Well, I suppose it’s been on my list for a while- one of those places that sort of has to find you rather than the traditional vice-versa. For all the time I’ve been out exploring the Wayside, I’ve managed to avoid ‘The Dead End’ until I came upon it accidentally a couple days ago, having turned left in one of those really quaint neighborhoods where the roads tend to meander rather than run straight because they all have the land to accommodate aesthetics over efficiency. That left took me up a near-single lane street, past a few houses, before I came to ‘The Dead End.’

Before I came to it the first time. 

‘Beware ‘The Dead End,’ which has terminated the trips of several promising travelers. It is a place with many entrances and very few exits, and it traps visitors at random, then releases them in far few numbers. 

‘The Dead End’ can be avoided with a little care. Some travelers reject modern GPS navigation but this is your primary method of prevention. ‘The Dead End’ only manifests in established dead-end roads, meaning that a device, operating with the latests information, should be able to steer a vehicle away from anywhere that might possible serve as an entry point. There have neen no reports of temporary closures due to weather or construction spreading ‘The Dead End,’ though detours provide ample opportunity to confuse a traveler, and to point them toward ‘The Dead End.’ When in doubt, it behooves the traveler to pull over- to stop in the road, even- rather than proceed toward ‘The Dead End.’ 

Understand that this advice is meant to serve as a guide rather than a guarantee. The only true method of avoiding ‘The Dead End’ completely is to stay home, but that would be tantamount to the same thing.’

I imagine if I came to a barrier and dead end sign in the middle of the freeway in any other context, I would have been confused and maybe scared. Maybe I would have plowed right through, having been midway to reaching something dropped on the passenger floor, fully comforted by the knowledge that highways and interstates can take me many places but basically never to full, unexplained stops. 

But it was dark when I arrived here, at the latest manifestation of ‘The Dead End,’ and I was already suspicious from a day of ‘accidentally’ taking wrong turns every half hour or so. The cherry on top was having to reverse down a one-way street for several minutes before backing into an intersection for a hurried three-point turn, before getting back on ‘the right track’ and immediately running into a new dead end street. 

Now, even my GPS tells me there are no known paths forward, only a series of blockages. Some close by. Some a few miles out. I set the GPS to my home address for the first time in nearly a decade and I receive the same results, only the dead ends are closer now. 

No way forward. 

No way back. 

I U-turn and head back toward Cedarville, the nearest town. Halfway there I come to a point where the shoulder and the land beyond seems flat for a while and I carefully navigate the camper off the pavement and onto the ground. The suspension struggles with the sudden change in terrain, but I carry on, hoping that the earth won’t shake my home to pieces. I cut across the field and squeeze through the trees beyond and drive over more grass, turning to make my way up the shallowest hill and then back down. The camper threatens to topple several times, but soon I see a new road ahead. I pull on, and reset the GPS. After a minute, it confirms.

I’ve shaken off ‘The Dead End.

Home, from here, is only an hour away. It’s very tempting, suddenly. More tempting than it has been in a long time. Still, I shake my head and check the guide and input a new address, this for a place called ‘The TikTok Factory.’

Can’t imagine this one will be my cup of tea, but I don’t have it in me to complain. I turn on the radio, and go.

-traveler

‘The common sentiment about ‘The Second Location’ is that it should be avoided at all costs, particularly if somebody is attempting to take you there and certainly if that person is a stranger. The author, here, would like to endorse the traveler’s gut in these situations, understanding that it will rightfully sense danger in places like ‘The Second Location’ and in the regulars who hope, so often, to bring guests. The author extends, also, a caveat to the previous statement, suggesting merely that ‘The Second Location’ has received an undeserved reputation from those who have abused its relative isolation in the past, and that there is much to like about ‘The Second Location’ for those that approach it free of ill intent. 

It’s just that you never hear from the people who liked being taken there.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Previously (and still technically) called ‘Lake Wells,’ ‘Lake Slime’ was, some years ago, infected with a European strain of algae that has absolutely thrived in its new home. This algae has transformed the water into a sort of gel- a slime- that has proven resistant to the (admittedly limited) attempts to eradicate it. The high water-content of the slime makes it resistant to heat and fire. Chemicals tend to slide off the surface of the slime, poisoning the wildlife around it. Actually solving the problem would prove to be complicated and expensive. 

And, for the most part, the algae’s damage is done. The fish in the lake died and were pushed to the surface for birds to pick at. The surrounding animals proved willing to, for lack of a better word, chew their water and nature adapted. The only downside proved to be a sharp decline in the recreational value of ‘Lake Wells.’ 

Then, a video emerged of a local teen running across ‘Lake Slime,’ relying on the slime’s non-Newtonian viscosity. Comments on the video, which soon went viral, pointed out that the depth of the lake reached 20’ at its center and that swimming in the slime would prove difficult or impossible if, say, the same teenager were to trip halfway across. This only exasperated the virality of the video. Copycats proved the stunt could be performed again and then one would-be copycat, a thirty-year old family influencer from several states away, drowned in the exact manner laid out in those early comments. 

‘Lake Slime’ is closed to the public but, like the attempted eradication of the slime, those barriers and signs installed to actually keep the public out seem inadequate compared to the situation beyond and the viral pull of possible celebrity.’

Despite the relative fame of ‘Lake Slime,’ its distance from anything else of interest seems to do a better job of keeping visitors away than the waist-high fence and finger-wagging signage that suggests danger past a certain point. Credit should be given to the artist of said signs, however. Given the task of illustrating the theoretical demise of an influencer in a lake of slime with blocky shapes in yellow and black, they have risen to the challenge. A stick man, with a backward baseball cap, screams for help as someone films with their phone from shore. The man’s up to his chest, past the point of saving, I’d guess, even if the audience (here represented by just a phone-in-hand) took up a rope and attempted a rescue.

Which they haven’t. 

It’s stupid, to think that crossing the lake is a good idea, but here’s the thing, reader. My sense of what it means to have experienced a destination is vaguely defined, sometimes leaning into the danger of a place and sometimes leaning away. I don’t know until I feel it and, when I arrive at ‘Lake Slime,’ I know, almost right away, that I will have to attempt it myself to feel justified. 

It’s not an ideal way to be. 

On my side is ample evidence of this being possible. Sure, one man tripped and fell, but there are countless other videos of people heavier than me taking the lake at something like a fast walk- of becoming so confident that they do a few circles in the middle, holding their hands out to either side and grinning at their videographer as if to say, See? This is easy.

They make it look fun, and while I don’t intend to have fun, it seems ridiculous to me that someone could have fun doing something I wouldn’t even attempt due to fear. Not here. Not on the Wayside, where I’ve made my home. 

So, I check the laces on my boots- tied, but not so tight that I won’t be able to abandon them to the slime for a second chance at escape if I start to sink. I set my backpack on the shore and stretch, maybe for the first time in my life. I throw a rock out into the middle and watch it sink slowly below the surface, hoping it will make me feel better about what I plan to do (or so poorly that I change my mind). It has neither effect, so I remain in the position of knowing I’m about to do something stupid. 

I step back and take the slime at a running start. It bounces underneath my steps, propelling me forward such that I worry I’ll topple, but then I embrace the speed it gives me and my pace stabilizes and suddenly I’m walking on water.

The Wayside can be playful, the way a cat is playful. Willing to show its belly. Happy to bite when it’s finished being stroked. I play, for a while, and I stop when I know it’s time. We’re familiar, now, the Wayside and I. Not friendly, maybe. But familiar.

-traveler

It is nail-biting, inching toward ‘The Intersection with No Sign.’ It is the drawn-out stress I haven’t felt since speeches in high school, sitting in my desk while Mr. Mickel hemmed and hawed over who ought to go next, knowing I should volunteer and get it over with but failing to raise my hand all the same. All approaches to ‘The Intersection’ are blind up till about half-block before, the left and right concealed by the towering office buildings of downtown Dallas.

The radio cuts in and out. There is supposed to be a pirate station, one that dedicates itself solely to traffic at ‘The Intersection with No Sign,’ attempting to coach vehicles into order from an unknown birds-eye perch. That station is quiet today, which is not uncommon but certainly inconvenient. Traffic is bad. Cars move slowly ahead. The height of the RV allows me to see a brief glimpse of the chaos ahead. A compact car has been signally right for nearly three minutes. It decides, last minute, to go straight. An oncoming truck bullies its way forward. The two graze. Horns begin to honk as the two drivers exit their vehicles to assess the damage.

At least they don’t live in their cars.

‘Every attempt to add signage to ‘The Intersection with No Sign’ has failed spectacularly, it being a running and highly conservative joke about the price of personal freedoms and small government and such. This extends, even, to measures that would ease traffic around ‘The Intersection,’ modifying certain one-way streets so that it would not be so vital to rush hour traffic in one of the city’s busiest strips of road. 

No, ‘The Intersection with No Sign’ is the pet disaster of the locals and it is something of a spectacle when the planets align and approaching cars zip smoothly past each other, caught in a shared dance that is equal parts skill and happenstance. 

Of course, ‘The Intersection with No Sign’ averages seven fatalities each year. Hardly the most dangerous destination on the Wayside, we leave it to the reader to decide whether this particular juice is worth the squeeze.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Forgotten, at times, among the myriad extinctions of our age, is a near-global mourning of the loss of the ‘third space.’ For the uninitiated, a third space is a location outside of one’s home and workplace, normally meant for socializing- a place for meeting friends. Malls traditionally filled the role of third space in America and we’re finding that they were something of a keystone in the intricate social patterns of humans, particularly young humans who are not yet welcome in bars and are still too cool for their local library. The malls haven’t disappeared entirely, of course, but those that survive are largely unwell, riddled with empty stores and tumorous stall-based merchants. They, like a terminal grandparent, do not appeal to children. They repulse them. 

Young people, these days, would rather stay home than visit a mall. They would rather stream videos to their phones, cradled between their legs in a comfortable chair while a flatscreen television screams boomer media into the void on the horizon. Kids these days would rather vape in their cars and argue about the best flavors of marijuana edibles. 

Kids these days would rather skip third places entirely, and they have begun visiting the forbidden ‘Fourth Place,’ and this is a concern for us all. 

‘The Fourth Place’ is considered an American destination because it can only be accessed in-country. For all other intents and purposes, ‘The Fourth Place’ is a location outside of space, a flat white plane with little variation in terrain or atmosphere. Bodies do not seem to exist in ‘The Fourth Place.’ It is a realm for consciousness alone and it is both vast and crowded. Thoughts arrive uninhibited in ‘The Fourth Space.’ They are shared via entanglement, an act that youths tend to perform with no particular consideration of the dangers involved. Studies have shown that participants in entanglement sometimes exit with foreign thoughts- with ideas that could not have been their own. Sometimes these thoughts are good. Other times they are cruel.

This is the appeal of entanglement: the integration of strange thoughts. 

‘The Fourth Space’ has several branches in most states, a full list can be found in the appendix. Responsible travelers should complete a mental audit before visiting, via their preferred meditation technique, as youthful consciousnesses have been known to swarm unsuspecting newcomers with uncomfortable mental narratives and earworm jingles that no earthly song can exorcise.’

Entrances to ‘The Fourth Space’ occur naturally. That’s what the current science says, anyway. Most have now been monetized, of course, they having been discovered on private lots in an age before regulatory laws could catch up to such things. I find a cheap entrance so far up north that I may as well be in Canada. It’s cold, for autumn, and the entrance is in a tin shed. A sign inside asks visitors to leave ten dollars in a jar. Honor system. When I arrive the jar holds one dead fly. I empty it on the floor and put my money in. I enter ‘The Fourth Space’ via a hole in the wall. My body is not left behind, but it isn’t with me either. Everything goes white.

Then the voices.

In the end, ‘The Fourth Space’ isn’t quite as bad as it’s made out to be. It’s annoying, really, and annoying in a way that signals to me that I’m getting old. The Wayside is beginning to adjust itself, shifting to incorporate the uncomfortable run-off of new generations and, in doing so, shedding the skin I’ve grown familiar with. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have a place, here. 

And I’m not sure where else there is to go.

-traveler