‘Biologists agree: ‘The Fruiting Bramble’ is worse than its previous manifestation, and they have roundly apologized if their questions about the once ‘Fruitless Bramble’ have somehow, in a display of irony, prompted ‘The Bramble’ into this new phase of life.

“We much preferred ‘The Bramble’ when it was inert, a spokesperson said, “And, on behalf of the scientific community, we’re sorry for ever asking.”

‘The Fruiting Bramble’ now oozes a thick sap from its branches. The sap attracts and traps nearby wildlife and ‘The Brambles’ wet the ground with their blood. The sap does not prevent decay, not really, but it does seem to draw it out, creating a loose sinkhole of rotting insects and small mammals. It smells for miles around and has been known to kill birds who fly overhead. 

The fruits that have appeared are soft and white and plump. ‘The Brambles’ tear at their skin, revealing deep red innards, riddled with thick seeds. Nobody has tasted the fruit, which says a lot about ‘The Brambles.’ People taste anything- this is a universal constant. Nobody wants to go near enough to ‘The Fruiting Brambles’ to try it. 

Those brave and foolish travelers who have consumed the side-of-the-road bramble tea have largely been hospitalized since the fruiting. Nothing so dramatic as the growth of new brambles in their bodies, just a stubborn and wasting sickness of the bowels and a weakness of the limbs. The tea left something behind and it is killing them. 

Flowers of ‘The Fruiting Bramble’ are small and temporary and largely nocturnal, as pale as the fruit and impossible to smell over the rotten soil. Their petals glow faintly in the evenings and attract moths, half of which are shredded by the incessance violence of ‘The Brambles’ thorns and half of which escape, somehow, carrying a wicked pollen to parts unknown.

Local governments have reached the conclusion that ‘The Fruiting Brambles’ may be dangerous, that it may be time to take action. To do the right thing and see ‘The Brambles’ uprooted for good. The process is slow, though. Money is short. 

It has become a game for local children to cover their faces with their shirts and look out over ‘The Brambles’ as though stargazing. They identify violent constellations in the flowers and return home with strange ideas. They dare each other to eat the fruit, but nobody will.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

What is most uncomfortable for me about ‘The Museum of Urinating Statues’ is that they are not displayed as one expects- outside as part of one large or many various fountains. The owners of ‘The Museum’ have instead organized them in separate stalls, all situated in a fairly enclosed, almost tunnel-like hall, so that each can (and must) be viewed separately from the others. Signs on the outside of each door describe the statue inside in some details and, where known, include the date of its creation, its original location(s), and its manufacturing process.

This is all good information, I suppose, and the door system does mean that nobody has to see anything they don’t want to (nudity being mostly necessary in this statue genre) but the result is very much like entering a massive public toilet and moving between occupied, but unlocked, stalls. The urge to knock is overwhelming and finding the actual bathroom is impossible.

‘Is it possible that the owners of ‘The Museum of Urinating Statues’ are run-of-the-mill art collectors who interests leaned innocently niche as the years went on? Yes. Is it much more likely that there is some sort of fetish involved, that it is the owners themselves staring down into the monitors of their unnecessarily robust CCTV system and watching visitors watch, in turn, these statues as they attempt to do their business in the privacy of their protective stalls? Yes, also, to that. 

It’s recommended that one avoid the 43^rd stall, which is kept empty for some reason but is also consistently occupied by a disgruntled man who, mid-urination, will turn to hapless travelers (they having opened this door like all the others, curious about the lack of sign and assuming that no person in their right mind would put themselves in the position of being caught pants-down) and be both angry and embarrassed and give just a small view of his genitals before shooing they, the also-embarrassed but also mildly-violated and suspicious traveler on.

On the other hand, it is recommended that travelers do not skip the 44^th stall, as they so often do in their reflexive attempt to place some distance between themselves and the urinating man. The 44^th stall contains the statue of a rather majestic horse and rider, hair swept back as though by the wind and both of whom are urinating into the same pot, mid-giddyup.

Not another one like it in the states.’

I waffle a little at the 43^rd stall and finally push it open with my foot, just wide enough that the man inside can grunt his annoyance and show me his dick and I can say ‘oops, sorry about that.’ I suppose it’s the perfectionist in me, wanting to see these places on full display, even when their fullness is… tainted. 

The horse and rider are absolutely worth the stop. 

-traveler

‘It’s said, or assumed anyway, that every part of nature has its place. The predators keep populations of prey in check. Prey consume and distribute seeds. The lowliest forms of life, those that feed on the dead, churn out fertile earth. Everything depends on everything else, this is a lesson we’ve seen realized again and again.

Everything except for ‘The Fruitless Bramble.’

There is nothing quite so frustrating to biologists than ‘The Fruitless Bramble,’ which covers a few acres in southern California and seems to do… nothing. ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ is so nearly inert that most people assumed it’s dead. The thick, brittle vines ribbed with stinging thorns are green only for about a day as they squeeze out new growth. Following that, they fade into a brownish gray and move no longer, hardly twitching under even the strongest winds. 

‘The Fruitless Bramble’ kills everything that enters. Mice and birds have not yet evolved to survive there and have difficulty avoiding the thorns. Their bodies litter ‘The Fruitless Bramble,’ rotting in the sun because the ground is so hardened by bramble roots that no natural decomposition can take place. ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ seems to forgo any of the nutrients it might receive from these kills. It needs next to nothing because it exhibits no seasonal change- no flowers, no berries, no leaves. 

‘The Fruitless Bramble’ has proven to be resistant to nearly every type of destruction. It has survived fires set by disgruntled landowners with adjacent property. It has been struck by lightning more times than seems right. It doesn’t respond to any form of weed killer or pesticide and the one time someone attempted to drive a bulldozer straight into the field, ‘The Bramble’ was able to work its way into the wheels and disable the attack before local authorities could respond. 

Sometimes nature turns out an evolutionary dead end and ‘The Fruitless Bramble’ appears to be one of these lost causes. It serves no purpose, makes no attempt to spread, but it persists all the same, baking angrily under the sun and howling in the wind and sometimes cracking, randomly, when one spiral of the bramble has become too heavy for bramble underneath. 

Avoid those stalls selling ‘Fruitless Bramble Tea.’ It isn’t good, or good for you.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

What they don’t say about ‘A Room with a Spider Hidden in it Somewhere’ is that ‘The Room’ is massive but cramped and chaotic with the sort of things one might expect to find in a grandpa’s basement. It’s clean, though. Dust-free. Information at the front desk suggested that this for the health of the spider and because cobwebs would make the game unfair for the human participants. 

‘Fair to call this another simulation destination, ‘The Room with a Spider Hidden in it Somewhere’ advertises itself, also, as a skill-building experience and a nature-exploration center. The latter aspect tends to take center stage in its most recent advertising campaigns, leaning on an almost insufferable insistence that there are whole realms of nature that have been neglected because people flock immediately to the lush green of the actual outdoors, ignoring the varied and valid life that lives in basements and attics and sometimes ventures forth to appear in a cupboard or drawer when least expected. How has it that this noble corner of the world has gone unilluminated for so long? This question, it clarifies, is rhetorical. Spiders don’t like much light. 

So, turn your back on that natural park or that world-renowned zoo and travel to ‘The Room with a Spider Hidden in it Somewhere’ or risk being, and this is a quote, a ‘nature-normie’ like the rest of the schlubs who read billboards about ‘The Room’ and drive on by.’

Comforting, at least a little, is that ‘The Room’ does seem to operate on a set of thin rules. The first rule is that the spider shouldn’t be killed, which I suppose is kind. The second is that winning the simulation involves finding the spider without killing it or being bitten, and here the bold is to represent that the actual text is presented in that dramatic, dripping blood font usually reserved for Halloween decorations, making it difficult to know whether the spider in the room is legitimately venomous or if it’s a dramatic reference. 

The last rule, and probably the dealbreaker for most, is that participants can only dress in one of the robes ‘The Room’ provides, which are, it turns out, pretty short in all dimensions. It certainly adds a layer of vulnerability to the experience- I acknowledge as much as I carefully turn over a chipped mug and, finding it empty, pull open a filing cabinet drawer.

Something brushes over my bare toes and I reflexively kick, cringing as something insectile knocks against the wall and slides to the base. When I get closer look, I see that it’s a centipede, now quite dead. 

“Does this mean I lose?” I ask, assuming someone is observing all this. 

The centipede twitches.

There is a pause and then an intercom cracks to life. “Nah, that’s all right. Keep looking.”

-traveler

‘In the southwest corner of Alabama there is a museum dedicated entirely to the geefer, an imaginary organ in the human body that material there suggests is sometimes also called the Magda Gland. ‘The Geefer Museum’ is one of those destinations that stands out for the sheer amount of thought and money that must have gone into its creation. The complex stands five stories tall and its central chamber boasts a massive, walk-through model of a human’s lower torso where the geefer and its adjacent organs are supposedly arranged. 

Doctors, or people who claim to be doctors online, have pointed out several inaccuracies with the display- not just the inclusion of the non-existent geefer, but also the overall arrangement of the represented organs. The museum’s informational booths and pamphlets cite very, very old sources, some that date back to the dark ages and here, historians (or people who claim to be historians on the internet) have also pointed out that many of its ancient sources simply do not exist either. Residents of the dark ages got a lot wrong, it would appear, but even they cannot be blamed for the imaginary geefer.

Notable, too, is the clinic in the back of the museum which offers a service called ‘Geefer Restoration,’ for which they ask a $1000 donation but will begrudgingly be performed for free if a visitor is of a lower income bracket and is in desperate need of their geefer.’

I suspect ‘The Geefer Museum’ has seen better times and that those times were before the internet made it fairly easy to debunk much of what the museum insists is true about the human body. It is wildly built, that’s certain, but its fiberglass models are beginning to chip and crack and its placards are dusty in a way that suggests long neglect. Someone still cares enough about ‘The Geefer Museum’ to keep the lights on, but it appears they employ just one man and his job includes ticketing, maintenance, and guide. He performs these duties with no enthusiasm and I am left to wander the museum on my own. 

Stand outs include the central chamber, where someone with a great deal of talent was once employed to recreate a skewed version of our inner workings. Red liquid sloshes through clean pipes while various organs squelch and gurgle and react to the occasional thrumming of the massive geefer, the unlikely shape of which is a near-perfect pyramid. 

There is a room that spends a lot of time detailing the cultural impact of the geefer with circumstantial evidence like the pyramids in Egypt and on the back of the dollar and that, somehow, the Masons are involved in its cover up or potentially its harvesting. The theories become convoluted by the end. 

Finally, there is a formaldehyde-smelling room near the end that is lined with jars that seem to contain reclaimed geefers. The signage there never quite explains how the museum was able to collect and display so many human organs, but it does finally make some claims about what the geefer is meant to do and, here, the museum debuts a third name: the fear-heart. If ‘The Geefer Museum’ can be said to have a thesis, it’s something like ‘humans are born with an organ that makes them afraid but a vast conspiracy suppresses or removes that organ in order to control the masses.’

It all approaches but never quite uses the word ‘sheeple’ in its explanation. I leave ‘The Museum of the Geefer’ enlightened, maybe, but not overly concerned. 

-traveler