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“You’re starting to realize it, aren’t you?” The voice was a whisper against his subconscious.
“The unraveling of all things isn’t the end.” There was laughter. At least, it felt like laughter, but there was no sound.
“No, the end happened a long time ago. The unraveling is just the last few pieces of the cosmos floating away.”
There was silence, and the silence was worse than the voice.
“He isn’t real, Cecil.”
The voice was worse than the silence.
“He was never real, Cecil.”
Pause.
The voice was definitely worse than the silence.
“He may have existed once, once upon a different time. Once upon a different place in a different world where there was no Night Vale.”
“Or maybe he didn’t. The world did end in 1983, do you know how old he is, Cecil?”
Pause.
“Do you know how old you are, Cecil?”
There was another lapse of silence, longer than the first.
It went on.
Then slowly hums of the weather broke in on all edges. Right, the weather. The weather was playing. Then slowly, it wasn’t.
Dead air.
Dead air.
“Wake up, Cecil.” No, that wasn’t right. “Go back to sleep, Cecil. Go back to your deluded fantasy strung together by tiny pieces of starlight, meekly trying to keep out the void.”
“Night Vale is waiting, Cecil.”
“Carlos is waiting, Cecil.”