After visiting a cheesecake bakery out of state, Shoshianna Moore was inspired to start one in Bethany. Not Cho Cheesecake is a place along Route 66 where you come in with a sweet tooth and leave as family.
I’ve been working on this story for some time and I’m happy to be able to release it! This was shot with Lumix S1H. I’m still getting used the camera, but this video turned out great.
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During her birthday party, Krystal hides in a new and mysterious giant washing machine at an immersive art gallery only to come out in a strange world.
Krystal had never seen the giant washing machine before. While she felt like she would discover a new tiny detail with each visit to the immersive art gallery, a front-loading washing machine, the size of an SUV was not something she would’ve missed. She walked around the silver-colored machine. The art piece wasn’t backed against a wall or connected to anything. That ruled out it leading to another section like the famous washing machine portal at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
If she didn’t want to get caught, she didn’t have time to stare. For her 30th birthday, she rented out the entire 6,000 square feet hand-crafted, immersive art project known as MixTape by Factory Obscura. Factory Obscura’s MixTape was a multi-sensory experience that explored the emotions associated with giving or receiving music as a gift. As a gift, Krystal invited a dozen of her friends for an adults-only game of hide-and-seek. Plus, a feast of pizza, cake, and craft beer from local businesses. Her goal: have an unforgettable birthday adventure.
The round, plastic door to the washing machine was covered with a milky way wallpaper on the inside, making it impossible for Krystal to see through. Curious, she grabbed the handle–not sure if it would even open–and pulled. Inside was a fully padded room of clouds against a blue sky and bright pastel-colored pillows, matching those of the nearby cactus treehouse. On the ceiling was a scattering of fairy lights. Krystal’s face lit up in awe.
“I can hide in here,” Krystal declared as she climbed inside.
When the door latched close, soft, dreamy atmospheric music began to play inside. Krystal leaned against the pillow wall and stretched out her legs. She felt confident in her hiding spot and bet her friends wouldn’t figure out that the door opens. She tried to listen for anyone coming, but she couldn’t hear anything over the music.
After several minutes, annoyance began to settle. Krystal regarded her hiding spot as good, but not that good. She then began to wonder if it was a prank or perhaps a wholesome trick.
Maybe my friends are in the lobby together, waiting to surprise me? Krystal thought. Then I shouldn’t keep them waiting.
Krystal opened the door. A sea of socks of every color and every pattern filled the sunny outside like sand dunes. There was no way Factory Obscura could pull off such a room. To fill a place with this many socks, they would’ve had been collecting them for decades–putting out numerous calls for donations, which she would’ve seen and probably would’ve contributed to the cause too. More importantly, she then realized, was that the area was larger than the entire building.
“Hello?” Krystal called out.
No response.
She eased out one leg, keeping most of her body inside as she tapped on the ground. It was solid. Feeling safe, she gradually stepped out of the washing machine. The ground felt like standing on a pile of laundry. She looked behind the machine. Off in the distance were small buildings composed of socks and random junk.
With the small town being her only visible point of interest, she started walking. After taking several steps, the terrain began to rumble. She turned and ran back to the washing machine, but before she could reach it, the machine was flung up into the air by a giant white sock worm.
Krystal screamed. The washing machine landed far away, near the town, but it didn’t seem damaged. The stock worm was three times the size of the washer. Krystal held up her arms, bracing herself to be eaten whole.
“Hello, there,” the sock worm warmly greeted.
Krystal let her guard down. “Hi.”
“Are you new here?”
“Yeah. Where am I?”
“You’re in the Land of the Lost Things.”
“Land of lost things?” Krystal repeated. “Is this like where lost things end up?”
“Yes, but you don’t seem to be lost. We rarely get humans here. How did you get here?” the sock worm inquired with a friendly tone.
“I just got inside that washing machine,” Krystal explained while pointing to said machine, “and when I opened the door, I arrived here.”
“I don’t like that machine,” the sock worm grumbled. “I don’t like it’s creator either. Always playing tricks on people to study the universe.”
“Could you help me get back to my friends?”
“Depends. Do you consider yourself lost in life?”
“Actually, I feel like things have been looking up for me lately and that I have a purpose, a direction for once.”
“Then this won’t hurt.”
“What won’t–”
Before Krystal could finish, the sock worm opened their mouth and devoured her. Her scream muffled as the socks surrounded her, making everything go black. Everything stopped moving, and she stopped screaming.
Then she felt a bop on her head by a human hand. She pushed away the clothes in front of her face, revealing she was back at Factory Obscura in a pile of socks where the washing machine once stood.
“Found you,” her boyfriend playfully taunted.
This week’s short story was inspired by the writing prompt: “You are playing hide and seek, and decide to hide in the washing machine. You sit there for some time, but it seems like your friends gave up. You climb out, only to discover that you are on a mountain of socks. Welcome to the land, where all the lost things go.”
When thinking about this prompt, I was thinking of some way to feature adults in the story as a twist. That got me to thinking of the washing machine portal at Meow Wolf, but I didn’t want to write about that one. Instead, I made up an art piece (or really a machine from Loki and Raven) that would act as a portal to the other world. I debated on leaving Krystal in the land of the lost, but I liked the sweet line of her boyfriend finding her. Happy ending today!
The journey for the third season of ghost stories, urban legends, and local history began on a dark, January night. Sam Saxton and Professor Geoff DeRoot traveled to Purcell to visit the McClain County Historical & Genealogical Society & Museum for stories about the country and a chance to see the ghost of Mr. McClain.
We would like to thank Pam Hobbs for sharing stories with us.
If you love what we’re doing, want us to keep being artist owned and patron supported, click here. In return, you can get bonus content, including early access to my other shows and short stories.
Behind the Scenes Commentary
As discussed in the episode, we recorded the interview with Pam Hobbs in January. We originally planned to interview her as part of season two, but our schedules didn’t align due to the busy holiday season. The opening, outro, and narrations were recorded later in the year once Jeff and I figured out our direction for the season.
The narration about the professor staring at the painting was something Jeff suggested during our edits. As you’ll hear on other episodes, I took that concept and applied it to others. I think overall, there’s more commentary from Sam this season.
At the time this episode premiered, Jeff and I managed to record six episodes. Our goal is to end the season with 10. Originally, we thought we would do more, but COVID has shortened our plans.
I hope you enjoy this first episode and stick around for more. Next Up: Bartlesville! We got a bunch of great stories from that trip.
While digging for resources on their polluted planet, Talus finds themself in a cave filled with hourglasses.
Talus’ optical system came back online, finding themself in a cave with calm, blue flames. No matter how efficient the Yellow Planet’s mechanicals were with recycling, the pollution that ravaged their home kept miners like Talus digging for raw materials. According to the data given by Eze, this cave didn’t exist.
Glass popped in the distance, prompting Talus to stand up. Their body moved with ease and perhaps with more fluidity than before the fall Talus thought. They tested the drill on their left arm. It spun with no difficulty.
Another glass container popped.
Talus scanned the area. Golden hourglasses the size of basketballs lined the cave walls from floor to ceiling, spanning throughout the depths. On the base of every hourglass was a metal plate with a name written in binary. They watched as the pink sand drained from the top half of an hourglass and popped, spilling out the sand.
Talus tapped on the networker on their wrist. “Call, Eze.”
The networker did not light up.
“I knew something must’ve gotten damaged in the fall,” Talus mumbled.
Accepting the situation, Talus wondered about the cave. Help would arrive soon, and they thought the cave might have valuable materials. Strangely, there were only hourglasses in the shelves carved out from the limestone and a golden door. Talus wondered why they hadn’t noticed the door until now. Talus walked over to the door and reached out for the heart-shaped knob when they saw a broken hourglass with their name on it.
Talus turned at the sound of rope falling through the hole he created.
“About time,” Talus teased as Eze climbed down.
Eze did not respond. Eze had the mechanical body of a spider, making them an agile climber throughout caves. Eze got on four knees.
“Are you damaged?” Talus called out, concerned.
Again, Eze did not respond. Talus walked over and saw Eze inspecting Talus’ own biped mechanical body crumbled on the ground with a metal bar piercing through the head.
“I’m so sorry, Talus,” Eze mourned. “This cave didn’t show on any of my scans.”
I took a hard sci-fi twist for this week’s writing prompt-inspired story. The prompt was, “You’re a miner and one day stumble into a well-lit cave. The walls are lined with hourglasses, as you look around, you see a few run out and shatter. As you turn to leave, you notice a broken one by the door. It bears your name.”
I haven’t written any stories on the Yellow Planet yet, so here we go! Out of the Five Following Planets, the Yellow Planet is the least populated due to the harsh conditions. Mostly mechanicals call it home.
Thank you to Janine De Guzman at Design Pickle for bringing this scene to life.
With origins in the solar-power industry, David Jankowsky saw a problem in the electric vehicle market. With billions going into EV technology, Jankowsky noticed little of that funding was going towards infrastructure. While Tesla Motors may have popularized the electric car and built their superchargers, they ’re all closed source.
“We know there ’s literally going to be hundreds of car manufacturers in the next five, ten years coming out with electric vehicles, and they would not be able to use the Tesla superchargers, so we solved that problem,” said Jankowsky.“We developed and installed universal chargers, so any car in the world can use them, including Tesla drivers. We solved the range-anxiety issue, meaning no one ’s going to buy a car if there ’s no infrastructure to fuel them if they ’re away from their home.”
The Francis EV Charging Network solved range anxiety in Oklahoma by having a charging station every 50 miles. One could travel from Broken Bow to Guymon in their electric car. Jankowsky notes that one may have to drive 10 to 20 miles out of the way to access a charger because they currently don ’t have enough in Oklahoma. The first phase of the network features 225 fast-charging stations across 109 strategically located sites in Oklahoma, including small towns.
“We’ve done a lot of rural development, and we basically said, ‘We’ll bring a charger here, pay for everything, and it ’s going to cause basically drivers that have been stuck on the highways at the travel stops at the gas stations, they ’re going to have to come into your town to charge, and by the way, they ’re going to be captive there for about 60 minutes,’” said Jankowsky.“When we go to the travel stops on the highways, no one wants to wait 60 minutes to charge their car, so that ’s where we ’ve put in super-duper chargers, we got to call them something at some point, they can charge cars in seven to nine or 10 minutes. That ’s very much equivalent to current gas stations.”
The public infrastructure for EVs is not going to look the same when compared to gas. Jankowsky sees electric stations being more“ubiquitous” as they ’ll be able to go everywhere and anywhere. When people are at the office, shopping for groceries, or eating a meal, there ’ll be a charger.
“There won ’t be like six chargers on one corner, and six chargers on another corner like you see in the gas space, and there ’s a variety of reasons for that,” said Jankowsky.“It ’s not going to develop the same way gas stations developed because quite simply, you don ’t need as many out there as you do gas pumps because people can charge their car at home typically at night, which is where about 90% of the charging is going to take place.”
As a startup in Oklahoma, Jankowsky finds people are surprised to learn they we able to install 225 superchargers across the state.
“That ’s never been done before,” said Jankowsky.“Our largest competitors are definitely not doing 250 charging stations a year, and I mean, we ’re just one data point, but Oklahoma really has, and I preach this to everyone that will listen, we have this unique ability or position where we could be the EV capital of the world, both in terms of the technology, so there ’s a lot of technology in these chargers, it ’s mostly software-based technology, we have the manufacturing capabilities to do it here.”
Looking forward to the future, Francis Energy is expanding into 30 states to build the network out from Oklahoma. There are also plans to upgrade existing stations, which they ’ll continue to do until Oklahoma can take care of every car on the road. In addition to the expansions, they ’re working on an app.
Like competitors, the app will allow users to find stations, initiate a charge, offer a discount, and more. One feature Jankowsky explained is that people will be able to stay in their car and connect to a free wifi hotspot while they wait for a delivery. Stations are separately addressed, allowing orders to come directly to that charging station.
“There are so many cool things that we can do with the software that ’s in the chargers themselves to create this great user experience,” said Jankowsky.“It ’s not perfected yet, and so some of our concern is we have drivers out there that are using our stations that might not be having the best experience, and we want to let people know, ‘Hey, this is new. This is novel. We ’re working on the bugs, we ’re working on the kinks, but it ’s going to be great, just stay patient with us, and then here ’s what we ’re doing to help the user experience.’”
David Jankowsky will be speaking at the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch on Wednesday, September 9th, 2020. Be sure to register for the online ZOOM event to learn more about Francis Renewable Energy, hear a Pitch Presentation by HyQ Technologies, and to network with entrepreneurs an innovators in Oklahoma. Read more about the September Pitch Presenter below.
