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Old Woman Josie reminds him of his aunt, with her caustic wit and smoker's rasp. He'd lost his mother to breast cancer when he was six years old. Because of the trauma of the bereavement, and how eagerly the media were following the story, the social services had allowed him to stay with close family until the custody hearing. They'd lived in a small, dilapidated town in the south of Spain, two hours and four hundred back roads away from Seville. He'd slept on the pull-out cot in the spare room for a month, wedged among the furniture and knick-knacks that tend to coalesce in the spare rooms of people who have a second bedroom but don't expect visitors. The lodgings were temporary - the social worker had emphasised when she'd handed care over - it was just until the hearing, then he'd have the option of living with his father.
The man hadn't shown, of course. His aunt and uncle, or tía and tío as they'd encouraged him to call them (use your Español, boy!), had known as certainly as he had, if the way they'd been inconspicuously de-cluttering the spare room around him was anything to go by. The man had left he and his mother before he'd even been born and anyway, his aunt had said to him after the social workers had finally evacuated the house with paperwork in hand, he was well shot of such filth; the man had been rotten through-and-through.
He'd quickly gotten used to his new home, finding adventure in the hidy-holes and burnt out back alleys around his tía and tíos' weathered old house. His tio had taken him aside for an hour or two every day and played at teacher for a few months, at least until they'd been able to enroll him in school - that had generated even more paperwork. He'd been a kind man, quiet and courteous and desperately in love with his wife: a matronly, no-nonsense woman with a voice like a rusted whistle and a temper that left even Georgio, the bohemoth who ran the garage down in town, quaking in his boots. One day, a few months into his new life, his tía had come in from feeding the chickens that morning with a strange smile on her face. She'd said it was 'time to play Cliche'. When he'd asked about it, asked whether it was their job, his tía had laughed her sandpaper laugh and barrelled out of the door. Tío had tugged him along gently, his voice warm as he'd explained. People came into town sometimes. Strangers who knew nothing about España other than what they saw on television. And his family, with their nutted skin and inky hair, their dusty old house and chickens, and their linens blowing in the breeze were practically the stereotype. And it was such fun to play up to stereotype and see the looks on others' faces. Mostly, his tío had confided as his tía gesticulated and ranted in Español at the two terrified tourists waiting for Georgio to fix their wheezing Volvo, it was her that did it. It was her game: shout nonsense at the non-speakers, first speaker to crack up paid for a round of drinks at the bar that night. He'd giggled as his tío translated the bigger words, the old man finally giving in himself at 'and my butter is too uneasy for my beavers to wear'. The town had cheered and his tía had had patted the tourists on the shoulders and kissed their relieved and laughing faces.
**
Tamika reminded him of his first crush. He'd been eleven and the local school he'd been enrolled in once his 'temprorary lodgings' became 'home' had begun a year-long expansion project that merged itself with two other nearby schools. He'd had to spend several nights in a row at his best friend Miguel's house so that he could still get to the new school site. He'd decided it was selfish of him to take money for the bus fare from his family when their budget was already stretched thin in their support of a growing boy. His tía had kissed him when he'd told them of his decision, full of pride for her beautiful niño and his tío had ruffled his hair and raised his allowance by a few pesetas; he'd rather thought it defeated the point but they'd looked so proud and he hadn't wanted to spoil the moment. Besides, it'd meant he could afford the soggy quesadilla for lunch, instead of just a wilted salad.
Miguel had lived in one of the newer housing estates, the ones that had been included in the new plans for the educational reform, and Katalina had lived two doors down. She'd been barren. His tía had told him, in an evening that stood out in his memories for how unusually subdued her voice had been, what that had meant and that that was why her daughter, Maria, was pale and blonde rather than sandy skinned and dark-haired. Like his tía, Maria's madre hadn't believed in talking down to or over the heads of children, just because they were young, so he hadn't needed to worry about Maria falling into an existential crisis should he slip up and mention the adoption.
Maria had been a quiet girl. Studious and precocious she'd known that, even though she was perfectly at ease with her relation to her parents, others might find it a reason to critique her work especially harshly, so she'd studied and reached the top of her classes, determined to be seen on her own merits. She'd been such a frail slip of a girl amidst the rest of them. There were other pale skinned children - some had even been from all-white families - but where their skin had tanned Maria's pinkened and burned and the sun bleached her hair from blonde to silver white. In hindsight, it was probably that exoticness that first drew his eye, the studiousness, so like his own, following after.
Some people hadn't taken such a rose coloured view, though, and with the breaks between lessons had come the names. Nasty, vile insults children their age shouldn't have known but with so many loose-tongued older siblings it was a foregone conclusion. One day, he remembered very clearly, a group of them, young girls mostly, got it into their heads that Maria's precious books were public property. They'd snatched and crowed, grabby fingers tearing at meticulously inked pages until they'd ripped them clean from the spine and Maria - pale, tiny Maria - had let out such a shriek and flung herself at the gaggle of bullies, teeth and nails and half-rent books a blur of almost incandescent rage.
He'd shied away from her then, never one for violence - still isn't, really, which is fairly ironic.
**
The Apache Tracker reminded him of a college friend, Gareth Chimes, who'd told racist and sexist jokes and turned up at costume parties in the most taboo outfits he could conceive, just to be contrary.
He'd been an ass too.
Though, he hadn't ever saved his life, so that was a point in Night Vale's favour. And isn't that a worrying thought?
**
Telly didn't remind him so much of a person but of a time. A party, to be specific. A Stag Night, to be exact. His university roommate and since best frind Andrew Farrows had been engaged to be married and, like so many young and stupid post-grads, had thought that having the bachelor and bachelorette parties The Night Before The Day After was a good idea. They'd started off at different sides of town: Andrew and his stags - including himself - at a seedy bar in southern Fresno while his wife to be and her hens headed for some posh place uptown.
The stags had begun their bar and strip-club (the latter hadn't been intentional, Drew had told Chloe when they'd all sobered up. Well, not on his end, anyway.) crawl sometime in the late evening, the hens' whatever they'd done starting around the same time, and somehow the two factions of pre-marital celebration had met up in the middle. A series of photographs -digital, so no-one had had to endure the wait it would've taken for them to develop - shed no light on how they'd met, ust that, at some point in their respective booze addled nights out, they had. And, according to the very same photographs, they'd done quite a bit more than 'meet up'.
No one remembered that bit.
Or the bit after that.
Or the bit after that.
Or whatever the heck that was.
Even worse, the photographs formed nothing in the way of a cohesive plot or timeline. The only things anyone had been sure about were where they'd started, where they'd ended up - though that knowledge had come fuzzily - and that both bride and groom were bald when they'd come to.
He'd laughed himself sick. Twice.
And as far as he knew the two were still happily married now; they'd certainly been enjoying marital life when he'd left to begin this...venture.
**
The Mayor reminded him of one of his professors at Stanford. The woman had kicked a door off its hinges when they'd pulled her away. Word was that it'd been drugs and when he'd asked which ones, he'd been answered with a grunt of 'all of 'em, I think'. The story had made its way around dormitories and cafeterias, bits and pieces being tacked on here and there, details twisting until they'd better fitted with the feel of the outlandish tale until it had become yet another far-fetched campus legend.
He thinks she recovered.
**
Dana reminds him of his last ex, Erika. With a 'k'. She'd been an outgoing bombshell of a woman. Twenty-seven years old he'd been when they'd met at the Oxford 'For Science!' Hallowe'en ball. It'd said 'ball' so, naturally, he'd expected grand gowns and snappy tuxedoes - like the one he'd worn, because it'd said 'ball' - but after five minutes, two Spiders Mans, two Brides of Frankenstein and a veritable horde of zombies he'd rather got the memo. He'd been slouching at the back by the, as yet unspiked, punch bowl after a man dressed as a carrot had called him an idiot when she'd crawled into his life.
Literally.
She'd been dressed up as Catwoman, all leather and No Imagination Required and she'd headbutted him in the knee, proclaimed that he was now 'her territory' and that he should just admit that he'd come as the Penguin and to 'get the heck out of your funk, old man, it's a party!' So he had. They'd danced, exchanged numbers and hey presto! A couple. Out of costume, Erika was quite a bit less sexually predatory ('the whiskers only come out on special occasions') and an absolute hoot: all English vowels and British humour. She'd seemed fearless to him; of course, in hindsight, she wasn't - he'd always had a habit of seeing the world as more than what it was. Or less, perhaps, he's never been sure. The point was, she'd seemed fearless as she'd dashed from project to project, job to job, as if she couldn't comprehend living life in any way other than at its fullest. He'd admired that in her, the carefree and no-holds-barred attitude of a freelance writer.
They'd ended it aimicably after fourteen months. He'd become more embroiled in his projects, in his passion for reason and knowledge and she'd become so caught up in her whirlwind of possibility and opportunity that they'd simply grown apart. He remembered the night of the break clearly; he'd been in Tokyo, ruminating on the whys and hows of the more frequent tsunamis and quakes when his phone had chimed a text alert. It'd cut through his musings so sharply he'd thumbed the inbox open before he'd realised.
It'd read: 'penguin! hi! ok i ws trying to thnk whn the last time I saw u was & it was about 4 mnths ago. & tht im not rlly bothrd about it. r u?'
He remembered seeing that text - once he'd deciphered it - and realising that no, he wasn't bothered. The only thing that had bothered him about it was that he...hadn't been bothered. It'd felt like an impugnment on Erika's honour. Then he'd shaken himself and reminded himself that, no, it wasn't; she would have let him know if it was. Probably with an uncomfortably racy joke.
So he'd texted her back, telling her so, and she'd replied with: 'huh. guess you cant shag me ny more then eh? :D catch u on the flip side, pingu' and he'd laughed himself silly. He made a mental note to include a couple of Penguin biscuits in his next 'Keep Dana Alive Inside The Dog Park' gift basket; it wouldn't mean anything to her, but he'd get a giggle out of it. In hindsight, the fact that a living memory of his ex worked in the radio station may have contributed somewhat to the length of time it'd taken for him to recognise certain feelings for what they were.
Just a little bit, though, because goodness knows there were plenty of other forces at work on that front.
**
When he'd first come here, to this bizarre place with its strange secrets, the scientist in him had been singing - because The Voice Of Night Vale was right when he'd called him 'The Scientist'. Even as a child, he'd been one. Not in the way a person locked away in a laboratory is a scientist, but in the way that he'd always, always seen the world in shades of How? and What? and Why?. He'd probed his madre about his padre, turning to his tía and tío when she'd died. He'd explored every inch of that little house in Spain, with its overflowing spare room and sun-bleached paintwork; every stretch of sunbeaten land in the gardens and allotments; every foot of the dry, cracked alleyways behind the greengrocers and the garage and the Post Office. Anywhere he could fit he had and he'd thought to himself, tilling his fingers through dry earth or running blistered hands along rough timber and brick, what is this? Why is it? How is it doing this? Throughout his entire life he'd questioned. Not always aloud, but frequently enough for people with influence to take notice, librarians (the human kind) hearing and reccomending books, teachers noting the curiosity and pointing him towards classes; professors and peer tutors suggesting courses, projects, jobs.
Yes, he was every inch 'The Scientist', so when he'd pulled up outside the makeshift lab with his small team in their battered old minivan and Night Vale lay, exposed and unexplored like the newly naked flesh of a lover, his blood had thrummed. There was radiation that didn't do anything except make the equipment beep, earthquakes that did the same thing, houses that didn't exist, shadowy figures in a dog park that wasn't made for dogs; the figure of a man beneath an 'on air' sign, oozing black velvet into his microphone.
Soon, though, the bravery of 'The Scientist' - for that's what it was, even if he hadn't realised it up until then; the bravery of a person to step blindly into the unknown in the hope of somehow distilling the clear, shimmering Known from the great writhing mess of Unknown - gave way to the fear. He had stepped into this town a scientist, ready to put his skills and knowledge to use and discover what had up until now been undiscovered, only to find that this place doesn't follow his rules. Science is an alien concept here. The very fabric of this little suburb of a universe has never heard of Science and it's minions and it is resisting. That's when the newly bared flesh turns sour and inflamed; that's when weather fronts that control the mind blow in; that's when even the Librarians need always be accompanied with the uppercase 'L' and a fearful inflection upon the second syllable; that's when there are sacrifices and dragons and a tan jacket that leaves him shaking in unremembered horrors. It's when the velvet-voiced man with a face with too many features - or too few - and far too many teeth and whose shadow doesn't look at all right narrates his life on the radio and it's all terrifying.
But he sticks it out, because he's a Scientist, damn it! With an uppercase 'S' and an inflection of conviction in the second syllable and suddenly, one day, one strange day among the many here, he notices the old woman out by the car lot, in her tatty pink bathrobe and slippers, hair frizzy and greying, voice rasping around the cigarette between her lips, and he sees his tia.
And in that feral little girl with the bloodstained clipboard he sees another feral waif, and when she is cleansed of the gore and her teeth are bared instead in a sweet smile he sees the reflection of his own innocence in that little girl's eyes.
Where there is a plastic headdress he sees a racist asshole...and beyond that Gareth's smarmy grin at his own racist quips.
When he goes to have his hair trimmed and instead his black locks are shorn off he remembers a night he can't remember, a day he does, and a lifetime of happiness springing from it.
In the mad ravings of Night Vale's government official he hears the nervous laughter of a roomful of students who don't quite know what's going on but by god they'll spin a tale or two about it.
Behind the black, indescribable walls is a woman he knows now, and reflected in the smiley faces and notes of gratitude written on empty biscuit wrappers is the memory of a woman he knew then.
And he'd had an epiphany: he had focused on the anomalies, on the interdimensional rifts and the unfelt tectonic activity, on the things that writhed and moaned and howled, on the creature that sat curled around its microphone in a recording booth with teeth glinting, on the things his science could not explain. He'd fixated on them so strongly that all he'd seen was the wrongness of it all and how far removed from normality he'd allowed himself to become, and in doing so he'd missed important facets of this place. It is the fond memory refracted in the face of a crotchety old woman that knocks his sight askew and suddenly, for the first time since his arrival here, he's seeing the world around his scientist's eyes and is seeing the people in amongst the horror.
**
When, in the blood soaked haze of a miniature invasion, he hears black lace crumple over the radio he thinks to himself that behind those tears is a person who feels them, and in the calm of Afterwards he carefully removes the uppercase 'S', puts the scientist on the back burner for a while and dials a number - because while that black velvet is back on the radio, tones smooth and pleasant as they've ever been - and how had he ever feared them? - beneath it is a person still trying to stitch themselves back together. And perhaps he can help with that, because while he's no seamstress, he is a person and he's only now realising that those teeth had been bared in a smile and that that voice had never been anything but genuine.
And his name sounds so very beautiful in black velvet.