Work Text:
CECIL: Good afternoon, Night Vale. It’s the fifth day since a sinkhole swallowed part of our town, and things seem to have settled down. Officially, as of last night, there are no more survivors in the sinkhole – that’s from Fire Chief Scott Thomas, who’s had his crew out there ever since the day of the earthquake, working to save as many of our citizens as they could. A lot of you may not know this, but one of the volunteers helping out the fire department was our very own man of science, Dr. Carlos Espinoza – that man working the ropes down in the sinkhole with Lieutenant Fiarelli, that was my Carlos. His team from the lab was helping out wherever they could too, which is more than I can say for our local police department and members of a certain mysterious government agency.
CECIL: <clears throat> Some of you may also be wondering why I sound a lot more…lucid than I have for the past few days. That’s because of Carlos too – today I’m sharing my medication with him, we have something of a shortage in town at the moment thanks to all the injuries caused by the earthquake and the sinkhole and the few but completely understandable outbreaks of rioting and looting. Carlos needs the drugs more than I do right now: Someone broke into our house this morning, a desperate armed robber. Things got violent, and my sweet, brave Carlos got hurt trying to protect me. <a deep breath> I think…I’m not sure what the robber may have been trying to steal, but they did try to hurt our kitten. We’ll never know for sure what they wanted, because when they frightened the kitten it called its daddy. Which was basically a big demonic tiger made of blue fire that just appeared in the center of our bedroom. And daddy sort of ate the intruder who’d threatened its baby, so we didn’t get to question him – or her, don’t want to be sexist about it, crime can be equal opportunity too, you know. But the mess is all cleaned up now, and Carlos is drugged all the way up to his eyebrows so he can sleep off the pain of having a three-inch stab wound cleaned out and then getting six stitches on top of that…and I’m doing the news because we are not going to let Desert Bluffs take our spot on the dial away from us, oh no we aren’t.
CECIL: <rustling papers> In other news, the unofficial election for mayor is over, and Hiram McDaniels, the five-headed dragon, is the new Mayor of Night Vale. The Old Woman Without a Face could not be reached for comment, but we’re sure she can find something else useful to do for our town in the wake of this crushing political defeat. I’ll try to get a statement from Mayor McDaniels – who was tipped over the edge into winning the unofficial election due to the selfless if politically opportune assistance he provided to the fire department after the earthquake struck – in time for our next broadcast. And since the City Council still has not returned from their extended vacation, it is expected that Mayor McDaniels will be calling a general election to replace them in the next few days. More on that when we have more on that.
CECIL: <papers shuffling> No, no…oh here we go. The construction crews manning the edge of the sinkhole have issued a statement that the northern edge is still not stable and warning everyone that, if you want to go look down into the hole and they know you do, you need to do it from the southern side where it’s safer. Dr. Espinoza’s lab has also issued a statement saying the aftershocks appear to have stopped and they aren’t seeing any signs of renewed seismic activity – basing this on the signs they saw before the earthquake hit, of course, not the on conflicting readings their equipment usually gives them – so we should be safe from the vagaries of Mother Nature for the time being. The other lab in town issued a statement of their own, but it was just a page and a half of REPENT! THE END IS NIGH and IT COMES FROM BELOW written in crayon, so I don’t think I need to read the whole thing for you to get the gist of it.
CECIL: <more papers shuffling> We don’t have a complete list of the people who are missing and are presumed dead, or of the people who have gone missing and are presumed to have been hauled off by the Sheriff’s Secret Police while everyone else was busy out at the sinkhole, but as soon as I have a list I’ll read it out on the airwaves so we can have a moment of silence for all of them. Everything else in town has been pretty quiet. There are a lot of shortages right now, not just medical supplies, but I’m sure something is being done about that – in the meantime, go easy on whatever resources you already have at hand, and be sure you look after your immediate neighbors in case you need to eat them later. Oh, and Dr. Espinoza’s lab also says that under no circumstances are you to eat any wheat or wheat by-products you may come across unless you want to die horribly and take the rest of us with you, so I guess the wheat ban is still in effect. There seems to be plenty of imaginary corn to go around though, so I don’t think anyone’s going to go hungry any time soon.
<Sleepy, inquisitive noise in the background from CARLOS>
CECIL: Shhh, go back to sleep, everything’s okay.
CARLOS: <sighs> …Are you sure this time?
CECIL: I’m sure, I promise. I’m just doing the news.
CARLOS: <hums>…I’m supposed to be helping with that…
CECIL: No, not today. Today you’re just supposed to sleep.
<footsteps, light and quick, coming closer>
WOMAN’S VOICE: Cecil, is Carlos…
CECIL: <calling off to the side, albeit quietly> No, it’s okay, Trudy – he just woke up because he thought he needed to help me.
CARLOS: <very sleepy snort> I can help you. Crickets After Dark is very popular, and it’s my show.
CECIL: <amused> Yes, it is. But it’s not time for your show yet, the crickets aren’t ready. We’ll wake you up when they get here, okay?
CARLOS: <sighs> Okay. <snuffle> Love you.
CECIL: <quietly> Love you too, sweetheart.
<silence>
CECIL: <sniffs, then takes a deep breath> You know, I think that’s about it. We’ll probably have plenty more news coming in over the next few days, what with the change of city leadership and all, so eventually we can hope to be back up to half an hour of news every day instead of ten or fifteen minutes. For now though, Night Vale, have a good afternoon and we’ll end with…the weather.