Into the Mist
Aug. 18th, 2013 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tikificTitle: Into the Mist
Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale
Author: tikific
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Cecil/Carlos
Warnings: Cursing. Weirdness. But you knew that.
Word Count:
Summary: A strange mist descends on Night Vale, and Cecil wonders about Carlos's intentions
Notes: I couldn't help it, Cecil and Carlos are just the cutest thing in the world.
“Cecil!”
Cecil padded out, bare-footed, to stand beside Carlos on his front porch, shivering deliciously in the pre-dawn chill. “Yes?”
“Is it always … like this?”
Cecil pulled his satin ceremonial robe closer and peered over the dark, delicate skinned man's broad shoulder towards the street, still clutching in his hand the paper sack containing the lunch he had packed for Carlos. Carlos tended to forget himself whilst he was off doing science, and proper nutrition was a must. So Cecil had attempted to furnish Night Vale's most intriguing outsider with a balanced meal, including a lovingly wrought tunafish sandwich. Although, what with the current ban on wheat (and wheat by-products) Cecil hadn't actually been able to obtain any bread. And the attack of the somewhat radioactive spores last week had caused the selection at the neighborhood grocery store to be limited, meaning what was actually inside Carlos's lunch bag was not so much a tunafish sandwich as it was a tin of sardines. But they would be enjoyable, Cecil thought, to share with the invisible mongoose Carlos claimed was now frequenting his laboratory.
Cecil had also packed an item of fresh fruit. He had originally intended for it to be a banana, but unfortunately he had lost the store's last banana in a wrestling match with a pregnant teen spider. (Cecil had actually let her win: it wouldn't be seemly, he thought, for an esteemed local radio personality to whip the tar out of a teen mom arachnid.) So it was instead a nice crispy apple, which he had carefully dusted for somewhat radioactive spores. Cecil thought this would provide for Carlos during his arduous day advancing the cause of inductive reasoning for the Night Vale community, though now that he was on the verge of granting the bag and its contents to his favorite scientist, he worried that perhaps he would also have included a granola bar, for between meal snacking purposes.
“Is it always like this?” Carlos repeated.
“Like what?” Cecil asked Carlos.
“Foggy?”
Cecil squinted out across the street, soon realizing that he could no longer actually see across the street, due to the rather impenetrable, fuschia-hued mist that was currently hanging in his neighborhood. “It's foggy this morning,” Cecil agreed, while silently cursing himself for the lack of wit in his observation. Still, he consoled himself, it was early, and he was after all an afternoon radio personality, and definitely not a morning radio personality.
“Is the fog always this particular color, Cecil?”
Cecil's face pulled into a warm smile, his heart fluttering at the sound of his name formed by Carlos's intoxicating caramel voice. “I don't know. I don't think so.”
Both men grew silent at the sense of something passing by. It sounded for all the world like the muttering and whispering of terrible faceless creatures, their cruel countenances hidden by the enveloping mist, so that one could only experience the quiet terror of their passing. And then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the ghastly creatures were gone, leaving only a creeping unease.
“I packed you a lunch,” said Cecil.
“Thank you,” said Carlos, taking the paper sack. “That was a considerate thing to do.” He stared again into the mist. “I suppose I should investigate this weather aberration,” sighed Carlos.
“Another late night at the lab?” asked Cecil. Carlos had a degree in Science, and employed it often in both the personal and professional facets of his life.
Carlos narrowed his perfect dark eyes. “Yes. Potentially.”
Cecil flew back into his house. He re-emerged a moment later, dropping an oblong, plastic-wrapped object into Carlos's lunch bag. “I'll pack you a granola bar, then.”
Carlos nodded and accepted the sugary treat. Then, a grim but scientific set to his square jaw, he marched off of Cecil's porch. He paused, just at the bottom step, gazing around at the bright pink fog.
Carlos turned. “The color. It reminds me of your eyes,” he told Cecil. His perfect lips traced a small smile. Cecil felt his beating heart leap. And then Carlos vanished into the mist.
Cecil retreated once again into his house, feeling the chill of the bare hardwood floors beneath his feet, and the hot breath of the poltergeist that dwelled in his linen closet on the back of his neck as he passed through his living room. The poltergeist half-heartedly flipped a wet dishrag at him, and then, sighing, retreated to the linen closet. Cecil suspected he had a slacker for a poltergeist, but he hadn't bothered filing the paperwork to lodge a complaint to the shadowy ad hoc committee who ran the Restless Spirit Registry in his town. They only met every other Tuesday, anyway, and it wasn't that Tuesday.
He passed through his bedroom doorway and regarded his disheveled bed, the bedspread askew, the bloodstone circle scattered into more the shape of a rhomboid.
And that was when he made his discovery.
“Intern Klaus! I'm surprised to see you here,” said Cecil when he arrived at the station. Intern Klaus was an exchange student from Svitz. He spoke perfect English, save for the fact that he had picked up a rather thick Texan accent. He had explained that in Svitz, many if not most of the foreign language instructors were in fact cowboys.
“Well, howdy thar, Cecil. I'm right pleased to see you in here today. How did y'all manage to navigate through that thar thick fog that's blanketed our town?”
“I knew if I tried to reach the station, I would probably get hopelessly lost,” Cecil explained, as he was the veteran of many similar phenomena, “so I simply chose a random direction and walked.”
“Well, that was right smart of you. Hey, that thar is a right nice T-shirt.”
Cecil blinked down at his shirt, blushing, his capillaries beating with rich oxygenated blood beneath his pale, ghostly skin.
“Would y'all like a cup of some nice hot java to start you out?”
“Yes, Intern Klaus, that would be, um, right nice of you!”
“Aw, Cecil, y'all don't gotta try and speak Svitz with me,” said Klaus, blushing as he swept away towards the break room.
Cecil repeated the invocation that unlocked the door to his studio, making sure to tread carefully around the remaining proprietary roaches that scattered when he pulled the lever that turned on the lights. The answering machine light was blinking on and off and so, brushing aside the caterpillar cocoons that had accumulated overnight, he pushed the button, hoping as always to hear that one, oaky voice, unsullied by the tinny speaker.
“Cecil? This is Carlos. I'm calling, I'm afraid, not for personal reasons this time. You know the weird hot pink mist that's now hovering over the town? Well, I have to conclude, after much scientific inquiry, that it is definitely and unequivocally dangerous. Perhaps more dangerous than we ever could have imagined! I'm calling to ask you, no to beg you: warn your listeners. Stay inside! Lock your doors, shut your windows and, if possible, hide inside your root cellar, or alternatively, cower under your bed until this threat is passed.”
Cecil pressed the button on the answering machine and adjusted his headphones. He leaned into the microphone. “So there it is, listeners. Which brings to mind my important news: this morning, Carlos left a T-shirt at my house!” Cecil looked down, sending a hand to brush the green-hued Miskatonic Institute of Technology logo that now stretched across his chest. “What do you think that means? Was he simply being his charming, absent-minded self? Or was this a deeper message, a clue as to the current status of our relationship?”
Cecil tried to still his rushing heart, and grabbed his next vellum-edged script from the dusty pile on the desk. “And now, I have a word from the local chapter of the NRA. They'd like to have a word about smoking: please remember, if a person doesn't get started early smoking cigarettes, they may not ever become a smoker at all, and thus, will bypass all the many benefits that nicotine addiction has to offer, including but not limited to looking way awesome cool! So remember, teach your children to smoke, and offer cigarettes, cigars, and cigarillos to any underaged persons in the neighborhood. Now, more than ever, smoking: it's what's for dinner. This has been a message from the NRA, which reminds you that guns don't kill people, and even if they occasionally do, well, to forgive is divine. And now, the weather.”
Cecil switched to a pre-recorded track, and turned to face Intern Klaus, who had just entered, wreathed in a cloud of smoke, offering a styrofoam cup of steaming Arabica bean coffee. Cecil plucked the cup from Klaus's trembling fingers, as Klaus hungrily took another pull from his smoldering cigarette.
“Thank you, Intern Klaus. I didn't know you smoked?”
“You're right there, Cecil. I didn't, pardner!” Klaus enthused, tapping ashes into the bottom half of a weirdly large carapace of an insect exoskeleton that sat for some reason atop the control board. “But that thar town council has been urgin' us to start smokin' for the good of the municipality.” He extracted a cellophane-wrapped package from his vest pocket. “Want one?”
“No thank you,” said Cecil, patting his throat either to indicate that he treasured the pear-shaped vowels of his radio voice, or that perhaps the papery thin remnants of a grasshopper wing had lodged there, temporarily cutting off his oxygen.
Intern Klaus gave him a friendly pat on the back, dislodging the wing. “Have you noticed that the fog seems … thicker?” choked Cecil. For truly, he could now barely see Intern Klaus's face from a few feet away.
“Yessir, thick as the ass end of a bull moose,” said Intern Cecil, who often came up with such folksy homilies. He lit another cigarette, even though he was still not finished with his current one, and disappeared into the salmon-tinged mist. Cecil carefully tore open small packets of sweetener, non-dairy creamer, and tincture of wolf's bane to add to his coffee. He tossed the torn packets into the roseate mist that crowded the room, where they were taken up by the twittering, faceless beings that no doubt dwelled there.
After fixing back the plastic lid, he tipped back the coffee cup, only to have half the contents spill down his front as the lid unfortunately popped off. Cursing, “Gosh golly willikers,” he somehow made he way from the booth and down the hallway to the men's room, where he paused to pet Koshekh. The hovering cat stretched and purred as Cecil stripped out of Carlos's Miskatonic Institute of Technology T-shirt and held it over the sink, rubbing in some of the pink hand soap in an attempt to remove the coffee stain.
Suddenly, Khoshekh raised his hackles and emitted a rather loud meow. “What is it, boy?” asked Cecil, not looking up from the sink. “Is it that sentient fungus again?”
There was a bright flash of light. Cecil held up the T-shirt. It was dripping wet, but thankfully, the coffee stain had been completely removed, and it was now bright and fresh, the tentacles on the university logo standing out with particular flare.
“You're not Josie,” came an annoyed voice from in back of him.
Cecil turned around. Standing before him in the WTNV studios men's room were two angels of the lord, a tall one and a short one. It had been the short one who spake unto him.
“What?” asked Cecil.
“We're looking for Josie. Old Woman Josie. We had an appointment to appear unto her. But we can't see fuck all in this fog.”
“Oh,” said Cecil, looking between the celestial messengers. “You don't have other senses to guide you?”
“What other senses, dumbbell?” fussed the short angel. He counted on his fingers. “Besides sight, smell, hearing, taste, psychokinesis, proprioception, disillusionment and blueberry muffins?”
Cecil sniffed. The short angel seemed slightly rude. “Since when are blueberry muffins a sense?”
“Mmm, blueberry muffins,” said the short angel, rubbing his belly. His many eyes blinked. “Hey, you got anything around here to nosh on?”
“I had coffee,” said Cecil regretfully. “But I spilled it.”
“You don't have snacks?” Now many eyes were all frowning at him.
“No.”
The short angel huffed in annoyance. “Are you completely ignorant of proper nutrition?”
“I packed a lunch for Carlos.”
“That was very considerate of you,” the tall angel told him, his voice like an infinite echo folded upon itself inside Cecil's head.
Cecil whacked the side of his own head, attempting to free it of resonating angel voice. “I suppose I could have Intern Klaus go down to the grocery store for something. “I need to get back to the booth now. I think the weather recording is probably over.”
“Well, get us some grub, Blondie, and be snappy.”
“I like cookies,” offered the tall angel. “Just not with raisins.”
Cecil interrupted Klaus the Intern's third smoke break of the morning to send him off with strict instructions to get to the grocery store and bring back no raisin-containing foodstuffs. He then proceeded back to the booth to share community announcements from the PTA, Eternal Scouts, and the vague yet menacing government committee that was really behind everything. He noted with concern that each and every announcement included encouragement regarding smoking cigarettes, including the offer of a new tobacco-fume merit badge for the Eternal scouts.
He hung the wet Miskatonic Institute of Technology shirt across the back of his chair to dry. Carlos's shirt. Though Cecil was beginning to think of it as his own. He leaned back in his chair, thinking of Carlos's perfect form as he played a government-mandated public service announcement regarding smoking, and which brands of cigarettes where really the tastiest.
He flinched as suddenly, something wet landed on top of him with a smack. Sputtering and clawing at his face, he straightened up to discover it was the wet T-shirt. He peered around the fog-shrouded room, only to see his lazy poltergeist hovering there, shrugging apologetically.
“Did you get out again?” he sighed. The poltergeist moaned unhappily, and retreated into the place in the recesses of the mixing board where it liked to sulk.
The cell phone in Cecil's pocket sounded, and Cecil took it out, mystified. He didn't have a cell phone. He put it to his ear.
“Cecil, this is Carlos,” came the delicious smoky voice from the other end.
“Hiiiii,” said Cecil, unsuccessfully attempting to act casual.
“Where are you?”
“At the studio. Where else?”
“I need to see you now. It is of utmost scientific importance!”
Cecil regarded the stolen Miskatonic University T-shirt guiltily, quickly hiding it behind his back, as if Carlos could see. “Uh, OK!”
“Stay put. I'll be right there.”
The line went dead, and Cecil snapped the phone closed and put it back into his pocket, noticing that it had a One Direction cover, and he didn't even like One Direction. (Well, except for that one song.)
“Cecil! Oh, thank god, it's aboot time I found you!”
Cecil turned to see the hulking figure of Intern Klaus standing agitatedly at the door of his recording booth. “Intern Klaus! What happened? Did you find the grocery store? Were there cookies without raisins? And why are you suddenly speaking with a Canadian accent/”
“I don't know, eh? I tried to find the store in the fog, but I got turned aboot, and ended up back here.” Klaus nervously took out three or four cigarettes and started to light them. There was a smacking sound, and suddenly Klaus had the wet Miskatonic T-shirt splayed over his face.
“Will you stop that?” Cecil groused at the poltergeist, who he could swear was now giggling, albeit in a somewhat desultory manner. He helped Intern Klaus extricate himself from his wardrobe malfunction, and then turned back to his broadcast.
“Listeners,” Cecil, “I don't know if this realization has come to any of you, but it behooves me to comment, given that this is a public radio station, I am forced to question Management's recent decision to begin airing cigarette commercials. Especially ones like the segment I just broadcast, which claimed that lung cancer is much like having an old friend bake up an apple pie and serve it to with vanilla ice cream and a sprig of mint. Listeners, first off, why would you add a sprig of mint to apple pie a la mode? That just smacks of overdoing it!”
Cecil flinched as the slap of a fat tentacle sounded on the door that forever (he prayed) separated the rest of the staff from Management. Alarmed by the moans he heard from within the office, he crept out of the recording booth and crouched by the office. A folded sheet of paper that Cecil assumed was yet another memo from the cursed abominations who ruled the station slid under the door. He snapped it up.
And then a puff of pink-ish smoke also emitted from behind the door. Cecil unfolded the paper to find several badly crushed cigarettes fall out, trailing tobacco into the mist that now hugged the floor. He heard a sound that sounded a lot like a hacking cough.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and spun around in fright.
“Cecil? Thank God!” said Carlos. “Don't you know that smoking is bad for you?” he asked, yanking the remaining cigarettes out of Carlos's hands.
Suddenly a blinding light cut across the hallway.
“Oh, no!” said Carlos, moving to shield Cecil with his body. “I'm too late.”
“It's all right,” sighed Cecil, patting his shoulder. “It's just my angels are hungry.”
“Cecil packed me a lunch,” said Carlos, holding up a wrinkled paper bag towards the angels, who were still milling about the WTNV men's room.
“That was considerate,” admitted the short angel, who tended to be a dick.
“Hey, a tunafish sandwich,” said the tall angel, peering into the bag.
“Isn't that a tin of sardines?” asked Carlos as the angel pulled out the same.
“Psshaw.” scoffed the short angel. “We're angels, dude. We perceive intent.” The angels greedily tucked into the sardines, offering a few bits to Khoshekh, who purred contentedly from his perch four feet up in the air.
“So what did scientific inquiry tell you about the fog?” asked Cecil, who was very interested in science these days.
“Well, it wasn't so much the fog, as the mysterious beings who entered the town within the fog.”
“Oh, the Nemoidians,” smacked the short angel as the tall angel crunched into the sweet, crisp apple. “That's what we were on our way to tell Josie about.”
“Why would you tell Josie?” asked Carlos.
“Well, then usually how it works is we give her the news, she gives a message to the station, and then Whitey over here announces it to the town, thus saving the people from a horrendous fate.”
Carlos's perfect face roiled into a frown. “Why don't you just tell Cecil? He's standing right here.”
The tall angel and the short angel exchanged annoyed glances, rolling their eyes. “That's what you get, talking to a scientist. They know nothing about the heraldry business! Hey, smart guy, if it worked like that, couldn't any old Tom, Dick or Melvin be an angel? Think about that!” He flapped his wings in a dismissive manner.
Carlos appeared ready to commit heavenly mayhem, had not Cecil put an hand on his shoulder. “What about this?” Cecil told the angels. “Why don't you tell Carlos here, and Carlos will promise to tell Old Woman Josie next time he sees her. And then she can tell the station, and I'll learn all about it?”
“Welllll,” said the tall angel. “I dunno. It's a little unorthodox.”
“I've got a granola bar,” said Carlos, digging into his lunch sack.
The angels's eyes widened. All of them.
“Yeah, they're douches, basically.” The short angel gave Khoshekh's head a scratch. “They come into a town and convince everyone to start smoking, thus producing an impenetrable, toxic cloud of smoke-”
“And smoke by-products,” interjected the tall angel.
“That will wreath the town in an inevitable death spiral,” finished the short angel. “You guys are due, oh, about midnight tonight.”
Cecil and Carlos exchanged a glance, Carlos's perfect dark eyes dilated with the sense of danger.
Cecil sort of wanted to kiss him, but, you know, not in front of the angels.
The tall angel took a big chomp of the granola bar, and burped loudly. “'Scuse me,” came his rumbling voice.
“We've got to stop people from smoking cigarettes,” choked Cecil as he and Carlos sat in the broadcast booth. “Should I tell them to stop on my broadcast?” The fog was getting very thick. And deliciously pink.
“It won't work,” huffed Carlos. “As we know from science, quitting smoking is tremendously difficult!”
“Dammit. Science is annoying sometimes,” sighed Cecil. As Carlos's perfect dark eyes flashed at him, he hastened to add, “No offense.”
“Science is never annoying,” Carlos avowed.
“Oh,” said Cecil, breaking into a goofy grin. “Our first fight.”
“I wish I could get to my lab, but the fog has gotten too thick,” said Carlos. “Now I have no hope of scientifically investigating this phenomenon.”
“Hey, I got another announcement for you, eh?” said Klaus the Intern, who entered, lit cigarettes now burning out of both of his ears.
SMACK! went the wet T-shirt, quickly quelling the smoke, and causing Intern Klaus's head to collide with the door jamb, efficiently knocking him out, cold.
The poltergeist giggled.
Carlos knelt down by Intern Klaus, checking his pulse, and pulling the sopping T-shirt off of his bruised face. He peered at the Miskatonic Institute of Technology logo curiously.
“Hey,” said Cecil. “I have an idea. Hey, you!” he said, addressing the poltergeist. “I have a job for you!”
The new day dawned, bright and, to everyone's astonishment, clear.
Cecil opened the WTNV station's front door and breathed in deeply. “The fog has lifted.”
“Your poltergeist went around and threw wet towels at everyone in town last night?” asked Carlos, blinking his perfect dark eyes into the yellowy sunrise visible out the window. “That seems … impossible.”
“I didn't think he had the initiative,” Cecil admitted. “But this is the happiest I've heard him since the Sixteenth Century.”
Carlos began to say something and then seemed to change his mind. “Well, I'd better get to the lab. I need to investigate what's happened to the Nemoidians now that the mist has lifted. I hope they aren't still hanging around, placing our citizenry in danger. And I still need to do more follow up on those somewhat radioactive spores from last week.”
Cecil nodded.
Carlos turned to walk away, but stopped. He looked back at Cecil. “Oh. I hope you don't mind,” he said, unbuttoning the first few buttons of his plaid flannel shirt to reveal the Miskatonic Institute of Technology logo underneath. “I borrowed your T-shirt.”
Cecil paused. He was breathless, but not from the toxic mist. He considered for a bit. “Erm. Actually, I thought that was your T-shirt.”
“No, that's not possible. I didn't go to Miskatonic for my degree in Science.”
“Oh.” Cecil thought about this. Was it possible it was his T-shirt? He hadn't gone to Miskatonic either. But he had found the shirt in his bedroom. That seemed to point a finger. “You wear it well,” he finally told Carlos.
Carlos's military formation-straight teeth flashed white as his face broke into a sunny if scientific smile that contrasted with the twilight darkness that perpetually enveloped Night Vale.
“By the way,” said Cecil. “Sorry I couldn't pack you a lunch today. And that we gave away your lunch yesterday to that rude angel.”
“Maybe you can make it up to me,” said Carlos, his voice smooth as melted caramel.
“Maybe,” said Cecil. He stared, dazed, at Night Vale's most intriguing outsider.
And then Carlos was walking away.
Cecil turned to go back into the station, suddenly intent on asking his listeners what they made of the delicate-skinned scientist now wearing his T-shirt. Even if it wasn't, really, his T-shirt after all. But he stopped short when he was suddenly smacked in the face by something damp and rough.
Cecil cursed, pulling the wet towel off his face. “I wasn't even smoking!” he protested.
Standing atop the WTNV station, the short angel giggled.
“That was rude,” said the tall angel, chowing down on another granola bar.
“Eh. We can blame it on the poltergeist.”
“Is that ethical?”
“Who gives a crap? We're angels. Our ethics are ineffable.”
“Maybe,” said the tall angel, upending the now empty cardboard box. “Hey, wanna grab some more granola bars? We're out.”
“Yeah. Let's look for those chocolate chip ones.”
“As long as they don't have raisins.”
“Yeah. No raisins.”
And then they were there no more.
Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale
Author: tikific
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Cecil/Carlos
Warnings: Cursing. Weirdness. But you knew that.
Word Count:
Summary: A strange mist descends on Night Vale, and Cecil wonders about Carlos's intentions
Notes: I couldn't help it, Cecil and Carlos are just the cutest thing in the world.
“Cecil!”
Cecil padded out, bare-footed, to stand beside Carlos on his front porch, shivering deliciously in the pre-dawn chill. “Yes?”
“Is it always … like this?”
Cecil pulled his satin ceremonial robe closer and peered over the dark, delicate skinned man's broad shoulder towards the street, still clutching in his hand the paper sack containing the lunch he had packed for Carlos. Carlos tended to forget himself whilst he was off doing science, and proper nutrition was a must. So Cecil had attempted to furnish Night Vale's most intriguing outsider with a balanced meal, including a lovingly wrought tunafish sandwich. Although, what with the current ban on wheat (and wheat by-products) Cecil hadn't actually been able to obtain any bread. And the attack of the somewhat radioactive spores last week had caused the selection at the neighborhood grocery store to be limited, meaning what was actually inside Carlos's lunch bag was not so much a tunafish sandwich as it was a tin of sardines. But they would be enjoyable, Cecil thought, to share with the invisible mongoose Carlos claimed was now frequenting his laboratory.
Cecil had also packed an item of fresh fruit. He had originally intended for it to be a banana, but unfortunately he had lost the store's last banana in a wrestling match with a pregnant teen spider. (Cecil had actually let her win: it wouldn't be seemly, he thought, for an esteemed local radio personality to whip the tar out of a teen mom arachnid.) So it was instead a nice crispy apple, which he had carefully dusted for somewhat radioactive spores. Cecil thought this would provide for Carlos during his arduous day advancing the cause of inductive reasoning for the Night Vale community, though now that he was on the verge of granting the bag and its contents to his favorite scientist, he worried that perhaps he would also have included a granola bar, for between meal snacking purposes.
“Is it always like this?” Carlos repeated.
“Like what?” Cecil asked Carlos.
“Foggy?”
Cecil squinted out across the street, soon realizing that he could no longer actually see across the street, due to the rather impenetrable, fuschia-hued mist that was currently hanging in his neighborhood. “It's foggy this morning,” Cecil agreed, while silently cursing himself for the lack of wit in his observation. Still, he consoled himself, it was early, and he was after all an afternoon radio personality, and definitely not a morning radio personality.
“Is the fog always this particular color, Cecil?”
Cecil's face pulled into a warm smile, his heart fluttering at the sound of his name formed by Carlos's intoxicating caramel voice. “I don't know. I don't think so.”
Both men grew silent at the sense of something passing by. It sounded for all the world like the muttering and whispering of terrible faceless creatures, their cruel countenances hidden by the enveloping mist, so that one could only experience the quiet terror of their passing. And then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the ghastly creatures were gone, leaving only a creeping unease.
“I packed you a lunch,” said Cecil.
“Thank you,” said Carlos, taking the paper sack. “That was a considerate thing to do.” He stared again into the mist. “I suppose I should investigate this weather aberration,” sighed Carlos.
“Another late night at the lab?” asked Cecil. Carlos had a degree in Science, and employed it often in both the personal and professional facets of his life.
Carlos narrowed his perfect dark eyes. “Yes. Potentially.”
Cecil flew back into his house. He re-emerged a moment later, dropping an oblong, plastic-wrapped object into Carlos's lunch bag. “I'll pack you a granola bar, then.”
Carlos nodded and accepted the sugary treat. Then, a grim but scientific set to his square jaw, he marched off of Cecil's porch. He paused, just at the bottom step, gazing around at the bright pink fog.
Carlos turned. “The color. It reminds me of your eyes,” he told Cecil. His perfect lips traced a small smile. Cecil felt his beating heart leap. And then Carlos vanished into the mist.
Cecil retreated once again into his house, feeling the chill of the bare hardwood floors beneath his feet, and the hot breath of the poltergeist that dwelled in his linen closet on the back of his neck as he passed through his living room. The poltergeist half-heartedly flipped a wet dishrag at him, and then, sighing, retreated to the linen closet. Cecil suspected he had a slacker for a poltergeist, but he hadn't bothered filing the paperwork to lodge a complaint to the shadowy ad hoc committee who ran the Restless Spirit Registry in his town. They only met every other Tuesday, anyway, and it wasn't that Tuesday.
He passed through his bedroom doorway and regarded his disheveled bed, the bedspread askew, the bloodstone circle scattered into more the shape of a rhomboid.
And that was when he made his discovery.
“Intern Klaus! I'm surprised to see you here,” said Cecil when he arrived at the station. Intern Klaus was an exchange student from Svitz. He spoke perfect English, save for the fact that he had picked up a rather thick Texan accent. He had explained that in Svitz, many if not most of the foreign language instructors were in fact cowboys.
“Well, howdy thar, Cecil. I'm right pleased to see you in here today. How did y'all manage to navigate through that thar thick fog that's blanketed our town?”
“I knew if I tried to reach the station, I would probably get hopelessly lost,” Cecil explained, as he was the veteran of many similar phenomena, “so I simply chose a random direction and walked.”
“Well, that was right smart of you. Hey, that thar is a right nice T-shirt.”
Cecil blinked down at his shirt, blushing, his capillaries beating with rich oxygenated blood beneath his pale, ghostly skin.
“Would y'all like a cup of some nice hot java to start you out?”
“Yes, Intern Klaus, that would be, um, right nice of you!”
“Aw, Cecil, y'all don't gotta try and speak Svitz with me,” said Klaus, blushing as he swept away towards the break room.
Cecil repeated the invocation that unlocked the door to his studio, making sure to tread carefully around the remaining proprietary roaches that scattered when he pulled the lever that turned on the lights. The answering machine light was blinking on and off and so, brushing aside the caterpillar cocoons that had accumulated overnight, he pushed the button, hoping as always to hear that one, oaky voice, unsullied by the tinny speaker.
“Cecil? This is Carlos. I'm calling, I'm afraid, not for personal reasons this time. You know the weird hot pink mist that's now hovering over the town? Well, I have to conclude, after much scientific inquiry, that it is definitely and unequivocally dangerous. Perhaps more dangerous than we ever could have imagined! I'm calling to ask you, no to beg you: warn your listeners. Stay inside! Lock your doors, shut your windows and, if possible, hide inside your root cellar, or alternatively, cower under your bed until this threat is passed.”
Cecil pressed the button on the answering machine and adjusted his headphones. He leaned into the microphone. “So there it is, listeners. Which brings to mind my important news: this morning, Carlos left a T-shirt at my house!” Cecil looked down, sending a hand to brush the green-hued Miskatonic Institute of Technology logo that now stretched across his chest. “What do you think that means? Was he simply being his charming, absent-minded self? Or was this a deeper message, a clue as to the current status of our relationship?”
Cecil tried to still his rushing heart, and grabbed his next vellum-edged script from the dusty pile on the desk. “And now, I have a word from the local chapter of the NRA. They'd like to have a word about smoking: please remember, if a person doesn't get started early smoking cigarettes, they may not ever become a smoker at all, and thus, will bypass all the many benefits that nicotine addiction has to offer, including but not limited to looking way awesome cool! So remember, teach your children to smoke, and offer cigarettes, cigars, and cigarillos to any underaged persons in the neighborhood. Now, more than ever, smoking: it's what's for dinner. This has been a message from the NRA, which reminds you that guns don't kill people, and even if they occasionally do, well, to forgive is divine. And now, the weather.”
Cecil switched to a pre-recorded track, and turned to face Intern Klaus, who had just entered, wreathed in a cloud of smoke, offering a styrofoam cup of steaming Arabica bean coffee. Cecil plucked the cup from Klaus's trembling fingers, as Klaus hungrily took another pull from his smoldering cigarette.
“Thank you, Intern Klaus. I didn't know you smoked?”
“You're right there, Cecil. I didn't, pardner!” Klaus enthused, tapping ashes into the bottom half of a weirdly large carapace of an insect exoskeleton that sat for some reason atop the control board. “But that thar town council has been urgin' us to start smokin' for the good of the municipality.” He extracted a cellophane-wrapped package from his vest pocket. “Want one?”
“No thank you,” said Cecil, patting his throat either to indicate that he treasured the pear-shaped vowels of his radio voice, or that perhaps the papery thin remnants of a grasshopper wing had lodged there, temporarily cutting off his oxygen.
Intern Klaus gave him a friendly pat on the back, dislodging the wing. “Have you noticed that the fog seems … thicker?” choked Cecil. For truly, he could now barely see Intern Klaus's face from a few feet away.
“Yessir, thick as the ass end of a bull moose,” said Intern Cecil, who often came up with such folksy homilies. He lit another cigarette, even though he was still not finished with his current one, and disappeared into the salmon-tinged mist. Cecil carefully tore open small packets of sweetener, non-dairy creamer, and tincture of wolf's bane to add to his coffee. He tossed the torn packets into the roseate mist that crowded the room, where they were taken up by the twittering, faceless beings that no doubt dwelled there.
After fixing back the plastic lid, he tipped back the coffee cup, only to have half the contents spill down his front as the lid unfortunately popped off. Cursing, “Gosh golly willikers,” he somehow made he way from the booth and down the hallway to the men's room, where he paused to pet Koshekh. The hovering cat stretched and purred as Cecil stripped out of Carlos's Miskatonic Institute of Technology T-shirt and held it over the sink, rubbing in some of the pink hand soap in an attempt to remove the coffee stain.
Suddenly, Khoshekh raised his hackles and emitted a rather loud meow. “What is it, boy?” asked Cecil, not looking up from the sink. “Is it that sentient fungus again?”
There was a bright flash of light. Cecil held up the T-shirt. It was dripping wet, but thankfully, the coffee stain had been completely removed, and it was now bright and fresh, the tentacles on the university logo standing out with particular flare.
“You're not Josie,” came an annoyed voice from in back of him.
Cecil turned around. Standing before him in the WTNV studios men's room were two angels of the lord, a tall one and a short one. It had been the short one who spake unto him.
“What?” asked Cecil.
“We're looking for Josie. Old Woman Josie. We had an appointment to appear unto her. But we can't see fuck all in this fog.”
“Oh,” said Cecil, looking between the celestial messengers. “You don't have other senses to guide you?”
“What other senses, dumbbell?” fussed the short angel. He counted on his fingers. “Besides sight, smell, hearing, taste, psychokinesis, proprioception, disillusionment and blueberry muffins?”
Cecil sniffed. The short angel seemed slightly rude. “Since when are blueberry muffins a sense?”
“Mmm, blueberry muffins,” said the short angel, rubbing his belly. His many eyes blinked. “Hey, you got anything around here to nosh on?”
“I had coffee,” said Cecil regretfully. “But I spilled it.”
“You don't have snacks?” Now many eyes were all frowning at him.
“No.”
The short angel huffed in annoyance. “Are you completely ignorant of proper nutrition?”
“I packed a lunch for Carlos.”
“That was very considerate of you,” the tall angel told him, his voice like an infinite echo folded upon itself inside Cecil's head.
Cecil whacked the side of his own head, attempting to free it of resonating angel voice. “I suppose I could have Intern Klaus go down to the grocery store for something. “I need to get back to the booth now. I think the weather recording is probably over.”
“Well, get us some grub, Blondie, and be snappy.”
“I like cookies,” offered the tall angel. “Just not with raisins.”
Cecil interrupted Klaus the Intern's third smoke break of the morning to send him off with strict instructions to get to the grocery store and bring back no raisin-containing foodstuffs. He then proceeded back to the booth to share community announcements from the PTA, Eternal Scouts, and the vague yet menacing government committee that was really behind everything. He noted with concern that each and every announcement included encouragement regarding smoking cigarettes, including the offer of a new tobacco-fume merit badge for the Eternal scouts.
He hung the wet Miskatonic Institute of Technology shirt across the back of his chair to dry. Carlos's shirt. Though Cecil was beginning to think of it as his own. He leaned back in his chair, thinking of Carlos's perfect form as he played a government-mandated public service announcement regarding smoking, and which brands of cigarettes where really the tastiest.
He flinched as suddenly, something wet landed on top of him with a smack. Sputtering and clawing at his face, he straightened up to discover it was the wet T-shirt. He peered around the fog-shrouded room, only to see his lazy poltergeist hovering there, shrugging apologetically.
“Did you get out again?” he sighed. The poltergeist moaned unhappily, and retreated into the place in the recesses of the mixing board where it liked to sulk.
The cell phone in Cecil's pocket sounded, and Cecil took it out, mystified. He didn't have a cell phone. He put it to his ear.
“Cecil, this is Carlos,” came the delicious smoky voice from the other end.
“Hiiiii,” said Cecil, unsuccessfully attempting to act casual.
“Where are you?”
“At the studio. Where else?”
“I need to see you now. It is of utmost scientific importance!”
Cecil regarded the stolen Miskatonic University T-shirt guiltily, quickly hiding it behind his back, as if Carlos could see. “Uh, OK!”
“Stay put. I'll be right there.”
The line went dead, and Cecil snapped the phone closed and put it back into his pocket, noticing that it had a One Direction cover, and he didn't even like One Direction. (Well, except for that one song.)
“Cecil! Oh, thank god, it's aboot time I found you!”
Cecil turned to see the hulking figure of Intern Klaus standing agitatedly at the door of his recording booth. “Intern Klaus! What happened? Did you find the grocery store? Were there cookies without raisins? And why are you suddenly speaking with a Canadian accent/”
“I don't know, eh? I tried to find the store in the fog, but I got turned aboot, and ended up back here.” Klaus nervously took out three or four cigarettes and started to light them. There was a smacking sound, and suddenly Klaus had the wet Miskatonic T-shirt splayed over his face.
“Will you stop that?” Cecil groused at the poltergeist, who he could swear was now giggling, albeit in a somewhat desultory manner. He helped Intern Klaus extricate himself from his wardrobe malfunction, and then turned back to his broadcast.
“Listeners,” Cecil, “I don't know if this realization has come to any of you, but it behooves me to comment, given that this is a public radio station, I am forced to question Management's recent decision to begin airing cigarette commercials. Especially ones like the segment I just broadcast, which claimed that lung cancer is much like having an old friend bake up an apple pie and serve it to with vanilla ice cream and a sprig of mint. Listeners, first off, why would you add a sprig of mint to apple pie a la mode? That just smacks of overdoing it!”
Cecil flinched as the slap of a fat tentacle sounded on the door that forever (he prayed) separated the rest of the staff from Management. Alarmed by the moans he heard from within the office, he crept out of the recording booth and crouched by the office. A folded sheet of paper that Cecil assumed was yet another memo from the cursed abominations who ruled the station slid under the door. He snapped it up.
And then a puff of pink-ish smoke also emitted from behind the door. Cecil unfolded the paper to find several badly crushed cigarettes fall out, trailing tobacco into the mist that now hugged the floor. He heard a sound that sounded a lot like a hacking cough.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and spun around in fright.
“Cecil? Thank God!” said Carlos. “Don't you know that smoking is bad for you?” he asked, yanking the remaining cigarettes out of Carlos's hands.
Suddenly a blinding light cut across the hallway.
“Oh, no!” said Carlos, moving to shield Cecil with his body. “I'm too late.”
“It's all right,” sighed Cecil, patting his shoulder. “It's just my angels are hungry.”
“Cecil packed me a lunch,” said Carlos, holding up a wrinkled paper bag towards the angels, who were still milling about the WTNV men's room.
“That was considerate,” admitted the short angel, who tended to be a dick.
“Hey, a tunafish sandwich,” said the tall angel, peering into the bag.
“Isn't that a tin of sardines?” asked Carlos as the angel pulled out the same.
“Psshaw.” scoffed the short angel. “We're angels, dude. We perceive intent.” The angels greedily tucked into the sardines, offering a few bits to Khoshekh, who purred contentedly from his perch four feet up in the air.
“So what did scientific inquiry tell you about the fog?” asked Cecil, who was very interested in science these days.
“Well, it wasn't so much the fog, as the mysterious beings who entered the town within the fog.”
“Oh, the Nemoidians,” smacked the short angel as the tall angel crunched into the sweet, crisp apple. “That's what we were on our way to tell Josie about.”
“Why would you tell Josie?” asked Carlos.
“Well, then usually how it works is we give her the news, she gives a message to the station, and then Whitey over here announces it to the town, thus saving the people from a horrendous fate.”
Carlos's perfect face roiled into a frown. “Why don't you just tell Cecil? He's standing right here.”
The tall angel and the short angel exchanged annoyed glances, rolling their eyes. “That's what you get, talking to a scientist. They know nothing about the heraldry business! Hey, smart guy, if it worked like that, couldn't any old Tom, Dick or Melvin be an angel? Think about that!” He flapped his wings in a dismissive manner.
Carlos appeared ready to commit heavenly mayhem, had not Cecil put an hand on his shoulder. “What about this?” Cecil told the angels. “Why don't you tell Carlos here, and Carlos will promise to tell Old Woman Josie next time he sees her. And then she can tell the station, and I'll learn all about it?”
“Welllll,” said the tall angel. “I dunno. It's a little unorthodox.”
“I've got a granola bar,” said Carlos, digging into his lunch sack.
The angels's eyes widened. All of them.
“Yeah, they're douches, basically.” The short angel gave Khoshekh's head a scratch. “They come into a town and convince everyone to start smoking, thus producing an impenetrable, toxic cloud of smoke-”
“And smoke by-products,” interjected the tall angel.
“That will wreath the town in an inevitable death spiral,” finished the short angel. “You guys are due, oh, about midnight tonight.”
Cecil and Carlos exchanged a glance, Carlos's perfect dark eyes dilated with the sense of danger.
Cecil sort of wanted to kiss him, but, you know, not in front of the angels.
The tall angel took a big chomp of the granola bar, and burped loudly. “'Scuse me,” came his rumbling voice.
“We've got to stop people from smoking cigarettes,” choked Cecil as he and Carlos sat in the broadcast booth. “Should I tell them to stop on my broadcast?” The fog was getting very thick. And deliciously pink.
“It won't work,” huffed Carlos. “As we know from science, quitting smoking is tremendously difficult!”
“Dammit. Science is annoying sometimes,” sighed Cecil. As Carlos's perfect dark eyes flashed at him, he hastened to add, “No offense.”
“Science is never annoying,” Carlos avowed.
“Oh,” said Cecil, breaking into a goofy grin. “Our first fight.”
“I wish I could get to my lab, but the fog has gotten too thick,” said Carlos. “Now I have no hope of scientifically investigating this phenomenon.”
“Hey, I got another announcement for you, eh?” said Klaus the Intern, who entered, lit cigarettes now burning out of both of his ears.
SMACK! went the wet T-shirt, quickly quelling the smoke, and causing Intern Klaus's head to collide with the door jamb, efficiently knocking him out, cold.
The poltergeist giggled.
Carlos knelt down by Intern Klaus, checking his pulse, and pulling the sopping T-shirt off of his bruised face. He peered at the Miskatonic Institute of Technology logo curiously.
“Hey,” said Cecil. “I have an idea. Hey, you!” he said, addressing the poltergeist. “I have a job for you!”
The new day dawned, bright and, to everyone's astonishment, clear.
Cecil opened the WTNV station's front door and breathed in deeply. “The fog has lifted.”
“Your poltergeist went around and threw wet towels at everyone in town last night?” asked Carlos, blinking his perfect dark eyes into the yellowy sunrise visible out the window. “That seems … impossible.”
“I didn't think he had the initiative,” Cecil admitted. “But this is the happiest I've heard him since the Sixteenth Century.”
Carlos began to say something and then seemed to change his mind. “Well, I'd better get to the lab. I need to investigate what's happened to the Nemoidians now that the mist has lifted. I hope they aren't still hanging around, placing our citizenry in danger. And I still need to do more follow up on those somewhat radioactive spores from last week.”
Cecil nodded.
Carlos turned to walk away, but stopped. He looked back at Cecil. “Oh. I hope you don't mind,” he said, unbuttoning the first few buttons of his plaid flannel shirt to reveal the Miskatonic Institute of Technology logo underneath. “I borrowed your T-shirt.”
Cecil paused. He was breathless, but not from the toxic mist. He considered for a bit. “Erm. Actually, I thought that was your T-shirt.”
“No, that's not possible. I didn't go to Miskatonic for my degree in Science.”
“Oh.” Cecil thought about this. Was it possible it was his T-shirt? He hadn't gone to Miskatonic either. But he had found the shirt in his bedroom. That seemed to point a finger. “You wear it well,” he finally told Carlos.
Carlos's military formation-straight teeth flashed white as his face broke into a sunny if scientific smile that contrasted with the twilight darkness that perpetually enveloped Night Vale.
“By the way,” said Cecil. “Sorry I couldn't pack you a lunch today. And that we gave away your lunch yesterday to that rude angel.”
“Maybe you can make it up to me,” said Carlos, his voice smooth as melted caramel.
“Maybe,” said Cecil. He stared, dazed, at Night Vale's most intriguing outsider.
And then Carlos was walking away.
Cecil turned to go back into the station, suddenly intent on asking his listeners what they made of the delicate-skinned scientist now wearing his T-shirt. Even if it wasn't, really, his T-shirt after all. But he stopped short when he was suddenly smacked in the face by something damp and rough.
Cecil cursed, pulling the wet towel off his face. “I wasn't even smoking!” he protested.
Standing atop the WTNV station, the short angel giggled.
“That was rude,” said the tall angel, chowing down on another granola bar.
“Eh. We can blame it on the poltergeist.”
“Is that ethical?”
“Who gives a crap? We're angels. Our ethics are ineffable.”
“Maybe,” said the tall angel, upending the now empty cardboard box. “Hey, wanna grab some more granola bars? We're out.”
“Yeah. Let's look for those chocolate chip ones.”
“As long as they don't have raisins.”
“Yeah. No raisins.”
And then they were there no more.
