Perry’s Backasswards Rooms

 

My version is much scarier. You'll see.

I was in the basement of my house in Havertown, PA, where I keep my beer, when I saw a strange light beckoning me to walk straight into a wall.

As I stepped forward, the wall dissolved, and I fell into a vast open space I had never seen before.

“Hell, if I’d known about this years ago,” I thought, “I could have put in a sauna or maybe even an indoor lap pool. But I’ve got to keep knowledge of all this extra square footage away from the township or my real estate taxes will go sky high.”

Yep — I had stumbled into an alternate dimension:

Perry’s Backasswards Rooms.

I walked past huge piles of broken desks and chairs and heard voices murmuring in a variety of languages.

“Gee, the UN General Assembly must have had a helluva party here last night,” I thought, “but somebody ought to clean this all up.”

I moved down the hallway, opened the first door, and was immediately swallowed by a sea of socks.

“Amazing!” I gasped. “So this is where they all go.”

A screaming woman with a distorted face chased me out of the room and deeper into the labyrinth.

“Hey, lady — you had a bad reaction to Botox. It’ll pass!” I shouted.

As I wandered through the maze-like rooms, I encountered even stranger things.

Down another hallway, I ran smack into the famous Lost Colony of Roanoke, missing since 1590, where Virginia Dare — the first British child born in America — had lived.

I asked why the word “Croatoan” was carved into a nearby tree before the colony vanished.

“Because we wouldn’t have had nearly the same cachet in history had we carved ‘Havertown’ into the tree, dumbass!” Virginia Dare told me.

At this point I was hungry, and fortunately I found a snack bar.

Unfortunately, it only served white blobs of substance pulled from the stomach of a comatose zombie-like creature with three eyes and a thoroughly contorted face sitting at a table.

And it was take-out only, so I kept moving.

A huge wooden pirate suddenly charged at me and tried to eat me and I sprinted down another hallway. Where are all the Backasswards termites when you need them?

I ducked into the next room, and there came the greatest shock of all. It was clear to me now that I was in the place where all lost things eventually wind up.

Those googly eyes. That red-and-white striped shirt. The perennially dopey look on his face.

“OMG,” I stammered. “You’re Waldo — of Where’s Waldo? fame!”

“Yes, I am,” he replied. “This is where I come to rest between gigs, but now that you’ve found me, my career is ruined.”

I told Waldo I could keep my mouth shut about his whereabouts, and he thanked me.

“That is, Waldo — as long as your money’s green and the price is right.”

And so an unexpected source of extra income has emerged from the bizarre and mysterious space I now know as Perry’s Backasswards Rooms.

And if I can just find a contractor somewhere down here, maybe I can finally put that sauna and pool in too.

 I promised him a cameo in my version if he promised not to eat anyone.