Free Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink

hearing the mangled screams.Later they are eviscerated themselves by vengeful arboreal spirits. Diane thought the movie wasn’t as good as the original, but she adored the comical voice work of immortal cinema legend Lee Marvin. Josh said he thought it was boring, but he said that about most movies, and he seemed to laugh at most of the jokes and funny death scenes.
    While sitting through the previews, Diane saw Troy enter. He was wearing a polo shirt and carrying a carpet sweeper. He crossed from one exit to the other. He seemed to be checking the floor lights along the aisle. One strip was unlit.
    Diane tried not to look at Josh and immediately failed, turning to watch his silver, scaly skin, his flat nose and protruding eyes intent on the screen. Josh hadn’t recognized Troy. Why would he? Josh hadn’t seen Troy since he was a baby. She saw herself in Josh, and sometimes assumed he did the same.
    Josh did not see himself in Diane. She knew this.
    She put her arm around Josh, ostensibly out of affection, but subconsciously out of protection. He glanced at her hand hanging near his non-shoulder. He glanced back at Diane, confused but not upset.
    Diane looked forward, toward the screen, thinking about how to not think about Josh’s father. Her foot was tapping. She carefully stopped her foot from tapping.
    Here is what it was about Troy.
    Diane does not always have a husband. There was a time when she always had a husband, but now she never has one.
    She always has an ex-husband. They were never married, but husband and ex-husband are the shortest-hand way to describe her relationship to Troy.
    Diane is interested in the semantics of marriage and not marriage. This is why:
    Diane always has two parents. Someday she will never havetwo parents, but right now she always has them. They are mother and father to Diane, and grandmother and grandfather to Josh.
    Her parents have never been married. They never want(ed) to be married. They want(ed) to be together and in love. They are almost always together and almost always in love. They never want(ed) to get a certificate or fill out paperwork or have their love and togetherness approved by a smiling god.
    They, of course, value and respect others’ love of a smiling god. (Is that a smile?)
    They also fill out paperwork and get certificates when required to do so for, say, a job or a driver’s license or Diane’s birth or the times they’re required to play the mandatory citywide lottery whose winners are fed to the hungry wolves at the Night Vale Petting Zoo.
    But they do not want to be married. Our life together is just that: our life together, they might say if you asked them to succinctly grandstand about their choice. They might, but they probably wouldn’t. They aren’t sanctimonious or vociferous. They simply love each other, and that is enough for them to believe in.
    Diane too wanted to be with someone and be in love with someone. She wanted to do these things without being married. She still does. She saw herself in her parents. She saw how she could be, how life could be, how love could be.
    There is a correlation between seeing what could be and experiencing what is. But, as the well-spoken scientist who is often interviewed on the news says: “Correlation is not causation” and “Past performance is not a predictor of future results.”
    Diane’s parents are also two different races. It matters which races, but it matters only to Diane and her parents and theirfamily and friends, not to those who do not know them. Not everyone gets to know everything about everybody.
    Growing up in the Southwest, Diane saw a few mixed-race parents, mixed-race children, but she did not always have the opportunity or inclination to befriend these families. When she was a kid, friends were still determined by City Council decree, based on the numerology of each child’s name, which had been considered the most solid foundation