This is a preliminary report, so stay tuned for updates. Over the last several months, we have received numerous complaints about a certain Wal Mart out on the edge of town. While each of these gripes had a common theme, they all told a unique story. One woman said that upon entering the Wal Mart, she received a call from her husband, who had been dead for years. Another man told us he entered the building, only to discover that the lights were out and upon turning around, he found no Wal Mart on the property at all. Only upon crossing the threshold did reality snap back into place. It has become clear that time has stopped working and we aren’t sure what to do about it.

First, I want to clarify what we mean when we say that time has stopped working. We don’t mean that time has frozen in place within the Wal Mart and we don’t believe that the clocks within this particular Wal Mart have stopped ticking. What we mean is that upon entering this particular establishment, the rules of time are simply thrown out the window and anything goes. We went there for this story and I ended up buying a type of bubblegum that hasn’t been sold in decades. When we left, the bubblegum that had been in my pocket turned into a batch of cockroaches and crawled away at a later, more convenient time.

I began setting up a booth outside of this Wal Mart specifically to interview people that had just come back from some sort of profound journey through space and time. One woman told me she saw her great-grandmother in the bras section, even though she swore off of them years ago. Another shopped told me that they had been lost in a primordial soup of chemicals and void, trying to find some sense of solidity. In the end, they fell into what they thought was a bottomless pit, only to tumble back out the front door months later.

This was what was so striking to us: that every story was different. This is why we can only say that time no longer works here. Or, if it does, not in the way we are used to. All we can do now is warn you and remind you to say goodbye to your loved ones before entering the Wal Mart on the edge of town. You never know when, or where, you might come back.

The Wal Mart corporation declined to respond to our communications and even went so far as to ban us from returning to the store on the edge of town. Thankfully, there’s no way they have planned for the amount of costumes I keep around the house, so there will be no stopping me when this story, obviously, progresses. 

This article was written by Nathan Ellwood and some of it was actually true. Follow him for more on Twitter @NPEllwood.