Better That it Never Happened
Summary: Forgetting a person can be a very difficult process. Sometimes re-education helps, and sometimes it only reveals how deeply embedded another person can be in your life.
A re-education session was planned and attended – a precaution. It probably wasn't even necessary, but there was no sense in taking chances with a potentially precarious situation. The change was not announced on the radio and it was accepted as the end of a discussion that had never taken place.
What was announced on the radio, a week later, was that it was odd that Cecil hadn't received a call from him. Cecil was concerned that it was something he'd said, and authorities were concerned that certain information had been overlooked in the last re-education session. A second summons was issued and complied to. The name was not mentioned again on the radio for some time.
Significant milestone dates provided the most difficulty. The anniversary required a week. It was tiring work, but it was worth it to ensure the excellent working order of their invaluable community radio host. Interns were lost too regularly for the station to provide any backup in case of emergency, so Cecil was a precious resource to the community. It would be such a waste to lose him to a silly ailment like heartbreak.
Cecil stopped wondering aloud on the radio why he hadn't gotten a call in... it had to have been a week, at least a week, how could he have forgotten for so long? There was no more than the usual amount of existential crisis on days when something should have happened but didn't, and seemed, somehow and for no explicable reason that he could discern, more important than all of the other days. He even managed to stop noticing those days as they passed by and faded into anonymous normality.
The removal of a thing, especially a large thing that occupies a lot of space, is not the same as erasing the thing's existence entirely. Removed things leave empty spaces where they once were, the patterns in which the world or at least the surrounding things adapted and existed in acknowledgement of that presence. The removal of a person is the same way to a greater degree, because a person can make very unusual and unique shapes with their ideas and memories and experiences.
Sometimes, Cecil would get caught in an empty space. There was the space just in front of the abandoned building next to Big Rico's, and Cecil seemed to get stuck there for at least several long minutes at a time when he went to eat his municipally-mandated slice. There was also the parking lot of the Arby's, and, when the timing was right, even the driver's seat of Cecil's car. He couldn't place his preoccupation for any of these locations, but, as often happens when one encounters an unexpected hole - corporeal or metaphorical - he tripped when he came upon them, and it was both a confusing and painful experience.
The authorities couldn't erase these empty spaces, because a person can't forget what they've already forgotten, and attempting to remove a wound by amputation is inadvisable. They couldn't even fill them, because the empty spaces people leave behind in someone else are very complex, and it is impossible that anyone else could fill them exactly or correctly as they were before.
They did what they could, because there were still moments when Cecil would hesitate, apropos of nothing apparent, and look around as though he had misplaced something and only just noticed. Additional re-education did not solve this; it only prompted more of those moments, as though the empty spaces were growing with additional digging.
Cecil put away the "re-education completion" slips in a folder on his bookshelf until the day he accidentally dropped it while trying to make it fit back onto the shelf. Little pieces of white paper flew in every direction; the folder was distended with the effort of containing them all, and somehow he had never noticed its expanding size. Cecil stared down at the mess in confusion and growing unease, because he couldn't imagine what might have warranted so many. He picked one up and noted the date, fairly recent, and tried to trace the line of his day. He wouldn't really remember, Cecil knew, but usually one could get a vague idea about it, from the outlines of the absence.
His mind did a very strange thing, then. It faltered, and stalled, and then skipped back several steps. He tried again, going slowly and taking more care, but his mind stuttered violently and for a moment he couldn't remember what he was doing or why the room was such a mess. He stood in the middle of the empty space for several minutes before slowly and methodically picking the folder up and placing the slips back inside, organized by date. If he noticed any pattern or concentration of particular days, his mind skipped right over them.
The stuttering came more often, but Cecil didn't notice, far too busy and fulfilled with a satisfying life of community involvement and radio hosting. He reminded himself of this complete satisfaction when he woke up in the morning and something heavy and hollow settled into his ribcage and slowed his first few steps of the day before he could get coffee and adequate distraction. It was a good idea to remind himself during the weather segment of the show, as well, when he glanced at the phone once or twice too often, and when he left the station to go straight home, and when he was in bed again and trying to sleep.
He reminded himself that the authorities knew what they were doing, and whatever dangerous thing Cecil had forgotten was for the best. He was definitely much better off not knowing. If it felt this horrible not to know, then he could only imagine what torture it would be to remember. Most things were not worth remembering. The absence gave him room to focus on what was really important. He was being a good citizen and a good example for Night Vale. He was perfectly fine. The headaches almost never happened anymore. He was fine, and Dana came with him to Big Rico's sometimes. She kept him from getting stuck in front of that building next to it. She'd hold his hand so his mind wouldn't stutter and stop for a moment. It made the trips much shorter. He hardly ever got headaches anymore. He was fine.
The radio show was his favorite time of day, because he could immerse himself in the events of the town. His thoughts always seemed to flow so perfectly during the broadcast, the words translated into his mouth as easily as they ever had while on air. Everything made sense from the safety of the recording booth.
Dana was there, too, usually just outside. She'd been promoted some time ago for the simple qualifying factor of being the intern who'd survived the longest. Occasionally, when there was an especially unusual piece of news, usually collected by one of the many interns, she would slip a paper under the door for him.
One early summer's evening, he absolutely couldn't read it.
Dana bustled in during the weather break, all business when it came to her job, and studied the note carefully. She glanced at Cecil for a moment, told him not to leave the booth, and hurried out into the main building of the station. Cecil, who was, after all, a journalist at heart, followed her when he was sure he wouldn't be caught.
She was in the lobby by the time she stopped, talking to someone angrily. The someone was clearly a man, and while he wasn't angry he was talking quickly, as though there was something of importance that he needed to convey. Cecil couldn't make out much through the door, but he was almost certain that he heard Dana call the man "Carlos."
He couldn't make sense of it. It didn't seem like a name or a title; it didn't seem like it should be anything, and Cecil felt his mind beginning to stutter back like it did whenever he got too close to what he shouldn't know. The hole was large, and the stuttering seemed like it was especially violent. He thought maybe he should return to his booth when Dana's voice suddenly rose in volume and the door he was hiding behind swung open.
The visitor was a man, and he had the facial features one would expect to find on a man. There was definitely a nose and mouth, regular facial structure and two warm, brown eyes that were wide with surprise. His hair was especially perfect. But for some reason, Cecil's head refused to put the face together in any recognizable form, jumbling everything up like it had with the words on the note. The stuttering intensified, his mind skipping back and back again, but the empty spaces were widening into gaping holes and there was less and less solid ground, less he could think about without tripping and falling, less to hold onto. The safe, solid parts of his life were crumbling away; whatever he was meant to forget had been buried underneath everything all this time. His mind wasn't structurally sound.
The man in the doorway might have said his name, might have even reached out and grasped his shoulders, might have explained reasons for leaving and for returning, but Cecil was too busy trying to fill the empty spaces in his mind to know.
A/N: Of course I wrote another re-education thing. I promise that re-education things are not the only things I will write. I just like them for some reason. Weird. Anyway, thanks for reading!
(Disclaimer - Welcome to Night Vale and its characters belong to those creative people over at Commonplace Books)