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I want to be your mayor.
Who knows you better than I do? I am not afraid to look deep into your refrigerator, taking in the smell of regretted experiments and lost time. I know what words make your eyelids twitch when I whisper them in your sleep. I know that the color of your couch reminds you of everything else that's ever disappointed you, and that's why I took the liberty of burning off the upholstery with acid.
I know what this town needs. I have a lot of good ideas about zoning and infrastructure, and I can hear the thoughts of bees.
I know that you want strong leadership that you can trust. You can trust me, Night Vale. I'm already watching you sleep.
When Leann Hart hears the Faceless Old Woman's latest campaign ad, she begins to hiss and sputter and fling her bloodied axe in rage, smashing two Precious Moments figurines. Another candidate who could have purchased advertising in the Night Vale Daily Journal, but did not. Another enemy of print media. Another one who has to die.
When Trish Hidge hears it, she's in the Moonlite All-Nite Diner nursing an orange milk and half-heartedly flirting with the tired waitress. She tries not to think too much about mayoral campaigns. She looks out at the lights of Route 800, and up at the lights in the sky above the Arby's, and lights a cigarette.
When Carlos hears it, crackling and distorted, it's emanating from a rock in the desert otherworld. He remembers the anomalous readings he'd started picking up in the kitchen a while back, and then he remembers those leftovers from his last date with Cecil, and he begins to worry.
When Cecil hears it, he is deeply moved by how much the Faceless Old Woman cares for her prospective constituents. Of course, he would never endorse a candidate on the air, because he is a radio professional, committed to objective reporting. Anyway, since the mayoral campaign is technically over, he's very afraid of what Station Management would do if he even mentioned any challenges to the election of Mayor Cardinal. And indeed, he's very proud to see a former intern survive to claim such a glorious position of municipal power! But in the privacy of his own home, with nobody but the Sheriff's Secret Police around to hear, he admires the singed clumps of stuffing and corroded springs exploding from his denuded couch and sighs happily.
When Pamela Winchell hears it, she answers.
"You're touching my leg," she says. She is sitting on an industrial steel chair in the middle of an empty room. She has left this room empty because it is the center of her house, which is the center of Night Vale, and the plans she has for this room are glorious and fiery and will come to fruition only when the time is right.
"Yes," answers the Faceless Old Woman. "But not that one. The other one." Her voice echoes slightly in the barren room.
Pamela begins to vibrate. She rises slowly, about an inch above the chair, briefly glows blue, then green, then void, then stops glowing and sinks back down. "Do you always do that when you're angry?" asks the Faceless Old Woman. "I do not think that much stress is good for you."
"You don't watch me sleep, you know," hisses Pamela in response. The Faceless Old Woman's hand is still touching her leg. Pamela can actually feel it now; what was once a vague nudge in her consciousness is now the definite impress of calm fingertips resting lightly on her thigh.
"Yes, I do," answers the Faceless Old Woman, unperturbed and insistent.
"I do not sleep," Pamela bellows into the shadows. She scans the room for sudden movement and shifts in the light, but there are none. The Faceless Old Woman has not moved. It pleases her. Pamela does not know anyone else who doesn't flinch when she bellows.
"You do sleep, Pamela Winchell," insists the Faceless Old Woman. "Every night, you hang your suit jacket on your closet door, and you loosen your tie, and then you lick your cufflinks three times each but do not remove them. The cufflinks glow for a moment. You recline on your bed. You recite incantations that are typically not pronounceable by human tongues. And then, you close your eyes, and you roll over, and you sleep."
"No!" Pamela pounds her fist on the arm of the metal chair. "Sleep is for the powerless insects that cower before me!" Her rage subsides, and she sighs. "Cowered. Cowered before me. I should get used to saying that."
The room is silent. The sun has gone down, and the ambient light leaking into the room has faded. Outside, strange lights dance above the Arby's. But in here, it is dark, and Pamela stares into the darkness. She feels sharp fingernails tracing arcane patterns on her thigh. She summons the even tone she uses to address young tarantulas and stubborn reporters, and she speaks again. "But I don't sleep. I simply close my eyes for five minutes of meditation every evening, and my extraordinary powers cause minor rifts in the space-time continuum that make time pass more quickly everywhere outside my bedroom." The Faceless Old Woman nods, but skeptically. Somehow, Pamela can tell she's nodding, and she can feel the skepticism in the Faceless Old Woman's fingertips. "I'm concerned about your fitness to be mayor if you can't understand simple concepts like this," she says. "I've been meaning to call an emergency press conference about your illegal campaign, you know."
"I watch you sleep," insists the Faceless Old Woman. "You murmur about spiderwolves and prophecies, and sometimes you seem to think you're speaking rather intimately to Trish Hidge. It's all very interesting. It explains some of the noises at Trish's house, and some of the stains."
"So you were watching when Trish and I--"
"No, not that. It bored me. Anyway, I was busy rearranging all the faces in your magazines."
"This is your plan? What you'll do as mayor?" Pamela roars. "I had great visions for Night Vale! Great and terrible visions of vast underground cities lit only by the eyes of unknown invertebrates! Visions of fire and glory and wheat byproducts. And you rearrange faces in my magazines and burn refrigerators?"
The Faceless Old Woman says nothing. She does nothing. Suddenly, Pamela doesn't feel fingernails on her thigh, and she doesn't sense an inquisitive presence just behind her right shoulder. She is alone in the dark room and she will never be mayor again.
"Please," she says. "I-- are you still here?"
It's quiet for a long time. Pamela feels cool, strong fingers enclose her wrists. A voice emerges from the darkness. "I have advice for you, Pamela Winchell. Mayoral advice."
Pamela tests the Faceless Old Woman's grip. Her arms strain against the unseen fingers, and her wrists are pinned against the hard metal of the chair. She smiles. She knows the Faceless Old Woman can sense it in the dark. She lets herself sink into the sensation, relishing the chance to exert herself against a force that will not bow or bend.
"Do you know what it means to have a mayor?" asks the Faceless Old Woman. "As mayor, I would not just observe your daily life, but improve it!" She's beginning to sound like her campaign ads. Pamela raises an eyebrow. Somehow, she knows that the Faceless Old Woman can see it. She goes on. "You should clean your bloodstone circle more often. All those entrails will attract flies and spiders and self-doubt. You should read better books. And I do not think you eat enough calcium."
"So you really do watch me," Pamela marvels, as if this were anything resembling a new insight.
"Yes," says the Faceless Old Woman.
"I think you're smiling," whispers Pamela. "Not literally. You don't have a face. But still, you're smiling. I can tell."
"Yes," answers the Faceless Old Woman.
"What do you want from me?" asks Pamela.
"I want to be your mayor."
"That's really all?" asks Pamela. "But you want to be everyone's mayor." She was expecting something more personal-- an assassination plot, a transdimensional conspiracy--and now she's offended.
"That makes no difference," answers the Faceless Old Woman. Pamela now feels a vague, yet insistent presence pressing against her legs, briefly, before the sensation disappears. "Right now, I want to be your mayor. I want to let you rage and howl against the bulwark of implacable municipal management until you finally sink into the comfort of utter powerlessness."
The shadowed presence is pushing against her legs again. It feels more corporeal this time, more solid, but it still falls short of the warmth and definition of a human body. It coalesces between her knees, pushes them apart. There are still hands gripping her wrists. They have not warmed to the touch of Pamela's skin.
"I've known for a long time that you were secretly living in my home," Pamela whispers. "I have known a lot of things that mere citizens could never comprehend, like the secret of fire and the terrible plans of trees. You know they have a plan, right?" She pauses. Somehow, she can sense that the Faceless Old Woman is nodding. She goes on. "Most people don't even notice when you replace all their books with other books or leave hair on their pillow or ask them how their day was. But I've known you were here. I think about how you watch me. And I like it. I want you to watch me, all the time. Not the others. I'm not like them."
There is silence in the dark room. Suddenly, Pamela can feel the negative space of the whole room, the whole town. She is in the center of Night Vale, and she is helpless in the face of the void. It's beautiful, she thinks, to be watched with such merciless precision, splayed before such implacable emptiness.
After some consideration, the Faceless Old Woman speaks. "I think it is very healthy for you to communicate your feelings so clearly," she says with more than a hint of mayoral smugness. "You did not communicate very clearly with Trish Hidge." She pauses, then interrupts herself. "Oh, don't worry; Trish is certainly alone tonight," she says dismissively, "and I doubt the waitress is interested. Anyway. You need to work on your vindictiveness. And clean your shower."
Suddenly, every unseen touch vanishes: Pamela's wrists are released from the cool grip, her legs are unencumbered, and the shadows by her neck no longer seem to tremble or scratch.
Pamela remains in the room a long time.
(Not that time has much of a say over her. It bows to her will, or once did, at least, and will once again before the fiery end.)
She walks into her bedroom and hangs her suit jacket over the closet door. She loosens her tie and licks her cufflinks three times, but does not remove them. The cufflinks glow for a moment. Pamela lies down in her bed. She recites an incantation. She closes her eyes.
She waits to be rendered helpless, inanimate. She waits for the darkness to resolve into an implacable presence. She waits for the one she can trust, the one who knows what she needs, the one who's already watching her sleep.