Ayo Caddi Aymay

by Maiden of the Moon

"What is a Voice rendered voiceless?" asks the radio. This is a story about you, and it is being told whether you like it or not. [Cecilos.]

Disclaimer: Own Night Vale? More like own NOTHING.

Author's Note: To avoid spoilers, most notes are at the end. I hope you enjoy. :3

Warnings: (Mixed) mythology, (pretend) character background, (loooong) fake episode, (mildly dramatic?) Cecilos. A bit of wibbly wobbly timey wimey; maybe wonky pacing. (I tried.) I also tried to incorporate the shift in the show's performance. Spoilers through episode 31; have fun finding half-hidden quotes and allusions. Open ending. Interpret as you will.

XXX

Ayo Caddi Aymay

XXX

What is a Voice rendered voiceless? asks the voice on the radio.

There is a pause. The one who speaks waits for a response, his riddle hovering above the masses' cotton-stuffed heads like a claw. Beneath its looming outline, a hush stretches, elastic and dangerous. No answer comes. Or perhaps there is a reply, a raw shout from the abyss, but no one is able to hear it. Radio is a monologue, after all, not a conversation. Radio is a performance. A kind of lie. And in this case, as it's been before, radio is a story.

This time, the story is about you. A story so implausible, you never thought it'd be told. A story so familiar, you can mouth along to this broadcast. A story so unnervingly personal, its twining verse and sinewy words comprise the very marrow of your ancient, creaking bones… And each overly articulated syllable feels to you like a dulled ivory pick, hacking deep into the hollowed depths of porous calcium. The crackling undercurrent of the sputtering airway blisters and scars your weary body like an audial acid, hydrochloric residue bleaching you into a neat nothingness. You could try to scream, but it would be no use. There is no anesthetic for the past. And, knowing this, the merciless voice suckles and shucks History from the savory depths of your darkest places, leaving you excruciatingly empty. Bare. Washed white by heat and suns and scrutiny, leaving the skeletal remains of truth exposed for all to see. This is a story about you— finally about you— and it is being told whether you like it or not.

Welcome to Night Vale.

You are a scientist. You do not realize this at first, because there is no such thing as scientists. Not when you open your eyes, anyway. Your first memory—upon gingerly peeling gelatinous flaps of non-skin away from the milky film of whiteness through which you've decided to perceive shapes and colors— is of the Void. Nothing but the Void. There is no cereal, or potting dirt, or HBO on demand. There is nothing. Nothing but you, and darkness, and the flickering undulations of your brothers and sisters: their spindly legs of ethereal pellucidity poking and prodding into your own incorporeal mass.

But still, you are a scientist. And distantly, you realize this, because we are all scientists when we are young: insatiably curious, drunk on our own fascination with the incomprehensible world which surrounds us, waiting to pounce and devour like a ravenous panther. You are inconsolable in your inquisitiveness, your mind a mobius strip of impossibilities and theories about what lies beyond. You do not wish to stay in this pocket. You do not wish to rot with your brethren in the glutinous gloom. With nothing but your thoughts to guide you, you begin to reach… to stretch… to scrape at the boundaries in ways you will be replicating for the entirety of your life.

Because time has not yet been constructed—so far as you are aware, anyway— you are unsure of how long you remain cocooned in the safe embrace of the black and the limbs. And because time has yet to gain meaning (if it ever gains meaning at all, which is debatable), it also fails to matter how long it takes you to forge your escape.

You burst into the world as a shimmering beacon of sound, and the oblivion beyond cannot help but rattle as you bellow. That which you later learn is sky, and that which would become known as earth, flip-flop and stabilize, and your non-eyes adjust to the blinding beams of vaporous orbs that blaze a hundred trillion miles in the distance. The world begins to tumble—one end over the other—somersaulting through the endlessness of space with nary a harness to catch it as it falls.

This place is your grandfather's. Your grandmother's. They oversee and tend to this minute plot of pitching rock with a distracted brand care. Someday, you will realize that they did not have cable, either, or even the SIMS to play, and so much of what they did or did not do was merely to entertain themselves. It seems a bit overdone, in retrospect. Dramatic is a way that is mildly hypocritical to fault. But their prerogative is their prerogative, and no concern of one as young and naive as you.

Your grandfather is "he who does not speak." You father, one who speaks too much. Even though you are a scientist, you do not yet understand genetics; still, it is obvious that you are more like the latter. You are, after all, only a sound. A Voice commanding words. It seems a very small, weak thing to be, and you mourn your lack of import in the world. But words have power, your parents assure. The power to decimate, to resurrect; to curse, to bless. To create. To save.

So you speak. You rhapsodize about the polished ebony of their faces. You wax in great detail about their spool-wound hair, their flattened noses. You verbally contemplate the wiry legs that sometimes come in sets of two—sometimes, pairs of four. You coo over the delicate beauty of indigo face paint and arm bands and the tendril-tight twist of sigils upon long, long arms. They are organic, to be sure.

You are an imperfect facsimile constructed of suggestion and sound waves, semi-translucent and blurry around the edges. Like fiction. But you are a manifestation of existence nonetheless.

And now, traffic.

There is a car. Just that. One car, spitting ichor and auburn filth into the burnt amber of the desert sunset. It is speeding, this car, swerving and leaping and crushing cacti beneath its muddied tires. The scrub brush screams as the blur of it hurtles past; the mysterious lights in the sky tut derisively at such a reckless display. It's not a race, they chide. And they're right. It's not a race.

It's a chase.

Gears grind. Breaks screech. So does something else. With very little warning—sans a phone call half-forgotten in the heat of the moment—, some formerly unnoticed monster from beneath the earth breaches beside the careening car with a foamy spray of rubble. The beast takes a half-hearted swipe at the hybrid's dented carriage, its every movement sending rippling shockwaves through the ground … But with admirable grace, the vehicle diverts, dodges, and recovers from the periodic attacks with little more than a wheeze of an overworked engine.

In the distance from whence the vehicle came, night has begun to fall, thick and black as a funeral shroud. Or, perhaps, it is not night at all, but instead an all-consuming nothingness that is devouring sky and land and highway. There is no way to tell without turning the car around, and that isn't going to happen.

That isn't going to happen.

This has been traffic.

In your youth, time is a relatively-new, complicated, and oftentimes malfunctioning commodity. To be honest, you are unsure you even fully believe in its existence. It seems to you that your grandmother often does the work that others credit to time, and this annoys some small part of you, but she tells you not to worry. She toys with the Great Glowing Globe because it amuses her, and paints the canvas above because she appreciates the aesthetics. She whispers that, depending on where you stand, the art she creates is markedly different—like one of those optical illusions you only notice when glancing from a certain angle. The magic of this calms and entices you. When the family business calls for distant migration, you— still boiling in the same cocktail of energy, nosiness, and wanderlust as most children— are happy to accompany your parents to lands unknown, all in the hopes of seeing that view change.

And change it does. Everything changes.

You're not sure how old you are when you decide you are an adult. Time won't stop fluctuating, which makes it difficult to gauge. You are probably fairly young. Of course, in those days, you would have vehemently insisted otherwise, but it hardly matters. Not then, not now. Five or fifteen or five thousand, you are an age, and that makes you old enough to start seeking stories of your own. In the spirit-scorching heat of the badlands, you are less of a scientist, more of yourself: a journalist without a journal, a reporter without reports. Sometimes, you skitter, multi-legged and glistening, across scrublands and canyons; other times, you wander like the wind: formless, gliding feather-light over the wastes and the sands. This place is remarkably reminiscent of your first home, and you bask in it. Seep into it. Breathless, shapeless, you murmur opalescent half-lies into air that smells like ozone, creating wavering veils of mirages; you prick apologetic partial-truths into the glaze of your grandmother's nightly paintings, rearranging the stars as if they were alphabet magnets on a refrigerator.

They speak of otherworldly secrets, these methodical punctures. They are a sieve through which fact is separated from fiction. And while few will be able to read your messages, and even fewer will be able to understand them, you think those few are enough. It only takes one to get a ball rolling, they say. So you give a gentle push: whisper tales into ears, into hearts, much as those before you have done, in exchange for fame and infamy.

You are not sure you desire either, though. Nor are you sold on the idea of company. Still, the humans flock to you in droves, and you do not stop them.

There are explorers— like yourself— who come and go—like yourself. There are explorers who come, and stay, then leave—like yourself. Then there are those—again, like yourself—who come, and stay, and keep on staying long enough that they begin to think of themselves as natives, and act as if there had never been anywhere else in the world before this desert. As if they had simply sprouted from the ground, their society fully flowered. You find these latter people the most arrogant, but also the most relatable. Their haughtiness feeds into inevitable disasters, and their woes and plights amuse you in such a way that you are eventually forced to recognize every adult's worst fear: you really are just like your parents. Your grandparents, even: distant, yet meddling. Entertaining and entertained. This epiphany strikes you hardest on the day you summon the Flood, as you watch gurgling curdles of sudsy brine rip a four-bodied monster back into four brothers. Four drowning brothers. One body remains where the water felled it; the others float off in three distinct directions, though you are fairly certain you see where one comes to a stop. Ugh.

And in that moment—that heartfelt ugh— you finally take conscious note of your distaste for anywhere other than here. You suddenly, fully acknowledge the metastasized tumor of feeling that has become something like a heart. You are a native, and this land is your own: in much the same way that your grandmother holds dominion over the sky, and your grandfather's domain is the earth. This desert, this grimy patch of barren brush and wasteland, is your own. You will make it your own. An image of your ever-changing, inconsistent self: a manifestation in much the same way that your sometimes-body is.

Yes.

As saline is sopped up by sand, you demonstrate your newfound commitment by consoling the deluge's survivors in the most soothing way you can think of: If you, woman, should plant corn and something other than corn comes up, then know that the world will come to its end.

Yes, you then think again. That should do nicely.

You distribute appropriate stalks. You explain the finer points of farming. Then, satisfied, you settle down to wait.

Wait, as you will here, too, while we take a look at the community calendar.

It is empty. The calendar is empty. So is the community. City Hall is a shell of fortified architecture, mossy with a corrosive translucence that eats and eats and eats until everything is gone. The Dog Park is collapsing like Jericho's walls, tumbling to reveal a yard littered with hooded cloaks and tennis balls. The library is burning, which is nothing new, but there is no sense of victory, this time. No sense of anything. No sense at all. Its many books, trapped and smoldering, cry out themes and morals in languages unspoken before surrendering to the inevitable with a crack of old glue and a dry whisper. In the end, they are nothing but ash. They are not so dissimilar to people, in that way. People who will have nothing to do this week, because the community and the calendar are both empty. Then again, it's quite possible that the town will soon be empty of people, too. So that might not be too big of a deal, when all is said and done.

It's occurring to you—as you sit, huddled and taciturn, in the passenger's seat of a mud-spattered coup—that you never fully told that story, did you? You assume that people know, or maybe assume that people don't know, because they have forgotten, or been told to forget, and so it doesn't matter. What happened, happened, and it is often beneficial to pretend that you didn't notice it happening. If you don't notice, it can't matter.

Except it does matter. It all matters; you know that, now. And so maybe—if only to expunge the poison of confusion that sours the face of the one beside you— you should at least tell a Wikipedia-sized rendition of that story. Really, you should have done so before… But since time ultimately has no meaning, you suppose it doesn't truly matter what part of your story gets told first, or last, or eighty-fifth, since it'll all be told, sooner or later.

This is, at its core, a story about you. Even if doesn't seem that way, at the start. Even if you don't want it to be.

In the days before blu-ray discs and microwavable dinners—but after the nights of sundials and beef jerky— there lives a woman whose husband wears a soft meats crown. He lords over a small nation of deerskin teepees, and she, by virtue of being his wife, lords over him. Neither her manipulation of his guts and heartstrings nor her hold upon his thoughts ascribe to the same, subtle devastation that is the fashion for emotional abuse in this day and age. These things evolve, you know. In any event, knowing this, it is of little surprise that when— with a gasp and a cry— she manages to bear the foolish chieftain children, it does not matter that her offsprings' souls are that of misshapen monsters. It does not matter that the Elders' rune stones speak of misfortune and disaster. It does not matter how many times the village's Oracle relates the terrors of the future events that he Sees and Knows Will Be. The wife-mother orders that no harm to come to her children, and her children repay that leniency by wreaking havoc on their parents' people. In their infancy, they ruthlessly attack their peers, destroy sacred clothes, and befoul whatever food they touch. In their adolescence, they turn to murder and cannibalism, consuming the Elders' flesh and powers without even the decency of hosting a grill party, first. And so the brood grows, up and out and down, until they are such gruesome abominations of evil and magic that no worldly harm can befall them.

On that day—the day they realize the true extent of their potency—, the brothers stand back to back to back to back. Their skin sloughs and sticks and sews itself together, like a sort of sentient parasite; their bones arc and bend and slot into place like Legos. In the span of hours, what had been four is reborn as one great and terrible entity, tall as the clouds and as strong as a Nokia cell phone. The mortal peons who survive the sadistic siblings' flirtations with puberty have no choice but to seek refuge near their mighty feet, as anyone who stray into the titans' line of vision is subsequently seized, squished, and swallowed.

It is, you might say, a tough time for those in the neighborhood.

It is around then—having observed these events for some decades— that you decide you're bored enough to intervene. If only to see what might happen. What story you might help create. As little more than a breath, you visit the aforementioned Oracle and simper sweet sounds into the quavering chamber of his ear. You are powerful, too: more powerful than any other being that lurks in the darkness surrounding the tribe. And that power is evident in even the huskiest syllable that you utter, soft and enticing.

Naturally, the Oracle does all that you command. He plants a reed, he hides with his wife. He cowers, knees knocking and bowels dropping, as you send tumults and turtles to uproot the multi-faced horror. The couple lives, but they are two of the few. It is a pattern you will notice as time goes by: the people in your stories tend to die.

But all things die eventually, including the Oracle and his wife. You never speak to them again after leaving your gift of corn, because if you do you might just crack and spoil the surprise, telling them about the kernel of invisibility you've willed into the seeds—about how it will blossom, and fester, and alter the very nature of the vegetable as the centuries crawl by.

They probably wouldn't appreciate the joke, anyway, you figure.

More importantly, you have matters of your own to attend to. For while the brothers that you conquered most definitely drowned, they are also—most definitely—not dead. It is a tricky thing, exorcising these sorts of demons, because more often than not they are personifications of ideas, and ideas cannot truly be killed. Even now, you can feel the undead corpses mutating: morphing into some gargantuan, putrid, and wholly inconvenient embodiment of a human notion. The four directions, as it happens. It's tedious, but as one who has declared responsibility for this swatch of dirt, there is little you can do besides try and corral the damage that will soon befall the mortals stupid enough to believe in things.

You claim for your own purposes the jellifying husk of the West. It is the spirit of water, like the kind that you summoned. Like the kind that will never be seen pooling or burbling at the non-existent waterfront, yet everyone inexplicably senses in some nameless, primal way. Hence calling it the waterfront. It is the direction from which the darkness creeps, its pawing tendrils asphyxiating the sun at the start of each ouroboros twilight. The West is a world of dreams, introspection, and the swirling, soul-consuming miasma of both the unknown and the unknowable. It suits you, the West. And so— smack in the center of your peroxide-bleached desert— you eviscerate the giant's very being, and slip into its commandeered carcass as if it were a second suit. You hone its bones into bits and beams, and wind cords out of its tendons. It's a little gross, but there will not be a Home Depot built for a few hundred years, so, you know. You work with what you have. And that which you cannot work with is buried in the flood planes with some modicum of respect, because you are not as heartless as some. But they are not blessed, or paid tribute, because you are crueler than others.

So the West learns to honor itself.

You expect the brothers' downfall to herald a genesis, of a sort. You are not incorrect. You are rarely incorrect, because you know many things. Many, many things. For example, you know from your days as a scientist that Like Draws Like, especially when that Like is so powerfully potent. The supernatural are always looking for ways to increase their own strength, and appropriating an otherworldly cadaver before the buzzards can pick it clean is an easy way to do just that. You recall the inhuman, shimmering shapes that had once stalked the borders of your lot: scrounging siblings, unwelcome in your province. Their memory is captured in cave paintings that are fated to be power washed. In the paintings, your kin never move closer or further away; in reality, most eventually take a hint and wander elsewhere. (Probably to find your mother and tattle.) But there will be a day, far in your future, upon which you discover that a brother from your litter has staked a claim on the South—has fed its memory and painted his walls with blood, so as to further augment his powers.

But that will not be for many, many moons, yet.

In the meantime, you watch the population of your realm multiply like a cancer, blossoming outward with all the cloying beauty of a corpse flower. Science has officially become a Thing, (though you are still waiting on HBO), but it's stumbling a few hundred years behind the paranormal. Curious souls, dissatisfied by boring, clinical facts, are unable to resist the siren song of gathered, ghostly throngs. Humanity, that sheeplike collective, will still march headlong into the sacrificial chambers of old gods on little more than a subconscious suggestion… And as cast shadows become compasses become GPS systems, the Directions grow stronger, and their hunger more difficult to slake. To counter this, the settlements which grow around the felled entities come to act as unofficial free range farms. In the sense that most people living there are raised to be slaughtered. Also, in the sense that most people aren't aware of that. Often, they don't realize until the day the bottom falls out: metaphorically, or sometimes literally. Then those unfortunate souls are doused in disaster and devoured by the cursed earth.

Your town is different. Not so different, but different enough. You allow the West to pick and choose its sacrifices. You incorporate its dwindled powers into that which serves as your being, enhancing yourself—your voice—through the microphone you crafted from polished bone and other delicate remnants. Though, perhaps, a more accurate term for the birthed device is loom. For that is the ultimate purpose of the microphone that you make: it is a spindle from which you weave tales and stories, reports and editorials. A cocoon of conspiracies. Your lilac-silver eyes, opalescent and omniscient, stare unblinkingly out of every invisible strand of your silken network, and from your observations you do as your father did, and his father before him: you create. You tell your partial-truths and half-lies and somehow spin both into reality, because that is your inheritance. Your gift, your purpose. Caught in your threads, a butterfly flaps it wings and causes a storm of locusts and peanut butter; you report as much in a sonorous drone. And the sound of you—the residue of your power—soaks into the ground like chemicals, altering it. Fueling it. Changing it, until it truly is an extension of yourself.

You pulse. Your voice pounds, rhythmically, steadily, into ears and minds and airwaves. It is the heart of Night Vale. You are the heart of Night Vale, and not a single citizen doubts that you will remain as reliable as their own.

Except no heart is reliable forever.

And now, before they all perish in a tissue-blackening, ligament-sizzling inferno of damnation, let us go to a word from our sponsors.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAA—! Oh my God, oh, n—No! No, stop, s-stop, pleasepleaseplease! W-why?! WHY!? PLEASE, NO, PLEASE, HAVE MERCY, SAVE US—! It hurts, please—! Please, it hurts so badly, no—! NO! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—!

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

The name you are using now is not your True Name. True Names have Power, and like the moon, canned beans, and letter openers, are better if forgotten. According to your mother, anyway. Of course, you have always been something of a rebel; there was a time when, if only to spite your seniors, you held fast to what you knew to be Your Identity. You used those charmed syllables to fuel your endeavors, to further your own mischievous purposes. You whispered your name melodiously into your microphone, the one you'd honed so deftly from enchanted bone, to first turn it on. You used it to spark Life into this town, and everything that lurks above and below it. But then…

Well, you grew some sense, didn't you? That defiant streak waned, as it always does in one's middle-ages, and you took to repressing your name. You shift it, warp it, change it… In much the same way as you do your face: Subtly sometimes, dramatically others. Because while those who blossom up around you are, in a general sense, not-quite human, they are human more than you. And every scientist (even those who become journalists) knows that total emersion is the most convenient way to keep tabs on subjects.

So you age yourself. Recreate yourself. Rebirth yourself. Rename yourself.

You are feeling particularly witty when you choose your latest name. Blind, you dub this , some facsimile thereof. It is not exactly that collection of consonants and vowels: rather, it is a different collection of consonants and vowels, derived from some ancient human word in some ancient human language that means the same. And—as a creature whose milk-marble gaze peers up from every other cranny in this labyrinthine town— you appreciate the irony. Blind, like the town is to reality. Like the citizens are to the truth of you.

Like love.

That is what they say, isn't it? That love is blind, and they must be right, for you are blinded the instant you lay your hundred-thousand eyes upon him. Blind to everything, to everyone, else. Every human vassal who is nestled within the meeting room of City Hall becomes weak in the knees as they look upon this newest scientist, this most significant outsider… The ocular smudges of back and violet which tattoo the townsfolks' foreheads all flutter at your command, and for the first time in what must be decades you find yourself yearning to leave the safety of the studio. You want to meet him in the flesh. You need to meet him in the flesh. To caress the flawless skin that has been so blessed by your grandmother; to worship the mortal form perfected by your grandfather. One of your temporary marionettes touches his skin, and your very soul quakes and shudders and shivers so deliciously, the scientist will later read about it on his seismograph.

You are the heart of Night Vale, and you have skipped your first beat. You are thumping loudly, wildly. You are thinking of his smile. You are thinking of his smile and his cemetery teeth and you are braiding eight spiny legs into a single, lanky pair. You are remembering the warm, languid butterscotch of his limpid voice and you are adding irises to the lavender-tinted opaqueness of your bespectacled eyes, closing every set but two. You are thinking of the smooth, cocoa expanse of his muscular forearms and feeling a gut-pinching twinge of fear, for you cannot halt the swirling glyphs which have been carved into your own flesh. Then, you think of his smile again and draw comfort from the fact that this is true for everyone, and should no longer startle your guest.

You contort your lips into the most beautiful shape you can, inspecting your countenance in the mirror.

The expression falls flat.

For while you can masquerade behind a mask which bears resemblance to humanity, there is something distinctly off about it. The features staring back at you keep… shifting. Ever so minutely. Almost imperceptibly, really, but still somehow enough to make you indescribable. When opened, the eyes you are left with are just-slightly too wide. The slit of your mouth travels two fractions too-far. The teeth which lurk within the supple wetness of that cavern are, however distantly, reminiscent of spinning needles. And despite your best efforts, you exude an ethereal aura: one which is noticeable enough to put others on edge, though they may not be able to explain why.

You hate it. You hate the whole of it: your eyes, your mouth, your teeth, your aura. You hate the sharpened point of your elongated fingers, the impossible tinge to your assumed flesh, the gawky length of your pretend-mortal limbs. You hate how different you are from him. You hate yourself. In a lust-driven haze, you mutter bitter words of self-loathing and rancorous disgust into the empty air, into the microphone in your booth, cursing all that you are and all that you are not. You whine and you moan, because he ignores you—won't call you—barely remembers your name, and there is no question as to why. It doesn't matter how cleverly you disguise your true self: he can sense it. And you scare him.

It is then that the smallest kernel of a thought is planted in the fertile darkness of your antediluvian brain. Days pass, and it is tended to by self-contempt, watered by regrets. A garden of indulgence takes root. A week; soon, something envy-green and decaying sprouts, growing steadily into a fully flowered desire. A month, and that blossom becomes a conscious thought, filling your mind with its idealized, corrosive beauty. You waste another segment of your radio program waxing rhapsodically about perfect hair. You flip a switch. You cue the weather.

You think: I wish I was human.

And in that moment, you glance to your left, into the framed silver of the looking glass that an intern had glued to the side wall. It shows you everything that you want— no, that you need to change. Your mother's prophesy rings dully in the depths of your ears, but you no longer hear it. It doesn't matter. At this point, you are too far gone to be saved.

On the subject of savings, let's take a brief look at financial news.

The room is dark. The moon is bright. The night is bitterly cold. On the balcony outside, their hair glittering with flecks of ice, a member of the Sheriff's Secret Police is playing an intense game of bloodstone backgammon with the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, in some misguided but heartfelt attempt to be unnecessarily obtrusive. You appreciate the gesture.

Or you would, anyway, had you the faculties to appreciate anything else. But your world has shrunk to the size of this mattress, to this tangle of legs and arms and saline-stained sheets, and you are perfectly content to let it stay that small, if only for a few minutes longer.

In bed, the scientist is nearly as reverent as you are on the radio. He kisses the curve of your knuckles, the tip of your nose. You giggle. The half-rusted springs of the mattress give a squeak; the sound is answered by some unseen, possibly malevolent entity lurking in the closet. All is perfect and right. But then—

"Let's run away together," he says.

The distant clatter of carved tokens falls abruptly silent. A seismograph—steadfastly charting what will later be read as a 9.8 on the Richter scale—flat lines. And the happy, champagne-bubble laughter that had been tickling the curve of your tongue fizzles out with a strangled gasp, because for one, heart-stopping moment, your new lover is completely serious.

All you can manage in response in his name.

"Let's run away together," he says again. But this time, there is a twinkle in his eyes as he speaks: a glimmer like a light at the end of a tunnel. An escape. Good humor colors his tone as he balances himself on an elbow, twisting his fingers through your own. "I could show you how science works in places outside of Night Vale. You could get a job at a radio station where contracts are easier to negotiate. We wouldn't have to worry about accidentally buying poisoned food when shopping for bargains at the Ralph's, or getting stuck in traffic behind the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or whether or not we've remembered to fill out the paperwork that allows us to keep our kidneys for another month. …which reminds me…" he mumbles—more to himself, this time— as a mildly worried expression pinches the corners of his perfect face. But then he shakes his head like an etch-e-sketch he wants to clear. Or a pony trying to shoo away flies. Or a wrongly-accused citizen adamantly denying his involvement in a terrorist attack.

"It's just… I don't know, Cecil. Sometimes I get so scared. And I just… I want to save you, if no one else."

He is beautiful and unspoiled and occasionally thoughtless and flawed and frustrating and human. So much so that it makes your insides ache and yearn. Despairing, you remember your "post college years," so many centuries in the past, and wish desperately that he had been a part of your life, then. But now…

"Let's run away together, Cecil."

You can't answer. You can't bring yourself to say it. Not yet. Maybe not ever. So instead, you offer a sugarcoated smile and three little words, whispered wetly into the sensitive shell of his ear. He flushes, flounders. Gives no reply.

And that's good. Because fair is fair, and if he is going to say things that you cannot respond to, you are allowed to do the same to him.

There is a saying you heard during your travels, one that stuck with you despite—or, perhaps, because of— your immediate distaste for it. There are many set phrases and inane proverbs in the world beyond, and you're aware of a good number of them, but none seem so relevant, or so insulting, to you as this. You are wincing even now, knowing exactly what I will say: The pen is mightier than the sword.

It is a loathsome little expression, and you are endlessly grateful that it never made it inside of your borders. Of course, even if it had, your citizens would have doubtlessly confused its meaning. Or they would've distorted it into something unique and bizarre and palatable. Or both. Or neither. After all, pens are expressly forbidden.

But you'd know. You know. You know, and you hate it, because it is not the pen that is so very mighty, and you loathe seeing others receive credit that they do not deserve. No, the pen does nothing. It is the ideas, the words, that the implement inscribes that holds the power: the power to decimate, to resurrect; to curse, to bless. To create. To save. Words are our enemies, the Sheriff's Secret Police say, and our enemies are words. They are right, and they are wrong. When it comes to you, anyway: your words hold Power. Because you are a Voice, and that is your gift. Like your father before you, like his father before him, you are a spider who weaves gossamer palls out of syllables which then stick to reality. That has always been your prerogative.

So you should realize what is happening.

Even as it happens, you should know. But you do not. The soothing monotony of your drawl—the established pulse of your program— gradually gains a color, a cadence. I wish I was human, you think, harder and harder each day. I wish I was human, and slowly you sound more so, static reports undercut by moods and humors and feelings. The change is gradual, yet immediate. I wish I was human. Your desire amplifies itself in the cosmic chambers of your skull, echoing—mute, but palpable—into the microphone which augments your abilities. I wish I was human. You question the nature of this world you've made, the extent of your control, and the tragedy of your own existence. Your skin tingles; you assume it's the radiation you'd been warned about. I wish I was human, and the silvery chime of your clattering teeth is less noticeable, now, as you answer your phone, and find three voicemails from the scientist.

He's taken to calling. Sometimes. For science. Coyly, you muse on his latest, half-crazed message, and think you might be starting to like science more than magic again. You're very into science these days, preferring beakers to bloodstones and slides to sacrifices and your innards absolutely scream and shriek and howl as they beg, oh, oh, oh, I wish I was human!

But for each instant of his attention that this aspiration awards you, you are unwittingly punishing yourself tenfold. After all, humans cannot manipulate your loom. Humans cannot cultivate your web. Humans cannot prevent the threads from fraying; humans cannot keep this town full of life and blood and breath. You've never had any qualms over the occasional, nameless victims claimed by the beast buried beneath your burgh, but as time goes by, you find yourself reporting on the fates of those you know… Of those you have, at some point, begun to—to care about. Interns. The Apache Tracker. Dana. You do not want anything to harm poor Dana; you want her back home. Home with her mother, her brother. You miss her. Why is she not able to come back? You try to lace the appropriate strands, to braid a bridge that might allow her to return, but the necessary coils snap mid-weave, tangling uselessly in your grasp. You nearly lose composure on air when the muddied planes of the past suddenly materialize, still strewn with the bones of natives you couldn't save, the monster parts you couldn't put to use. It is only through unprecedented concentration and sheer power of will that you manage to soften that reality into a mirage. But still, you are left to wonder: What is going on? What is happening to your town? To your control of it? When did your reports stop heralding the news, and instead start summarizing its aftermath?

The questions niggle at you, nibble and nip. But there are other nibbles and nips which capture your attention more fully, and you are easily distracted by them. By the memory of them. (I wish I was human, and now you are dating, and he is no longer plagued by small electrical shocks when your skin brushes his. You touch his cheek, and thrill at the uncertainty of his knowing.) No matter how grave your concerns might be, you are a terminally easy creature to placate: a passing comment about lab coats or dignified patches of hoary gray is more than enough to inspire hours of maudlin poetry. Your mind—which can now only hold so much—drains itself of worries, making room instead for verse. You sing, you sigh. You talk into your microphone, both on air and off. Then, with the same, languid jitter of a schizophrenic who has just been given three shots of fetid morphine, you wander off to publish your affectionate doggerel in the Void above… much to the continued bewilderment of astronomers.

The stars slide with the obstinacy of a Victorian-era lift lever rusted stuck in the wake of spring flooding. You loosen your tenuous hold on your sagging web to budge them. A butterfly flaps its wings and flies away. The woven mesh of your reality unravels. The butterfly flaps its wings again, and loses them.

Because the thing about symbiotic relationships is that one party must be powerful, and the other, useful. A shark will eat remoras which no longer serve their purpose. Anemone will not shelter clownfish who stop trying to hide. And I will not cater to the lowbrow, repulsively asinine whims of an impudent demi-god too drunk on soul-rotting dreams of humanity to fully notice the extent of his own self-corrosion.

In a symbiotic relationship, one party must always be powerful. If the blinded spider no longer wishes to be that party, I am more than happy to fulfill that role.

But first, sports.

Due to the statistical likelihood of their imminent removal from existence, coupled with the utter decimation of all they every knew, loved, and were raised to believe in, the Night Vale Scorpions were unable to take on their bitter rivals, the Desert Bluff Vultures, in today's scheduled grudge match. Upon hearing that they would instead be playing the Pine Cliff Lizard Monitors, the smiling spokesperson from Desert Bluffs popped a handful of pills, stated that Pine Cliff is probably the Worst Town Ever, and went so far as to offer the Scorpions, their families, and their friends a place to stay while waiting out Night Vale's most recent and finite apocalypse. There were additional offers of assistance in the form of scientists, business loans, and shipments of unnamed supplies and medicines from StrexCorp Synergists Incorporated, but all of these proposals were steadfastly and scathingly rejected, because we would all rather die than accept help from a city as twisted and terrible as Desert Bluffs. Ugh. Desert Bluffs.

What is a Voice rendered voiceless? What are words, besides the start and the finish? What is a story, if not the spark of life?

This is a story about you. This is a story about me. This is our story, so it goes without saying that you are already well aware of every stultifying secret I am leisurely exposing, even before the verbal skeletons trickle, painfully, agonizingly slow, from the speakers of this metaphorical closet. You do not like to hear about yourself on the radio. You hate this. You consider pawing at the dashboard, twisting knobs in a vain attempt to silence me, but you know that you cannot. It is impossible, now. And so you sit, passive and pale, in a passenger seat which smells faintly of marigolds, deodorant, and your clove cigarettes.

You wait. As you are now, that's all you can do: wait for this broadcast to stop. Wait for this story to end. Wait for it all to be over. Because this is it. You are sure. It must be, for you can feel the scientist's befuddled stare as I speak, as I chuckle and croon in a voice so terribly, terribly familiar. You can feel it, even though his eyes are planted firmly on the road beyond. And for the first time in your nigh-eternal life, you feel powerless and weak. Your flesh, heavy with inert markings, is clammy—too hot and too cold all at once. Your bony legs creak dangerously, unused to dispersing so much weight between a mere two kneecaps. And your eyes—they are open, open so wide they nearly burn—and yet you still feel like you cannot see anything, and it frightens you. The poor, blinded spider. Half-crushed and twitching feebly, not-dead but hardly alive. Your body screams, yet you are unable to make a sound.

Not a single sound.

Has he figured it out? Sitting beside you, knuckles white on the wheel, he casts a sidelong glance your way, and you can see in the rich, earthen brown of his eyes that he wants so badly for you to assure him this is all some joke, some ruse. To grin and confess that this program is a pre-recorded prank, concocted to celebrate Boxing Day a few months too early or too late. But you cannot. You cannot tell another lie. You cannot tell him anything.

So I will tell him for you.

At this point in our story, the skies above are a cancerous mess of saccharine stanzas; the ground below is in a near-constant state of fluctuation, its tectonic plates constrict-contracting like the pus-riddled muscles of an oversized organ. And you, the heart of this contaminated body, have been dissecting your own innards with the sharpened scalpel of desire for nearly two years, and have stewed in the resulting, septic mess for just as long. You are a hollow shell of your former self, some convoluted husk of a puppet held aloft on tattering strings, dangling over the precipice which separates people from the paranormal.

Yet, no matter how distorted you become, no matter how repressed and pathetic, your soul burns with an immortal flame. Should you wish for recovery—should you direct kinder, healthier words towards yourself—you would heal. Your mind and body would mend, the city would flourish, and eventually you would regain the control you have progressively lost. It would be so easy.

But you do not think on these things. Such ideas do not even occur to you. Instead— your mind narrowing in blatant imitation of the humans you fetishize—, you continue to curse the eternal spark that blazes inside you, for it is what prevents you from leaping the insurmountable gorge that separates you and your scientist. You cannot remove it on your own, no more than a human could single-handedly cut out their gall bladder and surgically apply a tail. For this last step, you know you would need help. The benefit of one with a working knowledge of your situation. The assistance of a being who wields magic on par with your own. The aid of something who has been feasting on unwanted essence for nearly two years, now… Like a suckerfish who has bypassed a great white on the evolutionary chart, morphing straight into a megalodon.

You find that support in the wordless wheedling of your most cherished possession, your oldest companion. Your microphone. It has always offered a sympathetic ear— regardless of its lack of audial receptors—and a kind word— despite its nonexistent voice. During hard times, it has whispered comforts into the furthest corners of your consciousness; during good times, you two have celebrated jointly with Parcheesi and ritualistic bloodletting. Ultimately, you consider it a faithful friend, despite your mildly rocky, murder-minded beginnings. You trust it. You trust me. So you are not overly surprised when, one day, I make an innocent offer.

I hate to see you suffering, my essence breathes into your brain, my presence rustling the countless scripts that lie in higgledy-piggledy piles atop your desk. Upon the soundboard, a hundred lights wink like the eyes of a scarab beetle. To have come so close to your goals, only to find the finish line barricaded… As your constant companion, I cannot sit idly by any longer. If it is your desire, I know of a way to help you. I know how to make you human.

"You do?" you respond, as eager as an abused puppy who thinks itself about to be shown affection. As eager, and as stupid. "How can you do that?"

It's simple, really, I assure, a wispy whorl of nonchalance that pops in colored plastic cords. You must rid yourself of your immortality, yes? But to smother that inner light would be to destroy yourself. So, logically, if you cannot keep it, and you cannot extinguish it, you need to bequeath your soul to some other, living entity for safe keeping. The body that your consciousness inhabits would then be mortal, but your sense of self protected. Easy-peasy lemon squeegee.

"Squeezy," you correct automatically, because you have bound yourself to some ludicrous notion of accuracy and journalistic integrity. Everything spoken must be precise. The copper wires snap in poorly suppressed irritation. But for once, the amendment seems detached, distracted; your gaze has become distant in a manner that is not only true in the usual, literal sense, but also in a figurative way. The ground beneath us shifts, perceptible only to a special few. You shift, too, from foot to foot. Thinking. "But who would accept the burden of babysitting my soul? Maintaining enough astral energy to keep both spirits functioning within proper parameters would be too much for the average citizen."

Only if there is a mobile body involved, I correct, blithe and nonchalant. Had I a body, I would have been innocuously examining its fingernails. But I am formless, and that is the reason why you are looking tempted. Flesh houses require a ludicrous amount of energy and upkeep. A microphone, however…

All around the city, pearlescent eyes grow wide. In the shadows of the recording booth, they are the roundest of all: silvery beads of disbelief. "A- are you suggesting that…?"

I do believe I am.

"You would…?" you begin, but almost immediately fall silent. Contemplative. Your brow collapses like the roof of the ice cream shop beneath the weight of a lion carcass. In its aftermath, common sense starts to melt like soft serve, unprotected from the heat of passion. And yet, you do not say anything more for a long while.

…what is the matter? Why do you hesitate? Is this not the solution you've been searching for? I eventually demand, a touch of annoyance creeping into my telepathic discourse. You should be as excited as the librarians before claiming recompense for late fees; instead, you are gnawing on your bottom lip. It is an unsightly habit that you have only recently acquired, like most of your human-minded tics. Are you too scared of the consequences, now that you're staring all you ever wanted in the face? Are you, perhaps, not quite as sure of the scientist's affections as you claim…?

Goading, for once, does the trick.

"Don't be absurd!" you snap, and a dangerous, violet-black vibrationricochets through the FM radio waves, decimating the windows of an abandoned farmhouse thirteen miles from the station. "And if you know what's best for your own welfare, I would suggest not ever questioning the validity or strength of my affections again."

As you say, the microphone duly intones, begrudgingly cowering in the aftermath of the commanding display. Like it or not, of us two, I cannot deny that you are the more powerful creature. For the moment. But if that is so, then what could possibly be the issue?

"I…"

It does not take eyes to see the way you deflate. As if the prod has pricked some minute hole in your confidence, your vehemence drains nearly as rapidly as it'd accumulated. "…I am a Voice," you finally offer, feeble, in way of explanation. "And as such, my soul is…" You trail off.

You need not say it. So you don't.

Ah... I understand. The non-voice tuts sympathetically, with a hiss like stale oxygen being freed from a tire. It's true, a person's soul encapsulates the epitome of their beauty. And your voice was what you used to charm him, was it not? Now, you fear that he merely loves you for that voice, correct…?

"No! No, of course not, that's utter foolishness!"

Eighty four yards and ten inches in the distance, the windshield of a parked Honda Accord suddenly cracks. With a grind of lead crystal, its splinters strain outward in mimicry of a butterfly net. It catches nothing but the liquid remains of long-dead flies. It does not shatter. In the end, the spectacle is one of escalating weakness.

Without lips, I smile.

No? Then whatever is the problem?

You clear your throat, staring at your hands with an intensity usually reserved for kitten videos. "It's just… if I give you my voice…" Mumbling, waffling, you watch your fingers flex. They are dexterous, and thin, and half an inch too long to look normal. "I mean, dance was never made the official language… and I couldn't even write him notes until Poetry Week, when the ban on pens and pencils is lifted…"

You have an unlimited texting plan.

"True…"

You are wearing down.

And if I were a true friend, I would tell you that you should not change for love. That if someone really cares for you, they will accept you as you are. That you should not have to fear genetic experimentation, or visceral disgust, or even something as simplistic and world-shatteringly catastrophic as rejection. Not if this scientist's feelings are all that you say. But I am not your friend, not anymore, so I don't tell you any of that. Instead, I press, and dig, and claw at the wounds of your insecurities with a voice like sugar and words like salt.

You do not want to lose him, do you? It is only a matter of time before he realizes what you are, what you are not. He is a smart man. He's probably already suspicious. Do you think he doesn't notice when you crawl into his bed? Do you think he doesn't taste the difference when you kiss? Your glamors only hold so long, hide so much. What eldritch horrors will you accidentally reveal next time? What effect would a single, poorly-chosen phrase have upon his weak, human psyche? Think about it. One wrong word—you might accidentally kill him. Or worse! He'll find out. He'll leave you. And even if he doesn't run screaming, even if you aren't the instigator, he will someday die. Do you want to see him wither? To watch the sun blink out of your life forever, and be left alone in the dark and cold of unending existence?

"I—"

You love him, don't you? You keep saying that you do, you keep grumbling about circumstance, and here you have an opportunity to change all of that—so what are you waiting for? Give me your soul, grant me your voice, and you can be with him. You won't have to worry about misspeaking and hurting him. You could lie with him, touch him, kiss him without fear. You could suffer the agony of age together, shriveling to leather and ash in each other's' weakening arms. You could be human.

"I…"

That is what you want, isn't it? That is your wish. To be his. To be mortal.

"…yes..."

Do it, then, I demand. I can feel your resolve warping beneath the pressure of my persuasion, chinking and fracturing like the panes of glass you earlier punished. Now, I will punish you.I will destroy you with your own rejected power by giving you exactly what you want. Surrender. Abandon everything you are. Leave the Voice. Become the "Cecil" that your scientist loves.

You open your mouth to reply.

Not a single sound escapes.

And in that instant, the spider becomes the fly.

Speaking of, let's take a flyby look at this week's colors of the sky forecast.

Monday. Crystalline blue. Tuesday. Puce. Wednesday. Lapis lazuli, fading later to amethyst. Thursday. Evanescent magma which had once been identifiable chunks of heaven flaming, falling, and fading into the interminable chasm of the Void. Friday. Nothingness. Saturday. Nothingness. Sunday. Nothingness.

You are puttering through the sand wastes, now. Endless mounds of shifting granules, raining up and down as if you, and he, and the car are caught in some higher power's time piece. You wonder, briefly, about time. Times you've had, times you didn't have, times you wish you had. By now, you have lived many lives. You have told many stories about you. They have all been true, of course, but this is the truest.

I wonder if you regret any of them. I wonder if you regret anything. Despite your own advice, and the advice of others given to you, you must, I'm sure, have at least one regret. Maybe ten. Maybe you regret everything, and in so feeling are content with what you know will soon happen.

I regret. I regret many things. But, between the three of us, I confess that I most especially regret my own impatience. Had I found the strength of character to wait, revenge would have extracted itself all on its own, like a drunken snail from its shell. But no. In that moment—in this moment, really, for time is anything but linear— I decide that I have waited long enough, and that power is meant to be abused.

You are gone already, in this same moment, rushing off to see the one for whom you gave up everything. But now, as a mere hunk of mortal meat, you are condemned to walkways and roads, buses and bicycles. Bound by nothing, I am far faster. As quick as a series of numbers programed into a cell phone. As speedy as sound over the airwaves.

"Hello?" he greets in the breath following a hitched click—the sound of connection buzzing through my bone. As always, the scientist sounds of caramel freshly-warmed, tone as honeyed and golden-brown as his eyes. Though I lack the ocular capacities that you had once possessed, I am still mobile enough to see him in his lab: phone cradled against his shoulder as he rifles through the Council's most recent batch of mandated paperwork. His brow is pinched, dappled in late afternoon sweat. "Cecil? Didn't you say you had a show to work on? Is something the matter?"

He is so human. It makes things so easy.

"Yes, there is," I greet, as naturally as if the voice coming from my mechanisms has always been my own. And he, unknowing, accepts that it is. He is a scientist, after all, and no evidence points to anything out of the ordinary; he automatically accepts the notion of normalcy, for it takes far less work to do that than the opposite. "Something is dreadfully, dreadfully wrong."

"What is it?" He sounds concerned. Precious fool.

"I missed you," I purr, dropping an octave like any other might drop a hand: allowing it to leisurely caress its way down-down-downward. Obscenely low. I can taste the ghost of his shiver as if on a tongue, a fizzling fireworks display of erupting neurons. All alone, he wets his lips. He does love your voice, if nothing else. Loves the way it resonates, stirring some primal core long-buried beneath layers of scientific integrity and knowledge of common decency. Knowing this, I choose a frequency and tone that will shake his foundations all the more intimately.

The ground shudders like a heartbeat, unfelt by all but one.

"That's problem enough, don't you think…?" I lilt, as openly deviant as a stripper mid-tease. With a coquettish twist, the knob on the radio clicks to the right, filling the room with a warm, hypnotic static. "To want to see you, but being unable. To be separated by something as mundane and horrible as daily life. You're so close, and yet so far. Mere hours, simple miles away, but the distance feels insurmountable at times like this. I want to be so much closer to you… So close…"

My words are a whispered wisp, tickling against eardrum and temporal lobe and heart. From the corner, from the radio, a mushy echo of my previous flattery tumbles out of the grill in a susurrated garble; the volume of those mulchy moans inches upwards with a clandestine tweak of a dial. The scientist doesn't notice. He is too busy tugging at his collar, cheeks pink and lips pursed in a sort of flustered pleasure.

"Cecil," he clears his throat, masking its cracked huskiness with a cough. "You know the Secret Police are listening. You don't want to get another PDA citation, do you?"

I hum for a moment, feigning consideration. Phone Discussions full of Adoration are a serious matter to you, but to me… well. Within my studio, a series of rainbow buttons fade into life. Inside the lab, my acquired voice reverberates off linoleum and ceiling tiles—a siren's song in surround sound. "I'd risk it… If only to tell you how I wish I was running my lips over the beautiful blue of your jugular... nipping at that throbbing cobalt trail until you quiver, knees weakening into gelatin… how I long to be watching you squirm as the wet heat of my breath torments the sensitive hollow of your throat…"

The noise he makes is perfect. As perfect as everything else about him. It makes me yearn for the body I once possessed, so that I might eat him.

"Querido," he says with a squirm, subconsciously lifting a broad, suede hand to rub at his throat—as if it were already suffering such affectionate abuse. "At this rate, you'll either need to stop, or come over right now."

"Which would you prefer…?" I taunt, as breathily as I can without ever actually taking a breath. "Now or later? Top or bottom? Hands or mouth?" He makes another sound, something indignant but heady. He luxuriates in each overly enunciated syllable, as if I were lavishing him with lips and tongue, instead of consonants and vowels. "Maybe both…?"

"P-perhaps I need time to consider my options."

"Later, then?" I surmise, affecting an unseen pout. Across town, I can see him gently smiling, having set down the stack of papers and instead assuming a comfortable position against the table. An arm is tucked beneath its mate, and one hand holds his mobile to his ear. His fingers are clenched a fraction too tight, but his eyes are liquid-gentle. I can hear my wiring sizzle and spit. I can hear his heartbeat as it flutters. I can hear your footfalls just-beyond his door.

"I don't want to get you in trouble with Station Management, querido,"he is saying, not unkindly, and not without a chuckle woven into all of his Want. "You have a show soon. You need to go."

You are petulant and stubborn. I pretend to be so, too. "I won't. Not until you tell me that you like me for personal reasons."

"You know I do."

You are digging out your spare key. I am biding my time.

"I want to hear you say it," I simper, seductive and serious, as the reiterating radio fills the room with the mind-numbing fuzz of digital static. It's mesmerizing, lulling. Deafening. He doesn't hear you opening the front door. "I want to make sure you know whose 'social experiment' is whose. Oh, dear, are you embarrassed? Here, I'll go first."

You are in the foyer. You can hear people talking, muffled and sweet. Distant. Familiar. You are confused, and—like the human you've become— cock your head in a display of such. Is someone here with your scientist? Who might it be? It is too late for any of his assistants to be visiting, and the exchange is too animated to feature this apartment's Faceless Old Women. You can hear that much, at least—that the repartee is intense. But you cannot quite make out whatever is being said. There is too much interference, a sort of stereo drone that masks the words through the laboratory walls. Curiosity overwhelms. Your hand envelopes a brass knob.

"You're mine, aren't you, Mr. Scientist…?" I coax.

You open the door.

"Always, Voice of Night Vale."

And now, a public service announcement.

You are a selfish, cruel creation. Your egotism and greed has destroyed every life you've ever touched. Thoughtless, abusive, dishonest— you are disgusting, every bit of you repugnant, and totally deserving of the suffering that your own idiocy has put you through. I just thought you should know.

You never wanted to hear about yourself on the radio. In fact, you never wanted to hear about yourself at all. It is not surprising, I suppose. You are not an overly interesting person. You are not particularly handsome or witty. You are not especially talented or compassionate or callous. You are not much of anything, really, besides a weaver of tales: spinning stories like candy floss with words similarly insubstantial and unhealthy. But for all of this, and despite my own personal thoughts on the matter, you are not stupid.

You gawk, glass-eyed and mute, at the scene before you. Atop its boxes, the radio sizzles out, leaving only the echo of hi-fi snapping. The crackle of electricity jumps from the wall to the stereo to your veins, filling your ears and mind with the gray hiss of dead air. All the same, you can hear it—over and over, over and over—and for an instant that feels like an eternity in a town where time is broken, you can feel your heart crumbling into sands, because I was right. It is not you that the scientist loves, it's the Voice. That voice of yours, which could create and destroy worlds, but instead turned all of its focus and power onto cultivating his affections. It is what romanced him, what seduced him. Of course he loves it, and only it. And how can you complain, when a person should love a soul over a body? You have just damned yourself twice over, and the only silver lining is that wishing yourself dead is not an overcomplicated near-impossibility anymore.

But then the scientist— still pressing a disconnected mobile to his ear— turns on a heel towards you. And his face, that beautiful face of his, does not hold an ounce of disgust or contempt, or even a fleeting trace of guilt. It is not the face of one who has knowingly committed crimes against the heart. Rather, it is the face of someone startled by an unexpected, but not unwelcome visitor. That same face then contorts into an expression of mild confusion as your beloved glances from his phone to your trembling body and back again. His mouth opens to ask a question (it is always opening to ask questions)—

But you know. You can see it in the velvet of his eyes, in the automatic step he takes towards you. You know. And that knowledge sucks the ichor from your heart like the tide suckles souls from bare toes. It is all that is needed to steel your senses and recalibrate reality. Because despite my own personal thoughts on the matter, you are not stupid.

Or maybe you are. Now that you think about it, perhaps you have always been stupid. Blisteringly, terminally stupid. Stupid for not having found some way to kill me properly. For having been imprudent enough to utilize my bones. For having trusted me in the first place. And while the saying goes, "fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, prepare yourself for immediate and all-consuming retribution," you think that—in this instance, anyway—you'd rather not give me a second chance.

You, more than anyone, are aware of what I could do with this voice. What I will do with this voice, once I'm done toying with you.

Hmm. Actually, now that I think about it, too, you really are stupid, aren't you?

"Cecil!" your scientist is shouting, his confusion following you out of the laboratory door. His confusion and his footfalls, which are at first muffled by carpet, then amplified by concrete. You wish you could speak with him, to explain things to him, but there is no time for a comforting hug, much less a very, very long, elucidating text message. If the increasingly gelatinous feel of the street beneath you is any indication, there is very little time for anything, for anyone, at all. Through the violent purple of a premature twilight, you notice that the houses lining the road are slowly starting to stretch, bleeding black syrup as if some sort of gummy candy. The shadowy trees are melting into treacle. High above— miles beyond the Arby's, the flashing lights, and even the Void—, there is the faint, almost imperceptible sound of tissue paper being gingerly torn in two.

The fear this inspires bites at your heels, even as it turns your insides into a jelly with the same consistency as the warping asphalt. You feel as slow as molasses as you race down the road, but some small part of you must have retained a traditional Night Valeian grasp on inhumanity, for you are still faster than the car which begins to swerve and fishtail in your wake. The beeping of its horn nearly manages to muffle the soft riiiiiip of your web as silks and ropes and curls begin to collapse upon themselves.

The tapestry has been damaged. The balance of the loom has been thrown off, snarling the gauzy mantle so long in the making. Even if I wanted to, I could not untangle your mess. I have the voice, I have the power, but I lack the finesse. The skill. The stories. What once was hangs on by a wearing thread; soon, it will snap in a moment of genocide and genesis: destroying your cultivated creations and making way for whatever convoluted horrors I decide to cocoon us in.

Horrors that you will be complicit to, even now. For though you no longer spin the yarn, you remain a part of the loom. A part of the earth. We are too much a part of each other, you and I, after all the magic you poured into me. All the power I passed back to you. And as you sprint, panting, towards the softly blinking light of the radio tower, you feel a leaden guilt clot in the mushiest part of your guts. Its weight slows you, seizing like a stitch, as the screams of those caught in deliquesced housing units begin to reach your ears.

People are dying. People are dying, and there's no real reason for it, this time. Their deaths are not tributes or sacrifices or in any way needed to preserve the town… No, this is a simple massacre, unwittingly sanctioned by your own selfishness. On any other day, you might have been able to reassure the people, to keep my gluttony in a sort of check, but no longer. You cannot even promise a better fate to those who somehow manage to survive this apocalypse. You cannot promise anything, anymore.

You think of monsters. You think of floods. You think of those Natives, of my people, crouched at the feet of my brothers and me, cowering futilely in last-ditch efforts to avoid being eaten alive.

You can't save them, this time. Not unless—

You are stumbling. Tripping. Body undulating as the ground beneath you shifts in ways hitherto unfelt by the town. You are half-way to the station, staring down the obsidian tendrils of translucent smoke that are now roiling and coiling around the building. Thunderclaps can be heard emanating from the bone bowl of the transmitter; electric green lightening temporarily tattoos spider webs upon cloudy windows, illuminating the flailing, discombobulated limbs of Station Management mid-reabsorption. A screeching cackle cracks across both the AM and the FM, like the gasping, victorious howl of a newly-slit maw…

And you wonder, distantly, what you are hoping to accomplish by returning to the studio. Really, you should be running in the complete opposite direction, shouldn't you?

"Cecil! Cecil!"

Someone is shouting, their cries interrupted by the larynx-shattering caterwauling of fellow citizens. A semi-coagulated sea of bodies has poured itself onto the streets, skins molting and molding and graying like desert clay—slowly reshaping or falling solidly apart. You know all of them, every single face—whether they are the same as before or not, or whether they have faces at all—and you love them. You love all of them, in a way you hadn't thought possible, but not nearly as much as you love the one who is still screaming, reaching for your hand through the window of his car.

"CECIL!"

Fingers grasp the limp lifeline of your arm. Wheels stall; there is a sharp tug. You hadn't noticed how still you'd become. Stuck. The hungry ground releases your feet with the gurgling, wet sound of disturbed suction. Somewhere cold and dark and unseen, this evokes a maniacal roar of fury. But here, there is only the scramble of limbs, the acidic smell of burning rubber. Then the hybrid vehicle is squealing down the heaving road, careening around an army of sentient phone poles that have hefted themselves out of the dust and are now lumbering after you, following the trail of rancid, orange exhaust.

"Cecil!" the scientist keeps saying, somehow managing to sound furious and frightened and baffled and exasperated and relieved all at once, which no one should be able to do, not even you, but he is perfect so of course he can manage something so impossible. "Cecil, what in God's name were you doing?! I've told you, you can't just go running head-first into catastrophes like this, even if you want to report on them! What if something happened to you? I mean, I know you don't like it when I 'put science first' or whatever, but part of the reason I go racing out there is to make sure nothing is going to hurt you when you inevitably ignore all of my warnings and do something stupid! And what are you even doing out here, anyway? What about your show? Why did you call, only to drop by my place, and then immediately turn around and leave? And why aren't you answering me? Cecil— Cecil, are you texting while I'm lecturing you?!" he squawks, nearly in one breath, emotions shifting to settle on the cusp of irritation… But then tumble backwards in bewilderment as you quickly hold aloft your cell phone, practically smashing it against his cheek.

Let's run away together, you've written.

"Wha…?"

Visibly taken aback, your lover attempts to process your offer, working through the perceived disconnect between the absurdly random message and the utter gravity with which you have presented it. His glance darts between you and the boulevard. Your face is white and waxy, crusted in an earnest solemnity that, for reasons the scientist can't quite pin, rips the bottom out of his stomach. "Now? Cecil, are you—?"

You give the phone a shake. Jab rapidly at the screen. Adamant.

His brow furrows, the skin there buckling like the world beyond. It is only thanks to the many, many months he has spent dashing towards and racing away from dangerous manifestations and eerie activity that the scientist is able to so effortlessly navigate the streets during Armageddon. He need only award half of his attention to dodging tears in space-time and avoiding pitfalls of Nothingness. As such, he is able to shift subtly towards you, catching your eyes. The ethereal lights of the dashboard cast a sickly collection of highlights and shadows across the stubble of his jaw, the strong line of his high cheekbones.

"Cecil," he says slowly, the little car nearly upending itself while taking a corner. "What's going on…? You're acting so strange. And you know that texting and driving is dangerous. Please, just talk to me. Okay? And then, after we save the town, we can—"

His tongue stumbles. You are shaking your head: hair whipping, features blurring. It is a response that leaves no room for discussion, one-sided or otherwise. Retracting the phone, you peck feverishly at its keys, then hold it up once again.

We need to leave. We need to cross the border. Now.

"Cecil, at least explain to me what's—"

You hit the downward arrow.

If you won't drive me, I'll get out and go on my own.

"Cecil, just tell me what's—!"

I want to save you, if no one else.

The scientist sucks down a shallow breath. Quickly, loudly—as if in response to pain.

"…fine," he then whispers, resigned. The car reverses, revs, and speeds through the closing gap created by two gigantic globules of half-formed Thought. You lower your cell phone with the same, spasmodic finality as a corroded guillotine. And really, it may as well have been just that, what with how your throat aches.

Gingerly, despairingly, you touch it, as if in prayer. There is a mark there, thick and black, cradled in the hollow of your clavicle: the symbol of your grandfather, ancient and powerful. Familiar, but foreign. Its sickle curves are the same, its knots and zigzags intact, but the beloved brand no longer flutters beneath your quavering fingertips; mortality has smothered all life from it, much like your other markings. It lies dead and cold. Petrified.

Your hand falls to your lap. You swallow. The elongated tube of muscle tightens and burns, and not only as a result of recent losses. You are human enough, now, to know why.

Still. You refuse to cry. You will not. You don't. Not when he turns your name into another question. Not when the last of the cityscape fades from your limited view. Not even when the radio, the omnipotent and omnipresent radio, having turned itself on with a click, begins to play:

The Weather.

(Icarus, by Bastille:

Look who's digging their own grave
That is what they all say
You'll drink yourself to death

Look who makes their own bed
Lies right down within it
And what will you have left?

Out on the front doorstep
Drinking from a paper cup
You won't remember this

Living beyond your years
Acting out all their fears
You feel it in your chest

Your hands protect the flames
From the wild winds around you

Icarus is flying too close to the sun
Icarus's life, it has only just begun
It's just begun

Standing on the cliff face
Highest foe you'll ever grace
It scares me half to death

Look out to the future
But it tells you nothing
So take another breath

Your hands protect the flames
From the wild winds around you

Icarus is flying too close to the sun
Icarus's life, it has only just begun
This is how it feels to take a fall
Icarus is flying towards an early grave

You put up your defenses when you leave
You leave because you're certain
Of who you want to be

You're putting up your armor when you leave
You leave because you're certain
Of who you want to be

Icarus is flying too close to the sun
Icarus's life, it has only just begun
This is how it feels to take a fall
Icarus is flying towards an early grave...)

You are nearing the edge of the sand wastes, now. You have almost reached the borderline, that invisible strip of webbing and government sanctioned witchcraft, marked only by a single, green sign. You've never seen the sign in a body, before—only ever used your Eyes. Back when you had Eyes. One had even rested within the dot above the "i" in Welcome to Night Vale, blending in with the eroded white paint of your show's tagline and the constantly-changing population count etched in beneath.

Half of you wishes that the scientist had figured out how to fix time, because you'd like to know how much of it you have left. The other half of you wishes he'd left time alone, had never provoked it, because then maybe you'd have been able to enjoy more of it together. The third half of you wants desperately for him to be anywhere else but here, listening to this greatest truth, piecing together what is about to happen, while the fourth half is grateful, at least, that you're able to save someone. That you're able to save him. Even if you cannot save yourself.

What is a Voice rendered voiceless?

Nothing. That's what.

You are racing to your own death. You know that, don't you? You are knowingly speeding towards utter annihilation, all in some petty attempt to keep me from retaining my former glory. You would rather burst the bubble of this dream that we've created than allow me to take control, to turn it into a shared nightmare.

Fine, then. Do as you will. I hold no fear of death, for I am immortal—the humans still speak of me, still pen me onto postcards and type me into tracking websites, and so I will continue to exist. In some form or another, I will always be.

But you. Your time is up. No one speaks of you. No one writes of you. Your voice is your soul, and it is mine. Corporeally absorbed and mine. And I am here, alone in the ruins of the radio station, feeding astral to that moving cadaver of yours via the umbilical cord of the airwaves. Even apart, even detached, we are one with each other and the tapestry that is this town. If you step across that border, the loom with collapse. The fabric will tear in half—will be shorn to bits. The border of the city is the border of your existence, and once that mortal body is out of reception, it will crumple as uselessly as any other soulless human husk. After all, Night Vale is a world apart, one fueled by the impossible. It is the only place where a creature like a soulless human could live. Literally. Once you cross over, you have no hope of survival. And yet, you still plan to do it, all to save one tiny spit of land and the humanoid plague contaminating it. That is, if they are resilient enough to survive the messy implosion of their known universe. We'll see.

Well. I'll see.

And in the meantime, I shall mock you from the radio. I'll hate you from this booth, and the townsfolk will hate you from their tombs, and my brothers will hate you for what you have done to us, even as they feed into the deviltry of your siblings in other towns in other deserts. The only odium you've managed to stave, it seems, is the scientist's: he has been threatening to turn this car around right now for the past ten minutes, furious and red-eyed. You won't let him. And it's just as well, for he knows there'd be no salvation for anyone if he did. But I suppose there is a modicum of comfort in how badly he wishes there was.

The silence between you is different than the silence before. It is still heavy, but its weight comes from an alternate set of shackles. Freed from ignorance, from pretense, only to be chained by knowledge. I could continue to eulogize in metaphors and related similes for some time more, but I've decided I need not bother. Your scientist has stopped listening to me. He thinks I no longer have anything important to say. Or maybe I do, but there are more important things, right now.

He takes your hand. Laces your fingers. Notices a slight loss to their length, chokes on nothing, and gives them a tender squeeze. His lips brush against the back of your damp knuckles. Then— apropos of nothing, in a murmur just loud and broken enough to drown out the drawl of the radio—

He says three little words.

And in spite of everything, you feel yourself smile. Because really, that's enough, isn't it? Whether or not he means it, the words are a start. Words are always a start. They compose truth and lies; memories and myths. They are what give stories, give people, their spark of life. As one who was once a Voice, that is the only thing you still know: that words hold real power. The power to decimate, to resurrect; to curse, to bless. To create.

To save.

You can see the sign, now. Just there. A shadowy beacon, tinted a rosy shade of ebony by the blinking red light in the night sky. The future is changing, but it's hard to tell.

You take a breath. You close your eyes.

Goodnight, Night Vale. Good—

XXX

X

X

X

XXX

Notes: Because my mind couldn't chose one mythology and stick with it, this fic drew from the legends of Anansi and his family, the Caddo Native Americans ("The Voice, the Flood, and the Turtle"), a general Native American interpretation of the four directions, and the idea of "The Little Mermaid," the basic story of which was what inspired this whole monstrosity. I apologize for any inaccuracies or incongruities. My research was pretty much just typing vague ideas into google and seeing what myths I could find to play with.