by Joseph Fink
As is the usual murder investigation procedure, the Sheriff’s Secret Police is ordering every single citizen of Night Vale to gather in the Rec Center for a mandatory night of Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre so they can determine the killer’s identity. There will be catering by Big Rico’s Pizza, and the Moonlite All-Nite Diner will be providing Invisible Pie for those citizens who do not eat visible food.
More on this soon, but first, a word from our sponsors. Today’s sponsor is Dasani. Here on their behalf is, of course, a sentient patch of haze, and her name is Deb. Deb?
DEB: Doncha know it, Cecil. Okay, listeners. I’m here to tell you about Dasani brand water beverage. And I certainly do hope you consider Dasani brand water beverage over all other water beverage opportunities that are available to you.
I know that you humans, insignificant meat-filled wisps that you are, are thinking: What difference could the water beverage opportunity I select possibly make?
And I’m sure you’re right. You’re very smart, I’m sure. I’m sure that all other water beverage opportunities haven’t been poisoned by unknown malicious parties, leaving Dasani brand water beverage the only safe selection. Why would that even happen? That would be illegal, immoral, and great for our sales.
Marketing a particular brand of water beverage is certainly difficult. You know what else is difficult? Death by poison. Hard, slow, and painful. Yes, if all other water beverage opportunities were poisoned, why then, your choice to select Dasani brand water beverage would be very important indeed.
CECIL: Deb. Please tell me the truth. Did you poison our water?
DEB: Oh, Cecil, not to my definitive out loud knowledge. But who even knows?
CECIL: I feel like you know.
DEB: Then maybe just follow that feeling. See where it takes you. Maybe it’ll take you to Dasani brand water beverage. Maybe it’ll take you to a slow oblivion. The important thing is that nothing you do could possibly affect me. As the good book says, “Human life is just a means to an end.”
CECIL: The good book?
DEB: The Sentient Haze’s Guide to World Domination. It’s actually a great book. Dasani brand water beverage: “Can’t Live Without Unpoisoned Water.”
CECIL: Listeners, I know you’re at a dinner theater, but perhaps avoid drinking anything with your food until we have this situation sorted out.
DEB: It’ll be fine.
CECIL: Still though. And thank you, Deb.
And now a public service announcement. The Night Vale Psychological Association reminds you to take a few moments each day for relaxing your brain. Never tried meditative exercises? They suggest the following:
First, close your eyes. Breathe. Think about your breaths. In. Out.
Next, picture a beach. Picture gentle waves, and then wet sand, and then dry sand, and then dune grass, flittering in a soft wind, and then a house.
Picture a house. A really big house. Bigger even than that. Square footage I’m thinking at least 3,000. Picture, let’s say, a 3,500-square-foot house. Bedroomwise, let’s say three, and bathrooms let’s go two and a half.
And we’re relaxing. And we’re breathing.
And we’re picturing a 3,500-square-foot Craftsman-style house. With a wraparound porch and porch swing. We are picturing our best selves living our best lives, we are picturing a calm ocean, we are picturing a media room with a back projection screen and reclining movie seats. Let’s really relax now, let’s feel very calm, and let’s put a massage function on those movie seats.
We should now be feeling warmth prickling throughout our bodies, and we allow ourselves to follow that warmth. We’re picturing peace. We’re picturing love. Love of every kind. We’re also picturing a wine cellar. We’re picturing a better wine cellar than that. No! We’re picturing a modern, humidity-stabilized, temperature-controlled wine cellar. Come on, work with me on this. And peace.
We’re picturing peace.
This is really coming together. We’re all doing a great job, picturing this house with a strong foundation, like our spiritual foundations, grounded and stable. With a good roof, like our minds, sheltering and waterproof and recently redone by a certified contractor. With a walk-in closet off the master bedroom, like our hearts, finished with recessed lighting and a rotating shoe rack.
Picture the house. Build this house in your mind. Have it overlooking a tropical beach but still close to markets and nightlife. Have you pictured this house?
Great. You can open your eyes now. Thanks everyone. You’ve just built the Night Vale Psychological Association a luxury beach house in your subconscious. We’ve already put it up on Airbnb, but we hope to have a few weekends a year to use it ourselves.
Every time you fall asleep you will see strangers gathering in this house, living in your dreams. Keep doing your relaxation exercises, we don’t want our dreamworld beach house spoiled by your weird mother issues. Thanks a lot.
This message was brought to you by the Night Vale Psychological Association.
A spokesperson from the Sheriff’s Secret Police has just handed me a note explaining I am not required to attend the Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre, as I was here in my booth broadcasting during the time of the murder. But it is mandatory for all other citizens of Night Vale.
After much debate over how to stage such an enormous theatrical endeavor, the Secret Police have settled on a very traditional Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre, in which the audience just stares at each other in suspicious silence for a long time until the mystery sort of solves itself.
And indeed, everyone in the theater was already looking around for a stranger who might be the murderer. Everyone. All of them were looking around for a suspect. They did not look at someone they knew personally or that they came to the show with. Those are people they foolishly trust. No, they sought out the eyes of a complete stranger, and then they made eye contact, and they locked in.
They glowered suspiciously at each other and only each other. “That person could be a murderer,” they thought, and then they pointed at the person they were making eye contact with. They pointed at each other and said aloud, “You could be a murderer.”
And they were each of them right. That person could be a murderer. Keeping their finger pointed, they narrowed their eyes. They widened their eyes. They crossed their eyes. Then they uncrossed their eyes because it made it hard to see this person they suspected.
They each slowly lowered their pointing fingers. And they each said to the other, “I have my eye on you, suspect,” and then they looked away, hearts aglow at a job well-done. They would remember the face of that stranger because they knew it would be important throughout the evening.
We’re getting word that there may have been an eyewitness to the murder, which is one of the top three witness types behind foot witness and kidney witness. We have the witness on the phone right now. It is John Peters, you know, the farmer?
JOHN: Yep, that’s me.
CECIL: Now John.
JOHN: Yep, that’s me.
CECIL: You’re saying that you saw the murder take place.
JOHN: Absolutely.
CECIL: Tell us all about it. What did you see?
JOHN: Well, I was out in my fields this morning. I’m a farmer, you know.
CECIL: Oh, I did not know that.
JOHN: Really? I feel like most people . . .
CECIL: Yes, I know you’re a farmer.
JOHN: Okay, great. Well, I was out in my fields this morning, growing imaginary corn, and I saw some movement at the edge of my vision. Right in between that point where seeing becomes not seeing. I turned. And I saw, I saw a great silver craft, disk shaped, with portholes at regular intervals.
CECIL: Wait a second.
JOHN: There were beings inside, of astonishing structure, and they were looking out of the windows at me. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck. I felt them with my hand because I had put my hand on the back of my neck in surprise. Those hairs are so soft. You ever just think about those
hairs back there, Cecil?
CECIL: Yes. Constantly, but what does this have to do . . .
JOHN: The craft landed, and the beings came out. They were of astonishing structure, and one of them, their leader, said, “Behold. My name is Klangor. We have arrived on your earth from someplace distant. We have much to show you.”
CECIL: John. Did you or did you not see a murder?
JOHN: These beings (they were of astonishing structure), they took me into their craft and showed me times and places far and along from this here and ago.
Did you know that the universe is not, in fact, a single, ever-expanding four-dimensional sphere of light and matter? No, Cecil, the universe, I have learned, is merely a particle composed entirely of itself and comprising a greater version of itself, a recursive function of its own body, repeated like identical cells forming the shape of that which each cell physically expresses. I think of Benoit Mandelbrot’s famous set of equations, each iteration a repeated pattern, psychedelic and vast. Our universe is not made of matter, nor space, nor time, Cecil. it is made of possibilities.
CECIL: So you saw nothing useful or interesting at all.
JOHN: And then the beings placed me, childlike, back down upon my earth, and their craft sprang up into the air, leaving a strange imaginary shape in my imaginary cornfield. I held up my hand in farewell, and through the windows, I could see them hold up . . . well whatever it was at the end of their limbs . . . they were of astonishing structure, and then they were gone. I do not believe I will ever be the same again. I do not believe I am the same now.
CECIL: Oh, John. I should have known you were a farmer, not a witness. This is why witnessing should be left to the professionals. Paid witnesses who will witness whatever crime you want for a nominal fee. That is how witnessing should be done, not by amateur citizens who might see incorrect things or repeat forbidden truths.
JOHN: I just really wanted to tell that story. Sorry I couldn’t be of any help with the murder. Ever since this morning, I’ve been too busy weeping in awe and transcendent grief to witness anything at all.
CECIL: It’s okay, John, but next time please only call if you have something interesting to tell us. Good-bye, John.
JOHN: Thanks, Cecil.
CECIL: Let’s have a look now at the community calendar:
Wednesday evening, Night Vale’s most popular restaurant, Tourniquet, will be hosting a special Chef’s Table Dinner. This exclusive event costs five hundred dollars, and is limited to only thirteen attendees. Diners will enjoy a special tasting menu personally curated and prepared by chef LeSean Mason. The five-course menu will center around quail.
Chef Mason rediscovered the joy of quail meat and would like to share this joy with Night Vale. Sous-chef Earl Harlan will recite instructions for gutting and cleaning, while each diner will be given a live quail and a brick.
The Chef’s Table Dinner begins at 7:30 P.M., at which time all diners from last year’s event will finally be released from the kitchen, back to their old lives.
This Thursday night, the Night Vale Tourism Board will be holding an opening night party to celebrate the new artwork on display at the Night Vale Visitors Center along Radon Canyon.
The theme of this gallery collection is “PAIN: Internal, External, and Beyond!” and will feature several works by local artists, expressing a wide array of popular art techniques, from post-modern monochromatics to outdoor rock sculptures, and even some interactive exhibits like “PUT YOUR FOOT IN HERE” and “HURTS DON’T IT?” and “STOP HITTING YOURSELF! STOP HITTING YOURSELF! WHY DO YOU KEEP HITTING YOURSELF?”
Say, did you know that it is completely possible for the human body to survive unprotected in space for several seconds? It’s true. And this information will be superuseful for you this Thursday evening around 8:00 P.M.
Friday at noon, the eastbound lanes of Route 800 will be closed between exits 17 and 19. All traffic will be rerouted onto side streets. Highway crews will be posting street signs with ALL ROADS NOWHERE and EVERY PATH DEATH and also some frowny faces to help you with your morning commute.
Saturday afternoon, the Night Vale PTA is hosting its Third Annual Youth Arts Fair in the front parking lot of Night Vale Elementary School. The fair focuses on creativity, fun, and personal expression for kids. But the PTA is warning all attendees that there will be clowns at the fair. Clown Local 189 requires the hire of at least two dozen union members, but for the sake of easily-frightened children, these clowns will not be allowed into the actual fair. They will simply stand inside the elementary school, watching through the darkened windows. The clowns will be just barely discernable in the shadows, and thus not at all a distraction for the children who will only be able to see faint shadows of curly wigs and round noses and sharp yellow teeth from behind the breath-frosted glass of the rooms the children must sit in day after day. Also, just so the kids feel totally safe, Slenderman will be there. Principal Angela Slenderman will stand in the back of the fair silently watching the children.
Sunday afternoon, the Night Vale Community Players will be hosting auditions for their next show, which is called Oklahoma! It’s an old musical about people from a fictional U.S. state that must fight off an attack from ballet-dancing farmers that ride a herd of elephants with corn husks for eyes. The controversial musical has been lauded and derided by theater critics for its graphic and gory death scenes.
Auditions are from 2:00 P.M. to 2:05 P.M. A postcard announcing the exact location of the auditions will be sent the day before, so make sure you wait silently in the shrubbery for the mail carrier.
Tuesday is a lie. Calendars are propaganda. Days and times are just artificial walls built to divide us.
An update from the Rec Center . . . Everyone in town is still participating in the Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre, and the evening is certainly providing a lot of theater, dinner, mystery, and, unfortunately, murder.
It seems that whoever is the culprit in this case is working to expand the number of cases that they are a culprit in. They have taken advantage of the fact that all citizens are required to be at this dinner theater production, and are slinking about in the shadows, picking people off one by one.
Janice Rio, from down the street, said that Bernie Simpson had been right next to her, and then the next thing she knew. Bam. Bernie Simpson was right next to her. Then, after telling me that, Janice paused for a long time, as though expecting a reaction, and then she said, “Oh, sorry, I forgot to say that Bernie was a ghost the second time. That’s an important part. Yeah, he was a ghost. He winked and said, ‘Hey, Janice. Looks like I’ve been murdered.’ He laughed and laughed and said, ‘They got me. I’m dead now.’ He just wouldn’t stop laughing. It was very off-putting and I had to switch seats,” Janice said.
Who is this fiend and where will they strike next? It could be anyone. It could be anywhere.
It is like that wonderful children’s book classic, in which the reader is playfully warned again and again that there is a monster at the end of the book, but of course when the reader gets to the end it turns out that there is indeed a monster at the end of the book, just as they were warned, and many of our children are eaten after reading it. What a beautiful book.
Citizens, please be safe. Please. I’d be very upset if you weren’t safe, so just . . . please.
In light of the current emergency, the Sheriff’s Secret Police has sent a spokesperson to the radio station to provide information and answer any questions that might be raised about the current “dangerous murderer on the loose in the room you’re all in” situation.
The spokesperson has tunneled their way into my booth using their long digging claws and has just pushed their soft wet snout out from the soil toward the microphone, so let’s say hello to the secret spokesperson.
SPOKESPERSON: [seeming unprepared to speak] Ah! Hello. Yes. What?
CECIL: You are here to speak to us about this dangerous situation.
SPOKESPERSON: Sure, sure. What? Right. Citiz
ens, we are completely in charge, nothing to fear.
CECIL: That’s great news . . .
SPOKESPERSON: [interrupting] Ah! Sorry, just thought of something frightening.
CECIL: That’s quite all right.
SPOKESPERSON: Oh god!
CECIL: Did you just . . .
SPOKESPERSON: No sorry, I remembered how I thought of something frightening. Now I’m thinking of remembering it. Truly fear devours. Anyway, the investigation is moving forward. We’ve got our best officers on it. And all the rest of the officers who aren’t on it are busy worrying that they apparently aren’t the best officers. Are they the worst? This will eat away at them at night. They will toss and turn. So everything is under control. I wouldn’t worry. I’m great at not worrying. You all might worry though. I guess it depends on how well you handle the stress of being in great danger.
CECIL: How close are the Secret Police to identifying a major suspect?
SPOKESPERSON: Oh man. Woo. Well that’s entitlement if I ever heard it.
CECIL: Entitlement?
SPOKESPERSON: We’re doing everything we can to stop this murderer, like having a dinner theater and announcing that there is a murderer and running through neighborhoods crying, “We’re done for! We’re all done for!” And now you’re all like, “Name a suspect. Make an arrest. Keep us safe.”You’re all fine. Probably. Listen, you’re either already dead or probably you’re safe for this exact moment.
CECIL: It doesn’t sound like we’re safe.
SPOKESPERSON: I understand your concern, Cecil.
[beat]
CECIL: And . . .
SPOKESPERSON: I dunno. I understand it. It seems valid. Good concern. I’m going to go back to the Secret Police hover office in the clouds until it gets less dangerous around here.
CECIL: You’re just going to hide.
SPOKESPERSON: [nodding] No.
CECIL: You just nodded though.