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“Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error, yet again, Mayor Pamela Winchell told us here at Night Vale Com-“, the soothing voice seeping out of the radio is cut off by a loud bang followed by a sizzling noise coming from just a few meters away.
“Oh, ouch…”, a voice says before letting out a subtle gasp. “W-what?”, it continues. Merely a few meters from the radio a man is standing, staring down at a glass of something which he, I bet, dropped on the floor. A blood-like translucent liquid is slowly making its way out of the glass; smoke is oozing from said liquid, up in the man’s face, seeping in to his nostrils. The man coughs and backs away from the liquid.
“… Carlos! Yes, listeners, I know what you’re thinking, not literally of course. Only a few can know literally what you’re thinking and I am not one of them”, the man looks towards the radio, reacting to his name being said. Carlos, apparently, rubs his eye and coughs again before reaching for his phone and punching in a number. He looks at the radio expectantly and waits.
“… and well, we all know what that means, listeners, however, that is to be discussed another time. Now, on to The Weather”, as the first few notes of The Weather started playing Carlos pressed the call button on his phone and held it up to his ear.
“Hello, Carlos?”, the same voice which was speaking on the radio was now speaking through Carlos’ phone. Carlos lowers the volume on the radio before speaking.
“Ce-”, Carlos coughs before he can continue. The smoke is starting to spread around the room.
“Carlos? Are you okay, you sound distressed?”, the voice also sounds distressed, Carlos registers.
“There’s... ugh... I- I kind of dropped this glass of liquid... stuff... and now it’s oozing smoke and it’s kinda slightly foggy and a lot uncomfortable and I’m not sure what to do”, Carlos says and moves away from the smoke filling the room like a liquid in a small container which, incidentally, the smoke had been just minutes before.
“Oh, sweet, perfectly imperfect Carlos...”, the voice on the other side of the phone said in that way that only said voice could. “Was it the blood-like translucent liquid which you told me you found yesterday?”, Carlos nods before he remembers that the owner of the voice on the other side can’t see him.
“Ye-, yes, yes that one”, the voice makes a high pitched noise and then mumbles something that sound suspiciously a lot like ‘adorable’. Carlos scowls slightly for a second, but of course, the smoke decided that that second would be a very good time to invade Carlos’ body through his nostrils. Carlos starts coughing and moves as far away from the smoke as possible.
“Carlos!?”, the voice panics.
“I- I’m fine, I’m fine, what do I do?”, the voice lets out a sigh of relief.
“Just... just lock every window and door and get out of there okay? I’ll come help you”, Carlos, who started locking the window closest to him, stops, startled.
“N-now? But what about the radio show?”, the voice sighs again, this time in uncertainty.
“I’ll, uh, I’ll get intern Zara to cover for me”, Carlos is about to argue because everybody knows that their town needs their radio host but said radio host interrupts before he can get a word out. “Don’t worry Carlos, it’s okay. I haven’t missed one day of work before, besides, Zara is good with words. You should hear her speaking the blood-meeting-ritual during the meetings”, Carlos is stunned for a second. The oddities of Night Vale are still new to him every now and then. At least he’s not that surprised to hear that there is such a thing as a ‘blood-meeting-ritual’. Carlos sighs before speaking again.
“Fine. But hurry, you shouldn’t need to miss too much”, the radio host speaks a quiet, and absolutely not adorable, ‘yessssss’.
“Neat! The Weather’s rounding up though, see you soon”, the voice hangs up and Carlos cranks up the volume on the radio which he’d been carrying with him outside.
“Listeners, there’s been an... incident, like so often during The Weather, and I need to go and help Carlos out with said incident”, Carlos winced and knew that there would be talk all over town of what kind of incident had occurred to him. “however”, the voice continues. “I will leave you with intern Zara during my leave”, there’s a bit of rustling before a different voice is heard through the radio.
“Hello Night Vale!”, the voice is sweet, and Carlos could definitely imagine Zara being a singer, so he sits down on the stairs outside his door and listens intently too what Zara is saying as he waits.
***
Carlos looks up at the sound of a car skidding to a stop just as intern Zara starts talking about what she thinks he and the actual radio host are up to, and Carlos is glad to have something to keep his attention from Zara’s rather, ahem, creative imagination. Carlos stands up and walks towards the car seeing as how the radio host just stepped out of it.
“Carlos! Come on, we have to do this quickly”, what, exactly, it is that they have to do Carlos doesn’t question and simply follows the voice towards his own front door. Carlos and the voice walk in to the laboratory, in which Carlos had been when dropping the blood-like transparent liquid. The voice coughs and turns around to Carlos.
“I thought I told you how to deal with this see-through liquid, wait, wait, did I not tell you how?”, the voice, which had always been smooth and soft, suddenly sounds harsh but genuinely confused. Carlos blinks.
“Wait... you were serious about that?”, the radio host stares at Carlos as if he had three heads. Although, in this town, who knows?
“Of course I was serious! Why would I lie about that?”, Carlos winces and looks apologetic at the radio host.
“I didn’t mean that. I thought you were joking, I’m sorry...”, the radio host smiles slightly and nods.
“Let’s just deal with this, okay?”, Carlos nods and heads for his living room to grab some cardboard and crayons.
***
“So, all I really had to do was write a sign that said; ‘science is happening’, then sing the words to the liquid and everything would’ve been fine?”, Carlos asks, even though that is the exact thing they just did and obviously that was all that needed to be done.
“Yup!”, the radio host smiles. “It’s so cute how you don’t even know how to deal with ectoplasm”, Carlos blushes and pushes the radio hosts shoulder playfully.
“Shut up, Cecil”, Cecil looks at his Carlos and smiles wider.
“Whatever, perfectly imperfect, Carlos”, he says and kisses Carlos on his nose. They exchange quiet ‘I love yous’ before diverting their attention back to the TV, which is showing a documentary on armadillos for the fourth time this week. They can watch anything as long as they’re together, they say.
The End