CECIL: We make our own luck. Which is to say that things randomly happen and we apply our personal ideas about luck to that randomness. Welcome to Night Vale.

Everything has changed. There was a before the blood matter from space and an 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.

BAD DANA: 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 Danas 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.

DANA: Dana, I shout. Dana! Leave 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.

CECIL: 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 at 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 macabre pool party. Unfortunately my life in the desert had not prepared me for swimming much or at all, but fortunately my broadcast equipment floats, so I sat astride my radio desk, bobbing about in the blood.

Oh Night Vale. 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.

BAD DANA: 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 jeans. 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.

DANA: 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: 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.

BAD DANA: I stride forward to kill her. It is a simple operation, like turning on a car. There a few easy movements and 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 am not prepared for this, so I fall backwards into the blood, sinking below it for a moment before 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.

DANA: 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.

BAD DANA: A circumstance I never could 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 deep 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.

CECIL: The conclusion of what concluded two weeks ago, in just a moment. But I really do need to check in on the weather.

[weather: “Mariposas” by Yva Las Vegass]

DANA: “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 judgement. I am ready for me to judge myself.”

BAD DANA: I look at this woman, the blood lapping at her ears, soaking into her hair. I flinch toward her and she makes no move to defend herself. In her eyes I see anguish. I see guilt. It would be a 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 given to herself, every hour of every day. She has not forgiven her crime any more than any other version of her has. I rise and stride away into that downpour of blood, and return to my brutal, familiar world.

DANA: I watch her leave, and I’m not surprised. How could I be? She is me. I am her. I stand, and make my way slowly, sometimes swimming, sometimes wading, to Radon Canyon. The blood rushes over the sides, a torrent. The voices from Radon 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 judgement is so flawed. Who has made mistakes so human.

“I give up my position,” I shout at 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 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. Night Vale 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.

CECIL: So ended the day of the blood matter from space. Clean up 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 Night Vale now, thanks to Dana Cardinal’s new system, runs through the 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 falconer. 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 gonna have to figure out this whole government thing. Because it is a mess out there. Literally. Lot of blood matter still.

From a town turning and turning in the widening gyre, I say to you: good night, Night Vale. Good night.