The Mall (16 page)

A waft of raw sewage passes me and I gag. What the… then I realise it’s me. Though I washed my shirt when we got back here, I still reek. There’s a stash of old promotional
T-shirts at Only Books, so I head that way. More shops have opened their doors and I notice a few customers wandering about, trapped by the shutdown. They must be from the Highgate Mall
apartments.

Typical of early-morning shoppers, most of them are freaks and losers. Fat, ugly, skinny, crippled, amputees or just plain weird. The type that don’t go to parties. I know their type well
from my shifts at the bookshop. Especially on weekends. While the casual staff are nursing their hangovers inside the shop at five to nine, trying to get ready for opening, there are always these
early-morning zombies with nothing better to do with their lives than scratch on the doors to get in, mouthing:
I see you inside, come on, just open up, I need my newspaper or my porno mag or my
computer manual or whatever the fuck else I need at this time of a Sunday morning
. Fucking freaks.

When I reach Only Books – Lonly Books, ha ha – the door’s still closed and that dick in the suit is still standing like a corporate android at the counter. I knock and the guy
revolves his head towards me then points to the sign on the door.

Monday–Thursday 8:88–8:88. Friday 8:88–8:88. Saturday, Sunday and Feast Days 8:88–8:88.

Ja, right. Helpful. Always a fucking clever graphic designer on every night shift.

I rattle the door again.
Come on, arsehole, I work here. I’ve worked here for three years and you’ve worked here for one minute so OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR.

Nothing.

I kick the door and a siren starts up somewhere inside the shop. Good. Maybe Bradley the Fuckwit or whoever’s the shift supervisor today will come out and open for me.

A few seconds later the door buzzes and springs open a crack. I stride past the android without acknowledging him and he greets my back with a chirpy, ‘Good morning, sir! How may I help
you?’

Christ, I’m surprised they haven’t made this arsecreep Bradley’s deputy instead of putting him on counter duty. I hurry through the shop and punch the code into the chromed
numerical buttons of the poky lock on the back office door. Fuck. They must have changed the stupid combination again. I knock on the door and wait.

I knock again. Nothing. On a hunch, I push 1-2-3-4 and turn the knob. The door opens. One of these days, I swear, I’m going to ‘borrow’ Bradley’s ATM card.

The back office is empty. Who the fuck buzzed me in, then? It’s too quiet in here. Normally at opening time the computer servers are whirring away and I’ll hear the music playing in
the front, staffers chatting over their nicotine or caffeine pick-meups, guys slamming piles of new books for shelving onto trolleys. There’s nobody here and nothing’s happening. Maybe
all the staff are stuck outside the mall waiting for the lockdown to lift. But then where did android boy come from? Did he sleep here?

I find the box of promo shirts under the tea sink and scratch through it for a large black T-shirt. I take out one with a coolenough design on the front. Whatever, as long as it’s clean
and fits fine. I check to see that nobody’s coming in, unlace my boots, strip off my jeans and after another quick glance, throw my underpants into the bin. The hot water flows russet brown
for ages as I rinse the jeans; then finally they’re clean. Ish. I wring them as dry as I can, then stroll across the office, arse out, to Bradley’s desk. I feel kind of like when nobody
was at home and my friend Karl and I went through his sister’s underwear drawer.

Across from me, at Gilda’s worktop, her chair lists tiredly to one side. The cushion has a permanent arse imprint the size of an elephant’s on it. Gilda isn’t svelte by any
means, but the chair looks really badly injured. I hang my jeans over it, pressing them into the chair’s exhausted sponge to blot the remaining water out.

There’s a pile of coffee-table books on Bradley’s desk. I sit down, the fabric rough against the bare skin of my butt. On top of the pile is a copy of the Taschen
Torture
Book
. The cover shows a trussed woman with an iron snare cutting into her head; a man in a mask poking something into her thigh. I page through the book thinking about Rhoda. What the hell
happened down there? Was it just a drug trip or something? Now, fresh-arsed and back at home, the fear and the filth of the last couple of days are disappearing like a bad dream. Paging past
pictures of women being staked and people getting suspended over crocodile pits wrapped in meat, Chinese soldiers with bamboo plants growing under their fingernails, Arabs being waterboarded, I try
to remember what I saw down there but I can’t visualise it as clearly as these pictures. I can almost believe it was just a bad dream, my overactive imagination. Almost. But I look again at
the lurid bruises on my thighs, feel the lingering nausea in my gut, smell the faint remnants of that shitty water on my skin.

I set the book aside. It’s still dead quiet in the back office. I worry for a moment that the suit-geek will come in and see me, but somehow I don’t really care. Josie, Bradley,
Katrien, that’d be blind, but they aren’t here. I fart deep into the meat of Bradley’s chair and carry on reading.

The next design book is called
Fashion Today
. On the cover is a parody of a Calvin Klein underwear ad. Three women and two men. Two of the women are skeletal girls with hairy legs and
saggy tits and pointy nipples, the other is enormous and sort of green; both men have massive, erect bulges in their pants, bloodshot eyes, flabby stomachs and hairy chests. One of the men is
coronary purple like the admiral guard, the other pale white under the hairy tufts. The purple man is grabbing the woman in front of him by the crotch. It must be some sort of advertising or
fine-art joke. I think of the stump-skeleton in the jeweller’s shop.

By now my jeans have dried a bit and as I squeeze them some more I notice a flash of yellow movement in my peripheral vision. There again. It’s Josie! God, I’ll be relieved to see a
familiar face. I whirl around before remembering I’m wearing nothing other than an Only Books T-shirt and my socks. I duck down behind the desk and struggle to pull my damp jeans on. But when
I get up and scan the office, there’s nobody here. Josie probably just ducked in to drop off her bag and went back out to the counter.

I lace up my boots and head out to the shop floor. There’s still only the android guy at the front counter.

‘Good morning, sir. How can I help you?’ he spouts cultishly as I get within range.

‘Hi, sorry, have you seen Josie? I need to ask her something.’

‘Excuse me, sir?’

‘Josie? Have. You. Seen.
Josie?
’

He turns to the screen in front of him. ‘Let me look it up,’ he says.

‘Never mind. Any idea when the lockdown will be over?’

‘Lockdown?’

‘When the fucking mall will be open?’ I know I should keep my temper in check, but
come on
. Is this guy a fucking retard?

‘Open? The mall is always open, sir.’

‘Then where… Oh, never mind.’ I bite my tongue and leave the shop.

‘You! Brown! Stop there!’

My fuck! Admiral Security has caught up with me. For a moment I think he can’t be serious. I haven’t done anything. But then he pulls a pistol out of a holster. My stunned mind takes
a second to register the fucking gun is styled like an old pirate’s flintlock pistol. I don’t hang around to see if it works.

chapter 15

RHODA

It’s the smell that brings me to my senses.

It’s a familiar, comforting aroma that for some reason reminds me of childhood. For a second I struggle to place it – then it hits.

It’s popcorn!

My stomach growls. I may be traumatised and definitely on the verge of cracking, but I’m also famished, and my empty stomach isn’t going to let me forget it. My shins are throbbing
from where I bashed them against the cars as I fled from the parking lot. Otherwise, far as I can tell, I’m pretty much intact.

Apart from your mind, that is
.

Great. So I’m still schizo. Just what I need right now.

Look on the bright side, two minds are better than one
.

‘Fuck off.’

Temper, temper
.

A windowless corridor painted a shiny industrial green stretches in front of me; the tiled floor littered with popcorn kernels, scrunched-up tissue paper and discarded soft-drink containers. It
leads to a pair of double doors clad in some sort of padded velvety material, round windows at the top of each one. Apart from the parking lot door behind me, it’s the only way out of
here.

Your choice
.

‘Not much of a choice.’

Seriously, right?

But there’s no way I want to find out what kind of fucked-up freak those syringe shoes belong to.

I sprint towards the padded doors, feet crunching over stale popcorn. I slam my shoulder into the middle of the doors and slip through.

It’s instantly clear where I am. I should have figured it out as soon as I smelled the popcorn. Because what goes with popcorn?

The movies, of course!

I’m in a large carpeted lobby area, one side dominated by a big semi-circular ticket-and-refreshment counter. The place is deserted; the only sound the rapid-fire pop-pop-pop coming from
the huge glass popcorn machine on the counter. My stomach growls again as I’m hit with the aroma of melted butter, flavoured salt and burnt sugar.

First things first. Find the exit and get the fuck out of Dodge.

‘Easier said than done.’

To my left, a red Hollywood-style rope is strung between two large marble pillars. Behind them, a red carpet stretches towards double doors leading into the various cinemas. Enormous movie
posters line the walls around the doors, but none of the films look familiar. One shows a lazily rendered cartoon tug boat, a maniacal grin splashed across its bow, and the title,
Boats That Talk!
, in bubble writing above it. The next one along shows Nicolas Cage and John Cusak posing in front of a massive explosion. They don’t look like their usual action-hero selves.
Nicolas Cage looks to have aged a good decade, a few wisps of hair combed over his otherwise bald pate, a paunch hanging over the top of his too-tight trousers. John Cusak’s face is a mass of
wrinkles and sun spots, and he’s also sporting a beer belly. Both are grinning humourlessly, and their teeth look chipped and nicotine-stained. There’s no title, but the strapline
reads: ‘This time… the world really
does
end.’

There are no obvious exits or even an entrance that I can see. The only doors seem to be the ones I came through and the pair leading to the theatres. So how the fuck do people get here? Not
just through the parking lot, surely?

Your guess is as good as mine
.

I head towards the refreshment counter, skirting a cardboard cut-out display in the centre of the room. A giant-sized Disneyesque prince and princess stand back to back, arms folded and scowling
over their shoulders at each other, the title,
Cinderella 2: The Divorce
, written in colourful script above their heads.

Oh God. This place is fucked.

Like you don’t even know, right?

The counter is deserted, and I’m tempted to climb across and grab a handful of the chocolate and sweets displayed behind it. Why not? Who’s going to stop me? And maybe there’s
a phone – a landline – behind the counter.

And who you gonna call? Ghostbusters?

‘Shut up!’ I say out loud before I can stop myself.

A woman suddenly springs up from behind the counter, and I jump back, unable to stop the scream. ‘Fuck!’

She grins at me brightly, but there’s something forced and rictus-like about her smile. ‘Hi!’ she says. ‘May I offer you a carton of GM puffs?’

Heart still thudding, I shake my head.

‘How about a cup of Ice-o-Toxin or a SugarGas or you can get one of our combos, Ice-o-Toxin-and-GM-Puffs-plus-MSG-Dropsand—’

‘
No!
I mean… no thanks.’

Confusion flits across her face. ‘No GM puffs?’

‘No thanks. Look, I—’

‘No? Okay, then!’ she says chirpily.

She vanishes behind the counter again, so swiftly that it takes me a couple of seconds to realise she’s actually gone. I lean over and stare down at her back. She’s curled into a
foetal ball, her head between her knees.

‘Hey!’ I call.

She jumps up again, fixed grin back on her face. It’s surreal – almost comical – like a ridiculous slapstick skit.

Maybe you should ask her if this is a cheese shop
.

Not funny. Not even remotely.

What’s wrong, Rhoda? Lost your sense of tumour?

Could I be imagining all this from inside an insane asylum somewhere? The real Rhoda locked in a padded cell? Listening to her mind unravel? Holding conversations with herself (maybe
occasionally referring to herself in the third person) and babbling away like one of the nutters in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
?

You’d be so lucky
. Girl, Interrupted
is more your style
.

‘GM puffs now?’ The woman is still grinning at me brightly but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. They’re focused on me, but there’s something odd about them;
they’re as flat and lifeless as a doll’s. Is she stoned? Pissed, maybe? She’s giving me the heebies whatever the reason. The veins stand out in her arms and neck like thick worms
and her skin is so white it’s almost blue.

Morgue skin
.

But there’s no one else here and Christ knows I need help. I do my best to slap on a friendly smile. ‘Hi!’

‘Hi to you! Can I get you some GM puffs and an ultra-GI drink?’

‘No. Look—’

‘If you’re not that peckish can I suggest one of our thinning options like maybe mini GM puffs and teeny SugarGas with—’

‘No, you’re not getting it—’

She clicks her fingers. ‘How about some nachos?’

‘No!’
Christ
. ‘Look, have you got a phone I can use?’