The December Featured Story is by Chris Reed
Please feel free to email Chris at: c_allen_reed@yahoo.com
MALL WALKERS
by Chris Reed
It would have been the perfect place to skip school if it hadn’t been for the mall walkers. Corey watched them rush by outside the arcade entrance, herds of them wearing skimpy little tank tops and shorts that exposed their pale, wrinkled skin. While they never actually bothered Corey and his friends, just their presence was enough to put a damper on things. They always looked at the teenagers with disapproving scowls on their faces. If Corey wanted to be surrounded by judgmental old bags, he would have just stayed at school.
“Watch this,” Travis said. He cocked his arm back and whipped a penny in the mall walkers’ direction.
Corey watched as the coin struck an old lady on the elbow. The woman grimaced, looked down and rubbed her arm, but kept her stride.
Travis was cracking up, but Tessa didn’t find the prank so amusing. “Why’d you do that, Travis? We’re gonna get kicked out of here.”
“Yeah, and I don’t want to go back to school,” Hannah said. “I’d be in trig right now.” She made an ugly face.
“Oh, come on,” Travis said. “You guys are so uptight!” He dug into his pocket and took out some more change. He handed Corey a quarter and said, “Your turn.”
Corey took the coin, even though Hannah was giving him the look. It was the same look she always gave him when he was about to do something stupid and she didn’t want him to. She gave him that look a lot when Travis was around.
Corey looked out at the mall walkers. They were moving so fast, arms tucked up tight to their sides, elbows jutting out, hips swiveling as they motored by.
“Corey, don’t,” Hannah said. “That could hurt someone.”
“Do it!” Travis said, grinning.
Corey respected Hannah’s feelings, but he’d known Travis since the third grade, and they always did stuff like this. He figured Hannah would eventually get used to it. Besides, it was just a coin. What real damage could it do?
Aiming at no one in particular, Corey pitched the coin towards the moving mass of people. It floated upward—higher than he’d meant to throw it—and caught a short, bald man in the temple. The man’s knees buckled instantly, his forward momentum sending him crashing to the floor. The group of walkers stopped abruptly, nearly trampling him.
“Shit!” Hannah said.
“Damn, bro!” Travis laughed. “You nailed him!”
Corey felt sick as he watched the old man’s friends help him to a sitting position. The man sat there, holding the side of his head, a dazed look upon his face.
“I can’t believe you did that!” Hannah said. “You could have killed him!”
“Chill out,” Travis said. “He’s okay. Look, he’s getting up.”
Corey watched as the old man’s friends helped him to his feet. A woman brushed the dirt off his shirt for him, and soon, the group was moving again.
“I think I have another quarter,” Travis said, thrusting his hand into his pocket.
Tessa grabbed his arm and said, “I think that’s enough excitement for one morning. Besides, I thought we came here to play video games.”
“Fine,” Travis said. He looked at Corey and said, “C’mon, bro.”
They walked deeper into the arcade and found a change machine to convert their quarters to game tokens. Corey dug into his pants pocket and came up with three quarters. The game he wanted to play cost a dollar. He looked back towards the arcade entrance, where the mall walkers were rushing by. The quarter he’d thrown at the old man was out there on the floor somewhere.
“You coming or what?” Travis said. He and the girls had their tokens and were ready to hit the games.
“I’ll be right there,” Corey told them.
“Well hurry up,” Travis said. “I want to play some air hockey.”
As the others headed toward the back of the arcade, Corey turned and walked toward the front.
The herd of mall walkers seemed thicker now. A black flag near the door, sporting the arcade’s name in red, fluttered as they rushed by.
Corey aimed his gaze at their shuffling feet, hoping to spot the quarter. It could have landed anywhere. He walked closer, eyes squinting at the crowd of marching gym shoes. Then he saw it—the gleam of silver on the floor, right at the edge of their path.
He moved closer, trying to time it so he could grab the quarter without getting trampled. The closer he got, the draftier the air became. He noticed the flag was not only moving now, but actually billowing. Where was this breeze coming from? The arcade was at least twenty yards from the mall entrance, and besides, it wasn’t even windy out today.
Corey looked back into the arcade. Travis was pumping tokens into a game as the girls watched. Corey considered asking if he could borrow some money, but he’d had a crush on Hannah since the eighth grade, and didn’t want to look like a bum in front of her.
He turned back to the mall walkers. Up and down their feet marched so quickly they seemed to barely touch the floor. Legs flew by in a blur. He’d heard stories of people getting too close to speeding trains and being sucked under, and that’s what he felt like now—like he was standing too close to the tracks.
Behind him the sounds of the arcade games and Hannah’s laughter beckoned.
He inched his way closer, kneeled down, reached out, his fingertips just inches from the shiny coin. He felt a tug on his arm, something pulling him forward.
He snatched his hand back and scooted away. The flag ruffled next to him, and he realized the wind was coming from them. No way, he thought. You’ve been playing too many video games.
“Come on!” he heard Travis yell behind him. “What are you doing out there?”
Corey turned to him and said, “I’ll be there in a minute!”
He faced the mall walkers again. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He crept forward, extended his arm, eyes on the coin—it was so close!
The flag whipped and snapped.
He felt the tug on his arm again, tried to pull back, but he was off balance. The force—strong as a tornado—dragged him out of the arcade and into the mob of walkers.
He bounced off their legs and tumbled along the hard, dusty floor. Instead of falling under a train, he now felt like he’d plunged into a raging river. Bodies slammed into him like waves, knocking him down each time he tried to stand.
He looked up, tried to spot Travis and the girls to call for help, but he was no longer in the mall. He was now at his high school graduation, crossing the stage, accepting his diploma. An elbow caught him in the ribs and found himself in his college dorm room, kneeling at the toilet after drinking too much. A knee struck him, sent him spinning, and he was losing his virginity on Spring break. Then he was in a church, standing before a beautiful woman, placing a ring on her slender finger. Now he was in a hospital, holding a crying baby. Emotions flashed by in a strobe light of joy, pain, lust, rage. Then time seemed to freeze and he was standing in the rain, weeping over a grave. He’d never felt so alone.
A hand grabbed him under the arm. Another seized his elbow. Wind rushed past his ears as they hauled him to his feet. A crowd of mall walkers surrounded him, their rheumy eyes fixed on him. An old man with saggy jowls and thick glasses said, “You okay?”
Corey stared back at him in revulsion.
“Looks like you’re bleeding,” a woman in a pearl-white wig said.
Corey followed her gaze down to his right arm. He gasped when he saw the old, leathery skin with the scrape on it. This couldn’t be real!
He examined the rest of his body, his wide eyes shifting from his liver-spotted hands, down past his white shorts to his knobby knees and stick-thin legs, webbed with varicose veins.
“What the hell?” he whispered, his voice a raspy croak.
An old man in a pink Polo shirt crouched down, picked up something off the floor. He stretched his gnarled hand out to Corey and said, “Dropped your quarter.”
Corey reached out and took the coin.
“Can’t get home without bus fare,” the man said.
“I told you to get one of these fanny packs,” the old lady told Corey, nodding down to the black pouch strapped to her waist. Corey smelled something foul coming from her pants.
The crowd of walkers was moving again. Corey cast a glance over his shoulder, back into the arcade. Travis and the girls were playing Skee-Ball, oblivious to his departure. He opened his mouth to shout, but his dentures shifted in his mouth, changing his words to a jumbled slur.
“Don’t pay those hooligans any mind,” the woman with the wig told him. “Someday they’ll be as old as we are.”
As Corey marched, a calm fell over him, and he was relieved to be moving away from the arcade’s flashing lights and noisy machines. He suddenly wondered what the appeal of such games was. He remembered liking them at one time, even playing them every day, but it seemed like so long ago.
“You coming to bingo tonight?” the lady beside him asked.
Corey found himself nodding. Activities like bingo and shuffleboard, or just reading a good book seemed quite appealing compared to the chaos of the mall. His legs ached, and he longed to finish the next lap, to walk out the doors where the bus would be waiting, to be back in the peaceful confines of the assisted living community, away from this teenage madness. He didn’t understand how people could spend hours in this environment.
He tried to remember how it felt to be young, to have his whole life ahead of him, unfazed by the ticking clock, or the changing seasons, oblivious to his own mortality.
Where had all the time had gone?
Chris Reed has been published over 60 times. His fiction has appeared in numerous small press publications, including Black Ink Horror, Midnight Echo, and Tattered Souls: The Provocative Boundary of Fear. His influences include Joe R. Lansdale, Fritz Leiber, and John Collier. Aside from writing, he enjoys browsing thrift stores, waiting for hockey fights to break out, and eating way too much pizza, sometimes simultaneously. He lives in Davison, MI, with his photographer wife and their two children. For news and information on purchasing his chapbooks, visit his official Web site: www.ChrisReedFiction.com.