Who's a Good Boy?

by Joseph Fink

  “What?” I said.

  “Never mind.”

  “Maureen and I have, like, a plan,” said Michelle. “It’s very secret. But we’re teaming up to save Night Vale.”

  “I’m so glad you two have become such good friends,” I said.

  They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “We don’t want to, like, put a label on this,” said Michelle. “Not everything has to be named.”

  “Yeah,” said Maureen. “So anyway we have a secret plan. Plus Chad is now panicking about what the thing he summoned has ended up doing, so he’s been trying to figure out how to reverse the ritual.”

  “LOL,” said Michelle.

  “LOL,” agreed Maureen, putting the lighter to the end of her cigarette, and letting off a cloud of smoke that smelled like overcooked caramel.

  Let’s have a look now at the community calendar.

  All events this week are canceled. This week is also canceled. You might be canceled too.

  This has been the community calendar.

  I found Lusia, the ghost that haunts the haunted baseball diamond, looking sadly at the nearby Shambling Orphan Housing Development. The development somehow has been hit even harder than the rest of Night Vale. There was almost nothing left to show that life had once existed there.

  “Ah, Cecil,” she said. “It is all happening as I was afraid it would.”

  “Do you know how we can stop them?” I asked.

  “No, I have no ideas. Only the fear. A writhing, biting thing within me.” She slapped her spectral chest with her spectral hand, making a deep resonant pop. “In here, Cecil.”

  She narrowed her eyes and pointed.

  “There. The beast.”

  I saw, a few blocks away, a beagle puppy cross the street.

  “The beast?”

  “He is so adorable, yes? Just the cutest. So cute that you would do anything for his little face, for his dumb floppy ears, yes? That is how he controls you. That is how he controls everyone. He is so cute you would just do anything for him, and you will. You will do everything for him, things you never dreamed you would be capable of doing. Ghastly things.”

  “Who’s a good boy?” I said.

  “Who indeed,” she said.

  I called Carlos to see how far along he was in saving the day. He said that he wasn’t very far along at all and it was frustrating to him. He said he’s been letting brightly colored liquid bubble in beakers and has been writing numbers all over chalkboards and it hasn’t helped anything at all. He even drew a structural formula for cyclohexane, but it also didn’t help.

  “It’s like,” he said, “this is somehow a problem that can’t be solved with science. But there are no problems that can’t be solved with science. Science fixes everything and is always on the side of good. I just . . . I can’t figure out what these strangers want. They don’t seem to want anything.”

  “You sound very upset,” I told Carlos. “You know that it’s not good for you to get worked up like this. Take a break. Play some Bloodborne. That’ll relax you.”

  “Okay, yeah, I guess,” he said. But I knew he didn’t mean it. He was going to keep trying to save Night Vale, and I loved him for it even as I wished he wouldn’t be so hard on himself.

  And now a word from our sponsors. It is possible the world is ending. If you cannot hide, then you must run. If you cannot run, then you must die. This message brought to you by Clorox Bleach.

  Two blocks past Mission Grove Park I saw the house of Frances Donaldson, the manager of the Antiques Mall. The door was off its hinges. The mailbox had been killed and skinned. For reasons I couldn’t explain to myself, I crossed that ruined front yard and entered the house. I needed to see. I needed to report on this disaster.

  Three feet into the door, I looked up to see a stranger before me. Her shoulders went up and down, a deep, constant breathing. Otherwise she did not move. At this distance, I could see the pupils of her eyes, unfocused, frozen on a point in the room several feet above my head. Her hair was greasy, and it stuck to her face. Her skin had faded into gray, like a person dying, or a person carved from stone. She stood in the ruined living room, surrounded by a pattern of destruction that splashed out from her, the echo of a flurry of movement even as she was perfectly still.

  I was distracted by the mess, and when I looked back she was much closer to me. I could feel her breath. It was room temperature, unchanged by her body. Air in, air out, but no transformation.

  “Hello, Cecil,” she said.

  Her mouth did not move. Her voice came not from her but from a glass of water on a side table that had somehow been spared the destruction. The water vibrated slightly with the voice.

  “Hello?” I said to the glass. “What do you want?”

  The lamp hanging above me laughed. There was no joy to it, just a replication of the sound of laughter. It went on and on, slowly petering out to a quiet choking and then nothing.

  “What do I want?” asked the glass of water. “I want nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing.”

  The lamp snickered. My left shoe joined in, and I jumped back. But the stranger was even closer than before.

  “We want nothing at all. Everywhere there is something. All of these things. Like this glass.”

  The glass of water shattered.

  “One less thing,” said my left shoe. “Soon there will be no things. We will take away your government, your laws, your infrastructure. All of your possessions. All of you. What we want is nothing.”

  “But why?”

  “A why is a thing,” the lamp said sternly. “We destroy whys. We destroy explanations.”

  I recognized the stranger. Behind the slack stillness, there was a human face. It was Frances herself, in the wreckage of her own home.

  “Frances. What happened to you?”

  At the sound of her name, her eyes focused in for a moment, and flicked down toward me, before drifting back up to the ceiling.

  “I was made strange,” the lamp said. “So strange that I became a stranger. There is a cavern.”

  I merely looked at the lamp, confused.

  “There is a cavern, Cecil. I was taken there. The ground is covered in mud. You walk through the mud, in the darkness, because you think there must be something else. But there is never anything else. For years, you walk through the mud.”

  My shoe chimed in, “Sometimes you feel as though there might be other lost people, also searching through the mud. Maybe you can even hear the soft swish of them in the black, but your hands never meet, and you cannot speak out. You are alone. Sometimes the mud goes over your head, and sometimes it is just a slight damp beneath your feet.”

  The lamp spoke again, “Years go by. You feel yourself hollowed out by time. Everything that was you slips away. There is a great power that replaces you with his desires. He is your leader. And you want what he wants. And he wants nothing.”

  “When did you leave the mud and come back to Night Vale?”

  “Leave?” This time Frances herself spoke. Her vocal cords cracked with lack of use. Her eyes focused on me again. Her parched lips clung to each other as she spoke.

  “Cecil, I’m still in the mud. I’m still in the mud, Cecil. I’m still in the mud. I’m still in the mud.”

  She said this over and over, quickly losing control of volume and articulation. Tears rolled down her face from her unblinking eyes. I turned and ran. Behind me, her cracked voice, more and more distant. “I’m still in the mud. I’m still in the mud.”

  I had a vision of the beagle, loping adorably through a burning building, his big stupid ears flapping as humans screamed and pleaded around him. He watched them burn, and replied only, “Woof. “Woof,” he said, as Night Vale fell.

  I am passing Louie Blasko on the street right now. He is frantically working the pumps of his pipe organ, tipping his hat at me while keeping time with a simple gamelan setup.

  He is holding out hi
s hat for spare change.

  “Louie, I’m sorry,” I am saying to him. “But . . .” And here I am gesturing around at the decimated street.

  “Just say weather,” he is telling me.

  I am not responding.

  “Say the word weather,” he is hissing.

  “Weather?”

  WEATHER: “Plunder” by the Felice Brothers

  “What was that about?” I asked Louie. But he was gone. In his place there was a stranger. Unmoving. Breathing. I hurried on, and did not look back.

  A black sedan drove slowly through the streets, the first functioning vehicle I had seen among the carnage.

  I waved it down and two men got out. One was not tall and the other was not short.

  “We had nothing to do with this,” said the man who was not tall.

  The man who was not short nodded vigorously.

  “Do you know what happened?” I asked.

  The man who was not tall stood between me and the man who was not short and said, “Don’t talk to him. He’s new,” though I had directed the question at both of them.

  The man who was not short said, “The question isn’t ‘what happened.’”

  “What is the question?” I said.

  “Don’t talk to him, he’s new,” the man who was not tall said. “Anyway, you know what the question is.”

  He leaned in close to me. I could smell anise on his breath.

  “Who is a good boy?” he whispered.

  “Do you have a pen I could borrow?” said the man who was not short.

  “Sure,” I said, handing him the one from my reporter’s notebook.

  “Thanks,” he said. He opened the trunk of the sedan, tossed the pen into it, slammed it shut, and got back into the passenger seat.

  “Don’t talk to him, he’s new,” said the other man, and then he, too, got into the sedan and the strange pair drove away.

  Finally I reached City Hall. It had been ravaged. There was no sign of City Council. Likely they have fled, as they often do during danger to our town. Or, I’m supposed to say, taken a sudden and fortuitous vacation. But I am not on the radio. I do not have to say what I am supposed to say. I wonder if Station Management is even in town. I suspect that they may have taken the same sudden and fortuitous vacation as City Council, their many strange and endless appendages entwined on some beach somewhere.

  Deputy Mayor Trish Hidge came running out of the building, holding a desk lamp in one hand. She ran by me, wild with panic, huffing. She was barefoot.

  Huff huff huff.

  Or no. That was not her at all. A wet, rapid breathing. Waiting for me at the door to City Hall. What she had been fleeing from. The beagle puppy.

  Huff huff huff.

  He padded forward. He was adorable. Or was he? I had thought he was a cute beagle puppy, but there was something off about him. A sneer in his lips. A strange bend to his legs. His body was misshapen. He was not cute at all.

  Breath came in and out of his mouth, which was gray and squishy within.

  Huff huff huff.

  The beagle rose onto his hind legs, higher and higher, until he was standing fully upright, his spine elongated and straightened.

  I felt something rising in my throat. I did not want to open my mouth for fear of an organ or bile or hot black tar pouring out. But that was not what was pushing its way out of my mouth. It was words. The words sputtered out of my lips, against my will.

  “Who’s a good boy?” I said.

  “I am the good boy, Cecil,” the beagle said. “You wanted to witness, so witness. I am the good boy, and I rule over the dark, wet caverns of hell.”

  Huff huff huff.

  He cocked his little beagle head. He stood so much taller than I thought a dog could stand. His breath was thick and wet and labored.

  “I want nothing, Cecil. Nothing at all. And I will have it.”

  Huff huff huff. Huff huff huff.

  PROVERB: Remember to compliment-sandwich when critiquing. Example: That’s an okay shirt you have on. Everything you wrote was bad. You’re wearing a shirt.

  Episode 90:

  “Who’s a Good Boy? Part 2”

  AUGUST 15, 2016

  JOSEPH AND I TALK A LOT ABOUT FLYING. WE BOTH DEAL WITH FLIGHT anxieties while having to fly a lot for our job.

  In talking about why flying is scarier than driving despite being overwhelmingly safer, I said, “I suppose it’s about control. You can control a car but not a plane.” Joseph countered that flying removes all illusion that we have control over our lives. There’s an important distinction in his point. Illusion of control. Not actual control.

  We deal with existentialism a lot on Night Vale, especially the bleak point that we’re all gonna die and it could happen at any moment. Despite a random and indifferent universe, we make up stories about why we die. Sometimes there are strong correlations of control: They were a reckless driver. She really loved BASE jumping. He liked trying to hug badgers. Sometimes not: Wrong place at the wrong time. Unlucky I guess.

  We make up stories about why we live too. He was so determined to beat cancer. She was chosen by God. They are the luckiest person I know.

  In this two-part episode, we’re playing around with that very notion that we can prolong life/avoid death. The strangers want nothing, need nothing, and ultimately are controlled by nothing. The town rallies. People take action. They pray. They fight. They sic their floating cat on the enemy.

  Night Vale suffers from an illusion of control. The strangers cannot be fought off or bought off or prayed away. As the Faceless Old Woman says, Night Vale’s efforts are all just noise.

  But another way to say that previous paragraph is that Night Vale needs stories to survive. There are conflicting stories. Who’s the hero? Tamika? Melony? The Erika? The spiritual coming-together? Maybe these stories are all self-deception, meaningless in the face of an indifferent universe. But these narratives help hide their lack of control.

  If we cannot explain why something bad happens or convince ourselves we can eventually stop it, then what’s the point of any of this? [points at all of human life]

  I vote. I try to eat healthy. I read. I speak my mind about causes I find important. I knock on wood when watching sporting events. I don’t drink and drive. I listen to Beyoncé during every airplane takeoff and landing.

  My candidate won. I haven’t gotten heart disease. No senile dementia for me. Social justice has made progress. The Red Sox won a bunch of titles. I won’t be killed in a drunk driving accident. I have never died in a plane crash.

  Are these illusions of control? Yes, most definitely. But they are narratives to help me cope with fatalism, to cope with the indifferent universe, to make me think that what I am doing makes a difference. I make up truths to feel sane.

  Stories cannot protect us from the void, but they can protect us from staring too long into it.

  —Jeffrey Cranor

  You wanna go outside? Outside? You wanna go outside? You do? You do? I bet you want to go outside. I bet you do.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

  Huff huff huff.

  The beagle puppy stood fully upright on his hind legs, breathing heavily. I inched back from the dog.

  Here’s where I want to tell you I drew a glowing sword and he drew a sword made of fire. I want to tell you our mighty blades clashed above our heads as our elbows and faces met. I think it’d be a really cool thing to say that I then pushed him back with a kick to the chest and swung my blade down upon him and as he tried to deflect it with his own, my sword shattered his, causing him to burst open with white light and doves, and order returned for good to Night Vale.

  But what I’m going to tell you is I don’t own a sword. Doves aren’t real. And the dog had destroyed everything we are without a single conventional weapon. Plus, I tripped while trying to run away.

  The beagle was standing over me.

  Huff huff huff.

  There was a boom that dimmed my hearing, and the dog w
as jolted backward violently. Sam, our sheriff, stood behind me, a shotgun in their hand.

  “C’mon,” Sam said as they grabbed my shoulder and pulled me up.

  I turned back to see the carnage, but the beagle was standing again, exactly where he was the moment before, perhaps a little closer actually. His adorable puppy mouth distended horribly with each labored breath.

  Huff huff huff.

  “Don’t look at it,” Sam said as they pushed me into City Hall and through a door marked “FORBIDDEN.” Sam slammed the door shut and bolted the lock.

  We were in the City Council’s chambers. The council was there. They had not fled their city after all. They all spoke in unison, their black robes undulating like a storm-tossed ocean. The only details of the council’s hood-shrouded faces I could discern were their reddish-brown teeth.

  “We have reopened the Dog Park,” the City Council shouted. It sounded like an accusation. “Sam plans to lure the strangers into the Dog Park and lock them away there.”

  “How do you get them to go into the Dog Park?” I asked.

  The council was silent for a long time, finally muttering, “Well, their leader is a beagle. So . . .” And then trailing off.

  Sam interjected, “We get every person left in Night Vale in front of that Dog Park. If they want nothing, they’ll have to go there to create it.”

  I was thinking about what nothing meant. About beings that don’t exist. And who better to fight off a lord of hell than . . .

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Is there a way out of here that doesn’t go through that beagle? I need to visit a friend of mine.”

  Let’s have a look now at traffic.

  There’s a metal grate about eleven feet off the ground. It’s large enough for most human bodies to fit through. There are eight ten-millimeter hexagonal bolts holding it in place. Sitting atop a person’s shoulders who’s sitting atop another person’s shoulders and then using a simple torque wrench, it is not difficult to remove these bolts and pull oneself through into the ductwork.

  The duct eventually ends at a similar large grate.