by Ben Larned
(670 words)
There’s a dead man on the 3rd floor of the abandoned mall. He’s been here for years, staring out at your town with rage and disgust, a silent curse upon this already-desolate place. He is only visible at dusk, when the sun’s glare leaves the window. Wherever you stand, he always seems to look at you.
No one in town remembers the mall. It left behind no more than detritus, racks and mannequins, barely visible in the shadows. Maybe the dead man is one of the things left behind. They say if you visit him, he will grant you any wish. And you need a wish.
The mall is concrete and oblong and stretches three blocks. There’s no charm to its flat-eye windows, pipes and wiring like organs on the outside. The vents and gutters leak tearful stains. The entrance has been chained off for years, the parking lot cracked and overgrown, a few rusted cars to show that people once came there.
Someone has cut a gap in the back fence, large enough to fit under. Maybe this person needed the wish as much as you. You crawl under the fence, grating your stomach, wriggling like a worm. Maybe the dead man sees you coming; you don’t think about it.
Inside the mall is cold and musty, quiet as only the abandoned can be. You make too much noise as you enter, every step a violent echo. The air feels sick and lonely as you move across the lower level. The glass ceiling filters the sun as if through toxic water. You think about all the people who walked here before, hoping to satisfy their dreams. It’s been a long time since you, or anyone in town, has satisfied dreams of any kind. Why shouldn’t you be the first?
The stairs creak as you mount them, unwilling to hold much longer. The entrance to the department store gapes, a screaming mouth at the end of the hall. The air cools the closer you get, until you’re shivering, rushing faster just to keep warm. When you reach the store, it appears as a tomb. Mannequins and racks and mirrors lurk in the dark. The window is huge, glaring, but the light doesn’t reach far.
Against it, you see the dead man’s shape. He slouches as if tired, and the air whistles around him. You step forward, ready to beg on your knees, ready to plead for your wish.
At your supplication, the dead man turns. Up close, his features are hewn deep as a grave marker. There’s no rage or disgust in him. It was never rage, you realize, that you saw from below. He stares at you with an inescapable sadness. He does not approach, doesn’t move at all, just says,
“It wasn’t meant to be like this.”
He sounds tired and frustrated, like someone who knows you all too well. He becomes more sad and lost as he repeats the phrase:
Wasn’t meant to be like this. Wasn’t meant to be like this.
The more you listen to the dead man, the more you understand. You can see your town beyond the glass. Through the crust-laden surface, everything sinks into the earth, more degraded than the mall you just traversed. You forget the wish you hoped the dead man would grant. Like him, you see what is, and what might have been, all the things so much better than this. It’s not grief, not even anger, that lines your features now. Soon enough, you’ll look just like him.
You sit on the floor, joining an audience of mannequins, some of whom may have come here like you did. You glare at the town and urge it to change, but you know better. If it was going to change, it would have already done so.
When the sky turns dark and your body doesn’t move, you don’t despair. You don’t want to go back. At least here, you’re not alone; at least now, you’re the one who’s looking down.
END
Ben Larned (he/they) is a queer horror writer, filmmaker and educator. His work is featured in Seize the Press, Not Deer Magazine, Daily Dead, and The Book of Blasphemous Words. His short film ‘Payment’ is streaming on ALTER. He holds an MFA from The New School.