The man, presumably the owner, stands behind me. I feel his eager breath on my shoulder. His hands tremble in his pockets, shaking the quarters there.

“Go on,” he says, “This machine is one-of-a-kind. A game unlike any other.”

The machine, an arcade cabinet called ‘ESCAPE!,’ beeps innocently and runs a small, pixeled man through a variety of trap-filled rooms.

“You’re sure,” I say again, “You’re sure I’m not going to get pulled into this thing? Like, pulled in to a real-life situation where I’m that guy on the screen.”

A speech bubble appears above ‘ESCAPE!’s’ character.

“Help!” it says.

The owner coughs and looks nervously around the empty room.

“First game’s on me,” he says, handing me a sweaty coin, “With a little skill you might be able to play on that for a long time.”

This is a man that can’t help himself.

I balance the coin in the slot and hear the man’s breath catch- almost a squeal. I brace myself and the quarter drops. The machine beeps wildly and then beckons me to start.

The man taps his foot and scratches wildly at his scalp for half an instant.

“Now,” he says, “Just press that red button. That’s when the real fun begins.”

This, like so much of what I do, will end badly.

-traveler

After two days of shuffling through snow and ice, two days of an escalating storm, I hunker down in a small cave and rest, gathering warmth and strength and taking stock of my dwindling rations. A few dry pieces of jerky, a sleeve of cookies, and bottom-bag rejects of a picked-over trail-mix, all raisins, peanut skins, and dust.

When I’ve confirmed the direness of the situation, I dig for the ground, hoping to find a surface that isn’t ice. No such luck- the softer snow gives way to sandpaper frost and I put my sore, trembling fingers away. I could move deeper, further into the darkness of the cave where the storm hasn’t yet reached, but it grows darker even as I stay still. The wind has changed and the entrance shrinks under the layers of drifting snow. It would be easy to lose the way out.

In the dwindling half-light, I harvest the ceiling’s rainbow stalactites, tossing them into a multi-color pile for shucking. There is a lot of green here, the chemical smell of artificial lime. I follow a vein of orange that starts several yards in and weakens to a dull lemon-yellow at the edge of light. The dank smell of fudgsicles and freezer burn rises from the thick black beyond.

An hour’s work is a minute’s fire, a warmth that leaves me colder than I was before. I stir the ashes of flimsy wood and faded punchlines and prepare myself for what will be the last try. There is not enough food for a meal, not enough heat to warm my extremities, not any reason to stop short of the exit. I consider the scant calories of the popsicle pile and weigh them against the deep cold of my body. If this really is the last push, I’ll need all the energy I can muster.

I melt a soda can’s worth of orange ice to slush in the waning coals and sip.

Sugar-free.

It’s all sugar-free.

‘Americans never feel freer than when they are presented with an abundance of unremarkable choices. Consider the self-service fountain drink, the multi-flavor holiday popcorn tin, and the international, all-you-can-eat buffet. Consider the 400 channel cable package, the cloned dating app, and the coffees with deep, personal backstories.

Consider ‘Chilltown,’ which boasts the country’s largest selection of frozen sweets under one roof, a collection so large and so all-encompassing that it includes a ‘collector’s aisle’ of popsicles kept in stasis since the pioneering days of freezer technology. Here you can peruse and sample- testing one decade’s strawberry against another or exploring the niche and failed flavors of doomed enterprises. The modern selection is no less varied, featuring ice creams from the west, the east, from neighbors in all four cardinal directions and from a fifth, loosely defined region marked ‘Other.’

In 2006 interview, ‘Chilltown’ owner, Anaya Anand admitted the selection can be overwhelming for some.

“It’s a lot,” she said, “And some people just want their vanillas and their chocolates. We get people walking out with coolers full of weird stuff and others that hunt around forever and never buy a thing. Some people love the choices. Some just freeze.”’

-traveler

Alice, between my teeth, tugs north. Her picks, swollen with water, turn in the wind and settle like a poor man’s compass. When my things have dried, stretched out in a field of unnamed boulders, I count my money and head west, feeling the thin wood grow splintery on my tongue in disagreement.

Alice is used to death in a way that I’m not. I don’t know what she sees from where she is, or what she feels about the man left behind in ‘The Watery Grave,’ but I am not inclined to join the Wayside just yet, to be a source of fear or confusion for those who encounter me. Toward that end, we ride west, in pursuit of ‘The Traveling Night Market,” which was last reported crossing into Iowa.

‘Appearing, unannounced, in gray-haired twilight, ‘The Traveling Night Market’ spells detriment for the passage of quiet evenings. It is a cause for temporary school closures in no less than fourteen districts, where well-behaved children have become skewed with strange ideals. It has formed and disbanded cults, uncountable, and it chews up unwelcomed followers like so much gristle, leaving a trail of meat and mangled destinies.

‘The Market’s’ legal head, Marlin Zed, serves as its harbinger, appearing in the offices of local town officials to produce labyrinthine systems of zoning permits, receipts, and fee waivers. Chaos sown, Zed will consume one hundred dollars worth of vodka-tonics at the nearest watering hole, wander drunkenly to the proposed site of ‘The Market,’ and pass out like some great, lumpy egg, waking only to pull crumpled legal documents from his coat as required.

‘The Traveling Night Market’ arrives within a day of these events and, there, you can buy scraps of the very darkness from which it emerges.’

A small group of concerned people have formed across from the fair grounds to protest ‘The Traveling Night Market’ in its most recent incarnation. I keep a parking lot’s distance between us while I wait for admittance to begin. Around four in the afternoon the group begins to struggle under the force of a wind that arrives to wreak havoc on their amateur signage and disperses them by five. I’m approached by a man who emerges from the ‘Market’ shortly after that.

“Strange thing, that wind, eh?” he asks, and I nod. “By strange I mean about how it only seemed focused on them folks causin’ trouble for the ‘Market’ and didn’t but rustle a single leaf a’these trees or whip at your hair or nothing.”

I nod again and the man sniffs.

“Not for nothing,” he says, “But I go by the moniker ‘Gale George’ at the ‘Market.’”

“You’re saying you caused the wind?” I ask, and the man puts his hands up in carefully exaggerated denial.

“No man can control the wind, my friend,” he laughs, “Why, that would be… that would be magic.”

I nod again and check the time.

“You’re a hard one to please,” he says, “What brings you to the ‘Market?’”

“A book I read says you can buy darkness there.”

“Emily’s the one you want, then,” he shrugs, “I’ll take you to her.”

“Is it open?”

“Might as well be,” he says, and we begin to walk, “Mr. Zed says we’ve got to keep the place quiet till sunset. Adds to the mystique. Meanwhile, we’re all bored as hell. Broke, too. Em’s cash only, by the way. Not cheap, neither.”

“Does she trade?”

The man smiles.

“What’s a fella like you got to trade to someone who can cut up the night?”

“A radio,” I say, “Previously haunted.”

“Don’t know that Em’s got use for that.”

“A few human teeth.”

“Got a full set herself, she does.”

“The gratitude of a shadowless man.”

“Was gonna ask about that,” he says, “Seemed rude until you mentioned it. And who’s the lady you’ve got traveling with you?”

“Alice,” I tell him and, sensing my surprise he says:

“A ghost ain’t nothing but wind.”

Gale George leaves me outside a tent with a sign that reads ‘Emily Nosferatu, the Black Tailor.’ He declines entering, himself, citing a history of personal clashes and ‘general claustrophobia,’ but hands me his card, insisting that wind and storm related business can be conducted by phone as necessary.

Inside the tent is a skeleton of a woman, her eyes glinting and bulged in the light from the open flap, which disappears quickly with a slap of leather- the tent resealing itself. There, invisibly, we bargain, trading dollars and favors and items of interest. She circles me all the while, her voice here and there between exchanges.

She wants the picks, Alice’s picks, or an outrageous amount of money and I guiltily bargain away just two pieces of the coffin before I hear the sharp whip of measuring tape and feel her bony fingers tapping the places where my body folds in.

In the deep black of the tent there is the sound of heavy scissors, a scrape and a click before the brush of metal along my neck. The Black Tailor cuts close and carefully. She cautions me against moving, though I stand very still. I do not hear her breathe, though I sense her face close to me.

Having fully traced my silhouette, I hear the woman step backward. The scissors close and she demands payment.

“It will always be behind you,” she says, “And it will drag for a while before you break it in. Sew it to your socks if a leg comes lose- black thread or you’ll get funny looks from children and dogs.”

“Dry-clean only?” I ask, and she ejects me from the tent.

The new shadow moves slowly and it sometimes makes mistakes, holding out the wrong arm or standing in profile, but I think it’s learning and it seems to appreciate the challenge. I praise it, occasionally, though it’s given me no reason to think it can hear.

Maybe it does the same for me.

-traveler

I am well enough, after a week in ‘The Watery Grave,’ to know that I am unwell. At the arrival of the man, the sane puppeteer inside me begins to put on a show, knowing that it will only have to be a civil 24 hours before I escape or die in escaping. My hand-strings tug and a voice comes from inside me:

“Hello,” it says, and it laughs lightly.

No stranger, this is, nevertheless, a strange man. He strips down to his sagging body and joins me in donning only underwear. I make room for him, for his things, and watch as he rolls out a blanket. The descent has left him entirely unscathed and, as though sensing my thoughts, he eyes me and says:

“Rough waters on your way down?”

My scabbed wounds crack quietly as I shift.

“It was narrower than I thought.”

“How long have you been down here.”

“Just a couple days,” I say.

I’m not sure why I lie.

The man hums a moment, the same tune.

“When are you thinking of going?”

“The next time,” I tell him, “Tomorrow.”

He nods and I add, “Not because of you.”

He nods again and he pulls out a harmonica.

“You play?” he asks, “Sing?”

“Neither.”

“Mind if I do?”

The sound of the harmonica in ‘The Watery Grave’ is maddening and inescapable but I listen, politely, sick on the inside like a rotten fruit. I stop him in between breaths.

“How did you get down so easily?” I ask.

“I’m a ghost,” he hums, “Come down to haunt the ‘Grave’ after perishing here myself.”

“Really?” I ask, because it’s hard to know what’s possible anymore.

“Nope,” he says, “But I’ve been down here a few times. Was worse off than you, I think.”

We’ve been avoiding direct eye contact, given the closeness of our quarters, but he turns to see me now with a look that it knowing, at first, and then, suddenly, concerned.

“How are you doing that?” he asks.

He leans forward, to look behind me, and then shifts back to dig in his bag. Before I can answer, he shines the beam of a little flashlight over my body and I cover myself, suddenly shy.

“You’re not casting a shadow,” he says, and though he chuckles as he says it, I see his frown hanging above the light.

“Yeah…” I say, “Weird, huh? Just, uh, happens.”

I wait for him to ask me about it but he doesn’t. He just nods and puts away his light. He pretends to read for a while, staring closely at the pages but rarely turning them. We exchange few words.

The man tries to escape while I sleep, leaving behind his bag and his harmonica, counting on his experience to guide him through the dark, waterlogged tunnel. I find him floating in the pool, one more hurdle to my exit.

-traveler

‘The Watery Grave’ is slick, at first, with blood from my various clam-wounds and with a half-stomachful of sea water. It is a difficult place to stand in, looking like some volcanic bubble, some still-born fart from the early, gassy days of the earth when things were still quiet and clean and smooth. I dreaded finding a body- I was sure I would, if not in the tunnel then certainly in the cavern itself, but there are no signs of life except my own. There is the sound of rushing water and sucking air as I watch the tunnel disappear under the black water. Then, the tunnel and the noise are gone, and I am left in absolute stillness.

I have packed well and learned the wisdom of catching my breath. I bandage my wounds and set up a modest camp, laying out blankets on the ground and making a table of my deflated pack. I eat a handful of a bland trail-mix that I make myself for times of lying low. It’s cheap mixture, caloric. Most importantly, it makes me want to not eat, it eventually becomes less desirable than going without.

Later, I am squatting awkwardly over a plastic bag, unable to find the proper balance for anything like a satisfying shit. My thighs ache terribly, my toes clenching and unclenching, shifting like worms in the dim light of my lantern. The only flat place in ‘The Watery Grave’ is the pool of water at the center, the flooded exit. At its fullest it is almost indiscernible from the stone- the potential for a twisted ankle in the short term, maybe a cause for madness over time.

Later, I have removed a marble from my pack, a thick, cat-eyed shooter. I roll it up the walls so that it rolls back. I am launching it in full circles by the time the water has drained halfway again, the marble spinning round and round the room and whizzing like a toy car and rattling at the stone’s invisible imperfections.

Later, the marble drops into the pool in the center and is swallowed, immediately, by the stillness there. I wade in, naked, the water rising to my stomach, and I grope with my feet.

Nothing.

I am startled by a sudden gasping, a sputter that sprays the unprepared stretches of skin across my upper half. I leap out of the water and see that the tunnel is reemerging, now. I watch it, a naked, suspicious man in a dark place. I realize I have not slept and that I am not tired.

There is a noise each time I turn off the light. Before, it was like the low hum of a distant lawn mower. Now it is the ghost of the marble, buzzing in constant circles. I try to sleep, but I wake often to the sound. The tunnel empties and refills in the dark interludes. I lie awake and grow claustrophobic, checking, often, that the pool is still there, that it has not moved. I dream of the sunrise and wake in the dark.

At its fullest, the pool in the center pushes just past the brim, a thin, black jell-o. I watch it and imagine its moving, or, it moves and I chock it up to my imagination. Claustrophobia gives way to boredom as several days pass. I write out song lyrics in dust- in the dust that must be shaking off of me. I forget to put on clothes and lose hours staring at the water.

Even though it’s dark.

Even though the water makes no sound, except for the awful sputtering that wakes me each time I start to doze.

When the shit-bag starts to outweigh the trail-mix, I consider emerging. A week has passed, according to my phone, and, though I have achieved a meditative calm, I recognize that it is being pressed and that it is fragile. To leave ‘The Watery Grave’ in a panic would be disastrous.

I give myself one more day and I start to pack and as I pack I hum a tune that I eventually hear, that I have been hearing and parroting for nearly half an hour. It is a man’s voice and it grows louder as I listen, louder and louder, though still very quiet. Louder relative to itself, and to everything else in the past week. I lean in close to the pool, which will begin its desperate coughing any moment, and I realize too late what is about to happen.

A man emerges with a massive splash, tossing a bag up onto the stone and twisting his shoulder-length hair into a pony-tail. He sees me, crouching in my underwear like some haunted goblin, and he smiles.

“Looks like we’re roomin’ for the night!”

The tunnel disappears below the water and the man begins to hum.

-traveler