I imagine there will be a time when cameras exist that can capture the full majestic silliness of ‘The World Hat’ and I, the aging millennial, will go white in the knuckles as the new generation makes a trend of posting those pictures until something happens to the site, accidentally or otherwise, that ruins it.

Just the hypothetical makes me angry.

I’ve been feeling that a lot, lately. The anger at imagined wrongs. I suppose some of it is the helplessness I feel when I read the headlines. I suppose some of it is this unending road trip. The loneliness. It’s been some time since I had a traveling companion or even a nemesis and now, with the camper, I’ve got all this room for either. It’s like driving a haunted house across the country. 

And I suppose all of that comes suddenly into focus because I find myself upside-down with my head in a hole and there’s nobody to take my picture from the viewing deck. 

‘Given the gaudy extravagance inherent in certain Wayside destinations, ‘The World Hat’ is something of a palate cleanser. It began with a naturally formed stone divot at the top of a rock formation on the edge of private land, owned by a woman named Rhonda Lasser who has never been seen on the property nor quoted speaking about it. Timothy Cortez, whose relationship to Lasser is unknown, is credited with finding the divot and recognizing that it was about the size of a one-size-fits-all hat and, eventually, installing two handlebars on either side of the divot so that he could flip himself upside down and briefly claim to be wearing the planet like a hat. This all happened with relatively little fanfare until a local news article chronicled Cortez’s attempts and failures to be recognized for this feat by a publication like the Guinness World Book of Records (he had broken no record) or Ripley’s Believe it or Not (this was not exactly unbelievable). The story did some rounds on the morning news programs of several neighboring counties and Cortez excitedly showed off pictures of himself wearing the world until the question of landownership came up and then he promptly disappeared from the public eye. 

‘The World Hat’ has never quite reached the viral draw that other picture-specific destinations have. Despite Cortez’s bars, standing on one’s head on a stone surface is difficult and uncomfortable and subjects of pictures tend to be red-faced and straining, leading to a secondary nickname: ‘The Space Toilet.’ It doesn’t exactly draw the social media crowd. 

At its heart, ‘The World Hat’ is a stupid idea executed with genuine intentions and its construction guarantees that it will be a Wayside destination for some time. Travelers are recommended to bring a friend, both for picture-taking and for spotting. Slipping out of ‘The World Hat’ at just the wrong angle may result in a bone-breaking fall and the nearest hospital is 50 miles down the interstate.’

There is something about wearing ‘The World Hat.’ When I turn upside down, I expect to feel the weight of my body like the weight of the world and to be reminded of all the troubles ahead of us. Instead, I find my worries pushed away as my body strains to stay in position and the horizon stretches out before me like the wide brim of a hat. 

-traveler

It is a good day for the beach. It’s more warm than I normally like, but the sky is speckled with clouds that allow for an occasional reprieve from the sun, and a breeze tends to appear when it’s most needed, playing over the ocean and cooling the people at ‘The Slight Beach.’ I glance up from my towel and think that this could be a picture taken from a postcard, if it weren’t for all the warning signs. 

‘One of nature’s deadly little illusions, ‘The Slight Beach’ is named for the grade at which the sands drops into the water past the shore. In a word, it is ‘slight.’ So slight, that one’s descent into water that covers anything above the waist takes a concerted hour’s walk straight into the ocean, by which point, many beachgoers find themselves exhausted and even a little lost. Far enough away from land, and without any sort of tangible slope, it’s common for visitors to become lost, wandering around in water that is only four feet deep but unable to drink or rest or even swim very comfortably. 

Those who choose to enter the water are advised to do so with a lifejacket and one of the many specially-designed shore-pointing compasses sold at the local souvenir shops for exhorbitant prices. Rescue boats leave the shore at 5pm but space is limited.’

I forgo the life jacket but do buy one of the compasses fro mthe local Ranger’s outpost, only because it has a picture of a disapproving looking Ranger and the words “Wish you were here” under the arrow pointing at the shore. The man who sells it to me asks me not to go in the water, explaining it’s his job to ask that and that there is nothing legally he can do to stop me but it’s really pretty dangerous. I point out that he waited until after he sold me the compass to start on the warnings and he gives up, suggesting I should skew northwest if I want a good seat on the rescue boat when it comes by. 

Once I’m on the water, I start to realize what the temptation is. Standing ankle-deep is supremely unsatisfying and, the further I walk, the more the sounds of the coast begin to recede. The experience is comfortable isolating and the view gets better past the signs. I take a few pictures at knee-deep and determine to go a little further, keeping the colorful umbrellas behind me in sight as I walk. 

The trick, of course, is that between the heat and the water, those indicators of land are there one moment and then gone the next, melded into the vague technicolor of light playing on water. Something brushes past the back of my knee and I nearly drop my phone. 

I hear someone yelling in the distance and see a man struggling to swim in the water. He says he’s gone too far out- is too tired to swim anymore. I motion for him to stand and he does, looking slightly embarassed. I check my compass and point him back to shore, glad to see that he isn’t compelled to talk to me or thank me for saving his life or anything like that. He waves and wanders off and fifteen minutes later I realize I was reading the compass upside down. 

-traveler

‘The Bone Garden’ smells. It smells for about a mile around its perimeter, which, given that it’s grown in this shrubby not-quite-desert of the outer Death Valley, doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Most people cycling their A/C from the air in the car could drive by without ever noticing it- the stench isn’t permeating exactly. With an open window, though, and paired with the vultures overhead, it isn’t exactly hard to miss. 

‘There’s not much to the surface of ‘The Bone Garden.’ There shouldn’t be, anyway. ‘The Bone Garden’ is an informal place where community members have come to bury carcasses in chicken wire, leaving them for a year or so to decomposition and hungry, burrowing insects but confounding the sorts of animals that might attempt to dig them up and scatter the bones.

It’s the bones that people are after. Given time, the chickenwire fills with the skeleton of the animal in a form that’s near to life. What people need these skeletons for is not a simple question. For some, it’s a morbid curiosity, for others, it’s nostalgia for a lost pet. Some people make art with the bones. Others claim to cast spells. 

There has been some drama in ‘The Bone Garden’ of late. A sign has appeared, handwritten but on wood, that asks the gardeners to not place human remains on the premises. This has been met with backlash, not so much for the rule itself, but for the idea that anybody should be able to regulate a community project such as ‘The Bone Garden,’ which has been maintained for over a decade now. Efforts to organize a clean-up of the discarded bones that litter the ground have been met with similar derision. 

“Those bones belong where they fall,” said one gardener, casting about with the skull of a rodent, “How would you know it’s the garden without the bones?”

The woman is later recorded tripping into a pile of remains as she searches for her plot, waving away the camera from the ground and swearing she tripped on her own shoes.’

The guide fails to mention that the ground of ‘The Bone Garden’ is swarming with insects, and I suppose that’s because they’re the sort of uninterested, half-alive larvae that feast on the dead and ignore or even resent the intrusion of the living, but had I known the earth beneath me would be so saturated with life as to be undulating beneath my sneakers, I probably would have tied bags on my feet or something. As it is, I waffle on whether or not to hike up my pant legs, choosing instead to tuck them into my socks and hope that nothing capable of squirming in between the tight fabric will choose to do so. 

The bone layer on the ground moves slightly with the earth beneath it. The bones make a noise, like the rattle of an insect, course and grating. Piled remains sometimes topple with the sound of hollow wood, the effect of which is to drive some deep instinctual fear of predators into overdrive. I turn reflexively each time this happens and my eyes try to make sense of the shifting landscape, occasionally determining that something large seems to be moving just below the surface of the ground, before the pattern collapes back into chaos. 

I stick around long enough to take note of the plot system- loose at best. Gardeners plant little signs- a name, at least, and an entry date. Some indicate the contents or an estimated time of retrieval. Others advertise their social media accounts. 

Before I leave, I watch a vulture fall from the sky, breaking its neck as it crashes into the center of the garden. I came upon a short scientific article about this. These birds are drawn in by the smell and become locked into a loop, waiting for a meal that never comes. I suspect the dead vulture may feed the others, but before they can descend a woman has made her way out of the woods with chickenwire to bury the fallen bird. 

Another vulture breaks briefly from the circle, hesitates, and returns, drawn in by a promise nobody intends to keep.

-traveler

‘Nestled in the parking lot of a local grocery store in Walter, Montana is a pile of snow and dirt that has not fully disappeared for as long as historical records of the area have been kept. ‘The Snow Pack,’ as its called locally, is actually the reason for the grocery being there in the first place, it having served as a natural refrigerating service in those wild west days of sarsaparillas and gun shot wounds. The grocery soon outgrew the need for ‘The Snow Pack’ but the snow remained all the same and eventually became the easiest place for plows to gather snow from nearby streets, only increasing the likelihood of ‘The Snow Pack’s’ survival. 

Now, the citizens of Walter baby ‘The Snow Pack’ with a care that borders upon anxiety. Unseasonable warmth has threatened the phenomenon, seeing it shrink to a mere ten-square feet in 2022 and, according to some reports, releasing something of a stench that has been frozen under the ice for decades. In the years between, residents have taken to dumping their sidewalk’s snow on ‘The Pack,’ hoping to see it last another year.

The city of Walter has reacted strongly to smear campaign created by Claremont, MO: their football rivals. The campaign has nothing to do with football: it features only a picture of ‘The Snow Pack’ as it was seen at its lowest point with the words: ‘What are they hiding in Walter?’ in bold print underneath. The unusual tone of the campaign has made it popular online and some have arrived at ‘The Snow Pack’ with shovels, in order to get to the bottom of things, both literally and figuratively. Members of the local football team (The Pack) roughed up one such visitor and were released with only a warning, indicating what may only be the tip of a much deeper conspiracy.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Well they’ve done it and we, the people who make a living on the interstate, are all so happy you’ve gotten what you want. As of this edition, likely to be printed in 2023, Texas has completed construction on the nation’s first, and hopefully only, ‘Interstate Loop.’ This is not a loop in the normal sense, that being a sort of long roundabout meant for traffic consistently moving between two likely destinations. This is a loop like for toy cars: dangerously vertical.

And its results are likely to be much the same.

It’s estimated that a vehicle will need to be travelling well over one hundred miles an hour to make anything close to a successful pass at ‘The Loop.’ It’s also suggested that, for a successful pass, a vehicle will likely want to cross lanes of traffic, meaning that, in the unlikely situation of two vehicles attempting to complete the loop at the same time from opposite directions, there’s a decent chance they collide mid-climax and crash to the ground. 

The state of Texas has seen fit to give drivers every chance they might need to succeed at this new strip of interstate. Steep hills on both sides of the loop offer a means by which to gather the speed theoretically required for making it across. The asphalt is smooth and sticky on the wheels, for maximum grip. An ambulance is kept nearby to rescue those survivors of ‘The Loop.’ Say what you will about the project- they’re putting in the work to make it a reality. 

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

Without meaning to, I begin to feel a certain accomplishment in the product I design at ‘The Interactive Baby Toy Factory.’ It’s been a long time since I’ve something with my own hands. The motorcycle counts, I suppose, and I’ve done some repairs on the camper over the year or so that I’ve had it, but to make something from nothing, based on no former design. I don’t think I’ve done that since elementary school thrust me into a craft room and asked me to make a crocodile out of popsicle sticks and glitter. 

The toy I design is a sort of thick plastic space ship with an inky finish and a crew of adorable aliens inside. My thinking is that the toy can be investigated in parts- locked closed while the child is young, and gradually opened as the child reaches ages where smaller toys and more nuanced pretend play can be encouarged. It’s got a little spring engine for zipping around the floor. The aliens inside make a satisfying rattle. The characters are generic enough to be lovable, but edgier that the usual bear. It’s something that will catch the eye of parents, I think. This is a capitalist endeavor, after all. 

I hand my spaceship over to the workers and wait in a room with a two-way mirror. Inside, an eerie mechanical baby seems to be watching me or, I suppose, looking at itself in the mirror. It, doesn’t look much like a baby, minus the silhouette. A long cord trails out of its head and disappears into a track in the ceiling.

It turns its head when factory workers enter the room with the space ship.

‘The owner of ‘The Interactive Toy Factory’ is a parent himself and, prior to branching out on his own endeavor, worked in toy design for several decades. The new factory is a little ‘grumpy,’ he admits. 

“Everybody thinks they can design a toy,” he says, “And when something goes wrong, everyone says they knew it was coming, that toy makers are cutting corners and using cheap plastic or faulty construction. It’s not easy, and it’s not my fault all those kids died!”

There is no record of the incident he is referring to.’

The spaceship is left on the floor and the workers retreat, leaving the curious mechanical baby to its process. It doesn’t move, at first, and I wonder if the toy is too generic. If it’s unable, even, to capture the attention of a child that, in turn, was designed to play with toys. Eventually, though, the baby makes its way to ship, toddles up to two legs, and then comes crashing down face-first on the tail. The fake baby begins to spew, what I assume must be a blood substitute as it mimics harm. It grabs for the spaceship and, in pulling it back, engages the little spring engine which begins to tangle in the baby’s thin hair. The baby tries to stand and slips in, what I personally feel but am in no way medically qualified to say, is way more blood than a child of that size could lose, and falls again in such a way that the hard plastic splinters into shards. What follows is an hour or so demonstration of what an immortal (and suspiciously clumsy baby) can do with pieces of sharp plastic. 

I’m handed a report at the end that predicts a great deal of liability, an expensive and difficult recall, and a death toll in the thousands. I get to keep the bag of gooey plastic shards- a souvenir from a failed career. 

-traveler

‘Washington’s ‘Wash’em’ or ‘The Largest Carwash in the World’ holds the record with an enthusiasm that likely works against it. The nearest competitor, currently located in Korea, is less than a quarter as long as ‘Wash’em’ and takes takes only a half hour to compete. ‘Wash’em,’ on the otherhand, is ever-expanding and the most recent reports suggest traversing the tunnel can take up most of a day.

‘Wash’em’ makes a lot of claims about the length of its carwash, indicating a very thorough understanding of modern cars as well as an appreciation for those vintage models that come through (this being a little tongue-in-cheek, being illustrated with a 2013 Camry). It claims that bleeding edge AI has been plugged into a database chock-full of car facts and allowed to wield of a state of the art visual recognition system to allow for a unique and tailored cleaning experience each time. It will, for instance, take note of novelty antannae toppers and attempt to clean around them, rather than whip them off into the wet, colorful void of its maw, as a lesser carwash might do. It is able to pinpoint and understand the difference between, say, wood sap and bird feces and even the difference between feces left by various species of bird (the literature does not indicate why this would matter exactly). The AI has been programmed to seek out ‘WASH ME’ messages written in dust and to preserve that small swath of filth while writing ‘done and done’ or something of the like beside it, tucking a little wet towel behind the rear wiper so that the driver, annoyed and maybe begrudingly amused, can finish the job.

Reports that the AI will sometimes write other, more concerning messages in the soaps suds and dirt of windshields are vehemently denied by the owners of ‘Wash’em’ and by its team of programmers, none of whom have ever been sighted at the car wash itself. 

‘Nothing to worry about inside the ‘Wash’em,’’ press releases read, ‘Head on in and see for yourself. Just, maybe pack a sandwich and some water.’

I have exactly two buckets in the camper and they are both already in use, keeping drips at bay. I have eaten through half my food. Consumed three-quarters of my potable water. I’ve been in the ‘Wash’em’ for two days and I don’t know how much longer the camper will stand up. 

Another impact shudders through the left wall and the metal creaks and strains under pressure. It’s dark except for the prismatic light leaking in through the towel I’ve taped over the windshield. A scrubber passes over the ceiling and a seam across leaks green foam that quickly resolves into an apple-smelling detergent of some kind. Brushes skidder underneath and the floor begins to warm. The last time the ‘Wash’em’ applied hot wax, the floor became too hot to stand on for half an hour and it fused the legs of my favorite plastic chair to the rug underneath it. I grab a sleeve of crackers from the cabinet and move on to the couch to wait it out. 

Several times I’ve heard voices on the outside of the camper. Calling for help. Calling for me to join them. I wonder what would make me desperate enough to leave- to risk it out there rather than in the safety of the camper. A buckling hull, maybe. An empty water tank. The voice of someone I know. Another day and I may be an entirely different person, willing to do desperate things to-

Oh, nevermind. It’s finished.

-traveler

‘Hardly a single attraction, in its current form, Chamber, Illinois has officially given itself over to the life of F.G. Williams, a former resident who passed away in 2017. Among the many Williams exhibits, one might puruse ‘The Williams Museum,’ which exists in the man’s former home and archives his belonging in the rooms where he left them. One might take the F.G. Williams walking trail, which consists of a circuitous path around town, hitting the liquor store twice, and takes up most of a day for several hours-long sits on local benches, where one is encourage to pass out or weep. If the time is right, one might engage in the F.G. Williams Pageant, an event that consumes the attention of the entire town’s population for months previous as they decide upon which theme of Williams’ life they will be highlighting and how, through song, dance, and short plays, they might convey those themes to the baffled outsiders who sprinkle the bleachers when ‘Williams’ Month’ begins in full. 

Casual fans will be impressed with the library’s collection of Williams’ works, including the original written copies of ‘The Long Lonely’ and ‘Dying Cat,’ two of his darkest memoirs of life living alone. A Williams’ gift shop exists as something of a black sheep on the edge of town, selling booze and tasteless t-shirts and doing what it can to remind people that F.G. Williams, while around, was kind of an asshole and that nobody in the town did a thing to help him.’

I’ve only read Williams’ first book, The Bleak Years, so I enter chamber with something of a handicap in understanding what all the hype is about. It was a tough read, only because I’ve battled with the same feelings that eventually killed Williams. I recognized myself in some of his writing and stopped while I was still in the mood to self reflect and well before I began to ruminate. I don’t know how the people of chamber can live with his stories year-round.

Several statues of the man slump about town, his sad eyes and wild hair captured in metal and stone. I drive past the cemetary where his plot is obvious by its decortation. I see several Williams look-alikes stalking through the park, and wonder if they’re outside fans or residents preparing for the pageant next week. I’ve chosen to skip that, instead, paying an exhoribtant price for what is basically a depression-themed AirBnB, advertised as being ‘in sight of the Williams’ Museum.’

When I pull into the driveway I’m greeted by yet another F.G. Williams, who stalks out of the door and unhelpfully directs the camper up near the garage. 

“You’re late,” he grumbles. I check my watch and see that I’m actually early.

“We don’t need to do the acting part if that’s cool,” I say and the man immediately straightens, removes his beard. 

“Ah, all right. I, uh. My wife’s from here and we just moved into town. Still getting a feel for it.”

“Seems sad.”

“Wait till you see the inside.”

The house is a mess. Empty pizza boxes and beer cans litter the kitchen. Several cat boxes are crammed into the bathroom. Clothes litter the floor of every room.

“This is all clean,” the man explains, “We replace those pizza boxes every week or so in case the cardboard smell is too much. We get a lot of complaints about the cleanliness, actually. Not real enough or what have you, but we can’t just put people in with rats, can we?” He pauses long enough that I wonder if he’s looking for an answer. “Anyway, these rooms are modeled after ‘The Williams House,’ down the street there. You’ll recognize the mess. These are all Williams’ brands. Local pizza place named a pie after him even before he was gone- their claim to fame. Uh, any questions?”

I kick a can gently across the floor and the man picks it up and puts it back where it was. “I’m good,” I tell him. 

There are a few copies of Williams’ books stashed in the drawer near the bed and I flip through them again, all long rants about his current difficulties and his loneliness. Occasional pointed jabs at the very people and businesses that idolize him now. As the sun is setting I begin to hear music from the pageant grounds. Three people weep and pull their hair outside ‘The Williams’ House’ while their spouses film. I close the shades and turn it for the night. 

It’s what Williams would have done.

-traveler

Not unlike ‘The Cactus Maze,’ I’ve been holding off on visiting ‘The House in Reverse’ for a year or two, but a recent announcement- that ‘The House’ had changed ownership and would soon be implementing a reservation system, lit the fire that has finally landed me on the doorstep. Even now, I am careful. There are signs of recent activity about. Mostly literal signs, indicating that ‘The House in Reverse’ will soon be a bed and breakfast. They’re waiting on a few repairs to be finished and, reading between the lines, they’re still not sure how long that might take. 

‘Abandoned for twenty years in the unrelenting weather of Northern Colorado is ‘The House in Reverse,’ which seems to be repairing itself piece by piece rather that deterioriating, as all good and natural things should. The earliest pictures of the house do indicate a skeleton of the building- a foundation and a few men standing about. For many years, these pictures were mistaken for construction, but a closer look has indicated charring on the wood and morose looks on those men’s faces. ‘The House in Reverse’ seemed to have burned down in the early 1900s and subsequent pictures, correctly aligned, reveal its slow return to health. 

By the 1980s, ‘The House’ was standing again, though its roof was sunken in as though by snow. By the 1900s, it was dilapidated but whole. By the 2000s it was only the dated and ruined interior that kept it from changing hands.

Now, those that recognize the pattern wonder if they shouldn’t engage in home ownership. Isn’t this a miraculous house? One that repairs itself? One that only gets better at time? Those pessimists among the Wayside believe ‘The House’ is not entirely in reverse, so much as it is caught in a cycle. They believe the house will reach its perfect state and then burn again, like a phoenix, unable to remain new for more than the blink of an eye. 

And among the pessimists are those waiting with bodies, to bury in the ashes of the house and to see what its magic will do to the bones.’

I have not brought bones or any intent to meddle with magic or buy real estate. My only intent is to spend the night in the house- to witness what others have reported seeing: dust falling upward, cracks in paint healing over. I’m here to witness and to leave nothing behind. 

The doors open easily and the house echoes with my presence. I call a tentative ‘hello?’ into the dark, in case there are others like me or even the new owners. I’ve learned that, in many cases, it’s better to announce myself early on and risk an awkward encounter than to come upon somebody in surprise. I’m happy to be escorted from the premises. I’m not angling to get shot. 

Nobody answers. 

The house is empty and old. The shades on the windows and the sheets on the bed are musty. A bed makes itself while I’m not looking. A creaking stair squeals and then squeaks no more. 

I had planned to camp in the living room, thinking that the bedrooms seemed too personal and much more likely to be maliciously haunted and much harder to escape if the house begins to burn. But there is a pile of dead mice on the floor, stacked like a neat pyramid. I kick it over and find skeletons underneath and then a new mouse runs into the room and joins the pile and dies. My skin feels dry and tight. I worry that ‘The House in Reverse’ is drawing power from living things or else that its chockful of some ancient asbestos-adjacent substance that causes brain damage in mice. Both equally likely in my mind.

This is what the Wayside does to you.

I spend the night in the camper instead, making sure I’m well off the property line. 

-traveler

Autumn takes on a great deal of winter’s chill the nearer one gets to Canada, which makes me thankful for the camper on those nights that I have to camp and makes me wary on those days where snow falls early and slickens the roads. North Dakota has seen snow in the last week and it hasn’t warmed enough, yet, to have melted it. The drifts crowd the road and I find myself claustrophobic even in the oil fields where the pumpjacks move darkly against the pale ground. 

I suppose ‘The Blank Space’ has gotten under my skin already. 

‘Theoretically accessible everywhere, but practically only visible in a square-mile or so of desolate North Dakota acreage, there is an section of visible space that is entirely blank, meaning, it seems to hold no stars or planets. Even satellites tend to avoid ‘The Blank Space,’ and, though this would take a little more proving, it has been reported that birds refuse to fly across it, preferring circuitous routes around the sky hole and generally preferring not to exist in the acreage under any circumstances. 

Several videos have circulated regarding ‘The Blank Space,’ none of them particularly convincing on their own but, as a mass, certainly telling of something strange. Most record satellites that just skirt ‘The Blank Space,’ usually with a background of disappointed travelers who hoped to be the first to document something cross it. One video records the release of a captured pigeon, which hurriedly hops across the field and out of range before attempting to fly. Another is an attempt to interview a parakeet that has been trained to talk. Visibly stressed, the bird only whines for its owner.

Of semi-recent interest is the uptick in disappearances following the migration of Swifties to ‘The Blank Space,’ it having gained some popularity in lieu of the hit song that shares its name. The number of visitors to the field increased a hundredfold in 2014 and several of the people making this pilgrimage never returned, a phenomenon local police attributed to them being ‘young people.’’

Like a lot of these places, it’s easy to identify ‘The Blank Space’ by the fence that’s been put up to keep people like me out. The fence has been cut and twisted back by previous visitors, which saves me the trouble, so I pull the camper a respectable distance ahead, as though I had only pulled over to take a piss somewhere, and then I back track through the chill with my little folding chair and a thermos of coffee.

The stars are bright, tonight, and that makes their sudden absence all the more disorienting. The moon hangs low in the west, the big dipper looks twisted and small in the east, and though my astronomical knowledge is fairly lacking, I can’t seem to pinpoint any one star or planet that’s missing, per se. It’s just that hear, in ‘The Blank Space,’ they are pushed to the side. The universe gapes open where they should be, and the longer I stare the more often I feel my chair tipping forward, as though I’m resting on an invisible precipice and am pulled by some extraterrestrial gravity. It’s intriguing and not entirely unpleasent, the controlled vertigo of a carnival ride. 

I remember, a little late, that I’ve also packed my binoculars, and as I dig them out of my bag I notice a chair like mine not so far away in the field- some artifact left behind by a traveler like me. The longer I stare, the more I see: a bag, a lunchbox, and a phone on the seat of the chair. There is nobody around, as far as I can tell, and I recheck the area with the binoculars before allowing myself to scan ‘The Blank Space.’ There, high up and directly above the abandoned post, I see a body.

I don’t wait long enough to see which way it is falling.  

-traveler