Joseph Fink - Welcome to Night Vale

It is also quite unlike many other houses. Imagine this house again.

Given that it is simultaneously not unlike and unlike other houses, it is exactly like all houses.

One way it is not unlike other houses is its shape. It has a house-like shape. That’s definitely a house, people might say if shown a picture of it.

One way it is unlike other houses is also its shape. It has a subtly unnatural shape. That’s definitely a house, but there’s something else, something beautiful, inside that house, people might say if shown a picture of it. I don’t know if beautiful is the right word. It’s more like… like… It’s actually upsetting me now. Please stop showing me that picture. Please, those same people might beg a few moments later. It is a terrible, terrible beauty that I do not understand. Please stop.

Okay, the person showing the people the picture might reply, because that person might be good and caring. It is hard to say who is good and caring when you know nothing about a person except that they show other people pictures of houses, but there’s no sense in going through life presuming awful things about people you do not know.

It would be safe to assume that the house is an enclosed structure owned and built by people.

It would be weird to assume that the house has a personality, a soul. Why would anyone assume that? It is true. It does. But that was weird to assume that. Never assume that kind of thing.

Another way it is unlike other houses is its thoughts. Most houses do not think. This house has thoughts. Those thoughts are not visible in a picture. Nor in person. But they find their way into the world. Through dreams mostly. While a person sleeps, the house might suddenly have a thought: Taupe is not an emotional catalyst. It’s practical and bland. No one cries at any shade of taupe. Or another thought like OMG time! What is time even? And the sleeping person might experience that thought too.

These thoughts may also be shared in the shower. Grumpy thoughts. Angry thoughts. Thoughts that should be unthought before interacting with the public. Thoughts like [low guttural growl] or [knuckles crack, fists clench, teeth tighten, eyes stop letting in any new information, and water runs down a rigid face].

The thoughts are everywhere. Sometimes they are quite literal and utilitarian. There’s a rodent chewing on some drywall behind the headboard could be one such thought.

Another way it is not unlike other houses is that it houses people. It houses a woman, for instance.

Imagine a woman.

Good work.

It also houses a boy, not quite a man. He’s fifteen. You know how it is.

Imagine a fifteen-year-old boy.

Nope. That was not right at all. Try again.

No.

No.

Okay, stop.

He is tall. He’s skinny, with short hair and long teeth that he deliberately hides when he smiles. He smiles more than he thinks he does.

Imagine a fifteen-year-old boy.

No. Again.

No. Not close.

He has fingers that move like they have no bones. He has eyes that move like he has no patience. He has a tongue that changes shape every day. He has a face that changes shape every day. He has a skeletal structure and coloring and hair that change every day. He seems different than you remember. He is always unlike he was before.

Imagine.

Good. That’s actually pretty good.

His name is Josh Crayton.

Her name is Diane Crayton. She is Josh’s mother. She sees herself in Josh.

Josh looks like a lot of things. He changes his physical form constantly. In this way he is unlike most boys his age. He thinks he is several things at once, many of them contradictory. In this way he is like most boys his age.

Sometimes Josh takes the form of a curve-billed thrasher, or a kangaroo, or a Victorian-era wardrobe. Sometimes he amalgamates his looks: fish head with ivory tusks and monarch wings.

“You have changed so much since I last saw you,” people often say to him. People say that to all teenagers, but they mean it more with Josh.

Josh doesn’t remember how he looked the last time each person saw him. Like most teenagers, he always was what he happens to be in that moment, until he never was that.

There was a girl Josh liked who only liked Josh when he was bipedal. Josh does not like always being bipedal and found this news disappointing. There was a boy Josh liked who liked Josh when he was a cute animal. Josh always likes being a cute animal, but Josh’s subjective sense of the word cute was different than the boy’s. This was another disappointment for Josh, and also for the boy, who did not find giant centipedes cute at all.

Diane loved Josh for all of the things he appeared to be. She herself did not change forms, only showing the gradual differences that come with gradual changes of age.

Josh sometimes tried to fool Diane by taking the form of an alligator, or a cloud of bats, or a house fire.

Diane knew to be on guard at first, just in case there really was a dangerous reptile, or swarm of rabid flying mammals, or a house on fire. But once she understood the situation, she was calm, and she loved him for who he was and how he looked. No matter what he looked like. She was, after all, the mother of a teenager.

“Please stop shrieking and swarming into the cupboards,” she would say. It was important to set boundaries.

Josh sometimes appears human. When he does, he is often short, chubby-cheeked, pudgy, wearing glasses.

“Is that how you see yourself, Josh?” Diane once asked.

“Sometimes,” Josh replied.

“Do you like the way you look?” Diane once followed up.

“Sometimes,” Josh replied.

Diane did not press Josh further. She felt his terse answers were a sign he did not want to talk much.

Josh wished his mother talked to him more. His short answers were a sign he didn’t know how to socialize well.

“What?” Josh asked on a Tuesday evening. He had smooth violet skin, a pointed chin, angular thin shoulders.

The television was not on. A textbook was open but not being read. A phone was lit up, a sharp thumb tapping across its keyboard.

“Come talk,” Diane said from the cracked door. She did not want to open it all the way. It was not her room. She was trying very hard. She had sold a tear to Jackie that day. It had felt good to have someone explicitly value something that she did. Also, expenses had been higher than usual that month and she had needed the money. She was, after all, a single parent.

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“I’m studying.”

“Are you studying? I don’t want to bother you if you are studying.”

“Ping,” the phone added.

“If you’re studying, then I’ll go,” she said, pretending she did not hear the phone.

“What?” Josh asked on some other evening. It was a Tuesday, or it was not a Tuesday. His skin was a pale orange. Or it was deep navy. Or there were thick bristles that plumed from just below his eyes. Or his eyes were not visible at all because of the shade of his ram-like horns. This was most evenings. This was the incremental repetition of parenting.

The television was not on. A textbook was open but not being read. A phone was lit up.

“How are you doing?” Diane sometimes said.

Sometimes she said, “What’s going on?”

Sometimes she said, “Just checking on you.”

“Josh,” Diane sometimes said, standing at his door, in the evening. Sometimes she knocked. “Josh,” she sometimes repeated following a certain amount of silence. “Josh,” she sometimes did not repeat following a second amount of silence.

“Dot dot dot,” Josh sometimes replied. Not out loud, but like in a comic book speech-bubble. He pictured other things he could say, but did not know how.