Welcome to Night Vale - 129 - A Matter of Blood Part 3

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

The battle for the soul of Dana Cardinal comes to a close. The voice of Dana Cardinal is Jasika Nicole. Weather: “Mariposas” by Yva Las Vegass https://monikerrecordsss.bandcamp.com/album/i-was-born-in-a-place-of-sunshine-and-the-smell-of-ripe-mangoes Night Vale Presents Birthday Party, June 8th at the Bell House in New York City. Tickets on sale now. http://www.welcometonightvale.com/live Brand new proverb t-shirt now available. https://topatoco.com/collections/wtnv Music: Disparition http://disparition.info Logo: Rob Wilson http://robwilsonwork.com Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin.  http://welcometonightvale.com Follow us on Twitter @NightValeRadio or Facebook. Produced by Night Vale Presents.  http://nightvalepresents.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Howdy y'all. It is Jeffrey Craneer. I'm not sure which episode of Welcome to Nightville you're listening to, but I am speaking to you from April of 2026. And I'm here to tell you we're going to be in Europe. If you want to see Nightville live and you're going to be in Europe, come check us out at the end of May. We're going to be in Edinburgh on May the 27th. We will be in Manchester on the 28th, London on the 29th, and Amsterdam on May the 30th. Just go to Welcome to Nightville.com slash live to see the show dates and to get your tickets. This is. our newest Nightville live show Murder Night in Blood Forest. It is so much fun. Please come check it out. Also, coming up this month here in April, it is the return of Alice Isn't Dead, brand new episodes of our other crazy hit podcast. This is written by Joseph Fink, produced and with music by Dissin and starring Jacique and Nicole. So make sure you are still subscribed to Alice Isn't Dead and go get those on April the 13th as new episodes come out. Finally, speaking of other shows, do you want to hear us talk about other things? things. We have three other really great chat shows. First of all, there's Good Morning Nightvale for all of your Nightvale needs. You can hear Hal, Meg, and Symphony talk about every single

episode in order of Welcome to Nightvale. Also, we have Random Horror Number Nine. That is me and Nightville star Cecil Baldwin talking about horror movies one at a time in a random order. And then Joseph and Meg do best, worst, which is a really fun podcast where they look at hit TV shows and they review the best rated on IMDB, the worst rated on IMDB, and if you're a Patreon member, they will review the middleest rated on IMDB. So check out all of those at nightfallpresents.com or just wherever you get your podcast. And hey, thanks. We make our own luck, which is to say things randomly happen and we apply our personal ideas about luck to that randomness. Welcome to Nightvale. The thing has changed.

there was before the blood matter from space and and after. Our town is still our town, but it is altered and can never be the same. It is difficult to interpret what has happened as a matter of history. We are not enough removed to be able to understand every facet. It is better instead that we listen through the event as it happened in the moment. On that day, the day of the blood matter from space. So, I take you back two weeks. Mayor Cardinal had just activated a new program routing most power and surveillance through the mayor's office.

At the same time, she was wanted for murder, because her double had come to town and killed many people. Her double went to her family's house in order to draw Dana Cardinal out, and it worked. As Dana approached her family's house in order to face this other version of herself, the blood matter from space descended upon us. Here's what happened next. This is not a story about a good Dana and a bad Dana. I know how satisfying such a story might have been for you, but I am not a bad Dana,

just a Dana who is willing, a Dana who does what is needed, because the Dana that you are tempted to call good, just because you have spent more time with her than you have with me, She killed her own double years ago. She killed her, our, blood. And so I have come to call her to account in the name of all Dana's in all universes. Mine is a righteous cause.

This Dana's mother, who looks exactly like my mother, sobs in the corner, clutching her hand from which I have now removed three fingers. A countdown of sorts for my other Dana. Next, I will murder her, my brother. I will show her that I cannot be dissuaded from my mission. And apparently, I have shown her, because as the blood starts to pour down outside, streaking the windows in vivid red, I see myself standing outside. and calling our name. I shout,

Our family alone. Come out and face yourself. I'm waiting. I brought no weapon. I am not there to fight and kill yet another version of myself. The first struggle has left me with such shame that I have sought great good for my town in order to atone. But apparently that has not been enough.

My fallen double will haunt me forever. The blood gains quickly on the streets, and by the time that other me comes smirking out of the door, we are knee-deep. The sky is a heaving mass of strange clouds. Everything smells like blood. I can smell nothing else. We face ourselves in that lake of red. Our faces streaked. Our eyes steady on each other.

While this was going on, the Blood Space Matter viewing party here at the station was going swimmingly, in that we all had to start swimming. None of us, not even Carlos, had been aware of just how deep the blood matter was going to get. Apparently the station is a bit of a low point in the local geography, and so we'd flooded significantly more than the rest of town. Still, we all made the best of it, having ourselves something of a macabra pool party. Unfortunately, my life in the desert had not prepared me for swimming much, or at all. But fortunately, my my broadcast equipment floats. So I sat astride my radio desk bobbing about in the blood.

Oh, Nightvale, what are we going to do? The mayor's new program of centralized power is still in effect. The mayor is in charge of everything, and not much can be done without her say, which is a huge problem now for obvious reasons. I eye myself over. This other me, she is weak. I see no strength in her.

She thinks she has seen hardship. She thinks she has experienced responsibility. But now I am her reckoning. I am the proof that she is unworthy of the name Dana Cardinal. You are guilty, I proclaim. This is a sentencing, not a conversation. I continue. You have murdered,

one of us, and you have been found guilty by your other selves. You must pay for your crime. She bites her lip. The blood we both stand in is soaking into her genes. She shakes her head. She draws herself up. A fight then? Very well.

I had hoped for some backbone. There are worse places to find it than in myself. This Dana from some other world, she is not wrong. I killed my double, or I am the double who killed the original. That is true. And I have felt every day sorrow and guilt and confusion over that. I have punished myself in my thoughts and in my nightmares. But now there is this external.

Avenger, come to see to it that I suffer even more. I had no choice that day of the sandstorm. It was me or that other me, and I chose me. That is what happened. It was survival, plain and simple. With a slight reshuffle of luck, there could have been that other Dana standing here, knee-deep in the blood, under clouds that look like angry boils. Or, I think I had no choice. I think it was a matter of survival.

Maybe things could have been resolved peacefully if I had made different decisions. Or if I was a different person. But I am only me. Of course, now I know there is not only me. And seeing my resolve, the Dana from another world bellows like a predatory animal. It is chilling to know that somewhere in me that bellow lives, even though I've never brought it out. And the other Dana comes for me, abrupt and violent. Cecil again, again, from the present.

And what a chaos this present is. Because even though the town's power and decision-making runs entirely through the mayor's office, there is no mayor now to make those decisions. The mayor's chair has sat empty for two weeks. and it may well be that no one will ever sit in that chair again. This is metaphorical. The chair itself will be collected by janitorial services and assigned to a new location on municipal property

in which an impressive chair is needed. But we still will be a town with no leader. Oh, Mayor Cardinal. Oh, Dana. I stride forward to kill her. It is a simple operation like turning on a car. There are a few easy movements and then it is done. So it has been with everyone in this soft universe.

But the Dana of this world, she is not soft. She meets my lazy killing blow with a turned shoulder and is already punching me in the gut. I'm not prepared for this, so I fall backwards into the blood, sinking below it for a moment before we're. rising out, a scarlet creature. So, this is how she was able to murder one of us. This is how she was able to survive multiple attempts upon her life from that erstwhile dragon, Hiram. She has a deep well of strength and an absolute instinct for continuing to breathe.

I had wanted a fight that would make me struggle. and it seems I have found it. We are now waist deep in the blood. I shout and rush forward and we clash once again. I am prepared to fight for my belief that there is good in this town. That this town deserves to exist. And by extension, the people who live in this town deserve to exist. And by extension, I deserve to exist.

She strikes at me. Now with a knife. I grab her arm, redirect her momentum away from my torso, but I feel the blade slip through the side of my hand, as easily as a thought slips through a mind. I know I am bleeding, but I have no way of gauging how bad the wound is when I am already covered in blood.

Meanwhile, this other Dana is already swinging again, this time for my throat, or my face, I can't tell, but the outcome would be equally catastrophic. I reach inside, looking for a response, some instinct, and I find that bellow, the same one that had come from her. It was waiting for me my whole life, and I bring it out now. I bellow, guttural and deep and cutting through the sound of falling blood. As she swings the knife, I wrench her arm back toward herself. stabbing the blade into her shoulder, and then heaving forward with a wild kick,

sending her sprawling back under the blood. A circumstance I could never have imagined. I have failed. I have never failed before, and so I saw no warning signs. I wouldn't have been able to imagine what those warning signs would have looked like. The blood stings my eyes and worms its way down my. throat. I come up coughing and gasping. The knife is in my shoulder. The Dana of this world, she yanks the knife out and I gasp with the horrible searing pain. She wields the knife before her,

and I hold up my hands to acknowledge my defeat. I wait for death. After all, it has been waiting for me my whole life. But Dana, she does not kill me. She cries and the tears make clean tracks across her bloody face. She tosses the knife away and it is lost into the blood. She lowers herself to her knees before me. In doing so, she goes neck deep, just her face peering at me from the surface. We are both at the same level now.

both almost submerged. The conclusion of what concluded two weeks ago in just a moment, but I really do need to check in on the weather. Eva Las Vegas, a Venezuelan born Seattle native, a motherfucker. I am guilty, I say. Everything you say about me is true. I killed my double. Or I am the double and I killed the original.

Either is a grievous crime against a person who was and was not me. And I should stand accountable for that. That crime has haunted me ever since. I present myself to you, who is also me, for judgment. I am ready for me to judge myself. I look at this woman, the blood laughing at her ears, soaking into her hair. I flinched toward her and she makes no move to defend herself. In her eyes, I see anguish.

I see guilt. It would be an easy set of three movements from this moment to her death. But I do not take any of them. She does not need to stand any more accountable than she has already made herself. She does not need any more punishment than that which she has already made herself. already given to herself every hour of every day. She has not forgiven her crime any more than any other version of her ass. I rise and stride away into that downpour of blood and return to my brutal, familiar world. I watch her leave and I am not surprised. How could I be? She is me. I am her.

I stand and make my way slowly, sometimes swimming, sometimes waiting, to Raden Canyon. The blood rushes over the sides, a torrent. The voices from Raden Canyon chose me as mayor four years ago, and I accepted their choice. But now I see, the power I have endowed to the mayor's office should not be given to someone like me. someone whose judgment is so flawed who has made mistakes so human I give up my position I shouted the voices

choose another no the voices echo back you are the mayor I refuse I say I won't do it we will not choose another the voices say

until you complete your service as mayor. Then you will never choose another, I say, and return to my mother's house. I embrace her, and I embrace my brother. I will live a life that is not perfect, but also not perfectly unhappy. I'm not a bad person. I just am not a good enough person to wield that power.

And I think perhaps no one is. Nightvale doesn't have a mayor, and it never will again. I am Dana Cardinal. I am the double, or I am the original, but I am Dana either way. I have stood accountable for my crimes, and now I come out the other side, ready to live my life as a fellow citizen, as a fellow human being. So ended the day of the blood matter from space. Cleanup has been underway for two weeks and will go for several weeks more.

It seems that everything in town will be tinged just slightly red for the foreseeable future, as there really is no way to get that much blood matter off of a town. We have no mayor, and it seems we never will again. All of the authority in Nightville now, thanks to Dana Cardinals' new system, runs through a mayor's office. An office that will forever remain empty. Already there is chaos, as agents of the vague yet menacing government agency and the sheriff's secret police both wander about town, seeking orders, but finding no one with the authority to give them. The city council howls and whines, but we don't know if they have any power anymore.

The falcon cannot hear the falconier. Everything is uncertain. Except that Dana, my friend, and a friend of many of yours, is healthy, and perhaps for the first time in years, truly at peace. And maybe for now, that is enough. Soon, though, we're going to have to figure out this whole government thing, because it is a mess out there. Literally, a lot of blood matter still. From a town turning and turning in the widening gyre, I say to you, good night. Nightvale, good night. Welcome to Nightvale is a production of Nightvale Presents.

It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Criner and produced by Disparition. The voice of Nightvale is Cecil Baldwin. The voice of Mayor Cardinal and Dana was Jacica Nicole. Original music by Disparition. All of it can be found at disparition.info or at disparition.com. This episode's weather was Mari Posa's by Evil. Las Vegas. Find out more by checking out the links in our show notes. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at Nightvale Radio or as the official

slogan of Nike famously says, wear a shoe. Check out Welcome to Nightvale.com for more information on this show and our brand new show, Good Morning Nightvale, that I hear is going to be very good. Today's proverb. My name for the pony I have been planning to get one day, has been Ponye West for years. But for obvious reasons, I have recently changed it to Janelle Pone. This wasn't written for me by Joseph. These are the actual names I've made up for my dream pony. Thank you. Hi, we're Meg Bashminer. And Joseph Fink. Of welcome to Night Vale. And on our new show, The Best Worst, we explore the Golden Age of Television. To do that, we're watching the IMDB viewer rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows.

The episode of Star Trek, where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost. The episode of the X-Files, where Scully gets attacked by a vicious housecat. And also, the really good episodes, too. What can we learn from the best and worst of great television? Like, for example, is it really a bad episode, or do people just hate women? The best worst, available wherever you get your podcasts.