Don’t expect the future to save you. The only thing that would motivate a time-traveler to come back is if the future is worse.

“Is there a cure found for my cancer in the future you come from?”

“What? Hell no. No one lives long enough to get cancer. The last doctor was eaten by spiders right before I jumped out of there.”

Any time-traveler you meet is a parasite and worthy of contempt.

That dream where there’s a door in your home that you’ve somehow never noticed, but you’re awake, or dreaming you’re awake– no, awake and realizing that the reason you don’t remember the door is because you’re not supposed to remember the door.

There’s a sense of having done something irreversible, even before your trembling hand alights on the doorknob, even before you open the door and find another hand on the opposite doorknob, someone else holding the knob from the other side, tugged off balance as you pull. Someone who looks exactly like you.

Now you’ve done it, you say. The other you. I was holding it. All you had to do was forget.

Nothing moves fast in the desert, which is why the camp is out in the middle of a plane, the tents aligned in spokes, a final circle of salt around the entire grounds, renewed daily.

During daylight, the campers memorize sigils and learn to cooperate in adverse conditions, singing together while counselors aim giant fans at them, play the sounds of growling tigers.

At night, the counselors sleep, leaving the campers to ignore their training, read books about electrical engineering, have make-out parties, or fits of foolishness, journey outside the camp’s salted border to ask the skinwalkers and dervishes directly what they did to be kept out.

“We’ve managed to translate some of the ancient tongue. ‘Baskin’ we know means ‘shrine’ and ‘Robbins’ means ‘gods’. The two most powerful deities were known as Chocolate and Vanilla, presumably gender paired, but we don’t know how. Their influence is seen in their offspring, which carry their names on these cards, which also indicated where their physical representations were to be placed. Possibly round-based statues, in these tub-shaped grooves.”

Wake the pledges up in the middle of the night. Claim to have no idea who any of them are. Offer them blankets, tea, ask if they have anyone who should be contacted about where they are. Every time they name a relative or friend, laugh, and beg them to be serious.

After drinking, quiz pledges on frat history/trivia. For each wrong answer, erase one of their childhood memories: the scent of chlorinated pools, a grandparent’s touch. Keep going ’til all they remember is pledging.

Here’s the thing. If some of the people you encountered today were decoy people– the equivalent of an anglerfish’s lure– you wouldn’t know.

You wouldn’t know because if you had triggered those lure-people, you’d be gone. And if you could recognize them for what they were, the species that uses those unsuccessful lures would have died out.

They watched you go by and you never noticed.

Keep looking at your phone.

What if our cult, pushing at the jellied walls of the world, eager to let in the Other from outside, was honestly trying to make things better? Huh?

What if the soft god we sacrifice to and summon was, like, a big bouquet of flowers? For everyone? Who doesn’t like flowers? Enormous flowers from beyond? With a pollen that inflicts blindness and madness? But, like… really pretty!

Scholars and adventurers, they see the robes and the knives and the chanting and they assume the worst every time.

The nurse comes in and says How are you doing today. The nurse comes in and says How are you both doing today? The nurse comes in and says Why are there so many nurses in here? The nurse comes in and jostles the other nurses and you’re dumped on the floor. The nurse comes in, and a foot finds your back, and glass cracks as a nurse is pushed into the window. A nurse comes in and nurses come in and the floor shakes. I’m better now! you cry, but nurses don’t believe you, more nurses as the floor sinks and then gives way for your health.

That romantic comedy moment where the cute person (falsely coded as “nerdy”) takes off their glasses but instead of getting hot, the rest of the world actually blurs out, matter separating, solids becoming vapors, the power of infatuation writ large by the power of removed glasses, the love story now between a person and the world they move through like smoke

all camp attendees expected to sign up for at least 1 daily

Popsicle Stick Summoning Circles: Catch an imp or boggin with glue, yarn and wood!

Mid-Lake Communing: a quick canoe ride out to shout questions into the water for the Something that stirs in the silt!

Cooking with Cauldrons: intro to pastas & potions (alt. days)

Hiking the Trail of Gems: last one to the top is tied to a tree until they can convince a wood ghast to free them either via a boon or riddle-solving!