Joseph Fink - Welcome to Night Vale

Every time he looked down, he seemed to be wearing that tan jacket. He would decide to take it off, and then he would forget until he noticed again and the process would repeat.

Soon he stopped going home at all. This was not a decision, it was just what happened. He always seemed to be at City Hall, with a staff who did not know who he was or that they even had a mayor.

The only thing he could hold clearly in his mind was the place that Troy was from. A town called Night Vale. So he went looking for Night Vale.

Night Vale is not an easy place to find, but he had a lot of time. In the infinite weirdness that had descended on King City, time was an inexhaustible resource.

He made it to Night Vale and began trying to see if anyone could help him save his city from Troy. He spent months, maybe even years there, he wasn’t sure. No one could remember talking to him, or what they talked about. No one could help him. And then he talked to Diane, and she, for whatever reason, mentioned Troy in passing.

So the mayor, whose name was not Evan McIntyre, began working at Diane’s office to learn more about Troy, a man of many selves but only one form, and in time learned about his son, Josh, a boy of many forms but only one self. And the mayor knew what he had to do.

He wasn’t happy about it, but then nothing made him happy anymore.

“Your Josh is the son of the man that took my town from me,” the man in the tan jacket said to Diane. “Your son Josh is also an unusual person, but he is different than his father. I need his help to understand Troy and save my town.”

He sighed, looking out his window as though the view were anything but a wall and a garbage can.

“I feel as though we have been replaced by some other King City that has gone on with the normal progression of its life as a city, right where we left it, diverging from us as we have spiraled out into whatever part of space and time you would call this.”

Diane stood. She didn’t care about the man or his town.

“Tell me where you took my son. I want my son.”

The flies swarmed again, catching Diane off guard. She stumbled backward into the leather chair. The man in the tan jacket shook his head.

“Space and time are weird, right?”

He was right.

“Listen, Evan, or whatever your name is, it’s terrible what happened to your town. But I need my son back. Because as much as I care about the world, I care more about my son. You have a daughter, you understand.”

“I do. I do have a daughter,” he said, turning back around to face her. “And as much as I care about your son, I care more about my daughter. You, I’m sure, understand. We’ve all had family taken from us because of Troy.”

She pointed at him. She meant it.

“Understand this. I will find my son. I will find my son right away.”

Which is when her son walked in with Jackie. He had a squat body and enormous antlers.

“Hi, Mom,” Josh said.

CECIL:… break into his storage locker? Who would do such a thing? Feral dogs probably. They are notorious thieves.

In other news, a recent report suggests that things may not be as they seem. The report explains that things are definitely what they are, but never what they seem. Many scientists contributed to the report. They studied numbers that were on computer screens and wrote out long equations and drew many diagrams that helped prove their point.

“Even these pages you think you’re reading could be quite different from what you think you see,” the report explained. “It’s possible this report is just a sprawling aloe plant or a mid-century modern maple credenza. You could try to study it more closely, but you will never know for certain.”

No word on whether or not things have been what they have seemed before this report or whether they will be what they seem at some point in the future.

And now, traffic.

There is a man walking out into the desert. He doesn’t have much. At one point he had a new job and a nice car and people in his life. Now he only has his gray pin-striped suit stained with dirt and a five-dollar bill. Soon, he thinks, he will have less. The less he has the more things make sense to him, although he doesn’t understand why.

He thinks back to the men he had been in the past. The man with a lover. The man with a job. The man driving without a destination. The man with a fancy watch in a place where time doesn’t work. The man standing out in the desert with blood all over his hands. The man entering a pawnshop. They all seemed to be different people, people who didn’t know each other although they might vaguely recognize each other from different corners at a party none of them liked.

But he also knew that they were all him, that all of them still lived inside his body, somewhere. That they could never leave, just recede into a background hum in his mind.

The young man is in the desert. He is looking back at a world that does not belong to him. Nothing belongs to him. He is looking around at a landscape that desolates outward forever. So he stops where he is, as good as any other place.

He looks up. Again, it is there in the sky. The planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans. It is very close now. So close that he wonders if he could touch it. As he reaches up, he thinks he sees movement on its surface. Through the canopy of the forests and upon the slopes of the mountains and on the shores of the churning ocean. People maybe. Crowds of people all wrapped in white cloth. They are leaning into each other like dropped puppets. They sway lifelessly. He feels horror in the back of his throat, but still he reaches up.

He can’t help himself. It’s just what he does next.

This has been traffic.

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Oh, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned my boyfriend Carlos on the air before, but…

“Mom,” Josh protested as Diane wrapped her arms around his sloped, furry shoulders.

She gripped his body tight, placing one hand across his wide back and the other hand to the back of his head, between the tall, pointed ears.