It’s the eye of the tiger. It’s the mouth of the tiger. It’s the gnashing, ceaseless teeth of the tiger. Then, only darkness.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Listeners, it has been hours—possibly even days—maybe only minutes—since I’ve been held hostage in my own radio booth. Time is hard to gauge in stressful situations. Time is also elastic, fluid, and nonlinear, which makes it hard to gauge as well.

I’m still here with the boy from Grove Park, who we now know is a young version of Kevin from Desert Bluffs Too. He is still holding a knife. After he cut my microphone cord, the boy and I sat together for hours. Or days. Or minutes.

He asked questions that I didn’t have answers for. It took some clever negotiation on my part, but I was finally allowed to get a replacement XLR cable for my microphone from the supply closet. Details on my negotiation skills later, if anyone is interested. But I’m back on the air, and that’s the important thing.

We don’t know what the boy wants. He doesn’t know what he wants. But he knows he wants something. And it seems like that “something” has to do with the knife that he is currently still holding.

Until he figures out exactly what he needs to do with that knife, I guess I’m stuck here, listeners. Just him and me and a large blade that he occasionally uses to look at his own reflection in a haunted, questioning manner.

“When you use a knife as a mirror,” the boy says to me in a voice that sounds like several voices, “it shows you unpleasant truths about yourself.”

While the tension here in the studio increases by the moment, let’s try to lighten things up by checking out some fun upcoming events on the Community Calendar.

###

On Thursday, the Night Vale Senior Center will be hosting a field day, showcasing rigorous athletic contests and feats of strength, open to anyone over the age of seventy but under the age of Ancient Spirit-Being. The Center is raising funds for an expansion to their assisted living facilities, which are overcrowded and experiencing a long waitlist.

“We will be using the money to open up more beds for new residents,” facility director Chris Tyburski (tie-burr-ski) said in a publicity statement for the event. “Or, you know, maybe some of the old beds will suddenly become available sooner than expected. Like maybe sometime after the field day on Thursday. We’ll see what happens.”

On Friday, there will be a Blood Drive in the newly reopened Post Office parking lot. A Blood Drive is crucial after a field day, due to the massive blood loss involved. Especially in the more traditional events, like javelin, cat-o-nine-tails, or MMA cage fighting. As a thank you gift for your blood donation, information extracted from your DNA will be used by the Postmaster to send out targeted advertisements based on your unique biological profile instead of the generalized junk mailers that currently get stuffed into your mailbox. “We need your blood to serve you better,” a voice from inside the newly reopened Post Office whispered out from a darkened window, according to one source who walked past the building last week.

Saturday is Community Cleanup Day, which will be necessary since things tend to get extremely messy during a Blood Drive.

And Sunday will mark the first meeting of the Night Vale Scarcity League. Which brings me to Financial News.

###

We all know that an abundance of something valuable can cause its abrupt devaluation. We experienced this firsthand when that huge deposit of plutonium was discovered in Radon Canyon, and everyone was crazy wealthy for like three days and now you can’t even use plutonium to buy dog food at the Ralphs anymore. This is exactly why the Night Vale Scarcity League was formed. The League invites you to stamp out abundance and protect value at all costs.

It’s easy to sign up—just pay the initiation fee, and members of the League will come to your house to do a full assessment of your resources, then burn anything deemed excessive in a bonfire. This will protect not just you and your family, but the whole concept of wealth. Their slogan is “Value Value!”

Which is unfortunately also the name of the new dollar menu at Arby’s, who are leveling a million-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit against the Scarcity League.

When asked for comment, a League spokesperson said the lawsuit could wipe the Scarcity League out completely. Then they shivered in ecstasy and said they were super into it.

###

Back to our top story. The boy is inches from me, sitting on the edge of my desk with his legs dangling off, carving a jagged question mark into the desktop. The knife is as sharp as it looks.

“Whatcha doing there, buddy?” I ask him. He doesn’t answer, but stops carving. He stares down at the question mark with intense concentration.

“I think I figured it out,” he says suddenly, looking up at me with the open excitement that only a child can possess.

“That’s so great!” I say.

“I know what I have to do with this knife,” he says, waving the enormous dagger around. I keep smiling and nodding, but roll my chair slowly backward.

Shoutout to my husband Carlos for this rubber office chair mat that allows me effortless mobility around the booth. I admit I didn’t appreciate it as a Valentine’s Day gift at first, but he assured me it was scientifically romantic, and gosh darned if he wasn’t right.

“I have to put it… into a body!” the boy says triumphantly, referring to the razor sharp, 12-inch long butcher knife in his hand. He is so very excited. He jumps off the desk and grips the arm of my chair with the hand that is not holding the knife and looks into my eyes.

“I have to put it into a body over and over,” he says, “until everything comes out.”

I repeat the phrase back to him — “until everything comes out?”— in a squeaky voice.

He nods vigorously. “Everything,” he says. “Blood and guts and organs, thoughts and memories and emotions, germs and cells and complex proteins. All over the place. Everything, coming out.”

I am still nodding, listeners, but for the record, I am not necessarily condoning the boy’s statement. And I have to admit, he sounds eerily more and more like, well, Kevin.

“Whose body?” I ask, because I’m a professional journalist.

The boy frowns. “I don’t know!” he howls in frustration and pounds his fist.

“Let’s get you a snack, bud,” I suggest. “Then maybe you can think this through a little better.”

While I do that, listeners, let’s go to a pre-recorded word from our sponsors.

###

DEB: Hello, listeners. It’s Deb, a sentient patch of haze. Today’s show is sponsored by DoorDash. Have you ever had a special craving? Woken up in the middle of the night feeling empty and wanting more? Wondered if that hollow sensation can ever be satisfied? Have you ever asked yourself what you truly want? And more importantly, have you kept on asking? Because that answer changes, you know. It changes all the time. And if you stop asking, you’ll stop knowing. And if you stop knowing, that’s when the abyss begins to take over. For example, do you want a hamburger? A burrito? A falafel plate? Fill the yawning chasm inside with $20 dollars off plus free delivery when you use the promo code EMPTY.

CECIL: Thanks for that, Deb. I’m trying out that promo code right now to order some delivery salmon burgers for myself and the boy, from my good friend Earl Harlan’s food truck. While we’re waiting, let’s go to traffic.

###

All roads will be closed this week for tarring and feathering. The roads have facilitated the transportation of people doing a lot of shady things lately and they should be ashamed of themselves. By applying layers of hot tar and fluffy chicken feathers, the roads will be undergoing both routine maintenance, as well as learning a valuable lesson about the consequences of being complicit in bad behavior. Since the roads will be closed to all vehicular travel, citizens are urged to stay home, go nowhere, just hunker down and don’t move a muscle.

Oh shoot, those road closures might affect my DoorDash delivery. I’m sure they’ll work it out. In the meantime, I’ve given the boy a bag of Goldfish crackers and a can of root beer from the hall vending machine and he seems to have calmed down a bit. But he is still holding the knife, and occasionally practicing slow, downward arc-ing motions with it.

Hold on a second, someone’s at the door. Oh, I hope it’s the food!

###

Listeners. It was not the food. The person who has just arrived in my studio is Tamika Flynn, former teen militia leader, current city councilmember, and the boy’s volunteer guardian. She’s come to help.

She could easily just dropkick the boy and end this whole thing, she told me confidentially, but as an elected councilmember, not to mention someone who’s responsible for the boy’s wellbeing, she is choosing nonviolence today. She’s going to use her words. She’s going to use the potent power of psychology and understanding. All of these tools, she tells me, make conflict resolution a lot harder.

This is so exciting, listeners. I’m really glad Tamika showed up, because I admit I was kind of hitting a wall with this whole babysitting-slash-hostage situation thing. I can’t wait to see her fierce pacifism skills in action.

For example, right now, she is calmly asking the boy to give her the knife. She has a friendly tone of voice, and she has said the word “please”. She is using “I feel” statements to try to show the boy how his actions are affecting others without making him feel defensive about it. She is offering to help him resolve his issues without stabbing.

Listeners, I don’t know how this is possible, but the boy has produced a second knife. He now holds a knife in each hand. This second knife is different from the first, thinner and longer, with a serrated edge. Like one would use for gutting an animal or cutting into a nice crusty baguette.

“I understand what you’re saying,” he tells Tamika, nodding earnestly. “But stabbing is super important to me right now.” He makes that same downward arc-ing movement with both knives now, and this time, he’s doing it much faster.

While these two continue their problem-solving dialogue, let’s go to the Lost and Found.

###

Lost: Keys. Several Florida Keys, which used to appear on the map now don’t. The key of E minor. A handful of keys from an old typewriter, namely the letters H, E, L, P, and M.

Found. Paper currency featuring the face of a creature with hollow eyes and gaping jaws, and a hologram of a worm or snake leaping out of its mouth. Denomination of 2.5 dollars.

Lost. The pursuit of a talent that, let’s face it, was never going to pay off. Reported by an anonymous resident on Oxford Street.

Found. A new friend with the possibility of more, reported by Latrice Beaumont. Get it, Latrice.

Found. A Hawaiian shaved ice hut, abandoned but fully functional, on Route 800.

This has been lost and found.

###

Great news, listeners. Not only have the salmon burgers arrived, but so has a devastatingly handsome rescuer who will surely be able to solve this situation with the aid of science, where peaceful negotiations have failed. My husband Carlos has joined us in the studio. He said he’s been listening to the broadcast and getting really worried. Aw, that’s sweet.

It’s time to run some experiments and get to the bottom of this, according to Carlos. That’s such a scientist thing to say, isn’t it? Too cute. Meanwhile, Tamika is duct-taping old Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers, aka the former Station Management’s financial plans, all around her torso as protective armor. Even when you choose nonviolence, she says, you should always protect your organ meat.

With Carlos’s arrival, the boy has mysteriously produced a third knife. This one is short with a curved tip, like the kind used for paring vegetables or performing small limb amputations. And listeners, the boy is no longer holding the knives.

The boy is now juggling the knives—I assume because that’s the only way anyone can hold onto three objects at the same time.

This is, of course, extremely dangerous, but also strangely mesmerizing. The flash of the silver blades glinting in the studio lights. The boy’s rhythmic but also highly erratic throwing pattern. The fact that he barely seems able to keep all those knives under control in such an enclosed space, and in such close proximity to three other human bodies all huddled together in fear.

“You just don’t understand,” the boy keeps saying, sweat dripping down his face, as he continues to throw the knives into the air, faster and faster and faster, not even looking at them at all. “None of you understand!”

The boy’s hand jerks wildly and one of the knives—no, all three of the knives—are now careening through the air toward us.

First, the weather.

[Weather]

Let’s start with a recap of where the knives are now. The butcher knife is stuck in the floor. The hooked knife has punctured my sound mixing board. The long serrated knife is sticking out of Tamika’s rib cage. But since she is fully protected by her Trapper Keeper suit of armor, she’s totally fine. However, the pink and lavender walrus near her heart has been pierced through the eye. And seems to be weeping some kind of sparkly rainbow gel.

The boy now sits quietly in the corner, arms wrapped around his knees, looking up at all of us with those bright, inquisitive eyes.

“I want to talk to you about symbolism,” Carlos says to the boy. “Symbolism is a branch of hard science. It’s where certain objects represent totally different things than what they actually are. Do you think it’s possible that these knives you’re so interested in could represent something else? That maybe you don’t want to stab a real person at all, but instead, you want to sever a connection to something or someone in your life or your past?”

(to Carlos): That’s so smart, babe!

(to listeners) Whoops, sorry, I couldn’t help commenting. I’ll go back to being an objective reporter.

But it does make a lot of sense if you think about it. If this boy is a young Kevin, maybe he can make a fresh start and grow up to become a totally different person than the Kevin we know. Which is honestly a great idea because, no offense, but the Kevin we know…eh, not the best.

“Thank you for teaching me about symbolism,” the boy says. “It’s helped me understand a lot.”

Carlos is so smart, like I said. Speaking as an objective reporter.

“It’s helped me understand,” the boy continues, “that my desire for these knives is not symbolic at all. I want to put them in a specific person’s body. One is heavy, for chopping big pieces into little pieces. One is long and jagged for sawing. One is small and curved, for separating bones from joints. Because now I know who I am. I am Kevin. And there can only be one Kevin. I have to go to the Desert Otherworld and find my older double. And I must disassemble him, piece by piece, so that everything inside of the Old Kevin comes out. Only then can the New Kevin truly begin.”

With a sudden movement, the boy yanks the butcher knife out of the floor. Dark red blood begins gurgling from the wound in the cork laminate flooring.

As we all process his shocking revelation, with blood swirling around our ankles, I’m not really sure what else to say right now.

So stay tuned for the tune Stay, by Lisa Loeb. The number one hit song from the film Reality Bites, based on the breakfast cereal of the same name.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.