[This episode written by Brie Williams}

It’s that time of year again. The days are getting shorter—minute by minute, hour by hour. Decade by millennia. The darkness grows ever closer. And pumpkin spice lattes are back! Welcome to Night Vale.

We are a long, long way from Mandatory Annual Spring Cleaning Day. The winter is upon us, and it’s time to stockpile. Do not clean, do not throw anything away, don’t even think about getting rid of those ill-fitting pants or your stack of junk mail or that box of stale Flavoroos [pronounced like a combo of Flavor and kangaroo; not dissimilar to Underoos].

This season is shaping up to be an especially harsh one. We’re seeing snow fall for the first time in our little community. Like, a lot of snow. These are not the false snows that we’ve experienced in the past. This snow is heavy and cold and ceaseless. It blocks the doorways and freezes the pipes. It makes the air hard to breathe. So keep in mind: those baggy pants could provide an added layer of warmth. That junk mail could be used to feed a fire. Those hardtack-style Flavoroos might sustain you when you run out of food. Keep everything. Our survival depends on it.

In response to the extraordinary conditions, I have new guidelines from the Sanitation Department about an opportunity for citizens to retrieve certain items from the landfill facility.

As you know, the landfill facility does not and has never accepted physical objects. The landfill facility only accepts non-physical waste such as memories, ideas, relationships, behavior, thoughts, and regrets. All items interred at the landfill are guaranteed to be safely locked away forever. Or they were until now.

The Sanitation Department’s Holiday Hoarder Special will allow citizens the chance to retrieve something they once disposed of but now wish maybe they hadn’t been so hasty. Each person may only select one item, and other very specific conditions apply. We will get to those shortly.

First, the news.

There isn’t much news right now since no one is leaving their house and everything is closed due to the storms. But in its place, I’m pleased to announce a new feature on our program: The Night Vale Tree of the Month! The current Tree of the Month is the Creosote Bush.

15,000 years ago, giant camels roamed the American West. They were called Camelops. When humans arrived in the area, they began hunting the Camelops. The humans would make weapons out of their bones, and so the creatures would be killed by the sharpened bones of their own children or parents or friends. They soon went extinct because this was so insulting.

Before they all died, they were a peaceful society who enjoyed lumbering walks through the desert and eating tough, fibrous shrubs. One such shrub is called the Creosote Bush. You know it well. It thrives here. It strangles any nearby species of plant and prevents other roots from forming anywhere near it. Nothing really eats it anymore because frankly, it’s disgusting. Nothing at all like a tasty Flavoroo, even one that has bricked from days of dehydration on your kitchen counter.

Occasionally a jackrabbit, if it’s very hungry, will eat the bitter, smelly leaves of the Creosote Bush.

Is this because the jackrabbit has lower standards? Or is this because the jackrabbit has the ability to transcend?

Shoutout to our new intern, Carol Holmes, for putting together that segment. Carol wanted me to share that they are aware that a bush is not a tree, but all the trees around here are, quote, “really boring”. Not sure why she pitched this segment in the first place but I suspect she didn’t think it would actually get approved. Be careful what you mumble at the morning staff meetings, Carol!

Now, back to our special offer from the Sanitation Department. Let me read directly from the organization’s press release, just as I was trained to do in journalism school.

“We saw you that day. You came here alone, as everyone does. You stood at the edge of the shrieking chasm, careful to stay behind the yellow safety line. You didn’t bring merely one item, but a lot of items. Things you had accumulated for a long time that were now so heavy, they were approaching the weight limit of acceptable refuse.

“As a side note, we can technically accept any amount of heaviness at the landfill, but for your own good, you should never let your garbage exceed an 8 on our 1-10 scale. If you are unsure of the weight, we have paper evaluation forms available, which allow you to circle which cartoon animal best illustrates the size of your load. It ranges from small rat to large rat. We also have a scale which translates weight to heat, and you can select from a simmering pot to the face of the sun. We also have a blank piece of paper and crayons. You must fill the entire page for an accurate measurement. Orange-ish green means you are at capacity.

“As a reminder, please do not recycle your paper evaluation forms at the landfill, as they are made of physical matter and will be rejected.

“That day, you were at orange-ish green, the face of the sun, and a large rat. You did a deep clean. You spent a lot of time collecting every scrap of waste from every hidden corner and crawl space and locked drawer you’ve ever owned. ‘I’m going to walk away from that landfill a new person,’ you said to yourself with determination. ‘I’ve kept this junk around for long enough. It’s time for a fresh start.’

“That was what you thought anyway. But you made some mistakes that day. In your eagerness to be rid of it all, you accidentally threw something away that was very important to you. And now you want it back.”

More from the Sanitation Department on exactly how to do that after a message from our sponsor.

Today’s show is brought to you by Flavoroos. After being discontinued for decades, you can once again enjoy the popular after-school snack made from synthetic kangaroo meat. Take a trip down under with Flavoroos! Peel off the plastic wrapper and transport yourself to the wild bush of the outback. You’re in a jeep. The road is deeply rutted and you’re going too fast. Sweat rolls down your neck as you jounce up and down in the seat. Slow down! The constant jouncing causes a throbbing ache at the base of your skull. But you don’t want to slow down. Something tells you you must go quickly. Movement rustles the tall grass. Your fevered eyes catch a glimpse of— Good god, what is that? The road ends. You are surrounded by grass, like a whispering, yellow ocean. You have entered its territory.

Each single-serving package of Flavoroos contains 10 synthetic meat discs, one-cubic-inch of frosting and a pouch of rainbow sprinkles.

This has also been traffic.

And now back to the updated guidelines from the Sanitation Department.

Quote: “You come here almost every day now. Even though the roads are closed and your coat is too thin for the weather. You don’t even have a hat or mittens. You must be freezing.

“You stand behind the yellow safety line, peering over the edge, just as you did that first day. You don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. All you know is that something is missing.

“After that first big trip to the landfill, you felt great. You were living inside of each moment, weightless. There was so much joy—almost aggressive joy. Even things that you used to think were mundane became sources of pleasure. Driving to the store was an opportunity to sing with the radio. Doing the laundry was a sensory feast of color and texture. It was actually kind of annoying to some of the people around you, but they didn’t say anything. Mostly, they were happy for you.

“You had no desire to ever come back to this place and you felt no regrets about all the things you’d left here. Not at first. Not for a long, long while.

“It started with the snow.

“When the first snow came, the power went out. Your neighbors gathered candles and cooked on camp stoves, but you did nothing. You sat in the dark, shivering. When you mustered any energy, you used it to weep and curse. Before you came to the landfill, you were the one taking food to the neighbors or calling the public utilities department to make sure things were getting fixed.

“You used to take care of so many things and people that it became overwhelming. Because once you started doing it, they expected it. They grew dependent on you. To stop would be an act of cruelty, you felt, and you weren’t a cruel person. You were a nice person. Instead, you resented people. Instead, you were frustrated with yourself. You need to create some boundaries, an Instagram therapy meme told you, but that only seemed like more responsibility on top of everything else.

“Then, thankfully, the landfill opened up so you simply added it to the pile, those feelings of frustration and responsibility and guilt. But now you wonder, as you watch your breath steam into the air and hear your stomach grumbling, Did I lose the ability to take care of myself when I stopped taking care of other people?

“That could be it. But then again, there are so many things it could be. You got rid of so many things. Maybe it was the estrangement from a relative. Or the shame from flunking 8th grade math. Or the words you left unspoken to a lover, the one at the hostel in Madrid, who had asked tentatively about buying a ticket on with you to Barcelona, but you left the next morning on your own. Maybe it was that deer you hit with your car on the highway, or the look on its face when you got out and approached it, both of you covered in blood and embarrassed. When you stared down into the ditch, shaking, and it looked up at you and hissed “this shall not be forgotten,” and then it melted away before your eyes into a pile of bones as if it had been dead for years.

“After you got rid of all that garbage, the positive things in your life became ecstatic and the neutral things became positive. But now you’re realizing that the negative things, even the smallest annoyances, did not down-shift to neutral as you’d expected but up-shifted to devastating. It was like you were starting over and each new pain was fresh and harsh and unexpected.

“You have no defenses left. No resilience. And there it is. That’s the problem isn’t it?

“It isn’t any one single thing you threw out that day, but the sheer quantity of things. You kept nothing to offer you protection or to guide you from experience. You got rid of all the monsters in the closet, but you also threw away the bravery you found when you opened the door and looked them in the eye.

“We at the Sanitation Department have seen this happen before. We’re working on new guidelines for the amount of waste that any one person can drop off at a time. We’re between communications directors though, so it will be a while before that guideline is released. Our interim director isn’t really up to the job, to be honest. This isn’t their field at all. They went to school for television broadcasting, not for writing municipal press releases like this one. What is a press release supposed to look like? Is this a press release because we say it is a press release? If one were to just release something to the press, would that be a press release? What about freeing a pet cockateel? If you say, ‘Hey, bird, go to the press,’ is that exotic avian now a press release? We have no idea what we’re doing because our interim communications director got a meaningless broadcasting degree. They wanted to produce feel-good human interest segments on a local news channel somewhere. Not in a huge metropolis, but not a super small town either. A nice mid-sized city, they thought. Somewhere like Tulsa or Knoxville or Santa Rosa. It seemed like such an attainable dream. So how did they end up writing sanitation guidelines press releases in this godforsaken town? How did they even get to this town in the first place? And more importantly, how do they get out?

“The point is, you got rid of too much too fast. And now you want to get it all back, re-sort it, be a little more methodical, and make some calculated decisions. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. As we have stated, you may only retrieve one item.

“So the only thing I can do now, you think, as you start to panic, is figure out the single biggest thing I left that day. The scariest memory. The heaviest burden. The worst experience. The biggest struggle. I have to dig it back out and take it home with me forever, you think. I need it because the snow is still falling and I have to build a fire and feed myself. And the snow will soon be the least of my problems. Certainly, worse things are coming. Worse things always are.

“We at the Sanitation Department took the liberty of adding ‘forever’ to your thought there, because that’s another guideline of our limited time special. You may only choose one item, and you can never bring it back here. Like, never ever.

“Did you also hear us say that this is a limited time offer? The hours are ticking away.”

Back to these guidelines in a moment, listeners.

First, as the snow drifts down and down and down, the weather.

[Weather: “A Lonely Impulse of Delight” by Twin Beds https://twinbeds.bandcamp.com/]

Here, now is the remainder of the Sanitation Department’s press release. (A press release day is a good day because I don’t have to actually research or prepare anything. Happy holidays, to me!)

“And so. You’ve made your decision. You’ve come once again to the shrieking chasm, one toe edging over the yellow safety line.

“The item you’ve chosen to retrieve is large. It’s one of the biggest things you brought that day. This item alone is the size of a medium rat and the heat of a noonday desert. You don’t really want it back but you aren’t sure what else to do.

“Don’t hesitate, you tell yourself. Just take it. Take it quickly and leave.

“But still, you do hesitate. You hesitate and you hesitate. You are standing there still, and the snow is falling still.

“We can’t make any guarantees, but would it help to tell you that items often become lighter the longer they’re left here? It’s not a particular service that we offer, just an observation we’ve made. Many people find that once they’re separated from their non-material waste for a while, it has somehow become more manageable in the meantime.

“Even that thing you saw behind the abandoned warehouses and never told anyone about, though you really should have. Even that sudden loss, the one that felt like you were being sucked out the window of an airplane right in the middle of eating your snack and watching a Tiffany Haddish comedy. Even that period of time in your life that you already buried once, long before you ever buried it here.

“Of course, you don’t have to take anything back at all. This is merely a one-time courtesy from the Sanitation Department.

“It’s your decision and we don’t want to rush you. We are here for you. We support you. Please take all the time you need. You have until midnight tonight.”

And thus ends the new Guidelines for Retrieval. Aw, that’s such a nice offer from the Sanitation Department! A little long winded maybe, but I don’t want to be too critical. I know their public communications department has had a lot of turnover lately.

Anyway, I definitely will be taking them up on that offer this week. There’s a super vivid recurring nightmare I used to have that would make a great NFT.

Stay tuned next for the audio-only presentation of the 1925 silent movie Battleship Potemkin. Be sure to listen for the 6-minute visual montage sequence that made this film an enduring classic.

Happy hoarding, Night Vale. Goodnight.