Work Text:
Your name is Dana.
You are recording this by hand in a curiously puffy red leather journal you bought from Barnes and Noble using your very first paycheck. Something about it compels you to write in second person present tense, though the tense wanders sometimes. The leather is warm to the touch, and you feel a fond pang in your chest when you hold it in your hands, almost as though it were a beloved pet or a yule egg. There is something hungry and eager about it every time you write out your evenings with your forbidden green pen, and you feel like you could easily fill the thing from cover to cover if you let yourself.
Your name is Dana. You are twenty years old. You have a brother who's a Weird Scout, a mother who sells pet cacti to tourists, and a father who has been absent under mysterious circumstances since you were four. You nibble on agave sticks the way other people smoke cigarettes—something about the slow pop of of your teeth puncturing the plastic and the feel of thin syrup on your tongue is calming. You're rarely seen without one in your mouth. Your dentistry bills are horrific.
You have been employed at the Night Vale Radio Station for a whole week without falling victim to any work related accidents, mental fog, existential anguish, public humiliation, or ritualistic sacrifices. You think that at the rate you're going, you might just break the company record for longest trauma-free work period. (Twenty days, four hours, two minutes.)
There was one trial by fire on your first night where you had to make Cecil Palmer a cup of coffee using the company's cherished espresso machine, but your stint waitressing at the Moonlight All-Night Diner proved useful—you belted out a pitch perfect moaning chant and your hands barely trembled using the knife.
Even your supervisor Jodie Schiller, who let you know upon hiring you that she hated your stinking guts, had complimented you on your pronunciation.
Cecil told you later that he'd very much enjoyed his cup of coffee during the show; the last intern made it a little heavy on the garlic and didn't add nearly enough chipotle. You glowed the rest of the evening. (NOT literally, that had been ONE incident in middle school that people still tease you about, damn them all.)
They warned you when you first signed on that Cecil Palmer, while offering a warm smile and a cheerful word toward almost anyone, doesn't allow himself to get too chummy with interns given the company's high turnaround.
Nevertheless, you found yourself doubting this last Monday when he found you hyperventilating in the break room and babbling apologies because all the promotional pamphlets you spent hours printing out and stapling somehow ended up with the text upside down and now all your coworkers were definitely going to hate you and when Jodie found out she was going to eviscerate you with a letter opener--
But he only laughed, not unkindly, and told you about an incident he caused as an intern at Night Vale Community College wherein he accidentally insulted the broadcast room specter when he attempted to interview it on the air.
“It certainly made a fuss! All I'd asked was if it approved of the new paint job the art teacher gave its old office. I guess it didn't like oxblood red! But anyway, what I'm saying, Dana, is that everyone makes mistakes and everyone must pay for them, but it's not the end of the world! Yes, sometimes it means docked pay or tedious re-training classes or having your voice privileges revoked, but in a few short weeks none of that is going to matter at all, believe me. Those fingers grew back eventually! You just have to let go of these tiny setbacks and push onward and upward.”
He was right. You limped home that evening, bruised but not beaten.
You think you may like it here.