‘On the outskirts of Baltimore there exists a venue that embraces the intense (and expensive) flattery one might expect to receive in a Japanese maid cafe. ‘Take a Win’ is a boardgame café where customers are invited to sit down with a stranger for a long afternoon of being naturally better at an arbitrary, if not enjoyable, activity. Its employees are trained to lose and they’re trained to lose in a variety of ways depending upon the package you select and the money you’re willing to put down.

The standard package offers an easy win and an amicable opponent. A little extra pays for a decisive win against a sore loser. A little more than that, and the loser is so sore they might sweep the pieces off the table or otherwise make a physical scene while you, the victor, gloat. There are short packages for short games and long packages for those six-hour marathons. There are serialized packages for trading card players who like to lose a game here and there for the sake of realism, but want to dominate overall. Once a month, ‘Take a Win’ hosts a tournament, auctioning off the winner ranks. It regularly sells out, and this is why:

People like when the expected occurs. More than that, people are lonely and unsure of their abilities. More than all of that, even, people who indulge in games are generally more open to the experience of pretending and pretending is exactly what is necessary for a game at ‘Take a Win’ to be satisfying.’

I’m pretty bad at board games. Bad at every part. Like, maintaining an understanding of the rules. Like rolling the dice in such a way that they don’t fall off the table and clatter across the floor. The employee who takes me under his wing starts to sweat just twenty minutes in. 

Losing against me is going to take everything he’s got.

-traveler

Way back in 1958, the Mickelson Steel Company created a life-size display of what the 2008 should look like if, in their estimation, people continued to invest Mickelson Steel for all their construction needs. This display looks a great deal like the usual fifties-era guess: bubble glass, flying cars, and a great deal of chrome. The display is big- a façade the size of a city block. Old mannequins lean against the steering wheels of their hover-vehicles. Robots speak on video phones that are still anchored to the wall by a cord. It’s all pretty well done, in my opinion, and it’s all pretty hopeful except, I suppose, that all the families are nuclear and all the mannequins are white. 

A display like this makes a great side-of-the-road attraction. It’s quick, it’s bigger than you expect, and it’s aging in a way that makes it just a little nostalgic.

What makes it a Wayside attraction is that Mickelson Steel did it again a fews years later. And again a few years after that.

They got pretty good. 

‘They got REALLY good. By the time 2019 rolled around, the sixties-era displays were looking a little uncanny. Modern cellphones and sedans the shape of melted butter. Media that appeared both angry and joyfully pornographic. A man in a crowd with a gun in his hand. A latter display even included some hygienic social distancing, meaning that they were still going just a little too far in their imaginings. Mickelson got some government side-eye for that prediction, but the Mickelsons had given up on steel and business before the turn of the century and were happy to stand before committees and explain to the men in black that showed up at their houses that they were only ever extrapolating from informational trends and that the information necessary became more abundant each year. 

They said a lot more than that, actually, indicating that the gift of foresight might also have been handed to their bloodline by some vague divinity while also fending off allegations that the old Mickelson Steel Mill had been converted into residences for a cult that continued to create these displays. 

The practical result of all this is that a traveler in central Texas might stop off at ‘The Mickelson’s Future,’ a catch-all for the dozens of completed displays that now make up a quilted sort of city block in the middle of nothing else. The author recommends taking the tour backwards.

It’s happier that way.’

The Mickelson’s artists have gotten pretty good with realistic wounds over the years, I’ll say that much. They’re due for a new display later this year, from what I understand, and that’s putting us within a stone’s throw of 2100. I’m hoping for more bubble glass but if their predictions for 2050 are anything to go by, humans won’t have the sort of eyes that necessitate transparent windshields. 

And, hey: they’ve diversified the mannequins. 

-traveler

‘Most insects don’t live very long. Setting aside their low average life spans and their fragile bodies and the dangerous environments in which they go about their daily lives, bugs are just not very well liked. The world is out to get bugs, even though we’ve already begun to recognize an amount of detriment from their absence. One wouldn’t think a sort of retirement would be in the cards for denizens of the insect world.

One would be wrong, though. An insect is allowed to retire when it is found inside another creature’s home and escorted out, rather than killed. Upon exiting the home, the insect makes its way to ‘The Place Where Bugs Go When You Throw Them Outside’ and, there, would live out the rest of its life in peace if it weren’t for all the tourists ruining it, nowadays.’

I suppose I should be thankful that insects understand the irony of unwanted visitors in the closest thing they could collectively call home. The glimpses I get of ‘The Place Where Bugs Go When You Throw Them Outside’ suggest that it is something of a honeycombed habitat, surface-level and underground. Satellite images suggest wildflower fields and forested acres are embedded within. Leaked government images indicate there may also be corpse fields for the scavenger species and, worse, cultivated mammal herds for parasites. It’s all very environmentally friendly, though, and without human involvement, humane practices don’t really factor into the project at all.

I’m escorted off the property by a motley swarm of stinging insects. Chased, one might say, but it does feel like the insects and I are going through the motions. They catch and release, hoping we will carry the favor forward.

-traveler

‘‘SOULFOOD’ is a matte black cube on four white wheels, looking for all the world like a car pulled from a children’s drawing (this child only had a black crayon). The windshield, if it exists, is matte black and indistinguishable from any other surface. ‘SOULFOOD’ has a habit of departing suddenly and in a direction that doesn’t seem like its front (though, given the identical sides, it’s difficult to say where any indication of its front or back comes from). ‘SOULFOOD’ has a habit of appearing in unlikely places, usually sandwiches uncomfortably between two other eateries but sometimes in the middle of a forest or at the top of an icy hill. It’s not a particularly welcoming sight, but it smells great.

There is nothing outwardly frightening about ‘SOULFOOD,’ if you discount the above description. It doesn’t exist in a way that flies in the face of established reality. The windshield thing could be the result of paint or glass or cameras. The odd behavior could be a form of guerilla marketing. The smell could be talent, plain and simple. What frightens people about ‘SOULFOOD’ is that they don’t seem to accept any sort of acknowledged currency. They serve food for… free?

The question mark, here, indicates a widely held suspicion that ‘SOULFOOD’ is taking ‘something else.’ Something that isn’t immediately missed.

This may be the most comforting thing about ‘SOULFOOD.’ This taking- this manipulation of customers in the process of taking- it is the cornerstone of every modern eatery, really. ‘SOULFOOD’s only crime is doing it in a way that draws undue attention.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Wished for gold, was transported into sealed, underground cavern.’ ‘Wished for youth, became a child.’ ‘Wished death upon enemies, killed in massive explosion with others.’

‘The Garden of Monkey Paws’ doesn’t feel the need to go into details about these events. It doesn’t try to explain how monkeys’ paws work or that ‘The Orchard’ exists as a means of producing them. It is simply a collection of extinguished paws along with short descriptions of their results. It’s a cautionary tale for those of us willing to read behind the lines. Potentially a guide for those who can’t.

‘Don’t try to pry the fingers from the fists at ‘The Garden of Monkey Paws.’ Outside of the occasional burst of malicious irony, the magic doesn’t return to the monkeys so easily. Knowing this, ‘The Garden’ loses what little allure it might have had. Outside of a few large-scale wish botches (we won’t spoil the surprise), the entire facility is devoted to a striking and disturbing display of dead monkeys. It smells like it, too.’

The paws are arranged by general wish categories. I spend a good deal of time in a room in the back that deals with wishes regarding love and sex. Irony can be particularly cruel in this vein of wishing and, for some reason, ‘The Garden’ has chosen to paint the nails of the monkey paws involved.

Rumor has it that the staff are open to bribes, that monkey paws ‘fall off the back of the truck’ all the time. Honestly, you couldn’t pay me to travel with something so dangerous.

Just as I’m about to wrap up and head to the camper, something moves in my peripheries. I turn and my absurd first thought it that someone is flagging me down from across the room. It’s a monkey paw, of course, opened like a blooming flower.

Then, with the sound of a creaking door, they all open at once.

The lights go red and a siren sounds. ‘The Garden of Monkey Paws’ shakes as its emergency doors begin to close. There’s shouting outside before a voice comes on over the PA system:

THIS IS NOT A TEST. THE PAWS ARE ACTIVE AND DANGEROUS. MAKE NO WISHES AND RETREAT TO A DISTANCE OF ONE MILE. CLOSURE WILL BE ATTEMPTED IN FIVE MINUTES.

The shouting is clearer outside, the curators arguing over what appears to be a long script for a carefully worded wish that would re-close all of the paws without room for malicious irony. The thing is, irony works a bit like an explosive. The more it’s compressed, the bigger it tends to blow up.

Someone is weeping inside ‘The Garden,’ cursing the cruelty of the universe between sobs. Someone got greedy and tried to make a wish. He won’t be the last.

I’m happy to put ‘The Garden of Monkey Paws’ behind me- to put the whole concept behind me, really- and, as far as my phone can tell, there are no more entries in the guide for monkey paw-adjacent destinations. The book is changing all the time, though. I find myself less sure of anything the longer I travel.

-traveler