Within the Wires: Relaxation Cassette #1

Hey hey, Jeffrey Craner from welcome to Night Vale here.

Apart from Night Vale, we make other podcasts.

If you're already a big Night Vale fan, check out Good Morning Night Vale, where cast members Meg Bashwiner, Symphony Sanders, and Hal Lublin break down each and every episode.

Or if you're looking for more weird fiction, there's Within the Wires, an immersive fiction podcast written by me and novelist Janina Mathewson.

Each season is a standalone tale told in the guise of found audio.

Finally, maybe you like horror movies or are scared of horror movies but are horror curious, check out Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9, where me and the voice of Nightvale Cecil Baldwin talk about a randomly drawn horror film.

We have new episodes every single week.

So that's Good Morning Nightvale Within the Wires and Random Horror 9.

Go to nightvalepresents.com for more or get those podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hello, it's Jeffrey Kraner.

This is the premiere of Nightfale Presents' newest podcast, Within the Wires, which runs every other Tuesday from June 21st to October 25th.

We'll be running the first three episodes of this show right here on the Welcome to Night Vale feed, but if you like what you hear and would like to hear the entire 10 episode first season, please go over to iTunes and subscribe to Within the Wires directly.

Thank you to Audible.com for their support of Within the Wires.

For a free 30-day trial, go to audible.com slash WTW.

Stay tuned to the end of this show to have a little bit of you time.

And hey, we appreciate you.

Mind to matter.

My voice will guide you through these exercises.

You will trust only my voice and your body, to which you are servant.

Listen, remember, comprehend.

If you listen carefully to each recorded session, you may find information in these cassettes useful to you in your daily life.

The object is to listen, to remember, and to comprehend.

Before you start the study, find a private spot, alone, away from your unit mates and security nurse, far from disruptive sounds such as telephone booths and redress sirens.

These cassettes are to be listened to free of external interference.

Cassette 1: Reducing Stress.

Side A: Weight of the World.

Start with a breathing exercise.

As you inhale through your nose, feel your breath behind your eyes.

Feel the cool air flow below your forehead.

Feel it hover under the top of your skull.

Feel it slip down your neck, across your shoulders, and into your lungs.

Breathe in now.

Breathe out slowly through your mouth.

Feel the air now stale, now used, rush from your lungs.

Feel your body relax as it lets go of the air, freeing it from the temporary prison of your ribs.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Continue breathing and listen.

Envision the air as a liquid, just like the first time you swam.

This was before you were born, when you were floating, unaware, fluid within and without your body.

You breathed it just fine.

You don't remember any of this.

You shouldn't remember any of this.

Inhale the thick liquid through your nose.

and out through your mouth.

You don't remember the loud thrum of another's body, a mother's body noisily soothing your unwitting transition into a conscious and sentient creature.

You are again breathing liquid.

Your lungs are milk-soaked yellow cake.

Draw liquid in

and out.

Feel it bubbling in your chest.

Listen to the breaths.

Who is that breathing right now?

Is it you?

Is it your own breathing you're hearing?

Are you certain?

Imagine there is another, someone standing just over your shoulder, breathing in,

breathing out.

A hand touches your right shoulder, pressing you down gently as if to keep a balloon from lifting out of gravity.

Think about moist yellow cake.

Breathe in

and out.

Feel your shoulders rise and tense and lower and relax.

Feel them wax and wane two helpless moons.

Listen to the sound of the other breathing in unison with your own.

You will learn to trust my voice.

You will learn to trust my voice.

Feel a breath from just behind you.

You smell its caffeine, acidity, its umami, and metal musk through cotton lips.

You know these breaths.

How do you know them?

How do you know them?

The hand on your shoulder lifts away.

You are alone.

You are fine.

No one is with you.

Who would be with you?

You are probably alone.

Continue breathing as you receive subliminal instructions embedded in this music.

One more deep breath.

And exhale.

Are you in the same place you were before?

No,

you're not.

The earth has moved.

The clock has changed.

You are older and far from where you were before you began this cassette.

This is relative, of course.

The important thing is that you continue breathing.

Let us begin an autogenic stress relief exercise.

Make sure you are in a standing position, your feet planted firmly underneath you, hip width apart, your knees straight but relaxed.

Say aloud the following:

My shoulders are stone.

My shoulders are stone.

My shoulders are sod.

My shoulders are sod.

Hold your shoulders up beside your ears, tense and angry.

Lower your shoulders.

Let them slip back down like beads of water on the side of a chilled glass.

Let your right shoulder fall away.

Say aloud, My right shoulder slides down my ribs to my waist.

It is free now, but separate from my body, it is meaningless.

It is just a shoulder out of context, lying upon the ground.

My shoulder is useless and alone.

Say all of that aloud.

Good.

Now say aloud.

My left shoulder is in its place.

It does not miss my right shoulder because it did not know my right shoulder had ever existed.

And now it is separate and alone, lying upon the ground, and it is not missed the way a brother or sister is not missed, because after age 10 there are no brothers or sisters, and before age 10, nothing can be remembered.

Say all of that aloud.

Can something be re-remembered?

Can it?

It cannot.

Why are you here?

What do you miss?

Who do you miss?

Say aloud, my right shoulder returns to my body.

My right shoulder returns to my body.

Feel your shoulders.

They are unmoved by your heaving breaths.

My shoulders are stone.

My shoulders are sod.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Open your eyes.

You have done well completing your first breathing and autogenic exercise.

How did you feel?

How do you feel now?

Did you remember experiences you never had?

People you do not know?

Or maybe you do know them.

Maybe you just forgot.

Before continuing to side B, please fill out the Cassette 1 side A questionnaire and submit it to the security nurse before your dosages.

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And even when I have to drive my car, it's difficult to try and read and drive, so I love Audible for making every commute so much more entertaining and less dangerous.

For listeners of Within the Wires, Audible is offering a free 30-day trial.

Just go to audible.com/slash WTW, download a title-free, and start listening.

It is that easy.

If you're like me and Janina, you listen to the musical Hamilton about three times a day.

So, let us recommend the book that inspired that show, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.

The stories of Hamilton, Jefferson, the Schuyler Sisters, Burr are engrossing and emotionally powerful.

Scott Brick's narration is perfection.

I mean, I knew how the story ended.

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And now, side B.

Cazette 1, side B, Shoulders and Giants.

Now you will begin a visualization for stress reduction.

Lie down.

Think of each muscle in your body.

Count them all quietly to yourself.

Close your eyes.

You are in a forest.

The forest is large and you are small.

The forest is immense, and you are tiny.

You are in mid-air, and you see several things at once.

To be more specific, you see the same thing iterated many times.

You are an insect with complex eyes and simple desires.

You are erratic and frenetic.

What little wind winds its way through leaves lifts and twists you into new directions.

You are naked.

You are alone.

You are fine.

You feel fine.

You cannot see your own nakedness, for you cannot move your head to look down.

Never look down.

You see every sight iterated many times, but you do not see yourself.

You are uncertain if it will rain.

You are uncertain how you are floating or flying.

You see a child.

She is iterated many times.

The girl is much larger than you.

As you drift close to her, you see her smaller details, giant and iterated many times, swirling valleys of the skin atop her palms.

You see the crevices and gorges of her inner knuckles and the milky half moons inside her fingernails.

You see long eyelashes swaying like shadows of corn, flicking up and down over white eyes with their narrow pink rivers and great brown rings.

You move in all directions.

You move left to right.

You move up and down.

Your body whispers.

You do not hear it.

Her hands move to you, and you feel a muted clap, and it is dark.

You breathe

in.

Out.

You breathe.

In her hands, it is quiet, and you can smell the ocean.

You see slivers of orange-red light between her fingers.

You move in all directions, but you cannot move far.

Your body cries out.

You do not hear it.

Her hands begin to open.

Her fingers wrap tight around you, and light pours over your body.

The sun sees you, but it does not care.

You see her nose, wet nostrils over a vermilion archway with columns of eggshell teeth.

You breathe.

The child breathes.

You feel her breath on you as you flutter, flustered in her fingers.

You see the child's shoulders, linen draped and slight.

You feel your own shoulders, stained glass wings above an exoskeleton.

A bird stops above on a branch.

You see it many times in your kaleidoscope mind.

The bird eyes you unmoving, unmoved.

The child rolls you in her enormous fingers.

She studies you.

You breathe.

She breathes.

She enjoys touching your your many spiny legs and your bulbous eyes.

Through her touch you understand her.

You absorb her thoughts.

She is alone.

She has brothers and sisters, but only for two more years.

She does not know her parents.

No one knows their parents.

No one should know their parents.

You understand suddenly that she once had a caretaker place a palm on her shoulder, the weight of it pressing upon her as if to keep a balloon from lifting out of gravity.

The hand, which comforted and calmed, lifted her head quickly, apologetically, acknowledging its mistake, and her shoulder felt cool and sore in its absence.

You understand that the child digs holes in various toys for future treasure.

She breaks off branches and calls them batons or wands, the wizard conductor of nature's symphony.

She asks without speaking,

Why are you different?

What is it you say you do?

Why are you here?

She sees your many colours, mostly shades of green and purple pulsing aurora-like on your black thorax.

She notes your hair, tiny and ubiquitous, hardly noticeable until she looks closely.

She sees the beauty of the body you cannot see.

You struggle to escape.

Your body exclaims things she cannot hear.

The child worships beauty.

She knows exactly what is beautiful because no one has yet told her she is wrong.

She holds you firmly in her fingers, breathing into your body and inhaling it back into her own.

She turns you about, seeking a better view through the keyhole.

Your body shudders.

Your many legs push against her skin.

The bird watches you still.

The bird watches you.

The bird is still.

You see the bird iterated many times.

You feel your shoulders pulling away from your body.

Two of the child's fingers hold you firmly with intention the way she herself has never been held in a way she wants to be held to be seen

Two other fingers pull at your shoulders your wings.

Your body wants to keep itself intact.

Your body does not like its parts to depart.

Your body wants to be whole.

This is what all bodies want.

She knows this, too.

But the child's fingers grip and squeeze and rip your wings from you.

Your body screams things no one can hear.

And in a pop,

your body becomes silent and slack.

You hear nothing more, you feel nothing more.

You can see your shoulders, your wings stuck to the child's thumb and forefinger.

You see parts of yourself you have never seen.

You see them iterated many times.

They are stained glass teardrops.

Your feet push and press against the child's fingers, but her soft pads of skin give up nothing.

You grow tired.

Less compelled.

You are stuck between fingertips, spiralling with her own unique pattern.

The child looks closely at your wings and then back at you.

The bird looks only at you.

The child sees you for what you are, and she loves you.

She does not hate herself for dismantling your body.

She does not regret what she has done, but she understands if you do.

She presses her fingertip and thumb, the ones with your wings, together and apart, together and apart, together and apart.

The wings stick to one fingertip and then to the other,

and then back to the other.

She wishes for a hand again upon her shoulder and blows your wings like a kiss to the wind.

She lays you, exhausted and free, upon a rock.

You cannot move, or you do not move.

You see the rock's grey horizon.

It is the same for ever in every direction.

The child skips away.

The bird lands on the rock beside you.

Its body is perpendicular to your own.

It stands in full silhouette.

It does not see you for what you are.

It sees you for what you are about to be.

Its empty slack eyes and long black beak cocked sideways, it does not move, only only stares.

You count the seconds that pass.

The bird still stands and stares.

The bird stares and stands still.

You begin to move towards the constant grey horizon.

You crawl without feeling toward the rock's edge.

You see the trees above you, the rock below you.

You see the bird, a hollow black statue.

You try to leave the rock, but with a twist and a twitch too quick to predict, the bird jerks its face towards yours.

You are inside of it.

It is dark.

You hear breathing that is not your own.

You smell grass and vinegar.

You are moving.

You are walking.

You walk on two feet.

You are human.

You can see your feet moving one in front of the other below you.

A cold light ahead.

A rectangle.

Stark, fluorescent dearth.

It is a corridor.

It is a familiar corridor.

It the corridor of the Institute.

Behind you is your assigned room.

There are doors ahead along your left and your right.

Listen.

You count the doors.

Remember, there are five doors along your right.

Each is white.

One, two,

three,

four,

five.

Count the white doors.

Comprehend.

You enter the fifth door.

You do this in the future.

Remember this door.

Why am I telling you this?

Why are you here?

Listen.

Remember.

Comprehend.

Visualization exercise complete.

You may open open your eyes.

You have completed cassette one towards relaxation and total self.

Cassette two will commence once standard diagnostics have been approved and schedule confirmation is issued by your security nurse.

End side B

Within the Wires is written by Jeffrey Kraner and Janina Mathewson and performed by Janina Mathewson with original music by Mary Epworth.

Find more of Mary's music at maryepworth.com.

Thanks again to Audible for supporting Within the Wires.

Don't forget your free 30-day trial at audible.com/slash WTW.

Within the Wires is a production of Night Vale Presents.

Check out our other podcasts, Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn't Dead.

Both are available on iTunes or wherever it is you get your podcasts.

Okay,

our time is done.

It's you time now.

Time to draw a bath, play some music, and light an aromatic candle.

Today's scented candle is Woodchuck making pancakes.

Today's relaxing music is Whole Note for Solo Bassoon.

Today's bath is filled with cereal milk.

I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director.

You might know me from the League Veep or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We love movies, and we come at them from different perspectives.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

He's too old.

Let's not forget that Paul thinks that Dune 2 is overrated.

It is.

Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-season, and case you missed them.

We're talking Parasite the Home Alone, From Grease to the Dark Knight.

We've done deep dives on popcorn flicks.

We've talked about why Independence Day deserves a second look.

And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of, like Kanja and Hess.

So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to hit the follow button.

Hey y'all, it is Jeffrey Kraner speaking to you from the year 2025.

And did you know that Welcome to Night Vale is back out on tour?

We are.

We're going to be up in the northeast, in the Boston, New York City area, going all the way over to the upper Midwest in Minnesota.

That's in July.

You know, kind of draw a line through there, and you'll kind of see the towns we'll be hitting.

We'll also be doing Philly down to Florida in September.

And we'll be going from Austin all the way up through the middle of the country into Toronto, Canada in October.

And then we'll be doing the West Coast plus the Southwest plus Colorado in January of 2026.

You can find all of the show dates at welcometonightvale.com/slash live.

Listen, this brand new live show is so much fun.

It is called Murder Night in Blood Forest, and it stars Cecil Baldwin, of course, Symphony Sanders, me, and live original music by Disparition, and who knows what other special guests may come along for the ride.

These tours are always so much fun, and they are for you, the Die Hard fan, and you, the Night Vale new kid alike.

So feel comfortable bringing your family, your partner, your co-workers, your cat, whatever.

They don't got to know what a night veil is to like the show.

Tickets to all of these live shows are on sale now at welcometonightvale.com/slash live.

Don't let time slip away and miss us when we are in your town because otherwise we will all be sad.

Get your tickets to our live U.S.

plus Toronto tours right now at welcometonightveil.com/slash live.

And hey, see you soon.