The passage to ‘The Choker’ is a narrow one, to start. And it’s not like they want you to find it, they being the Rangers who maintain and supervise Washington’s Greater Cave System which, until recently, was closed to the public due to all the deaths. Now re-opened (because those Rangers were blind sighted by an argument that those people weren’t just endlessly wandering in the caves, very much alive), accessing ‘The Choker’ has become a little easier and, passing by, it’s finally made sense for me to cross it off the list before an appeal on the dead vs. missing decision inevitably comes through. 

Still, ‘The Choker’ is only accessed via a branch of the caverns that is deemed ‘unstable’ and it takes the better part of three hours just to reach and find the little crevasse that opens wide enough to take a body but isn’t one of the similar but much more dangerous crevasses that just become tighter and tighter or drop travelers into seemingly endless pits. A small, spraypainted ‘X’ inside ‘The Choker’s’ passage confirms I’ve got the right one, which is only so comforting.

It’s still a tight squeeze.

‘‘The Choker’ is observed, not visited- a massive crystalline geode with a relatively tiny hole in the bottom where, if one chooses, they might painstakingly shove their head through to get a view of the sparkling panorama. It’s recommended that travelers bring radiant light sources, again, small enough to fit through a melon-sized hole, and it’s recommended that a form of lubricant is used at the penetration point. Heads go in a lot easier than they come out, and ‘The Choker’ is littered with the blood and skin of panicked visitors.’

The entry makes me think that the entrance to ‘The Choker’ is going to be this scene of old violence, brown with blood or something like that. It’s not- I almost miss it, actually, and could have spent another half hour crawling through the narrow approach passage which is said to end abruptly some ways ahead. As it is, I happen to glance up in time for my headlight to catch something glimmering in the shadows above and, to the left, I find another small ‘X’ indicating that I’ve reached my destination. 

My research allows me to avoid two common pitfalls, here. One is the utter destruction of my headlight while attempting to shove it, and my head, through the hole at the same time. The other is getting my head through without considering that I won’t have room to pass a light source in after. Several blogs I’ve read suggested candlelight is the way to enjoy ‘The Choker’ but I do carry some semblance of Leave No Trace in my philosophy and so have opted for a small, collapsible lantern. I pass it through the hole and start the unpleasant process of lubing up my head. For this I’ve chosen a water-based based lube that’s graphic design and instructions indicate it was meant for something a great deal more enjoyable than this. 

And it’s cold. 

Generously lubricated, I start to squeeze my head up into the chamber, rotating, a little, so that my nose and chin can pass through small divots in the stone. Through, finally, I try to enjoy the crystals and I try to wonder at the mysterious beauty of nature and consider that I’m probably one of only a handful to have seen this and so on and so forth but the rock around my neck is oppressive and the prospect of now pulling my head back down daunting and when I do a small test to see if I can alleviate some of the anxiety I find, to my deep concern, that I can lift my legs from the ground below me and be stably, if not comfortably, supported by my neck alone. 

It takes a great deal of mental effort to not immediately start shoving myself back down with my arms and, instead, remember a suggestion that I instead try to lift my shoulders and rely on that more subtle, and thus more gentle, leverage so that when I emerge I will still have most of the skin of my face. Another panicked minute ticks by as I search for just the right angle and then suddenly my chin scrapes below the edge of ‘The Choker’ and, slowly but surely, the rest of my head follows. 

It must be frustrating for the Rangers to see people, like myself, emerge from the cave with the facial scrapings and dirty lube-matted heads indicative of visiting ‘The Choker’ and to have little-to-no recourse. I don’t dwell on it for long, though. There are certain Wayside destinations that make me happy to be free and alive, by comparison, and ‘The Choker’ proves to be among them. I rinse my head with a bucket outside the camper and smile as the afternoon air stings the little pink wounds about my head.

-traveler

‘Google Maps has made watching ‘The Zombie Mall’ so easy and safe that it’s difficult to conceptualize the danger it represents. ‘The Mall’ originates from the outskirts of Bedford, Nebraska and was called ‘Eagle Mall,’ in a vague nod to patriotism. ‘Eagle Mall’ remains the core of what it has become now: a sprawling and useless structure, still suckling electricity from the grid despite several attempts to disconnect it. The meta-parasitic denizens have established elaborate redundancies the ensure the mall has at least the bare minimum required to support itself and, thus, them. They welcome visitors who follow their ‘laws’ and maintain a fairly healthy trade of organically produced vegetables, marijuana, and ultraviolet koi fish. Those who defy them are offered a choice: banishment to the outside world or some form of restorative justice, approved by a council of trained therapists. 

All right, so ‘The Zombie Mall’ might be something like a living utopia and further research suggests the undead connotation may have been the result of a smear campaign championed by local governments. ‘The Zombie Mall’ is certainly and illegally encroaching upon the lands of those governments but it seems to be improving them. Crime rates in ‘The Mall’ are low, at least, and poverty is unheard of. 

As a tendril of ‘The Zombie Mall’ approaches the outskirts of the capitol, residents of Lincoln are divided. Some believe ‘The Mall’ is a threat, the other believes it is a savior, and both sides believe the opposition represents a sort of death cult mentality. Crime in the city is up as people come to blows over the issue. Families are building mall-proof bunkers which, realistically, will provide residential spaces for mall citizens when it inevitably rolls over the land.

Until that day, it’s recommended that travelers avoid the outskirts of Lincoln, where everyone seems determined to prove the tired zombie trope that humans are the real monsters. 

Do visit ‘The Zombie Mall,’ though. It may be the safest place in the world.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

I am unabashed at the urinal- one of my prouder attributes. While some men need a second or two to get going, I am pissing right out of the gate. While some men’s streams falter when they find themselves with a neighbor, I find the company strengthens my resolve. When a line is growing behind me I easily find it within myself to power through a quick pee and make room. I once stopped to pee while being hunted by another human being. I’ve pissed myself on several occasions and would dare anyone to have faced the things I have without doing the same. 

Peeing is not a problem, for me. 

But there is something about ‘The Great Outdoor Urinal’ that gives me stage fright. The lead-up, maybe. The dark. Maybe it’s the smell- not like a bathroom but not quite like a forest, either. Like an old wax museum. Like a cellar. 

Maybe also it’s the bear, which must be tense with inaction somewhere in the room. ‘The Great Outdoor Urinal’ sits in a massive room, but it’s tightened by the presence of that bear. 

‘Some things meant to be fun and folksy become terrifying with age. These are your worn-down statues. Your elderly clowns. Your debatably-safe country zip-line tours. Your rickety bridges. Most communes.

‘The Great Outdoors Urinal’ seems like that same sort of thing but it was built that way in 2023, crafted with careful details to make it terrifying from the start. So, where many animatronic shows use darkness to conceal the unforgiving machinery that puppets their mascots, ‘The Great Outdoors Urinal’ is just a little more dark than necessary. And it’s secluded- the owners have purchased all the land off the shoulder of the interstate but ‘The Urinal’ is a full hour away from the nearest exit with nothing inbetween. 

More than anything else, thought, ‘The Great Outdoors Urinal’ is strangely exacting. Its shell is made of cement and steel. Its faux forest is carefully arranged and always clean. And it only except urine as an activation method. Attempting to pour water or lemonade into the urinal shuts off the lights and upsets the bear. So much as spitting in the urinal before peeing will often result in the same sudden anger. It is reported that bringing a container of someone else’s urine will do, but that animal urine is out, and that ‘The Great Outdoors Urinal’ can differentiate in the blink of an eye.

Come with a full bladder, traveler, and expect a show.’

The bear has only been pictured twice, at least as far as the internet is concerned. Both are frantic and blurry- the bear only approaches when someone has attempted to trick ‘The Urinal’ into accepting something other than urine. In one, a hulking figure is just visible between two false trees and on the edge of a beam of light. In the other, the bear’s face is caught by sunlight from the open exit- unapologetically fierce and mechanical in contrast to the contrived peace of the overall display. Neither picture indicates that the bear is bound by cords or tracks. Nobody that has ventured off the trail to the urinal has found the bear or discovered a hatch from where it might emerge. The somewhere-presence of the bear makes this whole thing very uncomfortable. 

So I think that’s why I falter, at first. Why I struggle to find my stride. It’s the same feeling of guilt I sometimes get when I leave a store without buying anything- afraid that some manager thinks I’m stealing or that somehow, something has appeared in my pockets that will set off the alarm at the door.

I’ve had enough water to need to go. I haven’t had so much that it will be watered down and unrecognizable. The chances of my releasing anything but urine have got to be near-zero. 

But still, I stand dick-out and afraid. 

-traveler

‘Much of the Wayside will appear, to the traveler, prematurely aged. This is mostly due to lack of maintenance (which, in turn, is due to the lack of capital for passion projects). A rare few cases, however, mark the result of failed experiments and these are aged appropriately, though prototypical materials may wear poorly. A traveler will rarely see these experiments in their early days due to confidentiality protocols and a tendency for them to go wrong quickly and so disastrously as to leave no survivors. 

Some suggest this is by design.

‘The Anti-Sleeping Bench’ system in Broadbank, RI has managed to be just durable enough, and just harmless enough, to remain a valid destination since its installation in 2016. More than that, these benches have proven to be something of a seasonal attraction due to their changeable nature.

The pitch is something like this:

Imagine a bench meant to be as inhospitable as possible whilst still performing the minimum duties required for being a bench. Now, imagine all the simple hacks someone might employ to make this bench comfortable enough to sleep on: cushions, stacked boxes, twisted sleeping postures and so on and so forth. NOW, imagine a bench that can alter its design to combat these so-call ‘hacks.’ Imagine a bench system that’s shape can be changed from a central hub accessible only by the local government- a bench that hacks back, if you will (though not literally in this case). 

That is ‘The Anti-Sleeping Bench’ of Broadbank, though it functions a little differently than intended. Broadbank’s political climate is tumultuous and the warring parties have very different feelings about people who need to sleep on park benches. When the liberal party is at the controls, the benches become subdued but still quite uncomfortable. While the conservative party is in power, the benches blossom into wild and everchanging forms to ward off even the loitering sitters. 

The unfortunate truth is that the wealthy in both parties resent the unhomed equally and are only at odds about how massively to inconvenience them. It goes without saying that the voters of Broadbank are roundly depressed. 

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

Autumn by the Wayside is much like any other guidebook in that its directions are generally limited to the cardinal, which is to say, it mostly just tells you where things are before delving into the vague and sometimes outright dangerous advice is contains about actually navigating the Wayside attractions. I’ve come to appreciate the book for its consistency, at least. 

The entry for ‘A Food Oasis’ raises red flags almost right away.

‘One week before an attempt to reach ‘A Food Oasis,’ a traveler should begin to cut meals in half, or so, and be rid of snacking altogether. A day or two out, the traveler should subsist on coffee and, if they choose, water. Good and hungry, the traveler should proceed to Goose Lake, MI, where three superstores crushed the local groceries and then collapsed in on themselves, leaving the town wholly reliant on food from elsewhere. 

Unless one counts ‘The Food Oasis,’ which appears only to those who most need it (coordinates follow).’

Needless to say I do check the coordinates on a full stomach and find nothing but a rundown park and several scrawny kids who sell me a few cups of foul lemonade for the absurd price of a dollar-per. When I ask about ‘A Food Oasis’ they waggle their eyebrows and roll their eyes, neither wanting to suppress their contempt at this obvious tourist nor wanting to lose a valuable lemonade customer. I leave and begin the starvation diet. 

A week passes and I am hurting. 

When I return to Goose Lake, those same kids are there, standing outside a farmer’s market and still hawking their neon drinks. I push past them and walk up and down, waiting to see what trick ‘The Food Oasis’ has in store for the hungry traveler. When I break down and dig into my wallet to buy an apple, I hear one of the kids snickering. I look back at him and the illusion of the market dissipates- a mirage. 

From behind their lemonade stand, the kids bring a basket of grainy apples and I buy them happily.

-traveler

‘The Monster Simulator’ is billed as the first of a series of unmanned attractions to be installed all along the country’s interstates but I’ve never seen another and it’s been… a decade or two. ‘The Monster Simulator’ itself doesn’t look like it’s seen much maintenance in that time, its parking lot overgrown and its turnstiles spinning freely in their sockets. The building isn’t much to look at- a rusted tin-looking little shack, like the visitor centers you see at the less frequented national parks. 

The inside, though…

‘If this author were to take the sum of his experiences on the Wayside and attempt to identify some secret piece of wisdom that had been shared between its founders, his guess would be: “Make it underground.” 

So much of the Wayside is underground, reader, and here I am not speaking with double meaning. There seems to be this drive to amongst Wayside entrepreneurs to include some subterranean portion in their plans. Sometimes the fancy strikes right away, as one might see in ‘The Museum of American Darkness.’ Sometimes it strikes late, as with the many hidden passages beneath ‘The Absolutely Mundane House’ outside Springfield, Ohio. 

Often it is done in secret and then presented as a little surprise for the unsuspecting visitor. This is the case for ‘The Monster Simulator.’ There is more to it than presents on the surface.’

Having read this passage prior to stopping, I enter the false-upper of ‘The Monster Simulator’ with a puffy jacket and a flashlight, both of which are almost immediately necessary as the inside attempts no further illusion and descends, on stairs dangerously steep, into the sort of hollow pitch black that indicates a chamber. When the door closes behind me, the darkness becomes absolute. I shake out a glowstick and duct tape it to the bottom stair.

For the first time in a while, I feel like I know what I’m doing. 

‘The Monster Simulator’ has me on edge for about ten minutes before it starts to do its thing, which is to say, it starts to do something other than let me wander in the great vacant space beneath the shake. I begin to hear a voice, distant at first, but unmistakably miserable. As the program progresses, the voice becomes loud enough that I’m able to make out the clear boo-hoos of a small child, probably a boy. 

After about ten minutes, that sadness becomes deafening. I deploy ear plugs.

Dim lights appear at the edges of the chamber, revealing it to be rectangular. There are curtains draped haphazardly along the walls. They shift and sometimes pull up entirely. It’s all fairly eerie but the first real shock I get is when the ceiling above me bulges downward and again when the bulge moves to one edge of the chamber and massive mechanical fingers descend along the wall to tentatively feel along the dusty pavement. 

The fingers retract suddenly and the bulges reappear, pressing downward toward me one after the other until the ceiling threatens to crush me into the ground. I suspect there are safeties in place to prevent this sort of thing happening but the place is old and I don’t want to die alone so leap out of the way, kicking off the sudden protrusion as it begins to retract. With that touch, the room is silent, again, and still and it remains that way for a minute or so- long enough for the fight-or-flight to leave my body, anyway. 

I take the walk back to the exit slowly, in case there are more surprises in store. It isn’t until I’ve stepped onto the first stair that I notice something glowing behind me: two luminous eyes, each my own height in diameter and positioned to form the illusion of a giant, its face upside down, peering down at me from above what I now understand to be a child’s bed. 

I’m the monster, here.

-traveler

It’s been about a year since I finally escaped ‘The Library of Book Levers’ which, if my rough estimations are correct, stocked a real-book to lever-book ratio of about 10:1. I understand the importance of displaying a subject in its context, here meaning that the lever-books would look silly on their own and even sillier on a shelf with dozens of other lever-book, but it meant I had to pull a whole lot of books off shelves before things started moving. There’s also something to be said for the ease with which a person, like me, is able to accidentally trigger the first lever when things are light and easy and the contrasting difficulty of finding a similar door-trigger when the situation has devolved and an exit is important. 

‘The Library of Book Levers’ became increasingly difficult to appreciate and navigate the further in I got, is what I’m saying, and it put me off libraries for a while but now I’m here at ‘The Library of Hollowed-Out Books’ and I know, already, that I’m going to regret going inside. 

‘Nobody stashes something mundane in a hollowed out book. Do you know why? Because hollowing out books is harder than it looks. It takes strength and determination to get through a book of any useful size. It takes care to keep the page-edges straight and natural-looking enough to pass a glance.

Then, there’s also the importance of finding the right book which, as we’ve discussed, has to be at least a little thick and probably hardback and, if you’re wanting to be clever, the book should be one that doesn’t seem an outlier on your shelf but, at the same time, certainly can’t be a copy of something you already own. So then there’s the need to hunt down a book that you probably would enjoy owning but, rather than enjoy it, there’s the reducing it to a cover which, as the saying goes, is the least important part. It’s a painful process for any book-lover, this disemboweling and this making-a-pact to never own a legitimate copy of such and such title. Most hollowed-out books function as a sort of tell-tale heart for their creators until they are beyond bearing and are emptied of their valuables and passed on to ‘The Library for Hollowed Books’ which proudly claims to be the nation’s least verbose library and which adamantly denies that one of its hollowed out books contains the winning ticket to a soon-to-expire lottery ticket and further asks that people ‘please stop spreading that rumor because it’s a pain to have to shelve all these books every time some down-on-his-luck wacko thinks he’s the first person to hear it.’’

There’s something very acoustically wrong with ‘The Library of Hollowed-Out Books.’ It’s something to do with the inaccessible honeycomb of open space on the shelves, of having to slip between those shelves carefully, so as not to disturb them, because they are kept close together and because the books they hold aren’t heavy enough to anchor them. Air passes through the books and mimics the muffled static of a stopped-up ear. Real, unhollowed books have been placed at stations throughout as anchor points and I find myself needing to use them, to feel the heft of an unmangled novel- to hear its wooden thunk under my fingers. 

There’s something especially disturbing to me in this collection and it isn’t until I’m leaving that I realize what it is:

These books are all beginnings and ends, their middles pulled out for space.

My story has been all middle for a long, long time. 

-traveler

‘The child-free have a difficult time understanding ‘The Baby Zone’ which is, by all appearances, a dark, baby-sized cavern accompanied by a crudely painted sign indicating its designation as ‘for babies only.’ Someone without children would assume that, under no circumstances, would any caring parent allow their baby to enter ‘The Baby Zone’ unaccompanied. Why would they?

Well.

Babies seem to love it in there. They come out, usually within a day, happier and healthier than they were when they entered. These are facts, verified by grimacing pediatricians and child psychologists, all of whom are bound to admit what they are witnessing but who also feel obligated to say they do not personally recommend babies enter the cavern. If pressed, those same doctors might also admit that babies who have spent a day or two in ‘The Baby Zone’ at any point of their lives tend to make more money as adults and rate themselves as happier than those children who were (and here the doctors airquote) “deprived” of ‘The Zone.’ 

So, to those travelers unburdened by parenthood, the situation is not so clear cut, is it? What parent doesn’t want the best for their child, even if it means making decisions that feel like risks?

It should be noted that ‘The Baby Zone’ rejects the notion of fur-babies, which is to say, it kills trespassing dogs. 

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘It’s commonly held that the closing of hole in the ozone layer can be attributed to proactive climate-centered educational programs in the nineties. It was an overall win for humanity who, in a moment of unusual clarity, banded together to tackle a problem that was a little too abstract to understand fully but that seemed bad all the same. 

It’s uncommonly held that ‘The Ozone Hole’ didn’t close all the way. It’s complicated, so, in the tradition of those old PSAs about hydrochlorofluorocarbons, we’re going to use a fairly simple metaphor: a zipper.

Say a sheet of cloth separates two spaces and, in the center of that cloth, there is a zipper. When the zipper is pulled open, things that belong in one space can move between the two. Pretend these things are bad- like mosquitoes. The closing of the hole is a lot like the closing of the zipper- especially in regards to the tiny little hole that will always be present where the zipper meets the end of the track. See, humans didn’t unzip the ozone layer, we tore it. Then we installed a zipper and mostly-fixed it. That tiny hole is still there and available for public viewing in Northern California.

Sometimes, a mosquito squeezes through.’

It’s probably wrong to say that ‘The Ozone Hole’ is the attraction, here, because unlike other impressive nothings (like the Grand Canyon, for instance) this hole isn’t even particularly visible by contrasting surroundings. ‘The Ozone Hole’ is more about the viewing tower, I suspect, a ten-story honeycomb of rickety metal with a lot of ‘risk of fall’ signs plastered about. The tower is impressive in a way that makes people who climb it seem impressive even though it’s a pretty low risk affair.

It’s popular with drone users, unfortunately, so there’s the constant whining of little motors and the constant feeling of being watched and knowing that your sad, sweating self will likely be posted on social media somewhere. I arrive at the top just as one of those drones whizzes across the platform and seems to disappear entirely.

There is a shocked pause. A shared look between those of us who saw it happen and then the others hear the pause and see the look and note how abruptly quiet it became.

“Did that drone just fly through ‘The Ozone Hole?’” Someone asks. 

Nobody wants to say that it did. A sign nearby explains a lot about what the ozone layer is and what a hole is in that context. It stops short of explaining that a drone could not ‘pass into it’ and ‘disappear’ but that’s what seems to have happened. 

Then, the drone reappears and it’s different than before. It moves slowly, as though intelligent. As though emboldened. As though awakened. 

It takes in the six of us on the platform. I’m still on the stairs and I consider throwing myself backward, not for any rational reason but for an overwhelming instinctual fear. The same instinct holds me in place, however, as the drone completes a full circle sweep. 

Then, there is the blast of a gunshot. My ears ring and my face is pelted with little shards of drone plastic.

There is a ranger behind me- he’s already holstered his gun. His partner is on the ground, speaking to the drone’s owner. He has the man at gunpoint. 

“Y’all see anything?” he asks, and we shake our heads. He nods, “Well, careful not to slip on your way down.”

The drone’s owner is attempting to run. The ranger on the ground is chasing him.

The ranger on the platform taps my shoulder. “Have I seen you around?”

“Probably,” I tell him. “I know some of the guys at the station.”

“Probably not anymore,” he says. “Let’s not meet again.”

-traveler

‘A place for the collector. A place for the too-poor-to-travel. A place for the husband who needs to make his husband think he’s been somewhere other than the place he’s actually been. ‘GetawayAgain’ is a souvenir resale shop with several small branches, a thriving online shop, and a headquarters in central Kansas, where absolutely nobody does any real vacationing. 

‘GetawayAgain’ is a hidden treasure to most of the American population but is well known among students of business, its success being proof that a market can be made for anything. The founder, Elisa Milner, got her start hosting vaguely-appropriative theme parties for small corporate gatherings and found it was cheaper, overall, to buy previous-year’s souvenirs from wholesalers than current-year’s actual party goods. When she was asked, during a confrontation at a particularly egregious Hawaiian-inspired luau, whether she had even been to Hawaii, she simply said ‘yes’ and cited the décor as evidence. That’s when she knew she was on to something. 

Now anyone can have a shelf full of colorful knick-knacks from faraway places and can brag to their app-dates about the mountains they’ve climbed or the resorts where they’ve told other strangers about the mountains they climbed. The trick Milner stumbled upon is that the need for going somewhere in life is pretty easily mitigated by having been somewhere already, at least in the eyes of others. At ‘GetawayAgain,’ anybody can have gone anywhere for a fraction of the price.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside