Hey Nightvale, it is Jeffrey Crainer speaking to you from April of 2026 with a couple of cool things coming up. First off, we are going to be in Europe, touring our newest Nightvale live show Murder Night in Blood Forest. We're going to be in Edinburgh, UK on May 27th. We'll be in Manchester on the 28th.
We will be in London on May 29th and we will be in Amsterdam on May the 30th. You can get tickets for these shows at Welcome to Nightvale.com slash live and hopefully we'll have more shows coming up later this year. Who knows? Just get on our newsletter, go to Welcome to Nightvale.com, sign up for our newsletter.
We will send you emails twice a month to let you know all of the news that you need to know about Welcome to Nightvale. One of the big news things to tell you right now is that our other hit podcast, Alice Isn't Dead, is coming back on April the 13th written by Joseph Fink, produced by Disporition and starring Jessica Nicole. More episodes of Alice Isn't Dead return on April the 13th, so make sure you are still subscribed to that podcast. Finally, do you want some cool Nightvale merch?
Go to Welcome to Nightvale.com, click on the store, and we have all kinds of cool t-shirts, things for the summer, tank tops, peach towels. And if you like coffee mugs, if you want calendars, if you want backpacks, all kinds of cool stuff there, so check out Welcome to Nightvale.com and click on the store, click on live. If you want to see our live shows, we will see you in Europe and hey, thanks. The password is Mudwoom.
The username is Mudwoom. The website is Mudwoom. Where did the rest of the internet go? Welcome to Nightvale.
I would like to tell you a story. It is a difficult story and I don't know what it means, but it seems important to me to tell you. It is about two people and a terrible, impossible decision that they found themselves having to make. It concerns Francis Donaldson and Nazar Al-Nujahid.
But first, the community calendar. This Tuesday evening, the Nightvale Football Boosters Club will hold their meeting at the Applebee's that we're all pretty sure was at Chili's, just yesterday, but now as an Applebee's. And all records show it has always been in Applebee's even though we remember it as a Chili's. The subject of this week's meeting will be the timing of football games, which all members agree are too long.
Hey, I like football as much as the next guy, said Hannah Gutierrez, but a whole 60 minutes of play, plus all the breaks and starting and stopping, we're busy people. Football should take less time. The Booster Club will be working on their new proposal to get games done in a tight 15, so everyone can get home and watch the newest episode of Stop Chef, in which a group of contestants compete to prevent a chef from cooking. Wednesday is Love Day at Dark Owl Records.
Owner Michelle Bien explained that after recent love-focused events, she wanted everyone to understand that love is a laughable concept, and she wanted to highlight its absurdity by selling albums with songs that ruthlessly mock love using subtle irony, like, I will always love you, and ain't no mountain high enough. My former radio intern, Maureen, who was in the store too, and was holding hands with Michelle, agreed that love is stupid, and funny, and fun, and ridiculous, and all-encompassing and revitalizing. Then Michelle said, what? And Maureen said, what?
And then they both got embarrassed and asked me to leave. Thursday is the Safety Parade, which the Sheriff's Secret Police hold each year in order to highlight safety. Of course, no one is allowed to march in or attend the parade for their own safety. As Secret Police mascot barks on we always says, woof woof, the biggest danger to you is you, woof.
Friday is a meeting at Town Hall to discuss the problem of entrances to other universes, and the question of whether all of us even ended up in the right universe after that whole recent mix-up. There will be light snacks, as well as blood tests and surprise interrogations about our version of history in order to trip up intruders from parallel universes. Attendance is mandatory. This Saturday and Sunday, the brownstone spire will be offering powerful gifts in exchange for great sacrifices.
The larger the sacrifice, the more powerful the gift. For instance, if you give it a DVD you got for Christmas five years ago and have never even taken out of its shrink wrap, it'll give you a well-worn copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that is missing its cover. But if you give it an offering of your blood and fervent chanting, the copy of Chamber of Secrets, it gives you, will have an intact cover. And finally, this Monday, Night Vale Cinemas will be hosting a showing of that classic comedy-caper, the grift of the Magi, in which two con artists run scams in order to get one another Christmas gifts, only to find that they have accidentally each stolen the money from the other.
And now, a story of love and horror. Frances Donaldson runs the Antiques Mall in Old Town, Night Vale. Long before she took on that job, though, she developed an interest in time. As a child, she would stand still and consider that while she had not moved at all in space, something had changed, that she had grown just slightly older, her hair just slightly longer.
And this without being able to see the movement at all. She liked to lie in bed and, through her window, watch planes pass very high in the sky. She liked to think about where they had taken off and where they might land. Objects fascinated her because they too moved through time on a different trajectory than her.
Her bedroom lamp had existed, looking more or less like it was now since before she was born, and could well exist after she had died. It wasn't even aware, was unable to move, and yet it joined her in this mad hurdle through time. She found this terrifying, and she found this fascinating. And she found this delightful, and she wanted it to stop.
And she hoped it never stopped. And she felt all of these feelings equally and at once, and without contradiction. What use was there in worrying if all of what she felt about time did not exactly add up. She was too busy feeling it to consider what it meant.
And so, of course, she became fascinated with Antiques. These objects washed up from the crooked tides of time. Nazar Al-Lujiheet coaches the Night Vale High School football team, Go Sportians. And this was almost the entirety of his world.
He thought about football when he woke up. He thought about it on the drive to work. Of course, he thought about it when he ran practices and had meetings with the assistant coaches. And he thought about it at night, when he ate takeout dinners on his couch while watching football.
This made him happy. And what makes a person happy, if it doesn't harm another person and doesn't harm themselves, is okay. Even if it's not how anyone else would want to live. But while it made him happy, Nazar was also aware that there is more than one kind of happiness.
And that perhaps this happiness he found in a life endlessly thinking about football, was less than the happiness he could find in a life with more things in it. This wasn't about fixing a problem. This was an attempt to improve on a good situation. This was his play for some sort of grace.
Other people, he knew, could provide an outside perspective. And perhaps allow him to be less focused on his work and on the game he coached. And so, he decided he would try dating. Without expectations, without a plan.
Just as a way to see what the world might have for him. And now, a word from our sponsors. Ford, our cars are built strong. Strong like a rock, or a mountain, or bone.
In fact, our cars are built out of bones. Weird metal bones that were buried in a meteor. What creature did they belong to? How did it live with a skeleton of steel?
Are its relatives even now streaking down from the sky, intent on revinging themselves upon the pitiful culture that desecrated their dead and turned them into affordable and reliable pickup trucks? Who knows? We certainly don't. We barely understand how an engine works.
We have one guy who knows, and he builds them all. But in order to protect his job, he won't show anyone else how to do it. Now that's smart thinking. Ford, drive weird bones.
There was no great epiphany for Francis that led to her dating life. She had been on the dating app Void, sent it to become available in Night Vale, and had gone on a few casual void dates. It was not an important part of her life because it didn't seem likely to ever lead to anything more, but the occasional company was nice. A night with someone, and then back to her life as it was, which was a life she liked.
In this way, her dating was related to her obsession with time. Her bed was always the same bed. And sometimes, there was another person in it, and mostly only her. She floated upon that bed as it moved through time.
Passengers on and off, and she alone, voyaging onward. And then, Nazar messaged her on Void, and they started chatting. For his part, he was unsure of how to date. It had been some time since he had done so, and certainly before dating happened as a series of written communications, rather than awkward hand gestures.
So he had messaged a number of women in town who had seemed to him like someone he might want to spend more time with. He did this without expectation. He had few expectations that did not involve football. He just performed the actions that might lead to new outcomes for him.
And three of the women had messaged back. He was, after all, not a bad-looking man, handsome even, although it had been a long time since anyone had told him that. And so, it would not have occurred to him that he was handsome. And this, in many ways, made him even more handsome.
Francis and he agreed to meet for lunch near the high school. This was close enough to her antique store that she could walk, and so the whole thing didn't feel to either of them like much of a commitment of time. So, he said, once they had sat down with their food. So, she agreed.
And for an awful moment, it seemed it would hang there and uncomfortable silence, and a bad date best forgotten. But then, he asked about antiques, because he himself had an interest in old football trophies. And he agreed that might seem a bit weird, but the thing was that their designs were often fascinating, never having been meant to stand up under scrutiny. Crudely carved players, hands like dinner rolls, feet disappearing into the base of the trophy.
And this turned into a discussion of all the many old items that would never be valuable from the viewpoint of capitalism, but were more interesting than the ones that were valuable. From this, the conversation spread out into her fascination with time. And then, time itself, and their childhoods, and how it was hard sometimes to remember that they themselves were adults. And in Nazar's case, older than his parents ever lived to be.
On returning to work, Nazar started the afternoon football practice as usual, and as usual threw himself into the rhythm of drills, spells, and counterspells that make up any football skirmish. But, he found, for the first time in his life, that he couldn't make himself fully focus. There was a part of him still thinking about the lunch, about the way her hands had looked, tapping on the table, about the way she talked about time as though it were not an implatable force, but an old and fallible friend. He had to continually draw himself back into practice, and the players wondered if he perhaps was sick.
Francis stood at the window of her antique shop, watching the planes fly overhead. When a person entered the shop, she would acknowledge them vaguely with a nod, and then acknowledge them vaguely with a nod again when they left. But otherwise, she kept her eyes on the window. Something in her chest felt tight, but also less heavy.
She was both scared and happy, and she wasn't sure why she was either of those. When later, they both messaged and decided to go on a second date, an evening date at a nice restaurant, something with a bit more commitment behind it. Neither of them connected it directly to the way they felt after they're lunch together. But both of them could not contain their impatience and had messaged that very evening, both at exactly 10.52 PM.
Let's have a look at that weather. There was a second date, and that night she went with him back to his house. Then a third date where they went to her house. Then a few more dates where they sometimes went to one of their houses and sometimes just kissed, wild with the feeling of it, out in the parking lot of whatever restaurant or bar they had met at, before saying goodnight because they had to work in the morning, and they were adults who sometimes had control of themselves.
This was not one of those nights though. This was a night that she was in his bed, and he was asleep. This was a little over a month after their first date. As she lay sleepy and happy, she watched the TV, which was tinting the darkness, a soft flickering blue.
It was an old episode of Friends in which Joey rolls limply and slowly over the course of 22 minutes across the apartment while out of focus in the background Phoebe searches desperately through every cabinet and screams. Frances had seen the episode too many times to laugh out loud at, but still, it felt comforting to watch, like sitting in a room that she looked. The episode had become a place she could go, rather than a story to follow. There was a commercial break, and a PSA from the Secret Police came on, featuring the adorable cartoon Spokesdog, Barks on Wii.
He catered about pointing out all the different ways one could break the law in Night Vale and get sentenced to a forever term in the abandoned mineshaft outside of town. She found herself grinning at his bad puns in the section about reporting on your neighbors. Traitorous activities can be rough, go fetch us their deepest secrets, and then Barks said her name. His cartoon canine face turned directly to the screen, and he said, Francis, she didn't know how to respond.
A commercial had never spoken to her, and certainly it had never done what Barks did next, which was to step out of the TV screen in a clumsy, flopping movement and then sit up, a two-dimensional, flickering cartoon dog standing in the bedroom. Francis, Barks said, you aren't supposed to be here, this doesn't belong to you. He cocked his animated head, the wall of Nasser's apartment faintly visible through him, as though through heavy fog. As his head turned, it sagged in the direction of the ground, stretching and distorting his cartoon puppy face until it was a series of drooping ovals.
When he spoke again, his voice sounded stretched, too. You will have to make this right, Francis, he garbled. You will have to make this right. She screamed.
Nothing happened. She screamed. Too next. Just stay tuned.
Next. Good night. Night Vale. Good night.
Welcome to Night Vale is a production of Night Vale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craner and produced by Joseph Fink. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin, original music by Disparition. All of it can be found at Disparition.info or at Disparition.Bancamp.com.
This episode's weather was Rich's and Wonders by Eliza Rickman and Jerrick Bischoff, covering a song by the mountain goats. This song is just one track from the new non-fiction podcast from the creator of Welcome to Night Vale. I only listen to the mountain goats. For more information on this show and this track, go to IOnlyListenToTheMountainGoats.com Comments, questions, email us at info at WelcomeToNight Vale.com or follow us on Twitter at Night Vale Radio or go into a cave and never come back out of the cave.
Check out WelcomeToNight Vale.com for more information on this show and our current tour of Australia and our upcoming tour of the US and Canada. Today's proverb, Welcome to 2018, the year we finally do it, the year we eat the sun. Hey Jeffrey Craner here to tell you about another show from me and my Night Vale creator, Joseph Fink. It's called Unlicensed and it's an LA Noir style mystery set in the outskirts of present-day Los Angeles.
Unlicensed follows two unlicensed private investigators who small jobs looking into insurance claims and missing property are only the tip of a conspiracy iceberg. There are already two seasons of Unlicensed for you to listen to now with Season 3 dropping on May 15th. Unlicensed is available exclusively through Audible free if you already have that subscription and if you don't Audible has a trial membership and if I know you and I do, you can binge all that mystery goodness in a short window. And if you like it, if you like Unlicensed please rate and review each season.
Our ability to keep making this show is predicated on audience engagement. So go check out Unlicensed, available now only at Audible.com.