‘No attention was given to the small dedicated space allowed to the jar of ‘Over-Millenium Oats’ in the unnamed local museum of Lassater, Minnesota until it began to glow. The phenomenon was first noted in 2022, shortly after the museum re-opened following an extended Covid-19 lockdown. The museum’s sole security camera holds a view of the parking lot and had been non-functional since 2016, so there remains no clear understanding of when the ‘Over-Millennium Oats’ illuminated and whether or not there was a catalyzing force. Many suspect it is a hoax- a prank meant for locals that inadvertently went viral.

Rabidly viral.

There is a certain subsect of people that believe overnight oats are a panacea and a subsect of the subsect correlates length of containment with alleged health benefits. This small, but very enthusiastic, population sometimes pushes their oats past a week- past a month. Sometimes a sort of fermentation occurs. Often, the oats rot into a slurry.

Nobody has gone on record as having left their batch for as long as the ‘Over-Millenium Oats,’ which, if the museum is to be believed, were jarred in 1935. Daily, the oats grow brighter. The unnamed museum flickers like a jack o’lantern in the night. If the current pattern persists, travelers may soon need to don protective glasses to view the oats.

The ‘Over-Millennium Oats’ may yet be taken by some tendril of the government that specializes in the study of strange and dangerous thing and it might prove to be a relief. Several private attempts have already occurred, half-baked burglaries by a population that seems no more physically healthy than the rest.’

My grandmother used to can and she used mason jars much like that which houses the ‘Over-Millennium Oats.’ It’s one of the bigger sizes- 32 oz maybe, and its lid is bulged further than I am comfortable with. Whatever’s happening, there’s a lot of pressure inside.

A woman stands near the display, authoritative and bored.

I step nearer until a shift in her stance indicates that I’ve entered a zone where she is now forced to see me as a potential threat to the ‘Oats’.

I stop. “Can I ask you questions about this?”

She seems both relieved and annoyed. “I’m not an expert.”

“Is there an expert available?”

She doesn’t respond to that.

“Is it warm?”

I’m surprised when she reaches out to touch the glass. “No.”

“You’ve never touched it before?”

“I’m not supposed to touch it.” She seems to remember this as she says it.

“What do you think would happen if you eat it?”

The woman shrugs. “They hired me because I’m not very interested.”

I nod and let her lapse back into a glassy-eyed middle-distance.

A sketch on the wall indicates a much grander opening ceremony than I would have expected for the opening of a jar of oats, planned to occur on the final day of 2035 (because the exact date of canning is not recorded). The sketch itself dates back to the early thirties and, the longer I look the more concerning it becomes. There are men in what appear to be hazmat suits in attendance of a parade at the center of which is the jar. The ‘Over-Millennium Oats’ are balanced precariously on a platform by itself, the central float. Lines indicate that it is glowing brightly and onlookers peer at it through blackened opera glasses.

They look despairing.

A sneaky looking man shifts in the crowd, reaching vaguely toward the ‘Over-Millennium Oats.’ A bird caught in the illustrated illumination has died and is plummeting toward the concrete. A regal politician awaits the parade and marks its end. He sits in a simple chair and has a spoon in his hand. He’s patting his stomach like he could eat, but isn’t starving.

A sign indicates this will take place in Washington D.C.

I’ll be sure to avoid it.

-traveler

‘Hard to say what the intention behind ‘We Don’t Wash It!’ was at the outset. A generous read is that it was a lazy, if honest, cash-in on an initial lot of old junk that the owner, Susanne Shoulders simply didn’t want to clean. A generous read is that it was the sort of store that operates at the lowest bar, providing capitalist balance in offering, also, the lowest price. 

Whatever it once was, it is not that anymore. 

‘We Don’t Wash It!’s’ inventory is now largely compromised of women’s clothes, worn just long enough to satisfy a largely male customer base. 

And it ain’t cheap.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Jim’s Lightly Used Mannequin Outlet’ is a business that suffers for the specificity with which it describes its wares. I noticed it right away in a sign at the front that claims ‘NONE OF OUR MANNEQUINS HAVE BEEN USED FOR SEXUAL PURPOSES (verified to the best of our ability)’ and if that fine print wasn’t quite enough, a second hastily scrawled sign attached indicates ‘All fringe cases have been marked.’ 

I notice this tendency to overshare again in the follow-up signs inside. One example: ‘This mannequin was acquired from an independent lingerie vendor and contains wear marks on the crotch that are in line with consistent dressing/undressing but also there is a stain. Further discounted -15%.’

“Hey!” Someone, maybe Jim, is watching me from across the aisle.

I look behind me in case I’m mistaken but see only the collected and lifeless crowd of the mannequins. “Yeah?”

“No loitering near the sex figures.”

“I was just reading the tag.”

Jim stares me down so I move on.

‘If you visit ‘Jim’s Lightly Used Mannequin Outlet’ you may remark that Jim doesn’t seem particularly keen to actually sell anything- that his hostility indicates a reluctance to part with any of the many, many female forms that gather in this, one of the countries dark corners. You would not be the first to think this.

Public records suggest he has tried many times to have the store legally transformed into a church and has been rejected because he is unwilling or unable to describe exactly the sort of worship he plans to conduct. Not unlike the subjects of his mania, the shape is there, but the details are scant.’

Jim tries to fool me several times by dressing in a beige zentai suit and posing as a mannequin himself. He is not model-shaped, however, and I begin to suspect he likes being caught. Maybe he wants me to accuse him of something so that he can angrily throw me out. I try my best to ignore the whole situation and feign interest in purchasing several highly priced models, but this only fuels a sort of hysteria that I sense building in the man.

He tries to convince me to buy from a cart of miscellaneous limbs and panics when I pull one from the bottom, insisting it isn’t supposed to be included among the sale items and that it may have been ‘contaminated by the touch of a man.’ Over the next half hour, he convinces himself that I was the man that contaminated it, most likely, and I’m back to claim ‘my prize’ in front of him. 

I’ve run from dangerous places and I’ve been chased out, but ‘Jim’s’ stands as the only Wayside destination where I’ve been asked to leave. 

-traveler

‘At least one ‘Yowling Cat’ has been installed in every state, though two are known to exist in Kansas and the pattern break suggests there are more yet to be discovered. They are not live cats but they sound real and, from the ground, they tend to look real as well. A typical ‘Yowling Cat’ is perched somewhere high enough to be dangerous but accessible enough to be possible to anybody with a healthy body.

They are placed to be tempting.

The ‘Cats’ yowl mournfully. The rhythm is intermittent by default, the each ‘Cat’ has its unique ‘song.’ When a ‘Yowling Cat’ senses humans nearby, however, it grows louder and more demanding. Only one ‘Yowling Cat’ has been recovered and dissected and from it we know that they are equipped with audio sensors only, though this specimen seemed to be added to a local wireless network and may have had more sensory access within the network. The rest of the ‘Cats’ have disintegrated upon retrieval, a clever self-destruction that’s made them difficult to faithfully reverse engineer.

It’s given the authorities a reason to treat them like bombs and the subsequent videos of bomb squads carefully climbing trees only to discover real, living cats at the top have gone viral for the sheer stupidity-making of the situation.

Maybe this is their purpose. We don’t know.

‘The Yowling Cats’ incorporate a great deal of dead cat into the design, which is unfortunate, but it does add a certain melancholy.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Enshrined into the constitution but largely kept from the public eye is ‘The Great American Burn-Pit,’ a tradition that is at once reviled and sustained by the same Neo-Christian demographic that spurns and espouses forgiveness. A remnant of the Revolutionary War, federal regulations state that anything burned in ‘The Pit’ is legally nullified. Originally meant to entice British Loyalists to join the independent Americans, ‘The Great American Burn-Pit is now largely filled with felony evidence, including the occasional instance of human remains that somehow make it past growing crowds of police and federal investigators who operate something like a tactical game of ‘Red Rover,’ attempting to catch the break in their case before it is swept permanently from the table.’

I don’t know how anybody makes it past the police on a normal day. ‘The Great American Burn-Pit’ is thick with law enforcement, and I say this understanding that at least a third of the people in civilian clothes are likely also undercover cops. A frustrated crowd surrounds them, hurling insults and sometimes surging ahead in a way that makes me wonder if anyone has ever slipped backward into the fire, a homicide for an instant before it lapses into an accident with no legal ramifications.

A man in the crowd attempts to throw something over the police and into the pit. The item, a balled-up, bloodied piece of cloth strikes the handle of a pool net, thrust up from a woman in an FBI cap. It unfurls and the agents dogpile it. The man tries to run but they chase him down. Several more items are burned while attention is drawn to this incident. The man, led away, claims the original throw was a decoy.

Seems reasonable, but it isn’t my fight.

I’ve read that the last mass-burning was a spectacle. Several hundred pounds of narcotics were haphazardly launched into the fire. The law enforcement contingent became stoned and paranoid. They fired on the civilians, killing dozens and, upon sobering up, shoved the bodies into the pit.

No charges filed.

-traveler