Joseph Fink - Welcome to Night Vale

“That’s probably for the best. It’s tough to talk with parents about romance and sex and dating. I remember being that age. I remember being almost all of the ages I have been.”

The tarantula had turned and was crawling down Catharine’s upper arm. Diane thought it would be nice to have a pet at the office. Like goldfish. Could she take care of goldfish at her desk? They make a lot of noise, and you have to feed them mice every week, Diane thought. Maybe not.

“Tell me what I can help you with, Diane,” Catharine said.

“I wanted to talk to you about Evan. About what happened last week with Evan and Dawn being absent.”

“Right. Your insistence that someone named Evan worked here.” Catharine tilted her head.

“Well, about the misunderstanding we had about Evan.”

Catharine did nothing.

“It was a—” Diane weighed the difference between accepting blame for an action and claiming that action. On the one hand, she could protect her job, her reputation. On the other hand, she could act based on what she understood to be a reality—that a man named Evan used to work in her office.

She had gotten in some arguments with her co-workers in both HR and finance over this issue. She wanted Catharine to help resolve it, but she also knew her insistence was beginning to reflect poorly on her.

Diane’s head pulsed with what wasn’t quite a headache. It sounded like her own voice was different, or like it belonged to someone else.

She also considered that in the place where she thought Evan’s desk was, there was no desk at all. Maybe her co-workers were right. She began to sell herself on the idea that she must have lost her mind, or a part of her mind, for a moment. That perhaps she should see a doctor. Like most people in Night Vale, she wasn’t sure what doctors did, exactly, but it was rumored that there were benefits to their secretive activities.

Diane had many thoughts in a breath-long conversational hesitation. The tarantula didn’t even have time to take a step.

“—a mistake,” Diane continued, the pause almost indistinguishable from a stutter. “I don’t know how I thought that there was a man named, umm…”

And for a flicker she did not remember anything about the man, let alone his name.

“Evan,” she recovered, “who worked here.”

“I understand,” said Catharine.

“But I’m curious. Was there ever an employee by that name, or a similar name? Was I close? Was I maybe conflating this person with someone else? I’m just trying to not, feel crazy, you know?”

Diane laughed. Catharine did not laugh.

“Not off the top of my head, no. I will look, and I will let you know. There used to be an Alan, I think, who was a sales associate.”

“Oh, I remember Alan. No, not him.”

“It will be difficult to help if you create a Culture of No, Diane.”

They both laughed at this. It was an excellent dry joke, Catharine thought. I am connecting with people, Catharine thought. What in the hell? Diane thought.

“Seriously, I will look into it, Diane. I am glad Dawn is back and that we have our full staff together again.”

“Yes, I was—Well, I don’t know if you were, but it was stressing me out, not knowing.”

“Not knowing?” The tarantula was stepping off the back of Catharine’s elbow, trying to reach the armrest.

“You held a staff meeting where we discussed Dawn and Ev——Dawn’s absence. That she was missing for a few days and no one could get hold of her. We offered to drive to her house and—”

“When was this?” Catharine swiveled her chair around to her computer and jerked the mouse back and forth in three equal swipes. The colorful dots and darkness faded, and Catharine clicked on her calendar. The tarantula retracted its exploratory leg.

“Tuesday.”

“Time?”

“Morning I think. I think it was a morning—”

“There’s nothing on my calendar that morning. We had an operations meeting that afternoon, but you wouldn’t have been at that. Nothing in the days around Tuesday. We had a staff meeting on Thursday, but Dawn was back that day. Dawn was only gone four days, and she had been calling in sick each day, Diane.”

Catharine turned back from her computer. The tarantula, still on her arm, turned with her.

“Have you talked to Dawn?” she said.

“Yes. No. Not in detail.”

“You should talk to Dawn.”

“I will. I definitely will.”

“Diane. You should also give yourself some time off. I want a healthy staff, a happy staff. I want you to take care of your migraines.”

Diane had never had migraines and wasn’t sure what Catharine was talking about. She thought that perhaps it was a different day than she thought it was, or that Catharine was not her boss but another person wearing a mask. Nothing seemed right.

“I will. I’ll take care of… them. And I’ll talk to Dawn.”

“Wonderful.” Catharine turned her chair back toward Diane again. “And, Diane.”

Diane, standing to leave, paused.

“Thank you.”

“No. Thank you, Catharine. Thanks for the… thanks for being patient. I was confused.”

“You are welcome.” Catharine’s fingers were together again, fitting neatly into the cleared triangle of her desk.

The tarantula had reached the armrest and was just dragging its brown bulk onto the desk. It pulled itself next to a photo of a young Catharine and a younger boy.

“Catharine, can I ask an unrelated question?”

“Any time, Diane.”

“What is her name?” Diane asked, pointing to the spider.

“Whose name?”

“Or his. I apologize. I shouldn’t assume gender.”

“Ah. Of course. This is a he,” Catharine said with a rigid smile, reaching her hand out in the direction of the tarantula. The tarantula stopped. It seemed to stare at Catharine’s hand. Or it could have just sensed motion above it and frozen.

Tarantulas are simple creatures, Diane thought, not knowing where the thought came from.

Catharine’s hand wrapped around the side of the picture of her and the boy. The tarantula brushed one leg against Catharine’s middle finger. She felt it but did not know what the feeling was and thus, like most things she does not understand, she ignored it.

“This is a photo of me with my son, Kim.”

It took Diane a moment to connect her mental narrative with the visible reality. But when she processed that Catharine was talking about the photo of the boy and not the tarantula, she understood clearly.

“I understand clearly,” Diane said.

“What a weird response.”

“He’s beautiful, I meant. I meant you are both beautiful in that photo.”

“We were younger in that photo. There are other photos where we are older.”

“Time.” Diane guffawed.

Catharine reciprocated. “Right? What is time even?”

Catharine took her hand away from the photo frame. The tarantula set its foot back on the desk. Diane completed her movement to stand up.

“Go talk to Dawn.”

“I will.”

Catharine turned back to her computer knowing she had reports to write.

Diane left Catharine’s office knowing she needed to talk to Dawn.

The tarantula stared at the ceiling not knowing at all what a ceiling is.

CECIL:… which implied a lot while saying little. Indeed the same could be said for the rest of the planets in the solar system. None of them commented.

Our town is once again facing a serious tarantula problem. The Night Vale Unified School District indicated that fewer than one in five tarantulas graduate from high school. Indeed, most spiders never even enroll in public education, choosing to instead spin webs and eat smaller insects.