It's supposed to take about 12 hours or so to get from my home in Friendship to Savannah, Georgia. Anyone who has traveled down I-95 has seen signs for a certain tourist trap of questionable racial sensitivity, a place far to the south where one can play mini-golf and experience shame at the same time. I will not name the place to avoid any accusation of libel, but anyone on the East Coast will know the place I'm talking about.

Now, I'd never been there myself until recently on my Savannah trip. I noticed it on the way down which planted a seed of curiosity in my brain. After my time in Savannah was over (and it was wonderful, thank you for asking), I decided to stop on the way up and see if it was as cheesy and offensive as the 1700 billboards up and down the coast lead you to believe.

I exited 95 about 2 hours into the trip and pulled into a parking lot that was full of cars, and guarded by a tower topped by a huge sombrero, apparently the national headgear of this culture, unless Tom & Jerry and the Looney Toon would lead me astray. Like I said, not racially or culturally sensitive in the least. I got out of the car and looked around, trying to figure out what kind of person comes to a place like this. I saw a couple of full families, a young couple wearing trucker hats that said "Bride" and "Groom", and more than a few seniors filing out of a large tour bus. Almost all were looking around with mixed expressions of wonder and embarrassment, and I realized that I shared their bewildered expressions.

The place is a sprawling campus of fake adobe, bright colors, and stereotypes. It even has its own water tower. I was immediately entranced and peeved, glancing around the lot to see if anyone was looking at me with accusation in their eyes as I hurried into the shop and stopped dead as the door closed.

Ho. Lee. Fuck.

Immediately, my senses were overwhelmed by a near-seizure-inducing assault of color and sound. Loud mariachi music played over tinny speakers and bounced off of a feverish selection of brightly-colored sombreros, mugs, shirts, stuffed dolls, and figurines. After a long moment of stunned silence, I wandered up and down aisles picking up items here and there and wondering how my husband would react if I came home with one of these things.

"Can I help you find anything, sir?", I heard a peppy voice ask. I turned to see a pretty young lady in her 20s standing next to me. I almost replied, Have you seen my sense of dignity anywhere? I seem to have lost it., but was caught by her ultra-bright green eyes. She unblinkingly held my gaze, and I was briefly fixated by those luminous eyes.

"Uhh..." I replied, suavely.

She began a clearly well-rehearsed spiel about the history of the attraction, but I didn't hear a word of it. I started to realize that her eyes weren't luminous, they were reflective like looking into an algae-infected pond. Her blonde hair wasn't glossy, it looked like it was covered by a thin sheen of oil. Her skin, rather than showing the glow of youth seemed plasticine and smooth, like I was viewing her through a bad Snapchat filter.

I broke eye contact and suddenly felt the music pounding in my brain. I stammered a confused thank you and hurried away from the creepy girl-bot. I stopped behind a rack of 1990s hackey-sacker baja shirts to gather myself. A quick peek over the rack showed me that the shop girl was now talking to the young bride and groom. She briefly turned toward me and she looked completely normal, just a regular young lady working her way through college talking to the honeymooners, who seemed completely rapt in the history of the attraction.

I shook it off and started browsing through a selection of mugs showing the cartoon mascot and piles of wildly-painted ceramic bull skulls. I chuckled as my own idiocy as I started to prepare a funny retelling of my apparent stroke while talking to an attractive young girl. Hubby would love that!

I spent the next 30 minutes or so walking up and down aisles full of tchotchkes and nonsense and realized that I hadn't seen anyone else browsing the vaguely offensive items in quite a while. I turned to the next aisle and noticed that I had made it to the very back of the store. The light here was not quite as glaring and I could no longer hear the shocked laughs of other customers. It must have been far from a speaker, because even the music seemed muffled and quiet, almost off-key.

The items on these shelved were plastic figurines of the mascot getting into all kinds of humorous situations. One had him slipping on a banana, spilling beans (of course) all over himself. The next had him being chased by a large cartoon dog, a comical mask of surprised fear on his face and his hat about to fly off his head. The next showed him hiding in bushes, peering into a window in the brick wall of a house. Through the window, you could see the silhouette of a busty woman showering. His tongue hung out in a lurid display of wantonness and the silhouette of the woman was minutely detailed in her curves. It could have been my imagination, but there also seemed to be a large bulge in the front of his pants.

What the fuck. I looked away in discomfort and picked up the last figurine on the shelf. It showed an angry-looking donkey kicking the mascot as he tried to sneak up behind it for some kind of mischief. This time, there was no cartoonishness in the violent action. The donkey's rear hooves were dug into the face and chest of the mascot. His chest was caved in and he was in the middle of doubling over in pain. The face was made to be ultra-realistic as opposed to the normal cartoonish smile. The other hoof had connected with his left eye and shattered the bone, causing his eye to start popping out. Where it connected, you could see the torn skin and under that, muscle, bone, and shattered teeth, all worked out in minute detail. You could almost hear the shriek of agony coming from the broken, gaping mouth.

Horrified, I threw the macabre knick-knack onto the shelf and it clattered loudly against the metal surface and the other figurines. The sound seemed to echo in the new quiet of the store and after a brief pause, I heard loud, quick footsteps coming towards me.

"Sir?", the shop girl's voice sounded harsh and angry now. "Sir, are you okay?" I turned and, seeing a nearly-hidden hallway behind a rack of garish woven blankets, quietly ducked in. The hallway was dimly lit and had a musty, coppery odor. I saw the girl hurry past the end of the aisle, again looking like an animated plastic statue of the generic American girl. I'm not sure if I heard the rattling, guttural growl coming from her or if my mind filled that in later. Not seeing me, she turned and stalked back the way she came.

After a quiet sigh of relief, I turned to look down the poorly illuminated hallway. It was short, maybe about 5 yards long and narrow. I'm a fairly heavy guy (hubby calls me his gorilla), so my shoulders lightly brushed either wall as I crept towards the door at the end of the hall. The door was a normal, white steel door and it had a sign on it.

EMPLOYEES ONLY

Two thoughts were in my mind. First, I wanted to get out of this store without running into Uncanny Valerie and two, I've always wondered what was behind these doors. Involuntarily, my hand reached out to the steel knob and grabbed it. It was ice cold and felt like there was a slight vibration coming through it, like a low hum. I was surprised that it easily turned in my hand.

Considering the situation, I was expecting a loud, spookhouse creak as the door opened, but was disappointed. The door opened quickly and quietly and beyond it was an absolute horror show. The room beyond was painted an institutional green, like the hallway of an old asylum. The walls extended for about 50 feet and were lined top to bottom with metal shelves like the ones in the store. Instead of merchandise there was a line of heads, each an exact replica of the shop girl's. The eyes stared straight ahead and the mouths hung slightly open, showing rows of perfect, white teeth.

At the far end of the room was a worktable that had two more heads and some other objects that I couldn't make out. The heads didn't look quite right. Disbelieving my own inability to turn and get the fuck out when I so obviously needed to, I stepped closer to the table until I could see what was on it. The heads were stripped of skin and blood was oozing into congealed puddles on the table. On one side of the heads were two perfect Uncanny Valerie masks and on the other side were two trucker hats. One had "Groom" printed on it and the other, "Bride". A small mewl of terror escaped my throat as I felt the blood drain from my face.

"Sir." The voice was now harsh and gravelly.

Oh, fuck!

I turned and there she was, a grimace of rage on her fake face and advancing on me with a small, silver exacto knife. Panicked, I looked around for something to defend myself with and noticed that all of the heads had their sickly green eyes turned to me and a carbon copy scowl on their faces. Almost in a fugue state, I saw my hands grab one of the duplicate heads and my feet advanced. Feeling the terrible weight in my hands, I swung.

The shop girl showed an instant of surprise as her head connected with... her head, I guess. Both exploded in a spray of rotting gore, loose flesh, and bone. Her body collapsed in the putrid puddle. Frozen in shock, I felt the results of the carnage dripping down my entire body as I stepped unsteadily back out the room. My shoulders and arms left streaks of blood and rot on the walls of the narrow hall as I exited.

Walking back through the store, I noticed that it was once again lit, loud, and full of staring customers. They stared at my blood-soaked and reeking self as I stiffly left through the door, leaving streaks of brownish red on the glass.

I only remember flashes of the drive home: stopping at a stream after dark, washing up and changing my clothe, dropping the bag of gore-soaked clothing in a random dumpster a few hours later, the traffic jam in Baltimore (of fucking course).

I never told my husband about what happened. Never told anyone until now. My advice to you: don't stop at tourist traps and stay the hell away from Employees Only doors.