Welcome to Night Vale (Welcome to Night Vale, #1)

by Joseph Fink

Come try out some simple and healthy imaginary corn recipes and take part in a costume contest sponsored by the Night Vale Daily Journal. They are asking that everyone dress up as the decline of the printed word in a society reverting to a state of brainless animality. The best costume wins one year of not being forced to purchase several Daily Journal subscriptions by newspaper employees armed with hatchets.

Tuesday will be reversed. We will rise tired from sleep to find that it is night and brush plaque onto our teeth. We will move backwards to work, where we will undo spreadsheets, lose ideas to dissipating meetings, and unsee hundreds of cat pictures. Then, returning with a buzz of caffeine to our homes, we will spit liquid alertness into cups and, refreshed but groggy, return to dreams that we faintly, just faintly, remember.

I’ve just been handed an update. The Secret Police would like to retract their earlier statement that they will be out in large numbers tonight. That was not meant to be known. “You think you want to know things, but then you know them, and it’s too late. You didn’t want to know that. You didn’t want to know that at all,” the Secret Police’s press release reads. “This is one of those things you will wish you had never known.” The statement goes on to say that memory is a tenuous human construct, and nothing matters in the Grand Scheme, so whatever.

She stared at the phone. The area code of the texts was a postage-stamp-size photo of a burnt-out forest alive with luminescent snails in an array of vivid colors. She didn’t recognize that area code, but it wasn’t local.

Laura came by the table and poured them both coffee. Diane ordered lunch. Laura drew a picture of a cow skull on her notepad, using her finger and a small pot of ink clipped to her pad. It was a detailed picture that took her a few minutes, while Evan and Diane patiently waited for her to be done, and when she showed them, they both agreed it captured the beauty and impermanence of physical life.

“You have pretty eyes,” Laura said. She didn’t know why she had said it. She also did not believe in free will, but that is not important to mention.

It’s a sign of a good diner to have customers who are stuck in time. A well-known rule of eating is that if there are no time-loop customers, the place probably isn’t worth even ordering a plate of fries.

And now a word from our sponsors. Or not now, but later. Much later. You won’t know it when it happens. It’ll be just one of many words you’ll encounter that day. But it will come leaden with unseen meaning and consequence, and it will slowly spread throughout your life, invisibly infecting every light moment with its heaviness. Our sponsors cannot be escaped. You will see their word. And you will never know.

Had she known at all that there was a tarantula in her hair, Catharine might have behaved in a surprising and unsafe manner.

“Diane, I need you to leave the office. You’re not fired or anything. We never fire anyone here. Let’s call it a ‘permanent unpaid leave’ while I consult the relevant agencies.”

GARAGE SALE. EVERYTHING’S FREE. MOSTLY NOT DANGEROUS. SOME DANGEROUS. YOU’LL FIND OUT WHICH.

The last was a controversial decision, as attacking a person with a hatchet (with anything really) is technically a crime. But Leann made it work by engaging in semiotic arguments with law enforcement about what is assault and what is a business plan.

They were flinty, dull, with inscriptions depicting each of the five Ws of Journalism (What? What! What!? What. Why?).

It’s amazing how much a roll of dimes weighs, the house thought.

There was a new exhibit at the Museum of Forbidden Technologies that sounded interesting. Unfortunately, Diane had never been able to go to the museum because all of its exhibits are classified, and no one is allowed to see them.

Is the roof the head of the house, or the hair, or is it a hat? thought the house.

The Sheriff’s Secret Police are suspecting this may have been a hit-and-run and are asking anyone with information to contact them. They’re also using this time to learn a little bit more about three-dimensional chalk art.

Having trouble sleeping? Are you awake at all hours? Do birds live in you? Are you crawling with insects? Is your skin jagged and hard? Are you covered in leaves and gently shaking in the gentle breeze? You sound like a tree. You are perfectly healthy. Also, you don’t need to sleep. You’re a tree, a very very smart tree. Are you listening to the radio? Is a human assisting you? What plan do you have for our weak species? Please, tree, I beg of you to spare me. Please, tree. Spare me. This message has been brought to you by Old Navy. Old Navy: What’s Going to Happen to My Family?

The concept of transitioning from one perceived reality to another is a tolerated madness.

“Look who’s awake,” the nurse said brightly. All the cameras in the room obediently turned to look.

“You had a touch of an accident,” the nurse said. “I wouldn’t worry about it. But then it didn’t happen to me. You should probably worry. Have a great day!”

“Ask your doctor if she is you. Ask your doctor if everyone is in your mind. Ask your doctor for tips for living in lucid dreams,” the loudspeaker said.

“How are you, Diane? How’s Josh doing?” A picture of Josh appeared in the top left corner of the screen. In this picture, he was a French press coffeemaker.

I take you now to the sound of a human stomach digesting, heavily amplified and electronically distorted.

There was a dull roar from above, as if a seashell had been placed directly atop the town.

There was everything you needed for a barbecue: a small plastic bucket full of mud. Everything.

“Even if we don’t have the then, dear, we have the now,” her mother said, biting into one of the wax avocados, as she always did when trying to process her feelings.