‘The ‘Hallshead’ chain of highway motels is largely confined to the Midwest, with something of a tail that works its way southeast as far as New Mexico. Like its many cousins, ‘Hallshead’ was at its peak in the days of the nuclear family, catering specifically to the road-weary traveling salesman who, after a day of hauling encyclopedias, would want nothing more than to slide into a warm bath shaped exactly like their own body.

Yes- exactly.

It is the ultimate validation of the masculine ego, the form-fitting bath. This is not the opinion of the author but a sample taken directly from ‘Hallshead’s’ fairly intense advertising campaign, one that centered on the bathtubs and largely ignored any other amenities, including the rooms. Billboards featured illustrations of a man perfectly encased in porcelain, his eyes wide and his genitals graciously censored by a cloud of soap bubbles. The man did not look relaxed. He looked as though he was having a revelation.’

Research suggests that the ‘Hallshead’ franchise went under sometime after this copy of Autumn by the Wayside was published, but a little digging churns up an address in western Minnesota: the ‘Hallshead Motel’ that held out the longest.

Hector and I drive by a few times before I realize what the problem is: the building is gone, or else its so fallen into disrepair that it can no longer be seen from the highway. Once that’s clear, I take a chance on the likeliest exit and, sure enough, find a sun-bleached sign still pointing the way to an old foundation, thick with weeds and rebar.

We’re far enough off the beaten path, by then, that I give Hector the run of the place and he gets to work, chewing down some dandelions that have lasted into autumn and I get to work scouting the place for anything of interest. Near the back, I find a place where a wall has collapsed and I spy one of the motel’s famous tubs underneath. The wood is rotted and light. I’m able to clear it after a few minutes.

The bath is too clean to have been exposed to the elements, though nothing else around me suggests that the collapsed wall was some sort of clever camouflage. It’s a strange make, too, consisting not only of the signature silhouette-style tub for a man about my size, but also a small, oval-shaped basin to the side. I circle the tub and lean forward, trying to align my arm with the arm-shaped indention. My hand slides into it and I feel the ceramic tightening comfortable along my fingers- a perfect fit. It hasn’t occurred to me that I might want to climb into the tub until now.

Something tugs at my jeans an I jump. Hector has found me again and he sniffs curiously at the old wallpaper. I pick him up before he can eat any and have nearly turned away when it hits me. I lower Hector into the basin and his eyes go wide. A perfect fit.

I don’t know if you’re supposed to bathe rabbits. I’ve never given Hector a bath but it seems a shame not to take the opportunity now. A small creek runs behind the foundation- runoff from rain in the mountains, I think. Its cold but Hector doesn’t mind and he emerges from the bath cleaner and calmer than I’ve ever seen him.

-traveler

Among Autumn by the Wayside’s myriad appendices is a section that sets destinations aside and considers, instead, the agencies that try to bring order to the Wayside and the factions that frustrate them. I’ve memorized this section to the best of my ability because if somebody is going to give me trouble, it is inevitably a member of some loose organization that claims a moral authority in the realm of traveler behavior.

And, look. I’m not opposed to following rules- even arbitrary ones. I just need to know what they are ahead of time.

This brings me to ‘The CBA’ or ‘The Cleanest Bathroom in America,’ in name if not in title.

‘The Wayside is generous in it’s use of the word ‘best’ and, for the most part, the American traveler is not so bothered by a little roadside hyperbole if it means cutting to the heart of what a business believes is its finest quality. Those who do take umbrage might be members of the fringe group ‘Actual Best’ which, like any standard-setting agency, is respected or reviled depending upon how closely one’s own tastes align with theirs.

‘Actual Best,’ is something of a mystery, having no digital presence whatsoever and a scant trail of physical records, mostly in the form of the ‘Actual Best’ award certificates. Unlike most standardizations, the certificates are not annual. When a restaurant advertising the best cheeseburger in America starts to cut corners, an agent of ‘Actual Best’ will appear to remove the certificate by any means necessary. The swiftness with which these agents appear after a colleague is arrested or killed has led some to believe ‘Actual Best’ is more a possessing spirit than an organization of actual people but, like most crack-pot theories, very little can be done to verify or debunk the notion.’

‘The CBA’ exists in the back of a large, but otherwise unassuming gas station. It’s certified by ‘Actual Best-‘ a fact that’s hard to miss given an ad campaign that crosses the borders of two states and leans hard into bathroom cleanliness where, really, they must do most of their business in gas and esoteric jerky meats. It all makes a little more sense when one realizes that internal signs for ‘The CBA’ forgo a straight shot to meander through the aisles. The gas station, unnamed as far as I can tell, doesn’t have a lot else going for it.

Hector and I follow the signs for full immersion in the experience and also to work up the need to pee which, I suppose, amounts to the same thing. I gather a candy bar here and a small jar of pickled eggs there and find a basket holding system near the restrooms for people like me who might, otherwise, remember that they came to use the restroom and put everything back.

Things go wrong fairly quickly after that.

My first clue should have been the separation of ‘The CBA’ from other clean-looking but mostly mundane restrooms. I assumed this was for those who wanted to skip the line and were okay with a restroom that was slightly less than the cleanest in the nation. My second clue should have been the speed at which the line moved through ‘The CBA.’ No bathroom line moves that quickly. The third, fourth, and all clues after that were likely included in the guidelines posted outside the door, which I failed to read because a spritz of pine-scented bathroom deodorant spooks Hector such that he becomes an undulating leather sack of rabbit bones, trying to work his way from my hands. I have good intentions going in, thinking that of all the rules, unwritten or otherwise, those who curated ‘The CBA’ probably wouldn’t want stray animals milling about on their immaculate ceramic.

Hector calms a bit inside ‘The CBA.’ It’s hard not to. ‘The CBA’s’ cleanliness presents like a tangible static. It’s difficult to look at- bright and overwhelming and smelling of aerosol and asthma inhaler. Air purifiers hum quietly in the corners. Calm music plays overhead. The door closes behind me with a sharp click and the exit sign beside it lights, pressing me to act or get a move on.

I stumble forward.

The water in the toilet sparkles cleaner, no doubt, than the mildewy sludge I have sloshing about in my bottle. That maybe should have been my final clue. ‘The CBA’ is too clean to have seen regular use.

Something crashes outside, startling me mid-pee. I crane my neck and press harder, having read somewhere that it wasn’t healthy to stop- not for anything. A second crash aligns with an impact on the entry door. Frantic knocking follows. Someone is shouting on the other side, their voice muffled.

Operating on sheer habit, I shout “Occupied!” and zip up and then, probably unwisely, check my hair in the mirror.

The hair check ends up being in my favor for, at that same moment, both doors collapse inward with a press of bodies. I end up behind the exit as gas station employees attempt to wrestle the ‘Actual Best’ certificate from a woman that I have to assume is an agent of the titular group. As soon as they have her pinned, a huge man flings himself inside, dogpiling the woman and the employees alike and snatching the frame from all of them. He’s grabbed from below before he can retreat and the fight carries on.

Hector and I slip out before any more ‘Actual Best’ agents materialize and it’s then that I notice the fairly large ‘For Display Purposes Only’ warning above ‘The CBA.’

So… my bad, I guess. Undoubtedly my bad.

-traveler

‘Though each has its curiosities, none of the nation’s ‘Little Italys’ are so curious as to warrant inclusion in this humble guide. Also absent are the handful of ‘Tiny Italys’ which, while certainly being strange as a concept, are all fairly mundane in practice and safe, overall. The northwest’s ‘Truly Miniscule Italy’ comes close, it being both very strange and mildly dangerous, but what danger does exist faces entirely inward. It’s just so small that a visitor could topple the place with an uncareful brush of their fingers.

The only Italian variant to be featured here is ‘Particulate Italy’ which, at the time of publication, hangs in a cloud outside of Springfield, Missouri and seems to be floating west on a leisurely breeze. ‘Particulate Italy’ is a destination that visits you and it’s worth adding any one of the many websites or apps that track ‘Particulate Italy’ to your rotation of electronic devices for it tends to be an unwelcome guest. Why? Well, that involves a short history.

‘Particulate Italy’ was created in the early 2000s, a product of the ‘everything must be smaller’ trend that prevailed at the time. Vancouver’s ‘Microscopic Italy’ (since lost), had held the record for the world’s smallest ‘Italy’ for nearly a decade by then and, daunted by the undertaking that would be involved in challenging Greenland’s ‘Gargantuan Italy,’ bored American scientists decided to create the smallest ‘Italy’ possible with the technology available at the time, hoping to score a much-needed ‘win’ for the States. After some trial and error, and using methods since classified, these scientists produced a fine dust that, on very, very close inspection, turned out to be ‘Particulate Italy.’ A short time later, these scientists died, their lungs filling with blood.  

The absolute lowest bar to qualify for an Italy variant is the inclusion of an identifiable landmark and ‘Particulate Italy’s’ claim is staked on an extrusion that looks a bit like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. This ‘Particulate Pisa’ has led to a great deal of trouble since ‘Particulate Italy’ was released from the lab and the problem is twofold:

When ‘Particulate Italy’ is inhaled, the ‘Particulate Pisa’ has a tendency to hook into the lungs and sort of wobble about with each attempted breath, tearing thousands of little holes in the delicate tissue meant for transferring oxygen to the bloodstream. The secondary issue has to do with the way ‘Particulate Italy’ moves through the air which is, in a word, erratically. ‘Particulate Italy’ floats across the nation like an American football rolls across a field, making sudden, unexpected turns for reasons that cannot always be calculated in time to adjust predictions. Those website and apps that track ‘Particulate Italy’ do their best to pinpoint its location, but their primary purpose is to highlight fairly large zones where ‘Particulate Italy’ mightbe, so that the residents of those areas can be evacuated in time.

It’s recommended that travelers avoid ‘Particulate Italy’ when possible and that proper respiratory gear be donned if a visit proves unavoidable.’

-traveler

‘In 2007, Edmond Bell discovered the entrance to a cave network on his land and, despite a lot of good advice from a number of reasonable people, he decided to map the cave with nothing but a flashlight, a daypack, and enough rope that he could tie it off at the surface and find his way back as necessary. This worked for a week or so, by which time he was able to report that the cave moved gradually downward without branching for as far as his rope would take him. Bell paused for a week to order more rope and to devise a reel-like system to release it so that he could ‘safely’ carry on past his current dead end. He entered the cave on June 23^rd and has not resurfaced. The cave system has been gated. Stern signage recounts an abridged version of this same story, using it as a case study for adventurous stupidity. Edmond Bell is most likely dead, after all.

But.

But the thing is, Bell’s reel is still turning at the same slow pace that might indicate a determined man’s trudging steadily forward into the dark. It stops at night, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a full eight, but it always picks up again, churning rope into the cave. You’re asking, couldn’t it be a quirk of nature? A body dragged along by some underground river? A trick of heat and wind? A hoax, even- a separate reel deep inside that eats up the slack?

Could be. Sure.

You’re asking now about this seemingly infinite supply of rope. That’s the special draw of this destination. Visitors bring rope to add to the reel so that Edmond Bell, whatever’s left of him, doesn’t get stuck on his journey into the earth.’

Hector and I arrive at ‘Edmond’s Reel’ around three in the afternoon with a length of rope I picked up special from a hardware store half an hour down the road. The woman there asked if I was going out to ‘Edmond’s Reel’ and gave me a skeptical look when I told her I was. I haven’t decided, yet, whether the skepticism was in response to my buying the cheapest length of rope that could support the weight of an adult man, or a broad skepticism regarding the whole enterprise.

These things still nag at me, even this far down the road.

‘Edmond’s Reel’ isn’t turning when I arrive but it groans to life after a few moments, as though whatever tugged the rope had been taking a breather. A sign nearby, likely placed there by the Rangers, details the use of the additional reel, which has been erected anonymously and allows for visitors to add line without interrupting the feed from ‘Edmond’s.’ The instructions are simple but I’ve never been very good with rope, so it takes me a while to get everything tied together and spun.

When I turn back around I see that ‘Edmond’s Reel’ has halted again and it’s a full minute before I realize his line has disappeared between the bars, severed from the creaking contraption that kept him anchored for over a decade. I rush to the entrance of the cave and watch the rope pull into the thick shadows beyond the gate. It disappears without a sound.

When I turn, I find Hector nibbling idly at the length of rope now drooping from ‘Edmond’s Reel.’ He stares back, daring me to point a finger, claiming, with innocent rabbit eyes, that the rope pulled loose on its own and he’s only making the best of a difficult situation.

I wonder, though. These things nag at me, even this far down the road.

-traveler

‘Retired, now, after many years of service, the mystery solving kombucha mother, known affectionately as ‘SCOBY,’ can be found souring the water of a two-ton tank off I-295 in New Jersey. ‘SCOBY’ is kept alive by the grace of the state where, in the nineties, it served as an unorthodox mascot for local law enforcement. ‘SCOBY’ was wheeled about in its tank, visiting elementary school classrooms in the mornings to tremble at the though of the audience considering recreational drugs, and to crime scenes in the evening, where it shuddered and gulped over bludgeoned corpses and stolen art.

It might be noted, here, that ‘SCOBY’s’ communication is limited to twitch-like movements and brief gurgles. At the outset, these were interpreted by the group of teenagers that discovered it and who, after hundreds of crime scenes and long media tours, dispersed. Only one of the original five remain in the state and he has refused contact with ‘SCOBY’ for nearly a decade.

‘SCOBY’s’ collaboration with the police ended when it exposed a deep corruption at work among officers. It quickly became a mascot for anti-police factions and, rather than make a martyr of a mushroom, the state placed ‘SCOBY’ in its current limbo with a signboard that sidesteps its history by describing it only as ‘the largest kombucha mother in the state.’ Attempts to communicate with ‘SCOBY’ through the glass have widely failed. It has instead become a sort of inactive pilgrimage site for those wronged by the police.

Admission is charged on the basis of donations. Visitors receive a bottle of ‘SCOBY’s’ kombucha for every five dollars spent. Connoisseurs maintain that it is nearly undrinkable and witches claim that it makes for incredible results in the magic of truth-telling.’

At some point in the previous year, a local police department donated a plaque to ‘SCOBY’s’ tank. It says ‘FEEL FREE TO TAP THE GLASS.’ ‘SCOBY’ doesn’t acknowledge me when I pry it away, but it feels good to do it.

-traveler

Three days. It takes three days of eating french fries and elephant ears and hot dogs- of paying grossly inflated carnival prices- before I give in and get in line for ‘The Inevitable Rollercoaster.’ And it’s not even the food, really. I’ve survived on worse diets for longer stretches of time for no better reason than poor mental health. At the end of three days, it’s the music that does me in.

‘It’s a bit of a misnomer to call it ‘The Inevitable Carnival’ just because it’s home to ‘The Inevitable Rollercoaster.’ The fact of the matter is that a traveler need not interact with any part of the enterprise but the rollercoaster in order to escape. It’s easier to pay for tickets and stand in line than it is to, say, sneak through the grounds and commandeer the ride, but there seems to be no standing obligation to be lawful in one’s actions in order to find one’s way out of the quantum looping carnival-shaped phenomenon that can be said to exist both everywhere and nowhere at once.

For the sake of describing it however, we’ll say that ‘The Inevitable Carnival’ appears like any other traveling carnival one might spot on the horizon, all flickering lights and tinkling music. There, at the center, is ‘The Inevitable Rollercoaster,’ which stands much taller and spreads much more widely than any mobile rollercoaster should. Once one spies ‘The Inevitable Rollercoaster,’ it becomes impossible to leave its outskirts. Practically, this means every road and highway will loop back around to the carnival grounds, reappearing on the forward horizon as soon as it’s disappeared from behind. The cycle is broken only after riding ‘The Inevitable Rollercoaster’ and with no particular fanfare. In fact, riding anything else afterwards feels like an anti-climax.’

The thing is that I hate roller coasters and really all carnival rides. I get motion sick in the back of cars and on boats in anything but the stillest waters. I get extra motion sick on carnival rides and the sickness, there, is so much more public. So, while Day 1 at ‘The Inevitable Carnival’ can be reasonably written off as me doing my due diligence in confirming the inevitability of it all. The following two days are dread and hard-headedness and unceasing carnival music which rides the wind to my camp at the furthest point of the loop, where I can look every direction and see ‘The Inevitable Rollercoaster’ towering in the distance.

At the end of the third day I smuggle Hector into one of the little rollercoaster carts and when I warn the ride operator that I sometimes get sick she puts me in the back, saying that the ride goes fast enough that I’m unlikely to vomit forward with enough force to spray even the person in front of me- that, if I know what’s good for me, I’ll turn my head to keep from choking on throw-up that hangs in my esophagus, caught between the momentum of the coaster and the strength of my stomach contractions.

It’s the best advice I’ve received in a long time.

-traveler

There used to be this toy, this little blue-gray plastic oven, that came with diecast molds and bottles of goop. Squeezed into the molds and baked, the goop would solidify into rubber-like toys. Bugs mostly, but monsters and aliens too. I loved that thing, despite its tendency to overheat and to leave streaking blisters on my hands when I tried to remove the rubber too soon after baking.

It had a smell- a smell like melted plastic and ozone. I haven’t thought about the toy in years but as soon as I take my helmet off, a breeze rolls off ‘The Astroturf Fields’ and the memory comes back clearly.

‘It’s hard to argue with the farmers who run ‘The Astroturf Fields.’ Well, no, it’s easy to argue with them, since there’s just no way they’re doing what they claim to do, which is growing astroturf from the ground like it’s sod. It’s hard to get anywhere in an argument with them, though, because when everyone at the farm does their job, it sure looks a lot like they’re growing plastic grass.

The nearest anyone has come to debunking the enterprise involved a particularly stubborn group of podcasters that caught wind of something shady happening on ‘The Astroturf Fields’ at night. The investigation culminated in the discovery that an absurd amount of pesticide was being applied to the fields and, though many might call any use of pesticide absurd in this case, the quantity in use was also criminal. ‘The Astroturf Fields’ were fined and they issued a boilerplate apology as well as pictures of what they claimed was a recent surge in detrimental pests but was, clearly, images of rubber locusts.’

I kick a rubber ant off my shoe and heave Hector’s kennel out onto the field with me. I don’t trust him outside of it, not here. He chews at questionable grass all the time and there’s no question that whatever rubber or plastic they’ve used in the astroturf will sit in his insides for however long he has left or until it dams up some inner orifice that’s necessary for rabbit life. I can’t help but wonder if I’m not exposing myself to carcinogens just by breathing the air over the field. Much of what I am nostalgic for is cancer-causing in retrospect. I swat a fly away from my face and it lands with a quiet thud on the ground nearby.

A rubber fly.

I’ve mostly given up trying to understand how things happen at Wayside destinations, but this is truly something else. I turn the fly over in my hand- definitely rubber. I glance around and then surreptitiously slide the fly into my pocket. I wish I’d collected the ant but it’s gone when I look for it. I don’t know what I’ll do with them but nostalgia’s a weird motivator.

Hector and I move inward. It’s a Sunday, which means the farm is technically closed, but forums have suggested nobody seems to pay much mind to trespassers who aren’t actively damaging the grounds. Without any real direction, without any sense of what it is to experience ‘The Astroturf Farm,’ I take us toward a scarecrow assuming that if anything freaky is going to happen it will happen near something like that. It’s the first thing around that isn’t made of rubber, that is, in fact, made of the sorts of materials a person might expect a scarecrow would consist of. It’s dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and swim trunks and it sports a tie-dye bucket hat. It’s stuffed with natural-feeling hay, though three rubber cockroaches shake out from under the cloth as I poke at it.

I hear rough rubber honking as I stoop to collect the bugs. When I look up again I find a rubber crow is now perched on the bucket hat. It holds a translucent rubber beetle in its mouth that’s the kind of green color that suggests it might glow in the dark.

It seems pretty cool so I reach for it.

When I make it back to the motorcycle, and I do eventually, I find that one of the newer editions of Autumn by the Wayside has an addendum regarding ‘The Haunted Scarecrow of the Astroturf Fields:’ a related, but distinct Wayside attraction that happens to exist on top of another.

The scarecrow chases Hector and I back and forth across the fields while rubber crows pelt me from above, bouncing lifelessly off my body and onto the grass. The rubber insects I collected squirm in my pockets. The astroturf shivers in the wind. I become aware of the distant forms of farmers, watching this unfold from the barn. They ignore my calls for help, dipping and swaying on rubber legs, softened by the midday sun.

-traveler

I’ll say this- the Department of Transportation does a lot of things right. Would a more robust train system be nice? Sure, but given that the interstate network is what we’ve been handed from previous generations, USDOT mostly pulls its weight and makes for a fairly smooth, fairly efficient ride- especially when you discover, like I have, that they also maintain the shadowy Gray Road version of the interstate. That’s a lot to handle in and of itself, what with having to retrieve people who stop for bathroom breaks and get lost over the Gray Shoulder. I wouldn’t do that job. Not for anything.

Next to the Gray Road Network, the tailored ‘Wrong Way’ system is a fairly underrated piece of American infrastructure. It’s saved me from trouble twice and, with a sudden abdomen-clutch-wavy-bike-stop, I get the sense it’s intervened on my behalf for the last time.

‘Why do chances always come in three? Baseball, probably. The traditions of baseball are reflected in nearly every situation in which rules or regulations exist in America, insinuated, like a recessive gene, in the very makeup of the country.

In this instance, the rule of three applies to the number of lifetime warnings a traveler is granted by ‘The Wrong Way’ and, given that these warnings are only delivered in the absolute direst circumstances and only in response to situations that can be avoided by going the opposite direction, the average person rarely needs the lot of them. Most truly disastrous events have their roots in people long before they hit the road.’

I don’t think much of it, at first, this final intervention. I pull off to the shoulder, like I have in the past, and I chew my lips and second guess myself (like I have in the past). The placement of ‘wrong way’ signs is not always clear, even in mundane situations, and it’s easy to mistake a warning pointed at other drivers for one that pertains to me.

The longer I look, however- the further I trace the road I’d planned on taking and see, along it, several dozen more ‘wrong way’ signs, the more I’m sure. And rather than relief (or, along with relief) I feel a hollow sort of dread.

There aren’t many objective ways to gauge the length of a life until it’s near to ending. I’ve had my last warning, and it seems as clear a sign as any that this journey, if I choose to continue it, will be the death of me.

-traveler

I’ve let myself get out of shape somewhere along the way. It may have started when I built the bike- before that I’d been walking and hitchhiking and lugging everything I owned on my back. I was fit, for a while, and then a little sickly. A little worn down. Tired. When I built the bike, some part of me decided it would never approach that low weariness again.

The truck, before all that, just wouldn’t go certain places. It was big and heavy and anything rougher than freeway would shake pieces of it off onto the shoulder. Sometimes those pieces were important so, though it theoretically was capable of four-wheel drive, I rarely risked any road that might require it. I was fitter, then, too. Healthy, even.

The bike has encouraged me to keep more than I can carry and it manages to reach places the truck wouldn’t. It’s held together surprisingly well. The bike has made me lazy and so, in climbing to my spot in ‘The Slumber Complex,’ I approach that old weariness faster than I imagined was possible.

‘It must have taken some doing to think of a name like ‘The Slumber Complex’ for a structure that is just a bunkbed taken to an unwarranted extreme. Dozens of beds wide, hundreds of beds tall, the addition of an exterior shell in 2017 makes ‘The Slumber Complex’ less like a bunkbed and more like a shitty hostel than ever before. It is the nearest thing to a human hive that has yet existed due, in part, to a work-to-stay policy with a focus on expansion.

In plain terms: you can stay however long you want if you build yourself a new bed each night. A lot of people are more than happy to take ‘The Slumber Complex’ up on that offer, and with the shell in place, the interior has taken on a density some might call unsustainable. The current state of ‘The Slumber Complex’ is difficult to describe. It is as wide as a field, as tall as an office building, and as tenuously creaking as an old home’s wooden staircase. Traversing it is like climbing a tree- like waking in the middle of the night during a sleepover, having to tip-toe over the unconscious bodies of friends to reach the bathroom.

There is no bathroom, here, reader, only designated overlooks and the filthy safety nets below them.’

I took a picture of the board map in the lobby, both for reference and to preserve a sense of ‘The Slumber Complex’ at what must be the beginning of its decline. The old map has been annotated and the annotations have seen so much further annotating that it’s difficult to read two-dimensionally. I noted that bunks used to follow a fairly simple coordinate pattern, something like 12-1-3 would be the first bunk in the third row on the twelfth level. Now there are so many partial levels and rows that my own bunk assignment is: 27JA-172R-13F/F.

There’s an app that’s supposed to tell me where I’m going but it asks for access to my photos, my microphone, my camera, and just about every other app I have installed as soon as I open it. Once I deny the permissions, the interactive map functions so slowly that I wonder if it’s sulking. I delete it and try to make sense of the physical signage instead, working my way up a few levels, and then wandering between staircases as a means of resting. By the time I’ve reached the 14th level, I seem to have found my general interior zone. As far as I cant tell, the letters indicate bunks that don’t correspond to the original, whole-number system and work roughly left-to-write (or down-to-up if we’re talking altitude). Forward slashes indicate bunks that crisscross, which seems to be a way to fit beds almost directly on top of each other without smothering the visitor on the lowest bunk.

I pause on the 16th level to congratulate myself on cracking the code and to drink a soda that I’d been saving for dinner. I’ve hardly turned the cap when the Stranger appears out of nowhere and kicks me over the nearest railing.

I realize, in the first second of that fall, that understanding ‘The Slumber Complex’s’ system and knowing where I am within it are two very different things. Facing upward, I have no idea whether the drop will be a yard or fifty feet. It’s with mixed-emotions that I slam onto a sub-floor that’s been relegated to upper level-15. My momentum carries me over another ledge and I bounce downward like a ball in a pachinko machine, cracking ribs and twisting limbs along the way.

Between falls I become aware of a black cloud above me- the Stranger’s rabbit, pulling its dark, silken fur through the bunks in pursuit. I plummet, again, land, and roll into a railing, finally coming to a stop on my back. The rabbit leaps down on top of me and the world goes dark. It’s almost peaceful until the black rabbit begins to burrow into my chest.

I try to pull the thing off me but each handful of fur ends up being too long to create any tension. The rabbit’s body evades my fingers, even as I scrape them over the bright spot of pain where it’s landed. Between heartbeats, I wonder if it’s already inside me, if it’s worked its way under my ribcage or into my stomach.

Then, the black rabbit squeals and the veil lifts. ‘The Slumber Complex’ shivers and creaks about me as other visitors clamber between bunks to see what the ruckus is. They help me to sitting. They assume I stepped wrong and slipped over an edge. The Stranger and his rabbit are gone again.

“Fuck!” Someone shouts. “What the hell is that?”

I push a hand away and make it to my knees to see what he’s pointing at. It’s only Hector, chewing a mouthful of long black fur.

-traveler

Well, here I am, featured in another museum. First it was the ‘Museum of Still Mirrors’ which was, really, just a man who drew caricatures so quickly that he could have a picture of any given guest ready before they’d finished perusing the other displays. There was the ‘You-seum,’ a sort of new age therapeutic experience led by a guy that can’t have had any real credentials in the field. Tangentially, that was a drastically different experience than the ‘You See-Em?’- which was a museum, I guess, except that it consisted only of landscape shots blown up to a pixelated blur and grainy video footage collected by a woman that would, occasionally, shout “you see ‘em?” while pointing at the empty spaces between trees. After 90 minutes of telling her I didn’t see anything she just shrugged and said “Well, they see you.”

This is all beside the point. The ‘As Seen on TV Museum’ is not one that features me as a technicality or a gimmick. I am featured under the theme and, worse, I am named.

‘Few descriptors boast, with such confidence, the low quality of a product as the phrase ‘as seen on TV.’ The ‘As Seen on TV Museum’ is the exception that makes the rule, it being a surprisingly thorough examination of everything that has ever been featured on television at one time or another. Yes, you have some dresses from soap operas and some costumes from sitcoms to bolster the foyer, but the vast majority of the sprawling collection spotlights that which is normally outside the spotlight altogether.

Here you will find various cardboard props, made so that they will pass muster only in the far backgrounds of scenes. Here you will find newscaster’s desks and politician’s podiums. Here you will find profiles- analyses, even- of the headless models that sometimes feature in stock footage for illustrating the obesity crisis. Everything that has ever been seen on TV has a place here. Of course, this has not been proven, because absolute proof seems an impossible task. This has not been unproven either, for every person that has entered the ‘As Seen on TV Museum’ with a challenging snippet of footage has found a display devoted to it, often emerging fractally from unrelated displays and so seamlessly that they might have grown there naturally.’

What I find out, very quickly, is that the ‘As Seen on TV Museum’ has a highly sensitive security system in place. It issues a light warning ping when I reach in to remove the little model of myself from a scene- one in which I was captured in the back of a news story about migrating geese. It pings again when I scratch at my name on the small placard which gives a concise but surprisingly accurate biography of myself. It makes a much louder, much more piercing sound when I tug at the model again and feel one of its feet give from the display.

I step backward and reassess the situation before a new ping startles me and I see that Hector, left to his own devices, has begun to nibble at a small model tree under the main display behind me. Finally, the system issues a low, almost sarcastic ping as I make a note of the fire escape and of the folded map I was given when I bought my ticket.

The sirens start before I’ve even leaned over the display again. I yank the model-me from the base of the display and bolt into the fire escape though, in this case, ‘into’ literally means I run into a stationary door- a prop fire escape that I mistook for the real deal. Hector bolts back to the model tree and the siren squeals indignantly. The footfalls of a surprisingly robust security team grow nearer as I gather the wayward rabbit and push through the real fire exit on the opposite side of the room.

The siren is sounding in the parking lot, much to my dismay, and any hope I had to blend in to the crowd disappears as I plow through the only other people visiting- a previously happy family with a dozen kids of indeterminate age and gender. I force any sort of shame I might feel into the back of my head, saving it for later when I’m trying to sleep. All I can think, now, is that if I linger too long, if I start a police chase, I might end up back on TV and all of this will have been for nothing.

-traveler