Much of what I feared might be true of the ‘Museum of Cleverly Disguised Traps’ is confirmed when I find the entry door locks behind me, that a soft ticking like tightly wound gears throbs from the walls and the floor. Just three steps forward and a thin dart flies from the grounding aperture of an electrical outlet, embedding itself in my calf. The leg goes numb and becomes functionless. A self-paid entry machine around the corner refuses to unlock the next section of the ‘Museum’ until I feed it three dollars in quarters. It delivers an electric shock through the last coin before sliding back the bolt.
The door is heavy and difficult to move with a bum leg; it opens into the living room of an old log cabin- heavy furniture, wooden floors, and an electric fireplace. I stretch myself between the entryway and a stool, hoping to keep as many escape routes available as is possible. In the last moment I see that two of the stool’s legs are on hinges and I fall forward in my effort to set it back down without triggering whatever insidious device it is bait for. The door closes and the room is quiet except for the constant, subtle ticking of the walls.
From my position on the ground I see several trip wires and a section of the floor that is very likely a pressure plate. Like the chair, two of the stools are on hinges and another has its legs sawn most of the way through (which seems, to me, more of a prank than a trap). Most concerning to me is a small glass globe perched on a high shelf among several other knick-knacks. The arrangement of the items (and their being glued to the shelf, I find, having carefully dragged my dead limb across the room) suggests a hidden track of some sort- the start of a vicious Rube-Goldberg machine that becomes too complicated for me to fully understand as long as it remains dormant.
And remain dormant it will.
I take the globe from the shelf, with the intention of disarming the trap, but its base sinks into the shelf and the books below it begin to topple into each other. I reach out to stop them and prick my hand on something sharp- a hidden needle on the cover of the book. My arm goes numb and the final book falls from the shelf and strikes the pressure plate.
The floor opens beneath me and I drop through.
There is a bedroom below the cabin- a mattress softens the fall. I wait, with bated breath, to see if my violent entry has furthered the machinations of the activated Rube-Goldberg above but, if it has, its only result is the closing of the trapdoor above me. I check my unfeeling limbs for injuries and then eye the new area suspiciously. It is, by all accounts, a room in a modern, 4-star hotel. Leaning over the frame of the bed, I spy a door but when I throw a pillow in its direction the entire thing falls forward out of its frame and squashes the pillow flat. It closes slowly, with the predatory alertness of an alligator.
I have one more pillow to spare.
I wrap my hand in the pillow case and slide the drawer out of the side table near the bed. It, like the doors of this place, seems to resist my opening it. Inside is a Bible and, finding it free of needles, I thumb through the pages until I come across a scribbled note in the back.
“WE POWER THE MACHINE.”
I toss the Bible to the opposite side of the room and see it peppered with needles from an outlet under the desk. The desk itself collapses and a meringue pie, hidden in its base, is catapulted into the opposing wall at the head-height of the average American male. I grit my teeth and wait for the feeling to return to my leg, at least.
After half an hour, I see that the drawer has begun to pull itself back into the table and I understand the Bible’s note. I sleep in the bed and wake to find the ticking in the walls has ceased and that I am able to walk upright in stiff, careful steps. I pull the exit door down just enough to crawl through- winding the springs of the ‘Museum’ just enough to power the traps for a few minutes. I wait, and when the ticking stops, I make my way toward the exit in similar, stuttering excursions.
‘There is nothing subtle about a mousetrap- it relies soles on the allure of the cheese to capture its prey. So, too, does ‘The Museum of Cleverly Disguised Traps’ rely on its bait to convince visitors that they will be clever in visiting. So prepared are they to prove themselves better than the machine, that by the time they realize they have been baited by the challenge of simple traps, they will already be assimilated into the clockwork of a thing that is far more complex.’
-traveler