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It was stupid to cry now, Carlos realised. Stupid. They both knew it was going to happen one day. Night Vale was so dangerous, so unpredictable that it was really only a matter of time before it did, and one of them didn’t come home. But that wasn’t reassuring, and the tears continued to fall.
Carlos had been in the flat when it happened, making dinner for the two of them to eat snuggled up on the couch like they always did and like, he strongly believed, they always would. He waited for the door to open, for Cecil’s reassuring “I’m home!” before the arms around his waist and the peck on the cheek.
And he waited.
Cecil had the only working time piece in Night Vale, but by the clock in the flat told him that it was half past nine. The show was over half an hour ago. He tried Cecil’s phone but got nothing, which was strange – Cecil always picked up on the first ring – so he sent him a text message.
Hey, Ceec, wondering what’s keeping u? x
No reply. What did he do now? Cecil would know, but Cecil wasn’t here to tell him. Where was Cecil? Where was his Cecil? He remembered his words from all those months ago: A scientist is self-reliant. That’s the first thing a scientist is. How ironic those words were now.
It was almost ten o’clock. Cecil never arrived after quarter past nine, apart from the one time when he needed to stay back because Khoshekh was sick, but when that happened he had called. He had called and told Carlos where he was because he knew that Carlos worried.
On the edge of a panic attack, Carlos did the one thing he had never done in Night Vale and hoped he would never have to do. He picked up the landline in the living room and spoke quietly into the phone, “Hello? Is this the Sheriff’s Secret Police?”
“Yes,” a voice replied. “Hello, Carlos. How can we help you?”
“Cecil,” he said. “Where’s Cecil?”
There was a pause on the over end of the phone before the voice said, softer now, “You haven’t heard?”
“Heard? Heard what?”
“Oh, Carlos. We think that you had best sit down.”
And so Carlos listened as they told him about Cecil, about Street Cleaning Day coming early this year, about him being trapped on the road, about how he hadn’t cried. He was a hero, the Voice of Night Vale, a hero right until the end.
But Carlos didn’t want Cecil to be a hero. He wanted him to be here on the couch eating dinner with him, like he was meant to be, like he was always meant to be, because that was the plan and Carlos liked plans.
Cecil wasn’t dead. How could he be dead? Carlos had never in all of his thirty-two years seen anyone so alive. He could light up a room just by walking into it and smiling. He didn’t need to walk, he bounced. He jumped. He flew. He was never tired, never slow. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead.
“You’re lying.”
Any second now, Cecil was going to walk laughing into the room with some rational explanation as to where he’d been and why and they’d laugh and eat dinner and apologise to the Sheriff’s Secret Police and go to bed, and yes, maybe Carlos would hold Cecil and little tighter and tell him he loved him just a bit more, but that was okay, wasn’t it? Because he did love him.
But he wasn’t dead.
So why was Carlos crying?
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re lying.”
“Carlos. We are all hurt by the passing of the Voice of Night Vale.”
And the name snapped him. “Don’t call him that! He was Cecil! He was Cecil Palmer and he was beautiful and perfect and pure and innocent and the best damn thing that ever happened to me!”
“Carlos –”
“Do you understand that? How ever day I woke up happy because he was here and alive and mine? He wasn’t the Voice of Night Vale, he was my Cecil who I love so much and now, because of this stupid town with it’s stupid misunderstandings and just general chaos, I can’t tell him that and I’m never going to be able to tell him that again because he’s gone and I’m never going to find him!”
“I’m sorry,” and the phone went dead.
What Carlos couldn’t put into words was that when Cecil used to come in the door, used to call out “I’m home!”, it wasn’t Cecil who was home. For Cecil, Night Vale was home even with all the danger and the confusion, even with all its imperfections. What it meant when Cecil said that was that Carlos was home, because Night Vale wasn’t home to Carlos nor could it ever be home. It was Cecil who was home and Cecil who was warm at night and Cecil who reassured him and Cecil who made him realise that he didn’t have to be afraid all the time, and, ultimately, Cecil who made him realise he did, because it was Cecil that he loved, loved so much he thought sometimes that it was going to break him to contain it all.
And now it was Cecil who was dead and gone and suddenly Carlos wasn’t home anymore and he wasn’t safe and nothing was ever, ever going to be all right again.
“I love you, Cecil,” Carlos sobbed, sinking down against the wall. He loved Cecil with every functioning bone in his body, every cell. He loved Cecil so much that it didn’t even matter if he came home late and if the Sheriff’s Secret Police lied to him about Street Cleaning Day and it didn’t matter if he cried over him and it didn’t matter if he burst in the door at ten thirty with a perfectly rational explanation –
But he wouldn’t. Because he was dead.
A scientist is self-reliant. That’s the first thing a scientist is.
It was stupid to cry now, Carlos realised. Stupid. They both knew it was going to happen one day. Night Vale was so dangerous, so unpredictable that it was really only a matter of time before it did, and one of them didn’t come home. But that wasn’t reassuring, and the tears continued to fall.