The NAGs Sent Me a Citation for Unauthorized Dimensional Bleed and I Don't Even Know What That Means
A retired ledger auditor receives a citation for a violation that references an ordinance that does not exist, for a condition nobody will define.
By Parnell Grout·June 30, 2026
I have lived at 14 Bracken Lane in Fenwick Hollow for eleven years. I have never missed a lawn assessment. I have never painted my shutters an unapproved color. I once received a commendation from the Neighborhood Association Group for "most consistent hedge geometry, residential tier," which I still have framed in the upstairs hallway. Or at least I did. The hallway has been acting up lately, but I'll get to that.
Three weeks ago, I found a citation on my front door from the NAGs. Not tucked into the mailbox. Not slid under the door. Adhered to the outside of the door with what I can only describe as regulatory-grade adhesive, the kind that leaves a residue you can still feel two weeks later even after you've gone at it with a putty knife. The citation was printed on pale green cardstock and read, in full:
"NOTICE OF VIOLATION: Unauthorized Dimensional Bleed, Category 2(b), originating from the premises at 14 Bracken Lane. The resident is hereby ordered to contain, remediate, or otherwise resolve the bleed event within thirty (30) calendar days, per Municipal Ordinance 11.7.4(c), subsection unclear."
Subsection unclear. That is a direct quote. It says "subsection unclear" on the official citation. I checked three times.
I called the NAGs office the next morning. The phone rang for nine minutes. A recording informed me that the Neighborhood Association Group was "perpetually declining to comment" and that I should submit my inquiry via the Residential Concerns Portal at nags-fenwickhollow.wv, which, when I visited it, consisted of a single page with the words "Portal Under Review" and a stock photograph of a door that appeared to lead nowhere.
So I went in person.
The NAGs office in Fenwick Hollow operates out of a converted insurance kiosk near the old trolley depot. The woman at the front desk, who introduced herself only as "Compliance," told me that my property had been flagged for "actively bleeding into an adjacent iteration" and that this was a Category 2(b) offense, distinguishable from a Category 2(a) offense (passive dimensional seepage) by the presence of "visible overlap." When I asked what "visible overlap" meant, she gestured vaguely at the wall behind her and said, "You'd know it if you saw it."
I do, in fact, see it.
For the past two months, my living room has been occasionally displaying a second version of itself. Not a different room. The same room, but slightly off. The couch is three inches to the left. The throw pillows are a shade of green I am fairly certain I never purchased. There is a magazine on the coffee table that I do not subscribe to (something called Gravel Enthusiast Monthly, which appears to be exactly what it sounds like). The effect comes and goes. Some mornings I wake up and everything is normal. Other mornings, there are two of my reading lamp, overlapping like a double exposure, and one of them is on even though I turned both (all?) of them off.
I want to be very clear: I did not cause this. I do not know how to cause this. I am a retired ledger auditor. The most dimensionally complex thing I have ever done is file a multi-parcel property assessment, and even that gave me a headache.
When I explained this to the NAGs, they were unmoved. The citation stands. The thirty-day clock is ticking. And the ordinance it references, Municipal Ordinance 11.7.4(c), does not appear to exist in any version of the Fenwick Hollow municipal code that I can locate. I have checked the public records office, the county annex in Ridgewell, and the basement archive at the Fenwick Hollow Library, which is organized by a volunteer named Dotterick who claims to have "cataloged every ordinance since the Consolidation" but could not produce 11.7.4 of anything. He did find an 11.7.3, which pertains to the maximum allowable height of decorative lawn geese.
The NAGs office, when I returned with this information, declined to comment.
I have since attempted to hire a remediation contractor. The first one, Kettlemark Structural Solutions, told me they handle "standard bleed events" but that mine appeared to be "iterative rather than lateral," which would require a specialist. The specialist they referred me to, a woman named Corabeth Lume who operates out of a van with the words "Dimensional Hygiene" stenciled on the side, visited my property, stood in my living room for forty-five minutes without speaking, and then handed me an estimate for 11,400 sovereigns. The line items included "spatial realignment consultation," "iterative boundary mapping," and something called "ontological caulking." When I asked what ontological caulking was, she said, "You'll know when it's done."
Nobody will tell me what anything means. This is the recurring theme.
My neighbor, Junipine Falk, has been unhelpful. She says her cousin had a bleed event in Cladmore six years ago and the NAGs let it resolve on its own after "the two versions sort of merged." I asked her what that meant for her cousin's furniture. She said his recliner now faces a direction that doesn't correspond to any wall in the room, and he's "gotten used to it." This is not reassuring.
The second version of my living room, for its part, is getting bolder. Last Tuesday, I came downstairs to find that the alternate coffee table had a mug on it. A full mug. Still warm. I do not own that mug. It had a logo on it for something called "Fenwick Hollow Fun Run, 14th Annual," which is troubling because, to my knowledge, the Fenwick Hollow Fun Run has only been held nine times.
I am now three weeks into my thirty-day remediation window. I have not remediated anything, because I do not know what I am remediating, because nobody will define the violation, because the ordinance does not exist, and because the one professional I consulted wants to charge me more than my property assessment for a procedure she will not explain.
Meanwhile, the living room situation has progressed. There are now, at certain times of day, two front doors. One of them opens to my porch. The other opens to what appears to be my porch, but the welcome mat says "The Grouts" in a font I would never have chosen. (I have standards. I selected my welcome mat from a catalog. The font is Kellford Serif, and I stand by it.)
I filed an appeal with the NAGs yesterday. The appeal form asked me to describe the nature of my violation in "three words or fewer." I wrote "no one knows." The woman at the desk (still just "Compliance") stamped it, filed it in a drawer, and told me I would hear back within six to ten business weeks.
The other living room had fresh flowers in it this morning. Lilies. Nicely arranged.
Whoever is living in the version of my house that is slowly merging with mine has better taste in flowers than I do. They also, based on the reading material, have a genuine interest in gravel. I am starting to wonder if the problem isn't the dimensional bleed. The problem might be that the other Parnell Grout is handling this better than I am.
The NAGs, predictably, have declined to comment.
Parnell Grout is a retired ledger auditor and eleven-year resident of Fenwick Hollow. He can be reached at his home address, provided you specify which version of it you mean.