The Mall
- WELCOME TO THE MALL -
She was new to this city and had spent the day going around the shops looking for things to buy for the flat. They had moved here because of her husband's new job and they needed to stock up on various household things.
She just needed some wet wipes for her infant son and then she could go home. Noticing a large mall across a plaza she didn't know the name of she headed towards it. She was from the Far East where everyone did their shopping in malls and was drawn to it like a moth to a heavily discounted light bulb.
The entrance was strongly guarded, unusual for a mall in Britain, but very common for where she was from so she thought nothing of it. Perhaps there had been a bomb threat?
She was seven months pregnant and her belly swelled out under her blouse making her waddle and quick to tire so the first thing she did was sit down in the food court and order a decaffeinated coffee. She looked for messages on her mobile phone but found that she couldn't get a signal.
Ah, what luck! Just across from where she was sitting sipping her coffee she could see a 'Boots'. She could get the wipes in there and then make her way home again.
- BOOTS -
What a funny lot they were here. In her country, old people didn't go out of their homes much, but in Britain they seemed to be out and about on the buses and in the shops all the time. And the old lady in front of her in the queue had no shoes or sock on! Her feet looked like something from a wildlife documentary. They had long toenails and were covered in sores, what a sight! She would have to ask her husband about it when she got home, were such things normal here? The old lady was looking away so she glanced over her face. It was a road map of deep lines. She look as if she was a hundred years old and the old man next to her looked equally as ancient, his face so saggy and deeply cut with lines he hardly looked human any longer.
He noticed her gaze and smiled weakly.
She bowed her head and looked away. In her country the old were treated with respect, unlike here, where even her husband would talk to them as he would any other person.
The queue was very long, but eventually she was able to pay for her purchases and leave.
- ONE WAY ONLY -
She head back the way she had came, but a security guard stopped her and silently pointed at the floor. She had to step back to read what was written on the tiles. One way only.
'Excuse me,' she said. 'How I get out?'
The guard, again silently, pointed up at a sign. One of the many things written on it was 'Exit' and an arrow pointing back into the mall.
Meekly she turned and headed back inside. She felt angry at herself for not being more forceful, but politeness and submissiveness was bred into her.
Her husband, she was sure, would have just pushed past the guard, he considered such people his social inferior. Even the police he regarded with disrespect, a concept completely alien to her. But they didn't carry guns here and she supposed that would make a big difference.
She followed the signs and noticed that there were more and more one way areas and more and more guards.
This was ridiculous! She was now desperate for a pee and was getting drawn further and further into this strange place!
- THE GALLERY -
She'd found a toilet at least. The baby was pressing down on her bladder though, and she instantly felt as if she had to go again. Instead of following the signs towards the exit she headed towards what was signposted as the 'gallery' and took a seat on a bench overlooking the city. She must have gotten quite high up now as she could see down onto the roofs of houses that were four and five stories high. There were office blocks in the distance.
She didn't even know the name of the city she was looking at. Her husband had explained that they now lived in the join of two large cities and it didn't even really have a name. The two other cities had western names she had found hard to pronounce and she'd forgotten them anyway.
The streets looked deserted.
She looked at her phone again. No signal. She sent a text message to her husband anyway.
'You have done well to get even this far,' the man next to her suddenly said.
She looked over at him, he was still looking over the city. He was in his early forties.
'Excuse me?' she replied.
'To see anything other than just the inside of the mall is rare.'
'I not understand,' she said.
'Ah,' he said, turning and smiling at her. 'You're new, in that case you must have got here by blind luck. Hopefully your luck will continue then.'
She realised that there was a bad smell here, and that it was coming from this man. He was a tramp. She got up to leave, he must be crazy. You get a lot of crazy people in this country, she thought.
- MAN AT C&A -
She was back at where she had entered the mall, or at least as close as she could get to the maze of security guards, escalators and one way signs that encased it.
She was on the verge of a complete break down now, it was so very late that her husband would be home from work and wondering where on earth she was. The infant, not even two years old yet, would need his dinner and his bath. She didn't really trust her husband to do all those things by himself.
He was probably driving around the city looking for her though. He would be worried sick.
This is absolutely ridiculous she thought and stepped forward to demand egress from the first of the guards.
She steeled herself for the confrontation, but then a man's hand gently held her back,
'Don't bother,' he said. 'Just watch.'
A family consisting of a man, his intensely angry wife and two children approached the guard and tried to force him aside. The guard whispered something into his radio and suddenly five more guards appeared as if from nowhere. The family were surrounded and quickly defeated, ushered back into the throng.
'You see?' said the man. 'It's futile.'
She could see he was well dressed, in a dark suit, but he had unkempt hair and a short beard.
'I cannot believe it,' she said. 'They can't do this!'
'I know,' he shrugged. 'But they do. I've been here three weeks.'
She was speechless.
'I think I have a plan though,' the man continued. 'We need enough people to spring all the traps. I've been standing here all day and I think fifty would be enough. The first person goes forward and confronts the first set of guards. While they are busy, the next person goes up and does the same at the next security gate. Then a runner goes past them all as fast as they can. I think they would have a chance of getting past them all if they were quick. It's like an American football game, the blockers hold up the other team so the quarterback can get through.'
'Fifty people to make one people escape?' she asked.
'I think so.'
'I think I find exit,' she said with finality and went back into the mall.
- EXIT -
She had dozed off on a bench somewhere near the big department stores. When she awoke she found she was leaning against another sleeping woman. She looked at her watch. It was four in the morning.
For a while, she watched the people in the mall. A lot of them seemed to be wandering aimlessly. Most of the shops were still open (didn't this place ever close?) but the people didn't go into them.
Some of the people looked like tramps. She wondered if they were really tramps or just people that had been here a long time.
She was hungry so she looked through her bags. She ate some of her son's biscuits. The ones topped with yogurt that everyone in the family liked. She washed then down with half of her bottle of caffeine free diet cola.
The woman beside her on the bench woke up and eyed up the remains of the biscuits. She looked like her hair was growing wild and her eyes were very red.
'I haven't eaten in two days.'
She gave the rest of the biscuits and coke to the hungry looking woman who began to eat and drink greedily.
'I'm looking for the exit,' she said.
The wild woman looked up and said, 'the mythical exit. You know, they say around here that there actually is one. They say that by law there has to be one. But don't bother with the signs, they are worse than useless.'
'But there is one?'
'So they say,' shrugged the wild woman. 'I don't know though. God knows I've looked.'
She got up to go, she needed the toilet.
'Another piece of advice,' said the other woman. 'Don't be so quick to give away your food next time. Unless you've got someone on the outside topping up your credit cards.'
She spent the rest of the day trying to find the exit. Up and down escalators that seemed to constantly switch back on themselves or dump you in the middle of nowhere or back where you'd started.
It was like a snakes and ladders board that only contained snakes. She wasn't the only person riding the stairs, there seemed to be hundreds of people going up and down, but ultimately going nowhere. Some got frustrated and jumped between the escalators, swapping from an up to a down or vice versa. It looked dangerous though and she doubted she would have tried it even if she hadn't been pregnant.
Occasionally she would check her phone, but she never got a signal and she tried to always remember were the nearest toilet was in case she needed to make a dash for one.
The mall seemed to be incredibly big. Just when she thought she had reached one side of it, there would be another passage or set of doors, or a shop with two entrances that lead off to another area.
Suddenly needing the toilet she realised she hadn't the faintest idea where the nearest one was. She was in a quieter section of the mall where there were a lot of empty concessions, rows of TO LET signs ranked along the tops of the shop windows.
Desperately she dived through the nearest door and into a staff only section. Miraculously there was a staff toilet just off to the side and she ran into it gratefully.
When she came out again she saw that there were some steps leading way down to a landing and she decide to go down them. After what felt like an age the stairs twisted around and she was confronted with a very strange sight.
Camped out on the beige carpet were a man on his son, lounging around in sleeping bags next to piles of boxes and crates. There was even a tent, but they seemed to be using it for storage rather than sleeping in.
'Hello,' said the man. The boy nodded and smiled.
'Hello,' she replied.
'We don't get many visitors down here,' he said.
'What you do here?' she asked.
'Me and the boy are just camping out,' he said. 'It's quieter down here away from the guards and the crowds. We prefer it.'
She nodded. They did indeed seem to be well set up.
'Do you know where exit?' she asked.
'As a matter of fact yes,' he replied. 'It's right over there.'
- FCUK -
She walked along a seemingly endless corridor. The man had pointed at a door marked exit and she had entered eagerly.
'But be careful!' he'd called as she'd left. 'They made a mistake with the plans, so it's not as it appears to be! Or safe!'
There was definitely something wrong with this corridor, but she couldn't figure out what it was yet.
It was a typical sort of thing, thin beige carpets, sets of locked doors on either side, strip lights on the ceiling and a litter bin every so often along its length. It was just that is appeared to go on forever. Literally forever, it must be a mile long or more because she couldn't see the other end!
Resigned to a long walk she had set off.
After a while she was surprised that her head suddenly brushed against a strip light.
Confused she looked back to where she had set off from. It was quite far away, but perhaps not as far as she had thought.
Setting off again she found that she had to crouch. Her head was touching the ceiling!
Suddenly it dawned on her what was wrong with this corridor. The perspective was all wrong. It wasn't just that it receded off into the distance, it was getting smaller.
Further along, she had to get onto her knees, and then down onto her belly.
This is ridiculous! She had to push the next litter bin past her body to get past it. It was the size of a salt shaker.
Now she had to hold her breath to squeeze past the frames of the doors on either side of the corridor. Each one she was sure she was going to get stuck on, but she managed to wriggle on to the next straight bit before getting to the next one.
Claustrophobia was beginning to get to her though, she felt like she was in a grave. This tiny tunnel wasn't going to get any bigger either and she couldn't even turn now to look back the way she had came.
Looking forward she could now see that it seemed to turn straight upwards. Another 'mistake' in the plans she supposed. If she could squeeze past one more set of doorways she could maybe get her hand up it.
She could feel the baby moving and shifting to a different position as she squeezed past the frames. She realised she couldn't do another one, but she was at the upwards bend now.
She knew there was no way she could make her way round it, even if she hadn't been pregnant, it was just too narrow a turn.
If it had been possible in some way, if she had been prepared to skin her knees and elbows, to risk a broken rib or two, then maybe, just maybe, she would be able to get underneath the shaft and see where it led.
She couldn't go forward another inch though so she decided she would at least stretch out her arm and feel up the shaft to see what was there.
As she edged forward she caught a faint whiff of something unpleasant. Something dead.
Reaching up she could feel one of the tiny door frames on the side of the wall. A little further and she could feel something else. If felt like wool. She tugged at it and when it fell onto the carpet of the tunnel she could see it was a black woollen sock.
A feeling of awful dread suddenly settled in her stomach, but she forced herself to reach up again. She slowly reach past the doorframe once more and her fingers closed over something bony. She gasped in horror and snatched back her hand as if she'd been scalded. She'd just touched a skeletal foot. She crawled back as quickly as she could.
- MOTHERCARE -
Weeks passed. At least she wasn't going hungry. Her husband - somehow - was topping up her bank account. He wouldn't know where she was, but at least he would know she was alive.
It also meant she didn't need to get a job or resort to begging or worse.
Her stomach got bigger and she found that she could hardly move from the food court. The women that worked there were stern looking, but even they didn't have the heart to move on a heavenly pregnant woman. She washed her clothes in the ladies toilets and had a sink wash each morning.
She was determined not to turn into a smelly, dirty tramp.
One day, she was sitting, drinking a decaf coffee as usual, when her water broke.
'I'm having my baby!' she cried to one of the waitresses.
She sat down again and started her breathing. In ten minutes some paramedics arrived and she was taken to a staff elevator. The guards looked at her sullenly, but she had a free pass, she was having a baby.
Next she was in an underground car park, and then an ambulance. Was she finally free of this nightmarish place? The ambulance screeched off and up a ramp, then out. From where she lay she could see the street outside. She was out!
'Don't worry,' said the friendly medic sat beside her. 'Just you lie back. We'll be at the hospital in no time.'
- HOSPITAL ZONE -
She was lying in her hospital bed, looking out the window at the small grass area that was fully enclosed by hospital buildings. Her beautiful daughter was in her arms, two days old.
Her husband and their son walked into the room. She squealed in delight.
'My gosh!' she cried. 'I thought I'd never see you!'
'Me too!' he said. 'I looked everywhere! The police here are useless. When I tried to report you missing they acted like I was wasting their time! The nurses wouldn't even let me see you until now.'
'But your here now!' she said as he kissed her. He held up their son for her to hug too. He couldn't talk yet, but appeared to be delighted to see his mummy again.
'I can't believe I missed the birth. Where have you been all this time?'
'The mall,' she replied as she stroke his cheek. 'You haven't shaved in long time.'
'Yeah,' he said. 'This hospital is really weird, me and the boy got here days ago. I wanted to go home to feed the cats, but... they have these lines painted on the floor. Red for A&E, yellow for Maternity and various others. Green for exit. But if you follow the green line it just leads you round in circles or down dead ends.'
She lay back and closed her eyes.
Trapped again. But at least they were trapped as a family.
