The Loop

If 'Twin Peaks' had a putt-putt course...

Entering 'Twin Peaks'

CBS Photo Archive

Welcome to Twin Peaks Putt-Putt! The only multi-dimensional putt-putt course designed to give you the experience of not just watching but being in the reality-bending hit psychological thriller.

Disclaimer: You might die, but there will probably be a loophole (and lots of cherry pie). Also, in keeping with the theme, the course isn't finished and never will be and your satisfaction doesn't matter in the slightest.

Putt away, old friend!

Hole 1, Par 2: "The loop." Start out with a simple warm-up: Just hit the ball into the loop. It goes around and comes out by the hole.

Six months later you get a phone call from a nurse at a Phoenix retirement home telling you the ball has finally emerged on the other side. You return to the course to continue the game. The ball looks fine. It hums until you touch it.

Hole 2, Par 2: A young man in a leather jacket on a motorcycle with a pretty young thing behind him revs the throttle. He pops his collar, then kicks the bike into gear and peels out. The girl turns and watches you as they go. Some strands of her auburn hair get caught in her mouth and she doesn't pull them out.

McGill & Marshall In 'Twin Peaks'

CBS Photo Archive

This tableau has no formal nor informal reach or definition and it is both beautiful and stupid. Tap the ball over the little glass-bottom bridge. With a second tap it's in the hole for par!

Hole 3, Par 1: This one's just a straight shot, a guaranteed hole-in-one. Literally. No matter where or how hard you hit the ball, it goes in. When you bend to retrieve your ball from the hole, you die.

Your death then inverts itself and a hole opens inside of you. It's golden. You hear a foghorn. You hear someone say, "Quiet, please." You enter the hole. On the other side is Hole 3. You don't know if you're alive and you never will. "There's no way in hell to score this one," you think. You look at the scorecard, and that's what it says, too: "Hole 3: There's no way in hell to score this one, Jack thinks."

You remember your name.

Hole 4, Par 23: As you tee up you hear a grinding on the pebbly ground that marks "out of bounds." A young boy about nine years old approaches. He has dark skin and dark eyes, perhaps of indigenous heritage. He wears a green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt and carries a cardboard box. Breathing holes have been cut in the front of the box.

The boy tilts the box towards you. Inside you see a turtle. The boy gestures at the turtle with his eyes and you pick it up by the shell. The turtle's legs move dumbly, instinctively, as if it's walking—or swimming—in air. The boy takes the turtle back from you, sets it on the course, and places your golf ball on its back. You and the boy share the silence while the turtle carries the ball down the turf and kneels three inches from the hole. You believe you hear the skin on its knees stretch. Do turtles have knees?

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You wait for further movement or sign, but after a few moments you understand the turtle is not going to move and no sign will come. You carry your putter over and tap the ball off the turtle's back.

Hole 5, Par 3: This hole has a tricky little ramp that you use as a carom. It's tough but fair, and it deals you a bogey. A package of cocaine has been stuffed in the hole, however. You stand stiff. Someone will soon come for those drugs.

Hole 6, Par 3: A two-parter: First you've got to hit your ball into a white PVC pipe. The pipe carries the ball down to a lower level, where the hole is. The hole number on a post next to the tee flickers and turns into a 19, which glows golden for three or four seconds, then flickers back to a 6. You hear gunshots. The boy with the turtle is beside you, holding an empty box and a putter. You make par. He hits a double bogey, but tells you it was par. You mark it and say nothing because you fear for your life. If you have a life. He laughs.

Hole 7, Par 2: You try to skip this hole and lose the boy. There's a big papier mache boulder obstacle in the middle. On the other side a beautiful blonde reclines on her side upon a crushed velvet chaise lounge. You recognize Laura Palmer, a teenager brutally murdered not far from here 25 years ago to this day.

Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me

LYNCH-FROST/CIBY 2000

Your phone buzzes in your pocket. It's your mother, so you answer. A woman's voice you don't recognize says, "A shoe is afoot." You hang up. Laura is looking at you, holding the turtle to her cheek. She had been speaking into it as if it were a mobile phone. You skip the hole, mark it par.

"You're going to the big house," Laura calls.

Hole 8, No Par: Dusk. A running police cruiser is parked on the turf. Its Visibar splashes you with red and blue. Its mirrored cups spin and click. You're unsure if this is an obstacle. On a bench next to the hole sit two local cops. They rise. One stuffs his thumbs into his waist band and steps forward, pushing his gut out in front of him.

KYLE MACLACHLAN;MICHAEL ONTKEAN

ABC Photo Archives

"Jack Kerouac?" he asks.

"Yes?"

He pulls a hand out, beckons with all four fingers. "We're gonna need you to come with us."

You turn to the boy, but he's running away. Across a footbridge. Into the gravel ground. It's steep there and his foot slips, but he catches himself on a fake palm tree. He runs again. Almost out of sight.

"Mr. Kerouac?"

You turn back to the policeman.

He says, "There's the hard way, or there's the easy way."

The second policeman holds a set of handcuffs. "Easy way," you say.

Beat.

The cops laugh outrageously then walk back to the cruiser. You hear one say, "Follow-through!" before the doors chuck shut. They drive away.

It takes four putts for your nerves to calm, but eventually you get the ball in.

Hole 9, Par 2: You spend what feels like hours walking through the woods that appeared so soft from the cruiser, clearing spiky brush with your putter. You see a high-wattage golden light through the trees and head for it. It's a sign the size of a highway billboard. Rows of 60-watt bulbs spell out, "THE 19TH HOLE." There's no tee. You walk around the billboard and on the other side find a hole in the ground about three feet wide.

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You peer into it, stick your putter in. You can't feel the bottom. Then you hear a car engine. No, a motorcycle. A lone headlight wanders through the forest, the trees creating a strobe effect as the light passes behind them. The bike picks up speed and the engine rises in pitch. It's now on a straightaway, heading for you at 50, 60 miles an hour. Maybe more. At the handlebars is the young man in the leather jacket, the girl is behind him. She leans to the side, pulls out a colt .45 and levels it at you.

You jump into the hole.

You hear gun shots.

You fall.

Six hours later you wake up in a fallout shelter underneath Denver International Airport.

Exploring Denver International Airport

George Rose