So today's piece is basically just a short Welcome to Night Vale fan fiction. I enjoy the show, though it's not grabbing me as hard as I hoped it would. I like the dryness, the subject matter, and the presence of a sweet, matter-of-fact, low-key queer crush. I do not like how loud the background music usually is, and I really am not feeling the musical interludes; I usually just skip over them.
I'm only six episodes in, so I'm not sure if this is consistent with the whole of the established story, or if I'm repeating any ideas they use later, but I felt like doing something in that style today, so I decided what the hell. I made a list of a handful of creepy things I could use in the humorous Night Vale style and gave it a shot. I hope you find it funny, particularly if you like the show.
Reading it over now, I actually think I did a pretty good job with this. Also, I got to make up the word "megalocoons."
CECIL: And now for a short evening edition of our program. After all, night is a special time to our quaint desert hamlet, as it gives us our name, as well as a blissful ignorance of all the unfathomable terrors that its all-concealing veil encompasses.
Night Vale is now in the midst of the migratory season for what biologist Dr. Edmund Droop at the Crucian University identifies as “megalocoons,” an oversized cousin of the common opossum. These “megalocoons” may be identified by their high-pitched, blood-curdling squeals, their hairless, whip-like tails, and the unearthly luminosity of their glowing red eyes. You may be disquieted by the megalocoon’s uncanny resemblance to housecat-sized sewer rats, but Dr. Droop says if you are close enough to observe this, you are likely to not survive long enough to be disquieted. If you hear something digging around in your trash cans this summer, do not approach with a garden hose— leave them, your trash cans are already lost. Otherwise, sleep easily as their sonorous gurgling hiss soothes you off to dreamland.
As the weather’s gotten warmer, there seems to be an increase in the number of arcane arrangements of sticks and other assorted whicker fetishes found out in the dunes. The nature of these carefully constructed bundles is unknown, though several theories have been put forth. Some believe they are part of an outdated prank staged by local teenagers armed with too much weed and a cheap camcorder. Some believe they are the anchor points of an elaborate web of unholy power that is slowly being woven over the town. Some have drawn a connection between these and the recent uptick in missing housepets, but that could of course be related to the megalocoons. In any case, local music fans with the inclination to turn them into bonfires at a festival are hereby cautioned, in the event that it angers any local practitioners of the forbidden arts.
Finally, rumors spread of a secret population of monstrous, mutated humanoids living beneath us in the sewers. They are supposed to have either been victims of caustic chemical exposure from the explosion at the chemical plant, or when popular regional soft drink Cactus Nectar changed its formula. They were then driven underground, able to bear neither society’s revulsion at their hideousness, nor the light of the scorching desert son. Now they seethe beneath us, building a new social order based on self-loathing and churning resentment of our rejection of them, as well as our beautiful, unblemished forms. These remain, of course, in the realm only of urban legend. On an unrelated note, Mayor Pamela Winchell has begun directing a portion of her campaign resources to targeting what she refers to as “underserviced subterranean constituencies.”
And that concludes our short evening broadcast. Remember, while a leopard can’t change his spots, all cats are gray in the dark.
Good night, Night Vale.
