This story was inspired by the story Welcome to Night Vale by cupidity11
This is Carlos/Cecil, rated M for possible adult themes and language (though I doubt I need it but it's better to be safe than sorry)
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7
I woke up in a cold sweat. I was panting, and I sat up quickly. There had obviously been something going on downstairs, and it leaked into my dreams. People were yelling, and I heard that something in the lab had escaped, or maybe it had come into the lab and was making a mess, I wasn't sure. I heard one of the scientists screech, as well as horrible growling noises.
"Shit." I said, jumping out of bed and getting dressed. I ran downstairs buttoning up my shirt, calling out for information on what thing was in the lab. One of the younger scientists sat against the wall, gripping his chewed-up leg. He was moaning in pain, nearly unconscious. I felt like throwing up, but managed to walk past him to Amber. She looked as if she was about to cry, probably out of fear. She was shaking terribly. I patted her arm when I came to her and she smiled.
"What's going on, and please explain slowly and calmly." I said. She nodded, taking a deep breath.
"An orange tabby looking cat came downstairs, meowing and begging for food." She started.
"That's the cat I found when…" I started to myself, but let Amber continue with his story.
"We had some cat food in the fridge that we wanted to put in the microwave so we gave it to the cat. It looked at the food and then at Brian. He then ran towards Brian with huge teeth and grew about four times its size and attacked him." Amber explained, "He ran when you began to call down to us."
I remained silent for a while. I was trying to process the fact that Gregory wasn't a cat, but then again why am I surprised? I've always been allergic to cats, and maybe I thought I wasn't allergic to him. I should be.
"Okay…" I said, calmly, "I have no idea what we are going to do with him. What do you all think? Do we keep him sedated and study him, or do we kill him?"
"Kill the beast…" Brian started to shout at me, but passed out before he could finish.
"Call an ambulance!" I shouted to one of the other young scientists just sitting there watching him bleed to death.
"I did! They said to hang up and try again tomorrow." She said. I paused, and looked at her. I sighed, and pulled out my cell phone. I dialed the emergency number, and put the phone to my ear. I waited for someone to pick up.
"We have someone who is bleeding—." I started to say.
"Please call tomorrow. We're busy." The woman on the other line started to say.
The Year 1824: The first meeting of the Town Elder council, predecessors to the City Council. Picture them-
The woman then hung up. I sighed, hanging up myself.
"Apparently this episode of Cecil's show is so important, and that's why they aren't coming." I replied angrily. I wanted to just scream out into the open air, but that would be needlessly dramatic. I closed my eyes and sighed.
"Does anybody in here have medical training?" I asked.
"I do." Samantha piped up. I looked at her, a little annoyed, and sighed.
"Help him then." I said, pointing to Brian. She nodded and began to treat Brian's wounds.
"You three," I said, pointing at the three strongest men here, "follow me. We're going to need to find the "cat" before we do anything about him."
"Yes sir." They said. I told them that if they saw where he ran to it would be wonderful. In the strange cosmic move that I experienced, we also gained a basement for the lab. It was very useful for the chemical reactions we did. Naturally, the "cat" went down there. I sighed and looked over at Amber.
"If anyone from Night Vale Radio comes, just tell them we're too busy to talk." I told her. She nodded. I then descended the stairs with my three companions. When we got downstairs, there were various chemicals that were knocked over, but it was simple ones that weren't important to our research. Gregory was sitting on the table, grooming himself. He looked over at me, with bits of pant leg sticking out of his teeth. He meowed at me. One of the men passed me a gun. I froze when it was put into my hand. I learned how to fire a gun, but I never wanted to use one. I gulped, and whispered to the man beside me if it had tranquilizing bullets. He nodded. Gregory jumped down from the table and looked as if he was very hungry. I should have fed him instead of pushing him away when he tried to wake me up, but I didn't know he was a giant monster at the time. He lowered himself to the ground and prepared to pounce. I raised the gun and fired it at him. It wasn't a tranquilizing bullet like they told me. The men looked at each other, in shock and surprise. I, too, stood in shock and surprise. Gregory spit the bullet out, and cracked his neck. I'd just managed to piss of the one thing in this lab that will kill us. The man standing behind me took the gun from my hand and pulled me behind him. Gregory pounced on him, and he unloaded the clip of bullets into Gregory's belly.
I wanted to scream, but I stood there in complete shock. The man bled out too quickly for the others to get Samantha. I don't know how long I stood there, watching the two lifeless bodies before Amber came to comfort me. I asked her what time it was, and it had only been two hours. This was a lot of death for the first half of my day. I told the two big men that we had left to load Gregory onto a dissection table and we'd see what he really was. They nodded and did as I told them. I asked Amber about Brian. Brian had to have the leg amputated, but he'd live. I told her to put him upstairs and let him heal. I found my way to my desk and sat down. I was panting and shanking. I probably looked really pale, because nobody came to bother me. To calm myself down I turned on the radio. I closed my eyes.
Speaking of which, Night vale High School is adding metal detectors, and parents and students alike are outraged. Several parents we talked to said that NVHS students have long been recipients of shadow government-issued Uzis and rifles, as well as Tasers and armor-piercing munitions. The School Board's decision to put up metal detectors, according to parents, impinges on the clandestine operation's rights as a vast underground conspiracy of giant megacorporation's and corrupt would leaders to bear arms via teenage paramilitary proxies.
I took several deep breaths while Cecil spoke. Soon I was feeling better, but still not good. I was still light headed and shaking a little. I opened my eyes. Two scientists had gotten to dissecting Gregory and finished by now. They came over to my desk and told me what they found. As it turns out he was a dog, not a cat. It made sense for me, I'm not allergic to dogs (at least I don't think I am). I nodded.
"Was there any reason he was acting so…vicious?" I asked.
"Well, he hadn't eaten." The taller of the two said. I nodded, sighing. It was my fault after all. A knock came to the door. I looked over at it in dread. Outside I saw an intern for the community radio. He held his pen and paper nervously. He was probably new.
"What should we tell him?" Amber asked me.
You could tell him the truth, I thought, and proceed to have Cecil panic about what's going on here. Cecil could draw too much attention to this place. We don't need that right now.
"Tell him we're busy with research. We'll talk about it later." I said. Amber looked at me, concerned. My voice was still a little shaky. Amber nodded. She walked over and opened the door. She repeated what I'd told her to, and closed the door before the intern could ask about the research. I noticed that it, in fact, wasn't an intern. It was Cecil. I felt my heart pound when he looked over at me. His expression changed from happy to concern. He came back and knocked on the door again. I stood up and walked (on shaky legs) to go to the door. Amber opened it up angrily and almost shouted, but my sudden appearance at the door stopped her.
"We can talk outside." I told him. I grabbed the door handle from the outside and shut the door behind me.
"What's going on?" Cecil asked me. I felt nervous for him all of a sudden.
"Shouldn't you be doing a radio show?" I asked him.
"Most of it is pre-recorded." He replied calmly, "You didn't answer my question Carlos. What's going on?"
"Well…" I started, but felt a little dizzy remembering it, "I can't really explain…"
Cecil stared at me for what felt like an eternity. He was looking into my eyes. His were full of concern and worry. He sighed and shifted his weight to his left foot. He cocked his head. He pressed his lips together, and sighed.
"I just want to make sure you're okay. I saw you looking as pale as you do and…" Cecil started, but stopped himself. He sighed, scratching the back of his neck.
"I appreciate you being concerned, I really do." I told him, "But it's best if the public—especially you—didn't know what happened this morning."
"Okay. I'll leave it be. We just haven't heard from…" He paused, as if he wanted to say something but decided against it, "…you guys in a while."
"We'll contact you when we have something to report, Cecil. I promise." I told him. He smiled at that. I smiled back at him. I suddenly felt a slight urge to kiss him goodbye.
"Bye Cecil." I said awkwardly, opening the door and heading inside. I faintly heard him say goodbye to me. Amber gave me a look and I just sighed. I shook my hand, and made my way back to my desk. I plopped down and sighed again. I picked up my pen and opened the journal I used for personal use. I had to write all of this down. It would live with me in my mind and grow more morbid if I just left it. I sighed, turned on the radio, and began writing.
I spent the next four hours writing. I only know it was four hours because Cecil's show had restarted about four times by the time I finished. I was pale and dizzy again, I'd been reliving it as I wrote it down. Samantha and Amber had asked me what I was doing, and I'm pretty sure I numbly told them that I was writing down everything that happened today. I might not have been speaking English when I did so, but I told them nonetheless. I looked back through my writing and realized I was going into a lot of detail. I also had a few little statements written down that were my thoughts of when it happened. It was also in Spanish. I tried getting up, but I ended up on the ground somehow. I was breathing heavily. I felt like I was dying. I'm pretty sure this was a panic attack, but at the time I had no idea what was wrong. I closed my eyes and tried breathing normally, but I was just hyperventilating. I was moved from my side onto my back. I was also moved from the ground to someone's legs. This person began to stroke my hair soothingly.
"Carlos. Dear sweet perfect Carlos. You're fine, you're safe." Cecil said, "You're going to be just fine. Don't try to speak right now, Carlos. It's fine. I know you're scared, but we're all fine. Nothing bad has happened to us right now. We'll be fine."
I nodded, opening my eyes. I looked into Cecil's purple eyes. He was smiling at me softly. I was still breathing very heavily. Cecil read the look in my eyes and then began to talk. Just ramble aimlessly. I noticed everyone in the lab was surrounding us (except for Samantha, who watched from a distance). They were all watching me in concern. I understood why; they were afraid of losing another head scientist. I was put in charge of this team, and I would let them down if I went insane and had to leave. I almost told them that I was staying, but I felt like I was going to throw up if I tried talking at this point.
I turned my attention back to Cecil's words. He talked a lot about the town itself, but mostly he questioned things. He questioned some of the seemingly ridiculous rules of this place, but then covered himself as he usually does on his radio show by saying "they were necessary at some point and City Council probably hadn't gotten to it yet". He questioned some things from science, again covering himself by saying that I and my research team were very good at our jobs, and that "he wasn't one to judge our intelligence". He then continued to just ramble. He started to bring up Steve Carlsberg, but got too angry to continue. More, he didn't want to upset me again. I calmed down after about ten minutes of Cecil's rambling. Everyone in the lab turned their attention to Cecil at this point. I don't think a single soul (other than Samantha) wanted this to stop. It was surprisingly intimate on my end, and probably the sweetest thing the others had seen. Cecil noticed that my breathing had relaxed and stopped talking, looking down at me and smiling softly at me.
"Looks like my job here is done." He said, sighing. I wanted to ask him to stay, but he'd already helped me to a sitting position and stood up, brushing off his pants. He smiled at me, softly but sweetly. I gave a friendly smile back at him.
"I won't talk about this on my show." Cecil said, "Just to clarify. No need to alarm the public on a matter that has been fully contained, right?"
"Thank you Cecil." I said. I couldn't hide the relief from my voice as I awkwardly stood up. He smiled softly at me again, and ducked out. Samantha sighed and closed the door after him, mumbling that she was going to check on Brian. She headed upstairs angrily.
"You should get some sleep, Carlos." Amber said, "I can handle things down here. You've been through a traumatic experience, watching two fellow scientists die."
"Thank you for your concern, Amber." I said, turning to the rest of the group, "I don't plan on leaving anytime soon, just so you know."
There was an aura of relief when I said this. They all smiled at me and nodded, getting back to work. I heaved a shaky sigh and nodded, heading upstairs. When I got up there Brian was in my bed. I didn't care. I grabbed a quilt from the closet, thanking Samantha for her help and went to the couch. I fell asleep a few minutes after I'd settled down on the couch.
You all get two updates today because I feel so bad about leaving you in the dust for so long. I'm super sorry about that! I just lost my muse for the story and then the new Night Vale and stuff so...yeah.