They cut Julie early, so she punched the clock and left Cookie Ranch behind, left the whole food court behind. She hadn’t brought a change of clothes, but there was still time to make it downstairs and hit up Alley Brats, maybe steal a cool shirt so she wouldn’t be forced to hang around the mall in her shitty uniform. She elbowed a path to the escalator through a bustle of bags and bodies, cowboy hat bouncing, plastic spurs click-clacking at her heels.
Halfway to the ground floor, she saw them: Spitzi and Bugbrain, mohawks intertwined, fishing for coins in the memorial fountain. Countless orphans died in some long-forgotten fire just so these jerks could steal quarters for a sixpack and a little airplane glue. But Julie didn’t care about that. She cared about their hands, their fingers, the tenderness of touch as they plonked wet change into each other’s palms. Her heart cinched in the middle and burst at each end.
Without thinking, she moved back up the escalator, against the push of the crowd, over the landing, back through the food court, click-click-clacking, click-click-clacking, past Burgerama, past Pizza Pumpers and Dr. Slushie, MD, through the swinging EMPLOYEES ONLY door, down the hallway, safe from sight.
She drifted through a labyrinth of rolling wastebins and backstock pallets, found a bathroom, and locked herself inside. A smudged mirror over the sink threw back her reflection: fringed vest, knotted kerchief, hat dangling from a cord around her neck. Scalp bristles dyed blue, chest speckled with bits of dried cookie dough like birdshit. She killed the lights so she wouldn’t have to see. Mirror-Julie winked out of existence.
She tore into her purse and found some of her mom’s pills, which she chased down with some of her dad’s booze. Then she plopped down on the toilet and let her entire soul escape in a single, back-bending sigh.
Fuckin Bugbrain. Fuckin Spitzi.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It wasn’t supposed to be them. There once was a center to Julie’s life, two clenched hearts that held everything together. Then Spitzi ripped through like a fireball and burned it all to dust. Julie didn’t understand it. She didn’t want to understand it. And she certainly didn’t want them to see her—laughing at her uniform together, filing away insults about some bogus job that she never wanted in the first place.
Tears threatened to spill, but she wouldn’t let them. She clamped her teeth onto her bottom lip until a blossom of pain swelled to nudge the sadness away.
After a bit the pills took hold. The waters rose and she found herself submerged, detached from the surface, floating upward and upward into a gulf of memories and despair.
“You’re getting a job, and that’s that.”
Her mom carved a slab from the tube of gristle on the stove and shloooomped it into a bowl of steaming gravy. She passed it to Julie over a table piled high with old bills, gossip mags, and half-clipped coupon circulars.
“Time you started contributing. This duplex don’t pay for itself.”
Julie said, “But I don’t wanna work at the mall. Place is for zit -farmers and hardoffs.”
“NI’m sorry not everyone’s as hip as that boyfriend of yours, what’s his name? Butterbutt? Brainddrain?”
“Bugbrain, Mom. And anyways, he might be old news.” Julie stared into her bowl, at the malformed globs circling within. “Maybe. I dunno.”
Her mom smiled and shlooooomped up another serving. “Well, good. You deserve better. His whole crew looks like a bunch of shoplifters. Don’t they, Gary?”
“Sure thing, hon.” Her dad was parked on the couch, sinking through his underwear, spooning bites of trembling slop into his beard. Two teams of indefinite competence battered each other on the TV in front of him.
Julie’s mom sat down at the table and flipped through an open magazine. Without looking up, she said, “Your brother works six shifts a week at the TP factory. And he’s glad for it! Seventeen years old, already promoted to lotion tech. Gives him a real sense of purpose, he says. Lots of room to grow in the TP world.”
She stopped flipping and tap-tap-tapped a page with her finger. “Lots of room to grow at the mall, too.”
It was a full-page, full-color ad for Lolly Darvocet, America’s favorite manufactured pop mutation: a walking titjob held together by acid washed denim and day-glo scrunchies. Her album Shopping Complex was dropping in a matter of weeks, and there wasn’t a billboard or bus stop or station break that wanted you to forget it. Julie rolled her eyes and pushed it back across.
“She only plays malls,” her mom said, smacking her lips. “And she only plays one mall each year. And this year she picked ours. Pretty cool, huh?”
“Her music’s for feebs,” Julie said. “Besides, ain’t she, like, forty or something? Why do they always pretend she’s a teenager? It’s gross.”
“What’s gross is you sitting around all summer thinking you can just mooch off your dad and me. Isn’t that right, Gary?”
Sounds erupted on the other side of the wood paneled wall, laughter and shouting in the next unit, footpounds swelling like waves, drifting from room to room. Ghosts of other lives, passing through, falling silent. Julie closed her eyes and listened and thought, If I don’t escape this place I’m going to die.
After a while, she said, “Fine.”
Her mom’s spoon clinked against the bowl. “Fine, what?”
“Fine, Mom. I’ll take the danged job.”
In the living room, on the TV, a stadium full of people cheered.
A bump at the door shook her back to the present. A bump, a whimper, and a scraaaaaape.
Julie sat forward. Her spurs clicked the toilet.
The dragging continued, a wet whispering hiss, growing quieter as it slipped down the hall. Pops of walkie-talkie static crackled and squealed, then everything was still.
Just a janitor, she thought. Must be late as fuck. How long did I sleep?
Her legs were liquid as she gathered herself upright, ankles drawing figure-eights beneath her. She leaned into the wall and followed her palms to the door. For a moment, Mirror-Julie reappeared, a phantom silhouette in a square of amber light. She tore off her hat, she tossed it aside. She stepped into the hall.
Fluorescents. Extreme soft-focus. Julie paused to adjust. Different paths unfurled around her, octopus-like, undulating, unfamiliar. She picked a random tentacle and went with it, click-click-clack, grasping the occasional freight cart for support. The floor quicksanded around her feet.
A corner, a cross-corridor, another corner. Click-click-clack. Backdoors to shops, one after the other. Not a single employee in sight.
The hallway hooked left and ended in a door. Finally. She twisted the handle and pulled. If this ain’t stairs, I’m gonna—
A blast of static jolted her. The janitor turned, inflating to fill the doorway, framed by mops and jugs of barf-colored cleaner. Julie sank into her heels and absorbed every detail: coveralls, sagging toolbelt, bald spot gleaming under a single bare bulb. Eyes fogged behind windowpane goggles. An embroidered patch, a name: IRV.
“Ah,” she whooshed. “Sorry, you scared the shit outta me, ha-ha-ha.”
Irv didn’t answer. He reached up to massage his scalp with an oily, black glove. His fingers left a red smear along the ridge of his cheek.
Julie’s eyes followed that hand as it dropped to his side. A walkie-talkie was clipped to his belt, next to a boxcutter in a velcro holster. Beyond this, behind him, bundled clothes spilled over the edge of a utility sink. She saw a metal pail with something dark and sticky inside.
Her stomach clenched. Don’t look don’t look, just turn around and run. Searing needles jabbed into her calves and started to twist. Run goddammit it run run run—
There was a head attached to the pile of clothes, a mesh of blonde hair, smeared lipstick, a wide gaping neck belching into the drain.
RUN!
The walkie screamed. Julie’s legs bounced like coiled springs and she was around the corner, she was down the hall, pinballing between wastebins and storage racks, knocking back everything she could to block the path behind her, knees pumping, knees pumping, click-click-click-click-clackclackclackclackclack, another corner, breathing breathing BREEEEEATHING, spine bowed to keep those horrible rubber fingers from her back, another corner, another hallway, clackclackclackclackclack, and then here it was, straight ahead, a pair of metal doors, a chance to escape.
NIGHTBALLZ, the sign said. The blacklight minigolf eXperience!!! Julie shuddered with impact and tumbled headfirst into outer space.
Pink and green stars and spirals splattered across the void like an explosion of neon piss. She swam through them, screaming for someone, screaming for anyone, throwing her voice into the abyss until there was nothing left but a rough, raw gurgle. No one answered. The course was empty.
The door ka-chunked behind her. It opened up and ka-chunked again.
Julie broke ahead, galaxies streaking, leaping lanes and weaving rocket-shaped obstacles. Irv closed the gap behind her, hnf-hnf-hnf-hnf-hnf. The sizzle of ripping velcro sliced the air between them.
Her toe WHANGED against something sideways and the universe swirled. Irv’s weight caught her full force in the belly, cracking her teeth together, wringing the air from her lungs. They barreled over the edge of a plastic crater. Julie tumbled backwards. He straddled her waist, arched like a buzzard, shadow squirming under a corona of blacklights. Spindly patches of astroturf crunched against her back.
This is it, fuck, I’m dead.
Irv shifted up on one knee. The boxcutter snicked in his glove. Julie felt the pressure on her hips lighten just enough. She dug both elbows into the floor and jerked her legs free. She whipped them up, boots over tits, then drove her heels into Irv’s goggles. He grunted and clutched her ankles. Her plastic spurs snapped and click-clacked away.
Julie rolled backwards. Her feet slipped from her boots, out of the crater, and landed on her socks.
Wall, corner, desk, turnstile. Baskets of golf balls lined a counter by the register. Racks of putting irons filled the wall. Julie skated across the tile to lunge for both. She swiped the baskets with one arm and reached for the racks with the other. Colored balls scattered like luminous gumdrops. Julie heard Irv shuffle and thump to the ground. She filled her arms with putters and snaked under the turnstile.
Crash bars. Double doors. The mall yawned cavelike beyond. She flung herself forward, ahead of her own body, stretching forever, blood rushing behind her eyes. Rushing and roaring filled her ears, her mouth. Her shoulder shook, the doors popped wide, and she was through.
She jammed the bundle of putters between door handles. Irv slammed against the other side, wham-wham-wham-WHAM, boxcutter clinking on the metal frame. The glass shivered, the putters rattled, but everything held firm.
Julie moved.
The escalators were straight ahead. She took the steps three at a time, snagging her socks the whole way down. Above her, the doors kept banging, banging. She didn’t breathe again until she touched the bottom floor.
She cut to the left, not choosing, just going. Her socks whap-whap-whapped around sunglass huts and ear-piercing kiosks and concrete cylinders stuffed with lush, drooping ferns. Gated storefronts and display windows unspooled around her. Fashion Pit, Sugarfixers, BJ Youngbottom’s. Ahead, the memorial fountain churned.
Her legs folded. She kneeled against the edge, fishmouthing for air, hnf-hnf-hnf-hnf-hnf.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be real.
Great idea, Mom. This job’s really taking me places.
Fucking Spitzi. Fucking Bugbrain. If those two hadn’t showed up tonight, I wouldn’t be here right now.
Coins glittered below the water’s surface. She pictured them passing between fingers, a lover’s communion. This washed into images of blonde hair under a drizzling faucet, of smeared lipstick around a flopping, dead tongue, of rusty slugtrails swirling down a hungry drain. She swallowed a gag, closing her eyes to shake everything away.
Where to go? What to do? The back passageway might be an option. Find a phone, find an exit, try to alert the security guard. Where the hell is he, anyway? She figured Irv had probably killed him, too.
The mall horseshoed in either direction, an entrance at each end. One side was completely blocked by the concert stage, a wall-to-wall monstrosity of metal rafters and pulled-taffy vinyl. The other entrance was down past the carousel, clear around the opposite side of the mall, basically a trillion miles away.
Julie deflated. A cardboard standee of Lolly Darvocet taunted her from near the photo booth, microphone dipped to her jellybean lips. You need a sense of purpose! Someone had doodled a veined boner over the mic and crossed out both eyes with black marker. Lots of room to grow at the mall! it said, just like her mother.
Julie looked for a fire alarm to pull, thinking she could hide in the photo booth, maybe wait for some axe-wielding firestud to save her life. And trap yourself in a box for that sicko? You’ll be lunchmeat for sure. The back passageway would be more of the same, a thousand spots to get cornered in. She decided to try for the entrance instead.
Shops zipped by at double-speed. Kaftan Kounty. Toytanic. Metal Mountain Rock Outpost. She imagined Irv behind every door, braced for walkie static at any moment. Her breath exploded in blasts of blinding red light, hnf-hnf-hnf-hnf-hnf.
She passed a sign for the Big Car Giveaway: frogeyed hatchback, babyshit paintjob, nothing special at all. PICTURE YOURSELF IN ME, it begged. REGISTER FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN!
Why didn’t I think of that? Julie wondered. This running shit’s for the birrrrds.
The concourse curved and cornered and she curved and cornered with it, gasping into a vast atrium where the giant carousel lived. It was so large that it swallowed most of the surrounding space and rose beyond the second floor balcony. A full moon ripened in the skylight over its circus-tent crown.
Julie crouched low, she stuck to the shadows. She followed the polished curve of a circus tiger to the other side of the platform, past rearing horses and regal swans. Her pace dropped, her toes throbbed. Cords of fire knotted in her guts.
Almost there. Keep going.
The carousel slipped away. She could see the distant entrance now, bookended by towers of boxed shrubs.
Almost there. Keep going.
Exhaustion caught her. Her legs locked, her heels dug in. She skidded to a stop between a standing ashtray and another cardboard standee.
Shit! Asshole! What are you doing?
She hovered, she wheezed. Her hands gripped the ashtray for support. She saw Lolly’s face, a grinning markered skull. Vandals had been busy around the mall tonight.
KEEP GOING!
While she hunched there, panting, one of the shrub towers moved. Shivered, inched forward, paused, turned. Waited for her to glance over and notice. Started lumbering her way.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp-clomp CLOMP-CLOMP CLOMPCLOMPCLOMP!
The universe compressed. Julie hurled the ashtray and fell back, launched it with the last of her dwindling strength, heard the satisfying grunt of impact as she sailed to the floor.
Don’t stop goddammit go go go. She clambered up, all fours at first, then she was stumbling back the way she came. Everything played in reverse: shoe store, barbershop, arcade, whap-whap-whap. Carousel swelling at her approach, hnf-hnf-hnf-hnf-hnf.
Last summer, when it was just her and Bugbrain, they would scale abandoned buildings downtown, daring skeletal fire escapes to collapse, hopping from rooftop to crumbling rooftop, tagging names and guzzling lukewarm wine from a spacebag. Back then, back before Spitzi, the nights felt open and endless and wild. Everything was so perfect. And now, this.
Boots clomping behind her, getting closer, growing louder.
Over the gate, onto the runner. The platform grumbled under her weight.
Closer. LOUDER.
She slithered to the far side of the carousel. Over the tiger, onto his back. Her socks skittered across burnished wood. She grabbed onto the drop pole and climbed.
CLOMP-CLOMP-CLOMP!
Knees clasped, thighs bulging, her fingers tightened like wet ropes. She inched up and reached over, grasping the ring of shields that circled the roof of the carousel. One-two-hnnnf! She pulled and swung at the same time. Heels swept under her belly to catch the rim, and then there she was, splayed face down on the peaked canopy. Her heart punched her ribs, hammering-hammering-HAMMERING. For a moment she was sure Irv could feel it, echoing like boulders throughout the mall. She flattened her chest against the boards. She waited, she breathed.
Irv’s boots finally reached the carousel. Julie heard him circling, circling. A shriek boiled in her throat. She chewed her lips to keep it down.
His walkie gargled once, then twice, softer each time. The clomping diminished, receding into silence. And then he was gone.
She counted to a hundred before sitting up to look.
A silent expanse unfolded below. Julie didn’t wait for him to reappear. The balcony was close, maybe a three foot leap. She caught the ledge with one hand and hoisted herself under the railing, chest-waist-ankles. Seconds later she was on the upper landing, quivering next to a pretzel cart in front of Booksachusetts.
She waited. She breathed.
Find a weapon. Get to a pay phone. Call for help. Kill Irv if you gotta. Don’t die.
Steps two and three seemed simple enough. The food court was within sight, and the nearest pay phones were just beyond that, across a walkway that spanned the stage below. Step one was a crapshoot, though. She didn’t want to think about steps four and five.
Julie dipped behind the pretzel cart to rummage for weapons. Tongs, spoons, napkins, mustard packets. Nothing sharp, nothing toxic. God. Damn. It. Even the lye sprayer was cleaned out, overturned, useless. She was about to crawl away when her shoulder whomped into a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall. She yanked it down its reassuring heft and clutched it against her chest.
She crouched to her haunches. She tucked her head low. She moved.
Calendar stands, massage chairs, candy machines. She snaked from spot to spot, cutting a wide arc around the escalators and zigzagging through tables in the food court. She wondered about the girl in the closet. Who was she? Did she have a family looking for her?
She thought of her own mom, clipping coupons back at the duplex. Does she wonder where I am right now? Is she worried? Probably not. Nobody missed her, nobody cared. Julie’s face darkened as she passed the Cookie Ranch counter. If I make it outta here, I’m never going back again. Her skin chafed under the uniform and sweat burned her open wounds.
Out of the food court, onto the walkway, extinguisher thumping with each step. Down one side was the frogeyed giveaway car, angled on a rotating platform. Down the other was the stage, big as an aircraft carrier, sequined curtains tinkling in the open air. Neon letters spelled SHOPPING COMPLEX across a lighting scaffold that humped like a cresting whale. Julie hunched in its shadow, creeping one sock at a time. Another Lolly standee waved near the pay phones, covered in pentagrams and swastikas, urging her across.
Clomp.
The walkie-talkie screeched and she was already spinning, lashing out before the sound even reached her, up and around, up and around, letting the weight of the cylinder carry her. It thunked Irv under the chin and he flailed back, three steps, four steps. Julie wound up for another swing but the extinguisher slipped free and ka-klanged against handrails. She heard it rolling, rollllllling, and then Irv lunged again, blade slicing air, boots clomping tile.
Arms up, gliding backward. Irv closed the gap in two strides. The boxcutter caught her wrists, her elbows, the backs of her hands. Her skin unzipped, spewing black lava. The bones beneath began to smolder.
Turn. MOVE! Banners of blood trailed behind her. She collided with the cardboard Lolly, embrace-like—they were whirling, dancing, dancing. The walkie crackled, crackled, and cackled, and a voice like grinding foil said, “Irv? Irv, buddy, are you there?”
Another clomp, another clomp-clomp, and he was there, he was, she pressed the standee against him like a shield. Irv’s arm punched straight through the cardboard, blade sweeping Julie’s hair, making a Pac-Man of her ear. Over Lolly’s shoulder she could see his teeth, coffee-stained and tobacco-yellow, gnashing and grinning and grinding.
Julie pushed.
The standee went up to Irv’s elbow. She moved around it, moved behind him, as he convulsed to shake it free. Back across the walkway, socks drizzling sloppy blood circles, no direction, no meaning, just floating, head expanding, lifting her away.
Halfway there, her limbs went rubber, losing form. She folded into the side rail, she looked over the edge. The giveaway car was directly below, idling on its pedestal. PICTURE YOURSELF IN ME.
She could let go and just let everything end: the pain, the exhaustion, the confusion. The heartache. Bugbrain, Spitzi. Seeing their faces. Feeling them together. The weight of emotion, of obligations. Of expectations. Her mother, her brother. The fucking future. Where does it lead? Cookie Ranch forever? Forever and ever? Marry some asshole coworker and fill up a duplex with babies? She could let go so easily. The knots in her heart could finally untangle. PICTURE YOURSELF IN ME.
Maybe it was meant to end here. Maybe the universe knew. There was nothing else for her but narrow walls and dead ends. Winding and winding, running forever. PICTURE YOURSELF IN ME. Nobody needs you. Nobody nobody nobody. I would be so easy to let go. The universe knew. The whole world could move on and float away.
Her fingers trembled, slipped. She fell, backward, onto the walkway.
Not today, I guess. Her eyes were slits. Irv’s boots clomped large through the bleary haze. Not today, not in this stupid uniform. Sorry, Irv.
The extinguisher bobbed against her elbow. She grabbed it with both hands, pulled the pin, and let him have it.
The blast caught Irv full in the face, frosting his shattered goggles. As he stumbled back to gasp for air Julie moved straight through the cloud and brought the cylinder down on his jaw.
The boxcutter dropped. Irv’s hands slapped uselessly at her face. Another blow brought him against the railing. The impact shot fire from her palms to the backs of her teeth. She brought it down again, and then again, and again. His hands grew weaker and fell away. There was a wet crack, and a whistle, a baby-toy squeeeak. His head shloooomped and swallowed itself like an overripe tomato. He went over the side, slow-motion, limp rags sailing, and spiderwebbed the windshield of the car below.
Silence.
Then laughter took over. Every joint, every muscle seized with rattling shrieks, overlapping, no breath between, it kept coming and coming, pouring through her in waves, even as her heel sank onto the boxcutter blade, as her foot gave out and she fell against the rail behind her. Even as she spilled over, stageward, socks over tits, even as her skull cracked against the lighting rig, spilling open like an egg, she kept laughing and laughing the whole way down.
They took her downstairs and they bandaged her up, then gave her something bitter to drink that made her whole brain blossom and bloom. She waited in an office of cool marble watching her pulse throb in shimmering, iridescent bursts, wa-lump, wa-lump, wa-lump.
The security guy called himself Jake Jupiter. He was pure cocaine sleaze: gold chains and silver blazer, permed hair and parachute pants. He appeared like a vapor and touched her shoulder and said, “Let’s gab? Y’know, like, girl talk?”
She limped after his shoulder pads through a darkened hallway. The floor ramped downward, the walls grew taller, each step locked to a pre-set rhythm, wa-lump, wa-lump, wa-lump.
“We’re totally near the heart of the world,” he shouted. “Like, can you feel it?” Wa-lump. “Pretty rad, yeah?”
“I thought that was just me.”
Jake snorted. The hallway stretched on and on, darker and deeper, swirling and swallowing. He disappeared as if dissolving in ink. “Like, stay with me, Julie. Almost there.”
She followed the rhythm, leashed to his voice. An aperture opened ahead, a tiny red dot that blistered, drawing her towards it, flashing larger with every beat, wa-lump, wa-lump, wa-lump. She found herself standing next to him at a window, looking down.
After a pause, Jake said, “Like, what even was there before malls? No one knows, right? There was only her. There was only her.” His voice thickened with reverence.
Julie followed his gaze through the glass to the room below, a spherical space of bright burning red—no walls, no floor, just an endless, angry eye. In the center was a round tub, set like a pupil, roiling with black, oily blood. And Lolly was there, sleek and ageless, glistening like the polished body of a carousel tiger, nothing but sinews and urges and teeth.
Julie’s skin tightened. Her entire body became alert. Alive.
Wa-lump.
Jake said, “Are you spazzing? Like, please don’t spazz out on me.”
An invisible door slid open and a tiny figure entered the room, lugging a large metal pail.
Jake said, “We give to her, she gives to us. When she’s healthy, we’re healthy. Her energy allows every mall to thrive.”
The pail was emptied into Lolly’s tub. Her body rippled and writhed. The figure exited as fast as it entered.
Jake said, “All she asks is that one mall each year makes an offering of what she needs to replenish. This year she picked ours! Pretty cool, huh?
Wa-lump.
Lolly lifted her face and opened her eyes.
Julie felt her move through the glass, across the ages, centuries of hunger, like a sliver in her veins, working its way through her heart, finding places she never explored, raw ragged spaces, appetites long ignored, infinite, bottomless, deeper than any sorrow, swimming through frozen chasms of emptiness and longing, offering her sustenance, offering her fire.
Wa-lump.
Jake rushed back through the hallway, sweat beading in his sideburns, vinyl pants swsh-swsh-swshing.
Julie said, “Why me?”
“Why you?” The springy coils of his perm dusted his popped collar. “Come onnnnnn! You’re a killer! Like, totally! Remember Irv? Like, just now? How you fucked his shit up and all? Sooo gnarly!”
The path curved and cornered.
Jake said, “I mean, like, when was the last time you made a choice for yourself? Instead of just, y’know, going along with whatever blah blah blah your mom or your friends wanted you to?”
Julie remembered her mother, millions of years ago, shlooooomping grey meat into a bowl. “You’re saying I have a choice?”
“It would be pretty sweet if you said yes.” The lights grew brighter, the darkness withered. The walls and floor became more recognizably boring.
“Irv was old news. We need a fresh vibe! The mall needs it. She needs it. Wouldn’t it be rad to feel needed?”
They reached a door marked SECURITY. Jake paused, hand floating, palm extended, as if presenting her with an unseen gift.
He said, “Can’t you feel it? You’re meant to be here. The universe knows.”
Wa-lump, wa-lump. She followed him into the room.
Two people sat, wrists shackled, with bags over their heads. Even with their faces covered she knew their boots, their jackets, their outlines. A large metal pail rested on the floor between them.
Jake said, “Irv caught these shoplifters drawing dicks and Nazi stuff all over the place tonight.”
His face twisted and he made gagging motions with his tongue and forefinger. The bags whipped and thrashed. Chair legs scuffled around on the tile. A muffled voice hollered, “Let us go, pig!”
“Ha! As if.” Jake circled around until he was standing behind them. “Nope-o-rama, posers!” He placed one hand on each of their heads and yanked hard.
Spitzi and Bugbrain shook their heads in the light, mohawks flopping and flailing. Jake moved between the chairs, gazelled over the metal pail, and crossed back over towards Julie.
Bugbrain said, “You can’t do this, you fascist! We got, like, rights and stuff!” His glare softened. “Oh shit! Spitzi! It’s Julie! Julie Truly!”
Spitzi looked up, raccoon makeup drizzling from cheeks to jawline. “Julie! I knew you’d come and save us…” Her voice trailed off as she looked over Julie’s uniform. Her pupils dilated with recognition. “Oh, yikes, Julie. How long have you worked at Cookie Ranch?”
Jake eased up to Julie’s side. He reached into his blazer and held something out to her.
Smeared brown prints crusted on the sheath. Jake pressed Irv’s boxcutter into Julie’s bandaged palm.
WA-LUMP.
“Think about it,” he said, lips to her ear. “Lots of room to grow at the mall.”
Julie’s fingers tightened. Jake stepped around her out of the room. The door went ka-chunk behind him.
Bert SG is a writer, illustrator, and thereminist. His work has appeared in Chthonic Matter, Body Shots, and This World Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Horror Stories About Bugs. Having retired from a life of adventure, he spends his days hoarding cats in the greater Kansas City area.
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