Just imagine you’re Carlos, and you hear about this town that your collegues have been trying to study but none who go there ever really come back, so you make the descision and you go down to Night Vale.
The very first day you arrive this guy on the radio with the smooth vioce starts off on how perfect you are and how it was love at first sight and it makes you anxious really, because you’ve never had that much positive attention in your life [and from another man no less] and he just goes on and on about your perfect hair and it makes you so anxious that you go and get it all cut off just to make him stop but then the barber disappears and you’re even more nervous now because you suspect the radio host with the smooth voice and he’s still very much in love with you.
You think there’s something going on with the passing of time here and you need to talk to someone from the town. A lifetime of social anxiety prevents you from just speaking with anyone, but you have his number, the man with the voice like french vanilla coffee, who you now know as ‘Cecil’. You work up the backbone to call him and voice your concerns and he makes you a lot less nervous now because he seemed pretty twitterpated himself, a little spacey. You wouldn’t go so far as to call him slow, but “Neat-!“ was not the response you were anticipating. Could he really be this enamoured with you?
Night Vale is strange and it just keeps getting more so. You still don’t go out of your way to talk to anyone outside of necessary interviews, so you don’t really know anyone. Just Cecil, who is once again going on about your perfect hair except this time you don’t mind that much. He still doesn’t seem to take you seriously when you raise concerns about how time isn’t real [which worries you greatly on a daily basis], and you wonder just how long this weird little crush could last.
It’s been nearly a year now since you’ve arrived and the clocks are all empty and you’re getting so used to all the abnormalities in daily life here that you’re beginning to doubt you could ever go back to the real world. [And isn’t it strange, now, that you think of it as “the real world”?]
Then you go down to that tiny civilization beneath lane 5 at the bowling alley.
You’re hurting and your heart is pounding from your near death experience and you feel overwhelmingly alone and displaced in this strange town and you need someone to ground you, to bring you back to earth and your phone is in your hand and you’re dialing the only number you know in Night Vale.
And there he is. Cecil who doesn’t believe in mountains but knows for a fact that all angels are named ‘Erika’. Cecil who remembers what everyone else does not and talks about things that everybody else can not. He is still in his work clothes and now that you think about it he should be broadcasting right now, but there he is, no questions asked, just because you called him here with your shaking voice and trembling hands.
Cecil.
You listen to his radio show now.
His voice chases your anxieties away.