Welcome to Night Vale

THE VOICE OF NIGHT VALE

CECIL:… or anyway, all of them that had survived. And that is why police and emergency medical crews no longer feel obligated to search for remains in any public library.

We are getting confirmation from several concerned citizens that something is very wrong with those cute plastic flamingos everyone bought from Lenny’s Bargain House. Those who get too close to the flamingos or, worse, touch them, are disappearing. Some of these unfortunates appeared again just moments later, sagging into shriveled skin with long gray hair, as though a lifetime had passed.

“Oh, I’m back! I’m back!” those people all said. “I thought I’d never see this place again.”

When asked where they had gone, many promptly died of old age.

Others have not reappeared at all.

Even those who were lucky enough not to disappear still reported odd side effects of the flamingos.

“Yeah, I touched one,” said Sheila, the woman who always marks people’s activities down on her clipboard at the Moonlite All-Nite. “And the world shown clear for the first time in my life. Like I had never seen any of it before. I had never seen any of it before, and I understood none of it. Which is when I realized that I had become myself as a baby again. I lived my entire life over again, making the same choices, surviving the same tragedy and surviving the same joy, and going through all the same mistakes, unable to stop myself, until I reached the moment again where I touched the flamingo, and then I was an infant again. I have gone through this loop hundreds of times. My life, which once seemed like an organic movement, now has become a hideous script that I must play out, with an ending that is forever forestalled. I won’t ever die, but I won’t ever live. Please help.”

And then, weeping, she touched the flamingo again.

There have also been some complaints that the plastic on the flamingos is cheaply produced and warped. Has Lenny’s Bargain House been selling us substandard and possibly time-bending decorative birds? We will investigate at some point in the future, when we feel like we are maybe more interested than we are now. Until then, we will continue on in ignorance, happy as we ever were.

And now, we are pleased to present three commercial-free hours of advertisements.