Welcome To Night Vale Drabble

Ah, the men's bathroom at Night Vale Community Radio. It has a pleasant aroma of goo, slime, vague disgust, and cat litter, the one constantly running faucet offsetting the smells with a rush of fresh water. A cat floats about four feet above the ground near the running faucet, dozing happily. Khoshekh awakes with a start to a loud and violent thrashing noise. He sits up, eyes darting around warily. He hears a voice from outside the bathroom doors, which look to be pushed shut.

"Extermination? Yeah, it's me again. This is serious this time, I swear! There's a thrashing beast in the men's bathroom and I..." There was a pause, and Khoshekh hears another voice faintly. The cat realizes that the voice is probably on a phone of some sort at this point. He's seen them before in the bathroom. "Oh? Oh, right! Night Vale Community Radio." He hears the other voice, presumably coming from the phone. "Oh, uhm... It has tentacles. I ran before I could see anything else." Another faint exchange of words. "You'll be right over? Thanks." Khoshekh hears the beep of the phone and the patter of footsteps walking away. He slumps over, upset at the fact that he missed someone coming in. He turns to the running faucet and drinks some of the refreshing water.

While he got a drink, a thought struck the feline. He is alone in the bathroom, with the exception of some kind of beast that was probably hostile. He tenses, knowing that his only option is to wait out the danger.

There are more rolling sounds outside. Something Khoshekh had grown used to, of course, but something about this was different. Right when the rolling grew loudest, it stops. Like it was right in front of the door. There are murmurs of other people outside, but he doesn't really care to listen to them this time.

... Nobody has come in all day. Only the thrashing of the unknown beast keeps the floating feline company. He curls up in a furry ball, saddened. He's getting rather lonely. That, and he hasn't been fed all day.

The thrashing sound worsens, and Khoshekh's concern rises. There's a banging on a stall door, climbing and loudening and clawing, and then... silence. The stall door swings open, and from the depths of a toilet in the men's bathroom, emerges the beast itself. It's truly a disgusting sight. The creature seems to be covered in goo and slime and radiates a pungent stench. Its tentacles thrash about as it seems to lock eyes with the floating feline. The tentacle beast drags itself across the floor ever so slowly, leaving Khoshekh to assume a defensive position with hackles rising and poisonous spine ridges poising for attack. He hisses and raises a clawed paw, preparing to strike. The beast from the toilet lets out a gurgled snarl, backing up. A pounding has built up on the doors to the bathroom, and they break down without warning.

A single man enters, poised with a gun of sorts and alert eyes. His sight flicks from the floating cat to the tentacled monster and he decides that he had received a call describing the tentacled monster. He aims his gun at the thing and fires. A dart shoots out of the gun and hits the beast right in its bulbous side. It falls over with a garbled screech and flails its tentacles furiously. Then, its movements slow, eventually coming to a stop. The man exits the bathroom, then quickly returns with a cage and shoves the now harmless beast inside. He makes a quick rounds of the rest of the bathroom, making sure that there were no more tentacled creatures running amok. As he picks up the cage and turns to leave, the black vest he was wearing reveals one word: 'Extermination'. Khoshekh can't read it because he's a cat, but the rest of the radio staff can. The doors close behind the man and several joyous yells echo through the hall. A few men burst into the bathroom, each taking a stall for himself. They all avoid the stall the monster came out of. Once they finished doing bathroom things, they stop to give the cat a thorough petting, much to Khoshekh's pleasure.