Welcome to Night Vale Read Free Page A

change forms, only showing the gradual differences that come with gradual changes of age.
    Josh sometimes tried to fool Diane by taking the form of an alligator, or a cloud of bats, or a house fire.
    Diane knew to be on guard at first, just in case there really was a dangerous reptile, or swarm of rabid flying mammals, or a house on fire. But once she understood the situation, she was calm, and she loved him for who he was and how he looked. No matter what he looked like. She was, after all, the mother of a teenager.
    â€œPlease stop shrieking and swarming into the cupboards,” she would say. It was important to set boundaries.
    Josh sometimes appears human. When he does, he is often short, chubby-cheeked, pudgy, wearing glasses.
    â€œIs that how you see yourself, Josh?” Diane once asked.
    â€œSometimes,” Josh replied.
    â€œDo you like the way you look?” Diane once followed up.
    â€œSometimes,” Josh replied.
    Diane did not press Josh further. She felt his terse answers were a sign he did not want to talk much.
    Josh wished his mother talked to him more. His short answers were a sign he didn’t know how to socialize well.
    â€œWhat?” Josh asked on a Tuesday evening. He had smooth violet skin, a pointed chin, angular thin shoulders.
    The television was not on. A textbook was open but not being read. A phone was lit up, a sharp thumb tapping across its keyboard.
    â€œCome talk,” Diane said from the cracked door. She did not want to open it all the way. It was not her room. She was trying very hard. She had sold a tear to Jackie that day. It had felt good to have someone explicitly value something that she did. Also, expenses had been higher than usual that month and she had needed the money. She was, after all, a single parent.
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œAnything.”
    â€œI’m studying.”
    â€œAre you studying? I don’t want to bother you if you are studying.”
    â€œPing,” the phone added.
    â€œIf you’re studying, then I’ll go,” she said, pretending she did not hear the phone.
    â€œWhat?” Josh asked on some other evening. It was a Tuesday, or it was not a Tuesday. His skin was a pale orange. Or it was deep navy. Or there were thick bristles that plumed from just below his eyes. Or his eyes were not visible at all because of the shade of his ram-like horns. This was most evenings. This was the incremental repetition of parenting.
    The television was not on. A textbook was open but not being read. A phone was lit up.
    â€œHow are you doing?” Diane sometimes said.
    Sometimes she said, “What’s going on?”
    Sometimes she said, “Just checking on you.”
    â€œJosh,” Diane sometimes said, standing at his door, in the evening. Sometimes she knocked. “Josh,” she sometimes repeated following a certain amount of silence. “Josh,” she sometimes did not repeat following a second amount of silence.
    â€œDot dot dot,” Josh sometimes replied. Not out loud, but likein a comic book speech-bubble. He pictured other things he could say, but did not know how.
    For the most part, I do not like taffeta, the house thought, and Diane shared that thought.
    â€œJosh,” Diane said, sitting in the passenger seat of her burgundy Ford hatchback.
    â€œWhat?” said the wolf spider in the driver’s seat.
    â€œIf you’re going to learn to drive, you’re going to need to be able to reach the pedals.”
    The wolf spider elongated, and two of his middle legs extended to the floor of the vehicle, gently touching the pedals.
    â€œAnd see the road too, Josh.”
    A human head with the face and hair of a fifteen-year-old boy emerged from the body of the spider, and the abdomen filled out into something of a primate-like torso. The legs remained spindly and long. He thought he looked cool driving a car as a wolf spider. He did look cool, although it was difficult to