And because I know that I am not a beloved town celebrity who is given a certain degree of leeway because of my standing in the community, I will not be reporting on the secret dealings of the City Council this morning, nor what horrific laws they have away from the public eyes, nor the staggering consequences of failing to conform to these new and forbidden laws. I can say, however, that maybe you should possibly avoid—actually, no, you get nothing, sorry. We’ve got a graveyard in the break room, people. I’m not risking it.
An update on the search for Cecil—we are still looking for our missing host, but thanks to the valiant efforts of interns Sylvia and Jeremy, we can safely say that he is not in either the Whispering Forest or the house in Desert Creek that does not exist. Well done, Sylvia and Jeremy. We thank you for your hard work and presumably, since you have stopped replying to my texts, your sacrifice. You will be missed, though Sylvia a bit more than Jeremy. He knows what he did. Or he knew, anyway.
We here at the Station would like to thank those helpful citizens calling in about where Cecil might be, though we would like to remind you that we need physical locations, not general statements like, “As long as I remember him, he exists inside me,” and, “He is so scared, he is running so fast and hiding in the forgotten places where the terror that hunts him lurks.”
Quite frankly, listeners, we’re all so scared almost all of the time. That’s not particularly helpful. And as pleased as we are that Cecil lives on inside you, your memories can’t run this radio station, can they? Wait, can they? We’ll bookmark that as an option if Cecil keeps hiding. But hopefully, it won’t come to that. With your diligent help, listeners, we can bring him back to the soundproof booth where he belongs and perhaps will never be allowed to leave again. And I can go back to being safely ignored. And isn’t that the happy ending we’ve all earned?
Old Woman Josie out by the car park tells us that the angels are agitated this week. She doesn’t know why, but she does say that they have been uncommonly rude lately. “They ate the last of my casserole without even asking me,” she said, standing outside in her tattered pink bathrobe with unidentifiable but probably innocent stains. “I would have given it to them if they had just asked, but they just took it.”
Whether this discontent is related to the City Council’s assertion that angels are not real remains to be seen, and it would be irresponsible for a journalist to speculate. But I am an intern—the head intern—so, yes, I’m going to guess that’s what caused it.
Old Woman Josie would like to add that if a new casserole just happened to appear in her fridge, she would drop the whole thing as a silly mistake. “That was my Thursday dinner. You know we’re not allowed to cook on Thursdays,” she said, referencing the recent controversial bill that banned any forms of food production on Tuesdays and Thursdays because, in the words of the City Council, why not?
Mayor Pamela Winchel announced today that she is officially endorsing the dead rat in the back of Big Rico’s as her favored candidate for mayor. Winchel, who recently declared that she would not seek reelection this fall, said, “That dead rat in the kitchen of the best, most mandatory pizza place in town understands the needs of a modern Night Vale. We cannot have a mayor that will drag us back to the dark ages,” referencing, of course, the period from 1984 to 1986 where all forms of illumination were banned and anyone caught illegally consuming light was ritually blinded.
“Other candidates will promise progressive politics,” Winchel added, “but will give you nothing but the same old tired ideas. Also some other candidates are five-headed dragons who are in jail and haven’t even expressed a real interest in running so maybe we shouldn’t rush them to the top of the polls yet, hmm?”
She then spent the next two minutes breathing heavily while all the journalists avoided eye contact.
The dead rat in the kitchen of Big Rico’s could not be reached for comment. Rico Herrera, proprietor of the restaurant, did tell us, “We got rid of that rat a long time ago. Not that we ever had a rat. We are a very clean store. No dead rats. None. Please leave.”
Meanwhile, the nameless cult that operates out of Sandy’s Hardware Emporium on Wednesdays and Saturdays has issued an official complaint against the current mayor for perpetuating the deluded belief that the past exists. So we’ll probably have to send someone to go investigate that. I nominate Intern Elizabeth, personally, as I’m pretty sure that she’s the one who keeps stealing my yoghurt in the break room.
They’ve got my name on them, Elizabeth, and I’m like eighty percent sure that you can read. Stop.
Wait—did you hear that?
Did anybody hear that?
Cecil?
Hello?
I’m sorry, listeners. I thought—never mind. It was just...never mind.
In this week’s science news, beautiful and perfect Carlos has—I’m sorry, listeners, it turns out Cecil writes that right into the show notes. Did not know that. Pressing on. Beautiful and perfect Carlos with his stunning hair and his well-formed chiseled yet supple—hmm. You know, I am just going to skip past these bits, if you don’t mind.
Just skipping past.
Still skipping.
Okay, so there at least three pages of show notes with nothing but loving, worshipful descriptions of our town’s visiting scientist. And judging by how increasingly explicit the description is getting, it is this head intern’s opinion that Cecil and Carlos have taken their relationship to the next level. Our official congratulations, gentlemen.
Four pages. These are handwritten. Cecil handwrote four pages of tribute. Now there’s a sonnet. It’s not a great sonnet. It is a very earnest sonnet though, and I suppose that’s what counts in love poems. Now there’s a drawing. It’s a very good drawing. Congratulations on your anatomy, Carlos. So many freckles. So few scars. And a lovely, singular, human penis. Well done, Carlos.
I don’t think there’s actually any science news in this week’s science news, listeners. So, um, remember that we all exist on a tiny sphere circling around a larger one made of burning plasma as we are flung through the void towards nothing, from nothing.
And that if you get a chance to peek under the lab coat, might not be a bad idea.
This Saturday, the Night Vale Historical Reenactment Society is holding a barbeque in Mission Grove Park to kick off their weeklong celebration of the nameless tragedy lost to history. This event, which involved at least fifty schoolchildren, a beast with no shape until you looked away, and the kind of crushing darkness found only at the center of black holes and the corners of your basement, happened seventy-five years ago this week, and was immediately stricken from all records after it was done. “This horrific, amorphous tragedy is such a large part of our town’s culture, we presume,” Society President Anna Rhys said. The barbeque is open to the town, and there will be face-painting, games, and ritual sacrifices. That’s this Saturday at three in Mission Grove Park.
And now, traffic.
You should have called her back. Last night when you woke and found her name blinking on the screen of your cell phone, you should have reached out then and there. You should not have waited until morning, the cool air warming around you as you sat naked in the kitchen and did not look at your phone. You should not have gone to work, under the thumb of a petty man in a cheap suit who has, by any metric that matters, achieved a far better life than yours. When his daughter comes in to drop off his lunch and kiss him on the cheek, you should not have looked. You should not have cried in the bathroom for two whole hours as your coworkers’ pity shifted to something darker, indignation that you would so openly demand comfort and still not be comforted. When you went back to your cubicle, legs shaking and face still wet, you should have bowed your lofty head and dialed your daughter’s number.
You should have called her back. You should have called her back or you should have skipped the next call you got because as long as you hadn’t picked up that second call from a number you didn’t recognize you could have believed that she had just once again cut and ran, like she always did when she reached out for you and found nothing but air. You could have believed that she had ran into something better than she had ever built for herself on her own, a life five notches at least above the best one you could ever have given her. If you had not picked up that second call, she would still be there in the back of your mind, flush with life and a joy that she never knew and will never know. When the second number called, you should have smashed your phone to pieces.
It seems like that the cars part for your grief, but as you rocket down the highway at one hundred miles per hour and rising, it occurs to you that it is perhaps not sympathy that makes them careen out of your way. Your tire will skid a few minutes from now, on a spilled slick of oil dripped of the bottom of a truck driven by the man who would have picked her up as a hitchhiker if she had made it to the highway as she planned. He is a good man. He would not have hurt her, and when she reached the end of her road, he would have given her money for a motel. He does not know that his leaking truck will be your death when your tires slip and the car flips and you fly faster than any of your ancestors have ever flown since the hazy beginnings of our species. He would feel very bad about it. Let’s not tell him. There are some things, after all, that we don’t need to know.
This has been traffic.
The search for our erstwhile radio host continues to prove fruitless, though several citizens have reported seeing him in the corners of their house, in the back seat of their cars, and in the corners of their eyes, as solid and sure as the great rocks of the desert until they turn to face him and see nothing. I myself have seen him in the reflection of the window in the sound booth, standing behind me as I speak and mouthing wordlessly, but when I turn, he’s gone. And perhaps he was never there at all. Old Woman Josie called in to say that the angels are very concerned where Cecil might be. They say he is trapped in the moments between moments, the pauses between seeing and comprehending, in the gap where we see what we see and have not yet considered that we should not be seeing this.
Or possibly, they added, he’s just lost inside the Red Lobster again. They can’t really be sure.
More news as it develops, and we implore our listeners to keep sending us their sightings. The more information we have, the sooner we can free Cecil from his hellish prison, whether that prison be our minds or the quite frankly mediocre seafood chain. We thank you all for your help so far.
We especially thank you, Carlos, for your particular diligence. One might even say that you have been too helpful. One might wonder how one man could call a station forty-seven times in an hour, or indeed why one man would want to do that considering that we cannot possibly have anything new to tell such a man. One might imply that maybe, just maybe, such a diligent, dedicated man with apparently such a fine figure should possibly calm way the hell down before we start blocking calls because if we knew where Cecil was, I would not be talking on the radio right now.
Thank you, Carlos, for your care. You are an inspiration to all of us in the same way that a displayed corpse is.
The recently closed Night Vale Daily Journal announced today that, fine, whatever, you people didn’t want the news anyway. “Like, whatever,” Editor Leanne Heart said between swigs from her large and unlabeled bottle. “You wanna get your information from your blogs and your, your, your tweets, fine, fine, fine. Print media doesn’t wanna deal with you. Print media’s done with you. Print media’s better than you.”
Night Vale Astronomy Club President Jean Porter then asked Heart to sit down and said that Heart could schedule her own press conference if she felt so strongly about it. Heart offered no response as she was busy grabbing and smashing the smart phones of everyone in the audience. More on the death of traditional media as it develops.
And now a message from our sponsor—prerecorded by Cecil himself!
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Orifice Depot—the new adult entertainment store in town. Because trust us, this will help.
Jessica, I’m getting something on the headphones. I think there’s some sound interference. Jessica? Are you there? I can hear you in the control booth, you must be there.
But no. I sent Jessica to make another pot of coffee. She’s in the kitchen right now. And between the chanting and the bloodrunes, she’ll be in the kitchen for the next ten minutes at least. So whoever is listening to this, you aren’t Jessica. You’re not even in the sound booth anymore. You’re behind me. I can feel you breathing there until I look in the reflection in the window. There is nothing behind me in the window. But now I cannot look underneath the desk, and I feel your hot breath.
Carlos, can you hear me? They will air this, they have to. Otherwise we’ll have dead air, and we can’t have that. When you hear this, Carlos, please, I want you to come and find me. You can do that, of course. What can’t you do? Carlos, I—
Cecil? Cecil, is that you? Cecil, are you here?
Because something just touched the back of my head, and if it wasn’t you, I’m out of here. Seriously, Cecil? Cecil? I will leave and let broadcast nothing but dead air, I do not care. I just wanted some communication credits, and it was this or serving as a voice of the dark shadows in your basement.
Cecil? I can see something in the corner of my eye, but it’s gone when I turn. I am afraid to turn. I am afraid to not know where it is. Is that you, Cecil? But the air smells like rotting flesh and turpentine. You smell like cinnamon and wool. I can see something reflected in the window in our small soundproof booth, but I do not know what it is. My brain will not let me understand what I am seeing.
It is cold in the booth, listeners. I do not think Cecil is the only thing in the gap. I think Cecil was the first of us to be dragged into the gap.
Only the fact that you are hearing my voice right now is keeping me here. The second I am unobserved by another living creature of our temporal and special plane, I will join our Cecil in the back of the mirror. In the corner of your eye. I can hear the phone ringing. Carlos, sweet Carlos, perfect Carlos, I hope that you can save us. That is, after all, what you are here to do, isn’t it?
I feel hot warm air on the back of my neck. I think I felt the scrape of teeth. Listeners, I am crying because I will not blink. Is this how Cecil went? Did he refuse to look or did he look it in the eyes? I am not brave, listeners. And that is my best quality. But now with my fate quite literally breathing down the back of my neck, I am, at least, curious. What can I say, listeners? No one dies as themselves. We’re all transformed in the face of our last hour. Or the prospect of it. I don’t know what I will see when I turn around, listeners. But I won’t leave you alone. It’s been a pleasure, everybody. Maybe we’ll talk again some other time.
Until that day, listeners, let’s go to the weather.
Well, listeners, this is Cecil, and what a strange day this has been! It’s not often you spend the afternoon running from a shapeless beast with no form until you look away, I can tell you that. Oh, humans and other creatures of all genders, bodies, and species, it is so good to be back! You cannot imagine how cold the hidden places between seeing and seeing are. Like, can we get some heating in the gaps between what we see and what we comprehend? Seriously.
And Carlos, sweet Carlos, perfect Carlos, swooping in at the last minute to save me from a fate that my mind cannot grasp and is even now forgetting to spare itself from the cosmic horror—oh, you should have seen how his perfect hair shimmered in the sourceless light of the in-between places. Listeners, it’s enough to make you—well. I’ll tell you all about in next episode’s science news.
Listeners, it just goes to show that the things you are frightened of are only ever really scary when you are not dealing with them. And when you are dealing with them. And after you are done dealing with them. The things that frighten you will always frighten you, yes, but if they didn’t, how much of our lives would we allow to pass by unnoticed? How many of us would peer into the darkness if we didn’t fear what we might find? And while you’re looking, when your stomach begins to flutter, and your spine starts to shift, and the skin you are feels too tight and like it belongs to someone else—is that terror or love? Oh, the wonders we see as we fumbling into the darkness. Oh, the beauty we find as we pursue our deaths.
Oh, and we are now accepting applications for a new head intern of the radio station. Good coffee making skills are a plus!
Good night, Night Vale. Good night.