This post is about the podcast Alice Isn’t Dead, Part 1, Chapter 1: “Omelet.”

I’m behind on watching the usual TV shows I blog, but for a good reason. I took this week off and promised myself I’d do some serious writing, which has meant my more fun, easy writing has taken a backseat. But I stayed up until two this morning and wrote 6 chapters. I hate to celebrate, because that only brings my total to 8 out of 44 on this rewrite, but ALICE ISN’T DEAD HAPPENED!

Welcome to Night Vale has been my favorite fictional podcast for awhile, and once I’d listened to every episode twice, I turned to other horror/sci-fi fiction podcasts like The Black Tapes, Tanis, The Message, Limetown, etc. I enjoy these, but… they’re not Night Vale. There’s something about its weirdness that rises above all other weirdnesses.

Alice Isn’t Dead isn’t Night Vale either, nor is it a sub-par substitution. It’s a new thing to love. I was going to love this no matter what, because I love everything these people do, so if you want a true, picky critique, this isn’t it. I only have positive things to say.

I hate to do a compare and contrast with Night Vale, because they’re really two very different animals haunting your dreams, but I’ll mention a few things. Just like Night Vale, it has a wonderful score by Disparition. Although in the distinct style I’ve come to know and love from Night Vale, it creates its own mood specific to this story. Much like the proverbs that come at the end of Nigh Vale, Alice has a Q and A — a seemingly harmful question before the story, with a crazy ass answer at the end. I like that both podcasts have this kind of non-sequitur segment tossed in; something to look forward to in each episode, and almost always weird and funny.

While Night Vale is framed as a local radio broadcast, Alice sounds more like a personal message to another person. Whereas we may be used to the friendly, welcoming voice of Cecil speaking directly to the audience, in this new story, the narrator/truck driver (voiced by Jasika Nicole) seems to be addressing “Alice” directly through a CB radio (which cuts out at random times, adding a little mystery). As a listener, I felt disconnected from the narrator in a way I don’t when it’s Cecil. It gives the feeling that you’re intruding on a private moment, and as soon as you’ve forgotten that slight discomfort, she addresses Alice again and reminds you. It’s that kind of awkward discomfort, with just enough relief, that I think creates true horror.

“Omelet” fantastically exhibits how a mundane, everyday moment, such as a man eating breakfast, can be turned into a compelling story. Listen to the narrator’s description of how he eats his omelet (which is later mirrored when he eats a guy). As that prose pulls you in, it’ll become less important that you have no idea who this woman is, who Alice is, or what the hell is going on.

Welcome to Night Vale expertly sneaks in facts through its alternate form of storytelling to build its world, using familiar places and constructs as a base before revealing their strangeness (think the PTA, the library, etc.). Alice has the same thing going on in this first episode, through yet another different storytelling method, using America’s roads and truck stops as a base.

Suspense grows as a mundane scene leads to horror, with the musical score helping build anxiety. At the climax, there’s a description of the dying man as “struggling with a vision of the future without him in it.” Wow. What a great way to put into words something that usually isn’t even attempted to be fit into any spoken language. This one sentence is better than any sentence I wrote between 10 p.m. last night and 2 a.m. this morning.

I was pulled in by a few other passages, too, including the description of the night sky and its place in our culture, as well as its vast emptiness. It might be because I’d been drinking (I’m on vacation, people!) or because my expectations for this podcast are so high, but this was another”whoa” moment for me, though not as “whoa” as the dying thing.

Another was the phrase “We are nothing if not absurd.” I suppose that could even describe everyone who’s in love with this kind of story, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with these absurdities poking their way into the mainstream nowadays, calling more and more people toward their true absurdness.