The Mall (21 page)

I make it down to the last door. I try the handle. It seems stuck.

I knock.

This corridor reminds me of fear, of running from that snotrasping, screaming-elephant thing. I remember its breathing, its dripping saliva.

I knock again.

‘Yes? Come in.’

I wrench the handle again and it gives.

The woman behind the desk in the Customer Care Officers’ office looks at me indifferently. The room is lined with rails of clothes, and the shop’s muzak pipes from the ceiling.
‘I’m Going Through Changes’? I try to slow my breathing as the woman watches, her wooden foot tap-tap-tapping impatiently at the modesty board of the desk. I hold up my gel token
and she points me across the room to a couple of bins marked Returns beside an old-fashioned changing screen.

‘You’ll find plenty of Abnormals there,’ she calls after me.

The only clothes I can dig out that look anywhere near my size are a satiny suit jacket in silver and black candy stripes and a pair of matching trousers with a complex Velcro fly. A ruffled
canary-yellow shirt completes the outfit. I try it on behind the screen, worrying that the woman at the desk can see me, or worse, smell me from there. I can see her, but she’s reading a
magazine, her wooden foot going tap tap tap. There’s only a small shaving mirror hanging on a hook behind the screen and I take it down and scan myself.

I look like a fucking clown. Or someone from a New Romantic boy band. I try losing the yellow shirt and just keeping the T-shirt on under the jacket, but that looks even worse. All I would need
is a pork pie hat and I’m some naff fucker straight from VH1 Classic. I put the shirt back on. Oh well.

I keep the ensemble on and present the woman with my token. She swipes it at the machine.

‘Interviewing today?’ she asks. I nod. ‘Good luck.’ She looks pointedly at my dirty boots.

‘Thanks.’

I swear I can feel something slick in the crotch of the trousers, but I try to shove the thought out of my head. I didn’t have the stomach to try on any underpants from the returns bin,
and I regret throwing mine away at Lonly Books. I try not to think of who returned these clothes; and the more I try not to, the larger the parade of suppurating freaks passing through my mind
grows. Maybe a leper, someone with seeping sores. I feel an itch in my crotch, spreading over my thighs. I swear there’s a sticky patch.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ asks the desk-woman.

I’m just imagining it. I’m just imagining it.

‘Uh, yes. Thanks.’

Don’t scratch your penis, Daniel, it’s a filthy habit
.

I have to get out of here. I have to get to the interview.

I’m just imagining it.

chapter 19

RHODA

I made it.

I lean against the parking lot’s door and wait for the stitch in my side to fade. My panicked sprint through the car park has used up my last reserves of energy (and probably sanity), and
my chest aches from drawing in jagged, hungry breaths. I try to concentrate on the plinkety-plonk of the mall’s muzak to ground myself. The limousine was still in its impossible parking bay,
and although it had rocked on its suspension springs as I passed it, there was no sign of that creepy syringe guy.

Maybe I
did
just imagine him.

Yeah right. Just like I imagined Elephant Head in the movie theatre and Horrible Rat Woman and the twisted text messages and the rest of the fucked-up shit that’s been happening.

So now what?

First priority: find Dan, and then try and track down that woman Ben the Freak said had escaped this nightmare.

Should be a piece of cake
.

NOT
.

Brilliant. The schizo voice is back. Just what I need right now.

From down the corridor there’s a burst of laughter, followed by the clip-clop of approaching footsteps. A couple is heading along the aisle towards me. It looks like they’ve just
exited a shop that – judging from the bright pink signage painted on the windows (Get Nailed!) and the giant plastic hand display – sells nothing but fingernails. The guy must be over
two metres tall; his head looks too square for his body, as if it’s actually a breezeblock balancing on top of his head, and the woman clinging to his arm is staggering on towering
translucent stripper heels. Her sequined dress barely covers her bum and the shoes are so high that her calf muscles stand out like lumpy knots of wood. Both of them are spray-tanned a vibrant
orange, and even from here, a good ten metres away, I can make out the extraordinary amount of make-up on the woman’s face: lipstick smeared over the edges of her mouth like a clown’s
smile; drag-queen eyelashes stuck onto her lids. Both are clutching giant plastic bags bulging with goods.

My exhausted brain refuses to react to their outlandish appearance. It’s as if my consciousness has decided, ‘Fuck, it, Rhoda, let’s just go with the flow’. I actually
don’t care any more. I really don’t. I’m becoming detached from all this bullshit; as if I’m just waiting for my mind to snap once and for all. And anyway, let’s face
it, I’ve seen a lot worse than this display of outrageous bad taste. In fact, compared to Horrible Rat Woman and the other freaks around here, they’re pretty tame.

‘Howzit!’ The woman smiles at me as they pass, batting her eyelashes. Close up it’s obvious that her cheekbones aren’t the ones she was born with. Plastic surgery
overload. And I can tell by the taut shiny skin in between her cleavage that her giant tits are as fake as her skin colour.

‘Hi,’ I say.

She pauses. ‘You know, you should really check out the lounge furniture in Flammable City. It’s simply to
die
for!’

The guy grunts in agreement. He’s also wearing make-up. His pores are clogged with foundation, and the thick black kohl smeared around his eyes gives him the look of Uncle Fester from the
Addams Family. He grins at me, showing off toothless black gums.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Cheers.’ My instinct is to step back a couple of paces, but they seem friendly enough, which is a major improvement on everyone else I’ve
encountered.

‘Oh,’ the woman says, using the neon pink talons on her remaining hand to dig under the dry blonde tresses of her hair. ‘And I heard a rumour that Scrape has new stock.
We’re on our way there now. Would you like to join us?’

‘Thanks,’ I say, trying not to think about what the fuck a shop called Scrape could possibly sell. ‘That’s nice of you, but I –’
have to get the fuck out
of this madhouse
‘– have to meet a friend.’

‘Another time, then. Have a primo shopping day!’ the woman says, and they both head off.

What the hell was that all about?

Do I really care?

Just more crazy shit
.

Okay. Back to the plan. First warn Dan that we’re no longer in Kansas (although he must have figured this out himself by now), somehow track down the woman who managed to get out of this
hellhole and pump her for information, then leave.

Like it’s going to be that simple
.

Buy cigarettes, tell the cops about the missing kid, beg or borrow enough cash to buy a plane ticket home, and then get on with my life.

What life?

‘Shut
up
!’

I’m not sure how I feel about schizo voice’s re-emergence. Isn’t talking to yourself the first sign of madness? And if so, what’s the second sign?

Arguing with yourself, of course!

‘Oh, ha ha. Fucking hysterical.’

I start heading in the direction of the escalators. I pass an enormous high-end clothes shop, the mannequins in the window a mix of the surreal and the sickening.

‘Greetings, ma’am!’ I jump as a salesman pokes his head out of the shop’s door. ‘I see you’re admiring our display,’ he says in an over-the-top camp
voice. His hair is gelled into a ridiculous spike on the top of his head, his eyebrows are shaven and drawn back on with what looks like thick felt-tip, and there’s a fuchsia silk scarf
draped around his neck, but otherwise he looks almost normal.

‘Hi,’ I say warily. Why’s everyone suddenly being over-friendly?

‘Please,’ he says, grinning at me and stepping backwards as if to usher me into the store.

‘Huh?’

‘Now, I hope you don’t mind me being forward, but I took one look at you and I just knew you were the perfect size starvation. Am I right?’

‘You taking the piss?’

‘I’m sorry?’ he says looking genuinely confused. ‘Have I offended you, ma’am?’

‘Fuck you,’ I say.

The guy throws back his head and laughs. ‘Ma’am! A figure to die for and a sense of humour!’

He pauses as a skinny woman dressed in tiny cycling shorts approaches. Christ. Her obviously fake breasts are way too large for her tiny frame and under her strapless Lycra top it’s clear
that they’re misshapen and lumpy, the skin around them stretched almost to splitting point. There’s a stained bandage covering one of her ears, and giant-sized false eyelashes are glued
to her lids, one of which is peeling off. She smiles nervously at the shop assistant and hesitates as if she’s about to enter the store, but he glares at her and curls his lip. She drops her
head and scuttles past. What the hell was that all about?

‘Don’t you just hate them?’ he says to me in a conspiratorial whisper.

‘Hate who?’

He gestures towards the woman. ‘Wannabes. As if I would be fooled. I mean, did you see the work? Substandard beyond belief.’

He smiles again and gestures towards the open door.

I hesitate. Maybe I can get some information out of him. It’s worth a shot.

‘Please,’ he says, this time sounding almost desperate. ‘Please come in, ma’am.’

Don’t do it, Rhoda. Remember the plan.

I suppose the schizo voice does have a point, but I have to start somewhere.

Fuck it.

I follow him into the boutique. A fine golden chain is attached to his ankle, snaking its way out from behind the polished wooden counter at the far end of the room, and he gathers it up
discreetly as he ushers me forward.

Uh-oh. Not good.

I tune out the voice and check out my surroundings. The shop is clearly one of those exclusive stores that only sells designer goods. It looks like the lounge of a country house. Beige leather
couches are dotted around the vast space, and silk dresses, tailored suits and the kind of clothes you only see on celebrities are sparsely displayed on the headless torsos that line the room.
It’s the kind of sneering exclusive store that under normal circumstances I wouldn’t even dream of entering.

But what’s normal about these circumstances, eh, Rhoda?

Camp Assistant claps his hands. ‘Patrice! Quickly! We have a fresh Shopper!’

A guy pops up from behind the counter with the speed of a jack-in-the-box. ‘Oh!’ he says. ‘How absolutely marvellous! Welcome, ma’am. And congratulations.’ One of
the arms of his suit jacket ends in a jagged tear just above the elbow, and a seeping, bandaged stump peeks out of the bottom of it. I realise that I don’t actually feel any surprise or
disgust at the sight of this. It’s like I’m watching all of this from the ceiling, or on a monitor somewhere.

‘Thank you so much for shopping with us today,’ Camp Assist ant says. ‘May I offer you some refreshments? Champagne? Maybe an espresso?’

‘Huh?’

He waves me towards one of the leather couches. ‘Please, have a seat!’

He nods at his companion and the one-armed assistant scurries out from behind the counter and sprints across the shop floor to a curtained-off area at the back of the room. His ankle is also
shackled to the desk, but again, my detached brain refuses to give a shit about this. It’s just much more comfortable not to worry.

I sink into the couch, and my leg muscles sigh with relief.

Camp Assistant smiles at me ingratiatingly. ‘May I just thank you again for shopping with us, ma’am?’

Would he know the woman – (what was her name? Nthombi? Nyameka? Napumla – that’s it) – who’d managed to escape this place? Only one way to find out.
‘Look,’ I say, ‘I wonder if you can help me?’

‘Help you? But of course I can help you! Just wait here.’

He minces off and disappears towards the rear of the shop.

What now?

What now? WHAT NOW? Get out of here and find Dan!

Ignoring the voice, I lean back in the couch, letting myself relax fully. Every inch of me aches, and it’s utterly delicious to be sitting somewhere comfortable for once. I put my filthy
sneakers up on the coffee table in front of me. It’s strewn with fashion magazines, but the models on the front covers all look like they’ve literally been starving themselves; most
have the sickly pallor and over-accentuated cheekbones of hunger-strikers. I can feel my eyelids getting heavy – it would be so easy to close my eyes and drift away.

Don’t you fucking dare!

The voice is right. I sit up and stretch my arms above my head, gazing around at the rest of the store. There are several black-and-white framed photographs behind the counter that I
haven’t noticed before. They’re the kind of posed headshots of celebrities you see in restaurants, and several have thick black crosses scored across their faces.

One-Arm returns balancing a tray loaded with a cafetière and, oh God, a plate of what looks to be smoked salmon sandwiches, with the crusts cut off.

‘I see you’re admiring our gallery,’ he says. I can’t take my eyes off the food on the tray. My stomach growls.

‘Gallery?’ I say.

He nods towards the photos. ‘Our beautiful gallery of Shoppers past.’

Now what the hell did he mean by that?

Duh. Shop till you drop, Rhoda, literally.

‘Now, you make yourself comfortable,’ he says. ‘I’m going to help Clive find the perfect outfit for you!’

‘Wait! I have to—’

‘Relax!’ he says, and there’s something desperate about the way he says this. ‘Please!’ He stares at me anxiously, but he needn’t worry. I’m already
salivating.

He scuttles off as I fall on the sandwiches, stuffing them into my mouth. I pour out a cup of coffee, and glug back a mouthful, scalding my tongue. I have never tasted anything so delicious. I
can’t cram the sandwiches in quickly enough, and almost choke trying to swallow.