(This episode was co-written with Brie Williams.)

One morning, as Josh Crayton was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a towering, gushing waterfall. Welcome to Night Vale.

The alarm had been going off for awhile, but Josh hadn’t heard it. Now he was going to be late. More upsetting than that, his bed was soaking wet. Josh was mortified until he realized that he had changed into the shape of a waterfall at some point during the night. Josh was used to changing shapes; he had been born a shapeshifter, after all. But he rarely changed into something he hadn't intended to, never in his sleep, and he could always change back easily. Now, no matter how hard he tried, he just kept pouring and cascading and splashing over rocks and being super annoyingly loud. Something had gone very wrong.

Lately, Josh had been staying in the form of a human teenage boy. He had grown to like his human shape. At times he even thought it was handsome, in an understated kind of way. Last night at a party was the first time he had used his abilities in forever.

He normally didn't like to use shapeshifting as a party trick, but last night had been different. He wanted to impress The Boy. Josh changed into all the shapes The Boy requested, including a bunch he had never thought to try, like mochi ice cream, primordial jungle flora, a bad idea, a hasty plan, and the gearshift knob from a Nash Rambler. He’d seen The Boy in class before but had barely noticed him, to be honest. Once they started talking, The Boy had become very noticeable. He was laid back yet keenly alert, like a hawk. Soft spoken yet hilarious, also like a hawk. Teasing yet kind, like a very attractive hawk.

At the end of the night, Josh wrote his number on The Boy’s red plastic cup in Sharpie and walked home smiling, even though it was late and he had to get up early the next morning to retake his driving test for the fifth time. He was 18 and still without a license. Every time he had taken the test before, he got nervous and turned into a shape that was utterly unfit to drive. A rhinoceros. A warm hug from an old friend. A bookshelf filled with first edition Zadie Smiths. “Ooh, I haven’t read Swing Time yet,” Shoshannah from the DMV had said, plucking the book off of him before failing him for not having eyes with which to check his mirrors.

The alarm sounded again. Josh tried to calm his rising panic, but it was difficult to do with the constant roaring of falling water in his ears and his distractingly chill body temperature. He closed his eyes and repeated a mantra he once heard on a Home Depot radio ad. "A triple-thick roof of natural cedar shingles. A triple thick roof of natural cedar shingles.” It always helped him feel more grounded. But no matter how he felt or what he tried, he was still a waterfall, tumbling and plunging and rambling along in picturesque tributaries against his will.

Josh knew he couldn’t drive a car in this condition. He probably couldn't even open the door handle. And if he somehow managed to pass the exam, the thought of getting his picture taken like this was embarrassing at best. There was nothing he could do but sit in his room and froth and foam and swirl and wait.

By Monday, the situation still hadn't cleared up. Josh wanted to stay home from class but his mother Diane, whom he still lived with, made him go. She said that he was obsessing over his looks and that no one would even notice, and that he was already nearly failing his history and English courses, and did he want to get put on academic probation his very first year in college?? Josh couldn't argue with this, mainly because there were too many different ideas all smashed together, and it was easier to just do as she said.

His friends on campus thought it was a joke at first. Josh tried to be casual about it. He told them that he was stuck like this at the moment. They were very understanding and treated him just the same as always. He actually started to feel better about the whole thing, and that maybe he was silly for having been stressed about it at all.

In his first class, however, he was sent to the dean’s office for creating a distraction. He went without argument, and explained that this was a physical condition beyond his control and not some immature hazing prank. He received an apology and was sent back to class with an administrative note in case this became a recurring issue. The note had to be laminated and waterproofed, which took some time, and Josh missed an important quiz.

In the quad, an engineering student that Josh barely knew ran right through him on a dare from her friends. She didn't even make eye contact with him, just ran away shrieking while her squad roared with laughter at the picnic tables. Josh left campus soon afterwards, not caring about flunking or vanity or whatever else he was supposed to care about. He felt violated and angry, and also ashamed of himself. These were not sensations he was used to feeling and on top of that, he had started to grow moss along his ledge, which felt slimy and gross and could not be ignored. His self-consciousness had become overwhelming.

Josh sat behind the Desert Flower bowling alley, drinking a blue Slurpee and watching himself babble all over the hard-pack sand. He felt some relief in being alone, and in being somewhere that his shape wouldn't have any consequences. Unless, he supposed, he stayed there too long and formed a river or something like that. He thought of going way out in the desert and becoming an oasis. That might be exciting. He could donate himself as a public service to the thirsty animals and exiled citizens and feral toddlers that roamed the land. He could create a grove of green trees and lush plants, a refuge for new life, maybe even new species of life, all springing forth from his gushing, messy body. He pictured a furry lizard with several blinking golden eyes. He pictured a one-legged bird with psychic abilities. He pictured the years melting away, the oasis growing, a green valley emerging. Then multiple valleys. A new civilization might form, rising around the ebb and flow of his waters, growing from mud huts to ziggerauts to steel towers and eventually again decaying again to mud huts before disappearing for good, and all the while, Josh would be there, steadily supplying the lifeblood of their earthbound existence.

Suddenly, his phone vibrated in the crevice of his rocky outcropping. There was a text from an unknown number. It read: “Hey Mochi.” (followed by an emoji of a winking face) “Wanna do something later?” (and that was followed by an emoji showing the entirety of possible human freetime activities). This was obviously sent by The Boy from The Party. The surge of excitement ignited by these six words was instantly extinguished by heavy, wet dread. Josh cringed at the thought of The Boy seeing him like this, and of trying to explain it to him. They didn't know each other that well and it was just too awkward. Josh tried to change shape again now with renewed effort. He wanted to see The Boy later and in order to do that, he needed to not be a waterfall.

After an hour of intense concentration and no results, his phone vibrated again. “This is Monty btw. We met at the party.” Josh burbled in frustration. He thought of several texts he could send back but none of them were the text he really wanted to send, which was: “Ya, I know who you are lol. Let's meet up!” After a moment of staring helplessly at his screen, he turned his phone on silent and put it back under his outcropping. Josh stayed behind the bowling alley for a long time, churning and flowing and watching the sun set over the dumpsters.

He noticed a thick vapor hanging in the sky above him and wondered if he was affecting The Weather.

[The Weather: “Always Right” by Anne Reburn]

Josh skipped class the rest of that week. He sometimes went to the movie theater during the day. Usually nothing was playing, but it was at least dark and empty and quiet. And the staff there seemed to appreciate how Josh inadvertently cleaned away the sticky soda and popcorn spills from the floor. They gave him free lifetime passes and encouraged him to return often. He missed the deadline for an essay, which meant that he would probably fail English for real. He ignored calls and texts. He couldn't stand the thought of being around people. Instead of getting used to his new shape, he just became colder, wetter, slimier, and more uncomfortable by the day.

Finally on Friday around 5:00 PM, Josh was spotted by some friends who were cruising around town, bumping NPR’s All Things Considered on a subwoofer and looking for mischief. They called out to him and pulled over. They were excited to see him and asked all kinds of questions. Was he sick? Where had he been? There were rumors going around campus about him. What was the real story? Josh didn't know how to answer, so he just shrugged and bubbled and eddied around their tires.

They were in an old pickup truck that they had just purchased real cheap from John Peters, you know, the farmer?, and planned to take it out driving super fast through the Sand Wastes. Did Josh want to come? Josh did want to, but he hesitated, eyeing the small cab that would definitely not fit his body. But on an impulse, Josh jumped into the truck bed, ricocheting off the sides in big embarrassing splashes. Everyone cheered, and Josh almost smiled, and off they went.

The wind whipped past him, warm and fast. He joked with his friends through the window. It suddenly felt just like any other carefree Friday afternoon. After parading around town for a while, they pulled into the gas station for snacks. Josh waited outside in the truck bed. He was thinking that he would probably go back to class on Monday when a voice called to him: “Josh? Is that you?” Josh knew the voice and it filled him with nervous electricity.

“I texted you a few times. Are you ghosting me or did you write down your number wrong?”

The Boy's playful straightforwardness hit Josh with some kind of feeling. “I uh, I don't know. I'm bad at checking my texts?” Josh mumbled in a non-playful un-straightforward way that no one could ever find attractive.

The Boy, named Monty, nodded, still smiling. “Gotcha. So, ghosting then.” Josh swallowed and his throat would have been dry except that it was made of pure water.

“Nice waterfall,” Monty said, jumping up on the tailgate and letting Josh's mist cool him off.

“Um thanks,” said Josh, wish the sun would evaporate him immediately.

“I've been wondering what you would look like as a breadcrumb,” said Monty. The word “breadcrumb” sounded sexy the way Monty said it. “Like maybe from a blueberry scone or something cute like that,” he elaborated.

Josh surged down violently at the ground and said, “I don't really feel like it right now?”

Monty nodded a little sadly and jumped off the tailgate, getting the message. “Sure. Maybe next time. See you around,” he said. And then he was gone.

Josh's friends came out of the gas station and they had bought him an ice cream bar, the kind with a hard chocolate shell covering vanilla ice cream with a candied tarantula in the middle. Josh's favorite. Josh ate it but tasted nothing.

Josh did not go back to class on Monday. He said goodbye to his mother and walked to campus, and then walked past it, and then just kept on walking. He didn't have a plan but after he’d gone into the desert a ways, he circled back to his oasis idea. Though it started as a back-alley blue Slurpee dream, it now presented itself as an actual life plan. Why not? He wasn’t going to graduate college or get a drivers license or be socially functional ever again. He might as well create an abundance of life in an otherwise barren wasteland. Josh felt self-sacrificing and heroic upon arriving at this decision, and marched around all day looking for the perfect place to set up shop, ie, his new life henceforth forever.

He found an especially desolate location and settled in. But standing there for hours while nothing happened was tedious work. Josh decided to do something productive while he waited, like maybe compose a song or write a novel. He hummed for a while but discovered he wasn't talented at songwriting or humming, so he tried to write a novel, an espionage thriller about the college basketball team, but he found he didn't know enough about basketball or spies or how to properly craft suspense fiction.

He thought maybe he should try writing something more personal, like a story about what had happened to him this past week. Maybe he could even write it in third person. He could pretend to be some other narrator altogether, some random omniscient God-voice totally removed from his problematic body, and try to look at things through its eyes. Maybe doing this would help him get a new perspective on the situation. Maybe that would be useful somehow. Or maybe not. But it was worth a try, anyway.

Josh went to work on this project while the rest of him spilled and whooshed and flooded across the sunbaked earth. He wrote until he couldn't feel his body anymore. For a long time, he was only aware of his words and thoughts. His self-consciousness was finally knocked unconscious.

At the end of his story, Josh did feel better, though nothing had physically changed. He still didn't know if he would ever regain control over his shapeshifting ability. He still had all the same problems he did before. But they didn’t seem quite as insurmountable as they had, and that was pretty cool. Plus, he’d made himself laugh by using words like “henceforth” and “insurmountable” and it felt good to laugh.

He thought if he could get his story read over the air at the local radio station, maybe other people would hear it and understand his situation better too. Like maybe his family would hear it and know that he was doing okay and that he would probably come home soon because there were no animals drinking from his oasis and he was really just creating a wholllle lot of mud out here. And maybe his English professor would hear it and let him use it as credit for his missing essay.

And maybe even The Boy would hear it. Maybe if The Boy was still interested, they could go to a movie sometime. If not, Josh would totally understand, because Josh acted like kind of a jerk the last time they saw each other. But Josh does get free lifetime passes at the theater now. And it would be a shame to waste them on just sitting alone in the dark.

Signed,

Josh Crayton

Ok Josh. Happy to help. Please tell Diane I said hi.

Stay tuned, listeners. No one knows what the future holds. Sometimes all you can do is stay tuned.

Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.