The door was locked. I wondered how this could be. After all, I had already wrestled the octopus in the bakery, eaten the poisoned apple at the dentist’s, and kissed a sultry ghost in the tile store. Now the tailor shop of all places was closed? Unfathomable. Hadn’t I just been there yesterday? Oh come on, what was inside that door? Was it the shy sting-ray? The glow in the dark spider? The upside down mermaid? No, on further thought none of those seemed right.
I struggled against the tailor shop door but it wouldn’t budge. I considered retracing my steps through the town, but that never seemed to work. Nor would skipping past the tailor help me achieve my unique goals. How could I be so lost after spending so much time in Grimage? I looked around the bucolic mountain town feeling hopeless and alone. The streets, of course, were empty. It was the stores I needed to access, the thousands of stores and the various objects they contained inside in this world apparently within, but adjacent to, our own.
“Bill, it’s dinner time,” came a voice through the fog. Grimage started to recede from my mind like a dream upon waking. Now I could clearly hear the voice of my wife, Jessica, the gurgle of our eight-month old son, and the wafting smell of breaded chicken baking in the oven.
Dammit. Now I was back in the North East Side of Denver, back to the reality of my responsibilities and work struggles, back to the clothes flowing out of the hamper, and the endless changing of diapers. I surveyed our undersized bedroom and my present reality came back to me in a flood, like the way torrents of information are downloaded onto a flash drive.
“Breaded chicken again?” I asked Jessica once I made my way downstairs.
“Yeah,” Jessica said. She was pouring banana chunks and blueberries into a baby blender. “Why, is that a problem?”
“No,” I said, eying the kitchen with skepticism. “It’s just, didn’t we have breaded chicken three, five, nine, and thirteen days ago?”
“I…I don’t know,” Jessica said. “You tell me, you’re the one with the perfect memory.”
“It’s fine,” I said, taking a seat.
“You told me you wanted to eat a lot of protein these last few weeks,” Jessica added. “For the competition.”
“That’s true but there are plenty of protein sources besides chicken.” I offered. “I need memory food: Salmon, blueberries, tuna…” My voice trailed off as I remembered now what was behind the tailor’s door: it was the ‘Hemingway Blue Marlin.’ I shook my head in disgust; so that’s why I’d kept thinking of aquatic images.
With our son Benjamin fed, Jessica finally took a seat. She glowered at me from across the table and tucked her amber hair behind her ears.
“What?” I asked.
Jessica put her fork down. “I know this is a big month for you with the competition and all,” she said. “But you’ve been very absent lately and I need a little more help around the house and with Benjamin.”
“Honey, I—”
Jessica cut me off. “Please let me finish, Bill. I also find it a little bit degrading that your first reaction to a home-cooked meal was to complain. It’s 2023, dear. If you don’t like what I’m cooking you then I’ll stop and you can simply make yourself whatever your little heart desires. Ok?”
“The competition is only two weeks away,” I protested.
“I know, dear. I’ve tried to grade you on a curve, but right now you’re still in danger of failing.”
“Come on, I said, don’t act like I’m one of your second graders.”
She smiled and said, “Clearly you’re not—they actually listen sometimes.”
In an attempt to get back on Jessica’s good side I washed the dishes that evening, but though my hands were scrubbing grease and chicken particles, in my mind I was back in Grimage, making my way to East Street where the tradesman stores were clustered together like electrical wires in an old house no longer up to code.
The Grimage sun was pitched high in a clear sky and to the left I observed the tailor shop, the butcher shop, the haberdashery, the shoe repair store. Across the street—in plain brown adobe buildings—were the mason, the carpenter, the blacksmith, the cooper, and other trades, some of which would be considered obsolete in our modern world. This was the friendly section of the town, mostly quiet and mostly safe to travel even though I was considered a “wonderer,” someone not endemic to their world.
The tailor shop was at the corner of East and North and I made my way to the entrance. The door was now open and I stepped inside. While my hands scrubbed the fond from the bottom of a stainless steel pan, in my mind I was now fully engrossed in entering the tailor shop.
Like all of the stores in Grimage it was dark inside and there was little or no sound. There was often a sepia tint in Grimage, but not in the tailor shop. I stood, beholding the tailor, a monolithic blue marlin wearing an oysterman hat and a large gray beard like Earnest Hemingway did in the ‘50’s. The blue marlin was carefully sewing a navy suit. For his part the marlin was completely absent of clothes outside of his hat.
“A good Morn,” I said to the marlin, which was approximately eight feet in height. The fish momentarily nodded back to me, but remained focused on his task. I now heard the sound of running water and later I was uncertain if the sound was background noise from my own kitchen sink or endemic to the tailor shop—I would need to revisit the tailor soon to figure that out. Upon closer inspection of the marlin I saw that it was missing large chunks of flesh, just like the fish from the novella ‘Old Man and the Sea.’
“Poor buddy, did the shark get you?” I asked.
“Huh?” Jessica interrupted. I opened my eyes and was instantly transported back to my kitchen. In my hand was the same pan—I must have been scrubbing it for going on twenty minutes—and I noticed the other dishes remained untouched.
“Huh, what?” I said.
“Did you just say something about a shark?” Jessica asked, flabergasted. She was holding Benjamin, who was getting fussy so close to bedtime. They both looked exhausted.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just practicing for the memory competition.”
“I’m going to put the little guy to bed,” Jessica said without conviction. She kissed me on the forehead and I returned to the dishes. I attempted to return to the tailor and the Hemingway blue marlin, but my mind was no longer focused. “East Street stands for two,” I thought. “The tailor shop stands for five and the marlin stands for nine. The tailor with the blue marlin stands for 2-5-9.” I was now clear on these facts, but Grimage itself remained locked to me.
The next day at work I was distracted. The regional mind mapping and memory qualifier was just thirteen days away, and I needed more time to prepare if I was going to place and make it to nationals. So I kept slipping off to Grimage to walk the streets and reinforce my memory palace. One time it took my assistant six knocks before I finally answered the door; I had lost myself in the sporting goods store on West Street, hovering beneath a massive orange Creamsicle on a pogo stick. The pogo stick seemed to have turned on me, it kept flying around the store, chasing me. When I fell, it began hopping on my body, and I was struggling to leave Grimage. When my assistant finally broke me from the trance I noticed that I had welts on my knees, in almost the same place the pogo stick had attacked. How strange.
“What?” I snapped at my paralegal. I’m a worker’s compensation lawyer, a job that bored me in the best of times, but lately seemed as daunting as a Catherine wheel. How could I focus on hearing about a truck driver’s hemorrhoids, a nurse’s back troubles, or a data analyst’s carpel tunnel issues when the memory competition was so close? I had been working six months to prepare for the regionals, and now I was confident my hard work was about to pay off. Especially now that I was using Grimage as my memory palace, a place I had fought against as a child because it sometimes terrified me, but which I knew intimately from all those childhood nightmares. It now seemed to be the perfect pairing of function and form, only nobody in my ‘real’ life seemed to understand.
Later, I almost giggled in the elevator when I recognized a more than passing resemblance between the Hemingway blue marlin and the managing partner of my firm.
“Any big settlements lately?” he asked.
“We got a permanent partial on a torn meniscus a few weeks back,” I said. “Sixty percent of $100,000.”
He scratched his thick white beard. “Didn’t that matter settle six or seven weeks ago?” he asked. “What about this month? I’m asking about this month specifically.”
“I’m working on a bunch of files but nothing has settled or gone to verdict yet so far in July,” I said. “You know how slow things get in the summer.”
“Well the costs to run this place remain the same all year round,” he said, literally looking down on me. “Try to reel in some big fish before your vacation, get some quick settlements, and don’t let them off the hook.”
I couldn’t help but chortle at the managing partner’s choice of metaphor.
That evening Jessica and I had a “date night” and her mother took Benjamin for a few hours. We watched a movie that I selected, but in my mind I couldn’t help but stow away to Grimage. While Jessica watched mutant teenagers fight for the very fate of the universe I was cavorting with neon pink ocean waves, six-headed frogs, and a bashful pelican who played soulful music on a kazoo.
Later, on the couch, Jessica tried her best to be intimate while I was lost in a waking dream of solicitous elves, voluptuous vampires, a gelatinous singing meatloaf, and toward the very end, alluring sirens in a pretzel shop; although I took a shortcut to that store to ensure a finish. 4-3-2, 9-0-9, 6-6-3, 5-6-7.
After, Jessica looked at the clock and realized we had forty-five minutes to spare before her mother returned with Benjamin.
“Can we snuggle for a while?” Jessica asked.
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. I pulled her close and spooned her.
“But I want you here with me, not in Grimage,” Jessica insisted.
“I’m here, I’m here,” I said.
“I double-checked on your airfare and your hotel today,” Jessica said after a few minutes. “Everything looks good for your trip to the regionals.”
“Thanks honey,” I said, while meditating on South Street in Grimage, debating which store to enter.
“When you get back I have that medical procedure and my mom will be visiting friends in Florida, so I’ll need you , so I’ll need you to pick up Benjamin from daycare.”
“Sure thing,” I said, half-listening and half-walking toward the Grimage table tennis store with its slanted roof and webbed net entryway.
“You sure you’re listening?” Jessica said.
“Uh-huh,” I said, pulling her tighter while simultaneously entering the table tennis store. I delighted in finding the door open, so very open.
The next few weeks were a blur of half-honored commitments and long hours preparing for the various memory events. I would be competing in a mental decathlon of sorts, trying to out-memorize stiff competition in events ranging from “binary numbers,” “abstract images,” “random deck of cards,” “random numbers,” “random names,” “facial recognition,” and more. I could hardly think of anything else. Meanwhile, at home Jessica continued to assume primary responsibilities and at work discovery went unanswered, letters to adjusters went unwritten, and depositions went unscheduled. Upset clients calling became a near-daily occurrence and my work email overflowed with unread messages.
Two nights before my flight Jessica and I had a fight that lasted nearly an hour.
“You’re never present anymore,” Jessica said. “You’re always off in fucking Grimage.”
“I promise I will be more present,” I said. “I won’t go to Grimage anymore after the competition. I promise.”
That evening, I tried to avoid Grimage, but it seemed to suck me in. Once there, many of the townsfolk were walking the streets, holding candles and moving in a dirge-like waltz down the dirt paths of that ancient yet eternal place.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“We’re sad,” one of the friendly vampires said, refusing to meet my eyes.
“Why?”
“Because somebody’s going to die.”
“The competition’s tomorrow,” I said, now more engaged with Jessica than I had been since perhaps Benjamin’s birth. “Just give me a damn break, Jessica. Right now I feel like you’re sabotaging my chances. The Grimage townsfolk are very upset right now, everything’s so disjointed, and I have to think it has something to do with the pressure and restrictions you’re placing on me!”
“It’s always something with you,” Jessica said. “First it was the marathon running, then the board games—”
“European board games,” I interjected. “European strategy board games, to be specific. You act as though I were playing Candyland and Chutes and Ladders.”
“Fine, fancy fucking board games or whatever, but you get my point,” Jessica said while throwing her hands in the air. “It’s just one hobby to the next—when do I get a seat at the table? When will you place your attention on me, and more importantly, on Benjamin? When can we come to Grimage, or at the very least, when will you bring it to us?”
“You’re unbelievable,” I said. “I don’t shit on your scrapbooking, or your childish fantasy novels, do I? Do I?”
“Oh, sure you do,” Jessica said. “You do all the time! In fact you just did!”
Eventually we ran out of steam, like two old prizefighters convinced they had nothing more to prove in the tenth round of a heavyweight championship. The evening ended with vague promises and apologies. Jessica again reminded me to pick up Benjamin from daycare upon my return from the regionals.
I arrived a day before the competition and was excited for the extra time to prepare in solitude. But every time I tried to go to Grimage, it was blocked. When I did enter for a moment, there appeared to be a large pumpkin head on a podium, speaking before a loud but nervous assembled crowd.
“We need to make the appropriate sacrifice,” the pumpkin head said. “We need to admit that strangers to our town are the reason Grimage is no longer safe. We can’t give in to such interlopers. Such…wonderers.” Then, as if everyone suddenly realized I was there, the pumpkin speaker and everyone in the crowd turned, all at once, and looked at me. They stared, and stared, and stared…
The Convention Center consisted of three buildings and our competition was held in the smallest ballroom. The layout and setting reminded me a bit of the atmosphere I experienced when taking the bar exam, only this time I couldn’t wait to be tested. In the lobby I made a few new friends. They were other first timers, and like me they were excited, nervous, and somewhat socially awkward. They too were middle-aged men with clunky barrel glasses and boring jobs they rejoiced at escaping. Then, it was finally time for the competition.
When I returned to Grimage for the competition, this time it was a nightmare version of the world I had known in my dreams and mind since childhood. The Mayor of Grimage (A Tortoise Butcher by trade) had issued a new decree that all palindromic numbers must be removed from the town and before I could intervene dozens of stores were cordoned off and closed. A thick red tape smothered the entryway to buildings 1 through 9, 11, 22, 33, 44, and on— 888, 999, 171, 202, ad infinitum. There were signs everywhere saying “No More Interlopers,” and “Wonderers will be Persecuted.” There were wanted posters on all of the telephone poles, though the face on the poster was blurred out, hazy. When I left Grimage, failing to remember the numeric pattern for which I was competing, I was covered in perspiration and smelled rancid, like I hadn’t bathed just that morning.
I later stumbled in the binary number competition, attempting it without using my Grimage memory palace. I had answered “011000011100001000011101011110” when the correct order was in fact “011000011100001000011101011111.” After my early dismissal from the binary number competition I decided to pack it in and return to my hotel without entering any further events.
The next morning I took an early flight home feeling tired and unhappy, clutching my participation trophy like I had as an unathletic child.
Immediately upon my return home I decided to go for a run. Out in the fresh air, feeling a runner’s high like I hadn’t in a long time, I decided now would be a great time to get back into training for another marathon. Not to win it, but just to compete with myself and to finish the event. Besides, wasn’t competition sort of vulgar anyway? The important thing was continuous self-improvement, wasn’t it? To be the captain of your own ship and to make sure the vessel ran as smoothly as possible—whether that be through training the muscles and lungs via jogging or training the synapsis and memory function of the brain—what mattered was making the most of yourself while you could. Wasn’t that the real point, in the end, of this life?
Such lofty thoughts were interrupted by the ring of my cell phone. I jogged to a nearby bench and saw the familiar background picture of Jessica in her wedding dress on my phone.
“Hey honey,” I said. “Guess what I’m doing? I’ve just jogged five miles.”
“What?” Jessica said on the other line. “Where’s Benjamin?”
“Don’t…you have him?” I asked.
“No,” Jessica said, her tone both angry and fearful. “I told you to pick him up today because I had that medical procedure and my mom’s down in Florida.”
I didn’t respond.
“Bill, are you there?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I…I guess I forgot.”
“Hold on,” Jessica said, cutting him off. “I’ve got to go; I’m getting a call from the daycare.”
A few minutes later I received a text message from Jessica that read: “Benjamin’s fine but his daycare closed half an hour ago and you’re going to need to go pick him up immediately.”
An hour or so later I was home with Benjamin, and Jessica had yet to return. Benjamin kept fussing and crying, so I placed him in his nursery. But even then, his voice carried throughout our little home.
I poured myself a glass of red wine, and when that didn’t sufficiently take off the edge, I sat downstairs on the couch and entered Grimage.
It was a massacre, with most of the friendly shopkeepers hanging from wooden gallows, others laying in bloody heaps upon the ground. The Hemingway Marlin was wriggling against an old Grimvalia tree.
“We tried,” he said. “But the pumpkin and the guilded vampires…they were too strong.”
“What can I do to help?” I asked.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the Marlin gasped. “It’s not safe for you here anymore. You’ve got to leave. You’ve got to stop opening the door!”
I noticed that among the strewn-about dead villagers, there were regular humans. Men and women and children. Fellow…wonderers. A sense of extreme shock and fear gripped me.
Before I could process this some sort of electric shock came upon the Marlin and he shook and convulsed until his eyes flew out of his head and then his entire body exploded into a puff of black-red mist.
Behind me, a demon-like creature with three large horns atop its head called out to a scavenging brigade of other monsters. These must be the evil forces that had taken over Grimage and killed all of my friends.
“A wonderer,” a goblin-like creature hissed, pointing at me. “Get him. HE still requires the sacrifice, we must open the universal door!”
“No,” I screamed in doleful terror, already turning to run.
They were upon me, sedating me with large needles and I was screaming in terror when I suddenly came to. I was back in my home, on my threadbare old couch. The house was eerily quiet. I noticed that blood was dripping down from over my eye. It kept clouding my vision. I felt groggy, sedated.
“Jessica?” I called out. No answer. I assumed Benjamin had finally fallen asleep as there was no noise. I applied some pressure to my forehead, and my head throttled as if I’d been on a four day bender.
Then, just out of caution, I made my way to Benjamin’s nursery. And found, to my dismay and horror, that his crib was empty…
The authorities are already scouring the local neighborhoods, but I know he won’t be found. I know that I need to get him from Grimage, only now entry seems blocked to me. Please, please, please, I beg of you: if you have any idea how to reopen the universal door, please let me know…