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They fill out the paperwork two weeks after they get married. The blood on the arch of Carlos’s doorway still smells faintly coppery and there are tendrils of grasping vines in his front yard. Apparently, the wedding planner failed to get rid of all their wedding décor. Cecil doesn’t seem to mind though, even though he nearly trips when he’s bringing in the boxes of papers.
There are forms 14F through 35B that have to be filled out separately. They ask about every single detail of Carlos’s life and future plans with Cecil. Most of them, he checks the box at ‘No’. He has never had tentacles. He has no intention of implanting tentacles. He does not wish to receive Mouth Food, whatever that is, but he thinks that he would like to have a sentient pet lawnmower as a present for their 729 day anniversary, courtesy of the Sherriff’s Secret Police.
Forms 59N, 67E, 78T through 91Z have to be filled out together. They go through each question carefully. It is a unanimous decision to check the ‘Either or Neither’ option under the question for ‘Gender’ and ‘Sex’. Carlos doesn’t quite know how he would deal with a ‘neither’ but he’s certain he can do it if Cecil helps him, so he doesn’t mind. Cecil assures him that it isn’t a problem and that they’ll buy all sorts of clothing anyway.
They get into a bit of tiff about ‘Extra arms’ or ‘tentacles’. Carlos argues that arms mean more opposable thumbs. Cecil argues that tentacles are more prehensile and can fit easily under clothes without more armholes. Carlos adds that if their kid gets Cecil’s tentacles, the kid will have to spend a lot on moisturizer when it gets really dry outside. Cecil concedes the point but they check ‘Either or Neither’ under the question anyway. There’s no question that they’ll love the kid, moisturizer, extra armholes or not.
They laugh when their pens bump together in their hurry to cross out the ‘Tiny People’ option and then again when Carlos jokingly tries to pen in ‘Carlsberg’ under ‘Preferred Last Name, if any’.
They’re pretty arbitrary about ‘Preferred Magicks’ and get into a bit of a confusion when they come to ‘Blood chanting Language’ because it doesn’t specify if it applies to them or the kid. And if it applies to the kid, do they really get to pick a language? What if their child wants to chant in Greek, Mayan, and Japanese instead of Russian, English, and Spanish? Fortunately a quick call to Old Woman Josie solves that particular problem.
It takes 23 hours, 35 minutes and 18 seconds for Carlos and Cecil to go through the whole lot in tetraplicate. One for the records, one for the office’s perusal, one for their private stash, and one to burn in their backyard during the sickle moon while playing or singing fertility songs. It doesn’t really do anything, Cecil admits, just that it’s a tradition that some of the older Night Vale residents keep and Cecil thinks that it would be nice to pass it down to the future generations instead of letting it die.
Carlos dutifully assists Cecil in folding the last set of papers into tiny origami animals as they sit around the bonfire, two copies already sent to the ‘Child Requisition Department’ of Night Vale and one safely squirreled away from prying eyes in Carlos’s lab shelves.
“So, what now?” Carlos asks as he tosses a tiny paper tiger into the fire. He swears he kind of hears a tiny pathetic roar as the tiger dissolves into ash. Cecil shrugs. His idea of an ostrich seems to have three heads. Carlos doesn’t try to understand how Cecil can fold that out of one rectangle of paper.
“We can’t do anything but wait,” Cecil sounds rueful. “The CReD doesn’t like it when people rush them. They get a little bit… bitey.”
“Bitey?” Carlos asks. Night Vale still manages to surprise him here and there. Cecil makes a face.
“My neighbor tried to rush them and ended up with four sets of teeth in his arms,” Cecil says delicately. “They chewed up his furniture and his clothes.”
Carlos tries to wrap his head around it and sort of succeeds. The picture in his head is a little disturbing so he turns his thoughts elsewhere. He wonders abstractly if their child will come with moving, roving tattoos. He wonders if their child will have his dark brown or Cecil’s lightly glowing hair. Carlos thinks, what if their kid has three eyes and becomes short-sighted? He tries to recall if the optometrist down the street made three eye spectacles.
They spend the rest of the night chatting about other things, how Carlos’s experiments are going, the war against the miniature people and the appearance of who appears to be the Apache Tracker’s daughter.
Carlos imagines the sounds of the origami animals he flicks into the fire. The purple-orange glow outlines Cecil’s profile. Carlos doesn’t stop staring until the fire dies and the sun rises.
The days after that seem to revert to normal. Cecil goes to work, interviewing people and finding out about things that go on around down. Carlos spends his days, and sometimes nights, in the lab, drafting experimental procedures that he has to adapt and change in a thousand tiny different ways to account for Night Vale’s eccentricities.
Days, turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months. Months turn into a year. Cecil still smiles, of course. He’s just happy to have Carlos, he says. Carlos goes to ask Steve Carlsberg about it.
Steve is a bit wary of talking to Carlos. It’s understandable because the last time he did, Cecil spent half of his show detailing the embarrassing bits of Steve’s high school life. Still, Steve is willing to tell Carlos about the requisitioning process.
It takes time, of course. The shortest time was three weeks. But that was because the CReD already had a compatible child on hand. The longest took four years. On average, the requisition process was done within eight months and eight days.
Carlos was a patient man but he was getting on in age and he wasn’t sure if Night Vale invincibility applied to him too. Not to mention, it would crush Cecil if he had to wait for four years.
Carlos told Cecil he had to attend a panel that questioned his scientific method. In reality, he went out and got a lot of wheat and wheat by-products. Then he made himself a potato launcher.
Exactly 388 days after they file the forms, Carlos storms the Child Requisition Department armed with his potato launcher and sacks of wheat and wheat by-product ammo.
“Do exactly as I say and no one gets hurt.” Carlos says. The tiger striped clerk looks unimpressed until Carlos fires a tiny sack of wheat at the ceiling and it explodes behind her, raining bits of wheat on her.
“OH MY –AAAAAA.”
“WHEAT. IT’S WHEAT. THE SSP ARE COMING.”
In the following chaos, Carlos fires another projectile, this time a potato, and yells over the din.
“NOBODY MOVE.”
Surprisingly, they all comply, freezing in their steps.
“The SSP reeducates terrorists.” A tentacle-hair youth in the back shouts defiantly.
“Look. I just want you to review case…” Carlos scrunches his nose and recalls the number. “225158##B-CCNCTS that was submitted three hundred and eighty-eight days ago!”
A dark skinned person that Carlos can’t quite make out due to their fuzzy edges, pulls open a cabinet drawer and rifles through the folders. They pull one out and thump it on the counter.
“That one?!” they ask. Carlos peers at the names. It has both his and Cecil’s names on it printed in blood ink and sprayed with scent of baby pandas so he nods. The dark-skinned unknown flips through it quickly and nods, going ‘Mmhmmmm’, ‘Hmmmmmmmmmm’ and ‘I see’ from time to time. Everyone else looks a little stiff and uncomfortable from not moving and it’s making things awkward so Carlos waves his launcher at them and make some non-committal noises. They take that as permission to go back to their work while giving him and his ammo a wide berth.
“Well you’re not Cecil.” The person says. Carlos doesn’t know how to reply.
“So you must be Carlos, the Scientist.” The person continues. Carlos doesn’t know how he knows but he knows, that the person just peered at him over non-existent spectacles and is now judging him.
“CReDeM, the Child Requisition Department Management, had doubts about your reliability, your chanting ability, your parenting skills and your existence. You will be followed tomorrow and after tomorrow and the day after that and perhaps everyday, until the corn moon. Which is in two weeks. We will see. We will see.”
Carlos hesitates. He actually hadn’t thought this far. So he settles for lowering his weapons and nodding.
“Yeah. Um. Thanks.”
Fuzzy Person gives him a fuzzy shrug movement and then fuzzes back into the backrooms. Carlos shuffles out of the office and hastens to dump all the wheat and wheat by-products in secret places he tells no one about.
Cecil is blissfully unaware. He goes about his life like usual, tracking down happenings enthusiastically.
The first week is agony for Carlos. He gets even worse prickling feelings on the back of his neck than before. He supposed they were from the SSP at first but then realized that it was probably the CReD. He goes out to the patio, sticks up both his middle fingers and turns in a wide circle. He hadn’t quite believed Cecil at first when Cecil told him this was how citizens of Night Vale signed to their stalkers or the SSP that they knew about the surveillance. Carlos still feels ridiculous doing it but he does it anyway.
He surprises Cecil with a tiny rabbit he caught outside. They sacrifice it on the altar in the yard and have a bit of a romantic chant. Carlos then sings a few songs from the Outside. Cecil is gooey all over him that night, both figuratively and literally. Carlos doesn’t mind.
A letter arrives the day before the night of the corn moon.
It simply reads -
‘SQUAAAAARRE’
- followed by a series of hieroglyphs. Carlos doesn’t know what to make of it but Cecil seems to interpret it just fine though.
Cecil insists that they will need to plant more grasping vines. Carlos hates the things because even though he trained the potted one in his lab to hold beakers, it was always more interested in poking the fungi on his petri dishes instead of helping him do work.
They get to work immediately, planting them in a circle in the front yard. Cecil waters them with a something that Carlos has never seen before and they sprout nicely. Cecil hands them each a bloodstone, which the tendrils wave enthusiastically in the air.
They go to bed early that night. Carlos is sick with anticipation, body completely tired but mind racing at a mile a minute.
What if the child doesn’t love him? What if, for all that Carlos professed to accept, he couldn’t accept the child? What if Carlos, couldn’t love their baby?
In the morning, Carlos walks out the door to get the paper and screams like a victim in a horror movie. He drops his mug which floats upwards into the stratosphere, taking his coffee with it. Cecil comes pelting out of the house and gasps.
The tendrils have gathered to form a giant bud in the middle of the front yard. It is pulsing with an eerie red light. Cecil reaches out to touch it. The light turns purple. Carlos gets over himself in a hurry. He takes a brief moment to mourn his coffee then reaches out to lay his palm on the bud. It pulses and then blooms.
In the middle, right in the very middle where the stigma or anthers should be, there is a baby. It is breathing. It is pastel. It is perfect.
Cecil squeals in delight, scooping up Junior in his arms. The tube that connects the flower to the baby falls away. Junior opens his eyes, all three of them, and whimpers. Carlos has to slap his own face to make sure it’s real.
“We haven’t talked about baby names!” Cecil cries in despair. Carlos comes up beside him to look carefully at their sun. Junior has twelve fingers and ten toes. Perfect. His eyes are an alarming shade of orange and his skin a lovely pastel green.
“Caradoc?” Carlos offers. Cecil blinks several times then breaks out into a big, big smile.
“That sounds nice.” He coos. Junior shivers in the cool morning air. Carlos shrugs off his bathrobe and drapes it over their tiny little baby son. Caradoc waves tiny fists, yawns and appears to drop off to sleep again.
“Our darling beloved.” Cecil coos again, tapping one pale finger against Caradoc’s light green skin. The sun casts its rays unto Carlos’s beloved husband and son, outlining them in pale gold.
Carlos tries, but he can’t stop smiling. It is a good day, he thinks, wrapping one arm around Cecil to guide his husband back into the house.
A good day indeed.