First: The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
Previous: Clean

“Excuse me?”  Abby took a step backwards, reaching for her friends.  “Packaging? I don’t want to be wrapped up any further than I already am, thank you.”

“You will need face masks.  Packaging will now commence.”

A whirr and a soft creaking noise came from the bin where their bags had been.  A few more sounds commenced – ripping, some shaking, and something that sounded like sucking air through a straw.

Then three identical white bags popped out.  They looked clean, they looked like they had everything in them, and they looked more comfortable than the back packs they’d had.

Each of them took one.  The bot, now a sphere again, whirred at them one more time.  “Please take one face mask each and install on face.  Please take one face mask each…”

A tray popped out of the sphere’s side.  They took one face mask each and, after a moment, figured out how to put them on.  They were surprisingly comfortable, and now the three of them were nearly anonymous.

“This is weird.”  Liv-probably-1’s voice came out clearer than it ought to have, but also somehow anonymized.  “Like, we got all our individuality pulled away.”

“On the plus side,” the other Liv pointed out, “we’re clean.  Now if only we’d been fed.”

“The food depot is out this door and to the left.  Please follow the blue line.” The bot was far too helpful.  “You have been cleaned.  You may now pursue food.”

“Do we have to chase it?” Liv-probably-2 muttered.  “Because I’m not all that hungry, but I might still run something down.”

“Please follow the blue line towards food,” the bot repeated.  

“Following,” Abby agreed.  She took both Liv’s hands. If she lost them here, she was never going to be able to pick them out of a crowd.

One of the Lizs glanced sidelong at her. “This is getting to be a habit.” Continue reading →

First: The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
Previous: Reunion

It was too awkward, talking to all these people with the faces of people she knew.  Abby rushed through a meal of ridiculous fruit and meat she didn’t want to ask too much about, Chinese-restaurant sauces and a few spices that the person in batik swore up and down would do nothing more than make mystery meat taste more palatable.

It would feel nice to sleep here, but something about the way Vic looked at them, the way Kevin looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking, the way Greg sometimes looked at Tommy, it made her feel like they shouldn’t be here.  Like it was like looking at ghosts for them. Continue reading →

First: The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
Previous: Back the Way They Came

Abby glanced at both her Livs, to find one of them as shocked as she was and the other completely not surprised.

She cleared her throat. “Food?” she asked.  “We can trade some ridiculous fruit.”

“Fruit?”  Kevin leaned forward.  “I haven’t had fruit in-”

“It’s been a while.”  Vic squeezed his shoulder.  “Okay. You have the question-face on.  So. Short version: This is this world’s Kevin.  I’m not this world’s Vic – she couldn’t make it through the doors.  I’m a traveler, but I lost my Sandy, and without her it’s almost impossible to go anywhere, and, besides, this one might be kind of grubby, but nothing here is actively trying to kill anyone.  Um. Usually.” She coughed and looked away. Continue reading →

First: The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
Previous: Back the Way They Came

The Hidden Mall has a landing page here: http://www.lynthornealder.com/verses/the-hidden-mall/

⏳

Abby stared at the door.  “Hold on?” she asked the Livs.  It won’t go where it did.  Well, nothing had yet.  We can’t go home.  What did Abby want more than anything?  Home?

She wanted to feel safe, and to have a warm place to sleep and a real meal.  She wanted to see sunlight and feel it on her face.

She opened the door. Continue reading →

First: The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
Previous: Circles

The Hidden Mall has a landing page here: http://www.lynthornealder.com/verses/the-hidden-mall/

↩

They turned back, retracing their steps.  Past the Tome Home, past the little shop where Liv had traded in a regret for a necklace.  Back towards the hallway, where it had first looked all bright and colorful and shiny, where it now looked covered in cobwebs, grey, and awful.  Back through the narrow door and into a cold concrete hallway, covered in pipes.

They were all holding their breath.  They were moving slowly, as if they were afraid what they would see.  She was holding on to both Liv’s hands tightly.  She didn’t want to lose either of them.  She didn’t want to know what happened if they got split up here, here where it had all began. Continue reading →

First: The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
Previous: Normal

The Hidden Mall has a landing page here: http://www.lynthornealder.com/verses/the-hidden-mall/

🔘

“One minute.  Just one minute, and then we can run.”  She was being ridiculous, and she knew it.  No, she was being suicidal.  But she had to know.

She pulled the bag from the skeletal hand and passed it to her Liv, who took it as it it was on fire, holding it with two fingers by the end of a strap.  Then she pushed aside a bunch of the vines in one rough shove.

The vines wanted to crawl back in, pulling back around the body, pulling back around Abby, but she grabbed what she was looking for – the chain of the necklace around the corpse’s neck – and pulled hard. Continue reading →

First: The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
Previous: The Hidden Mall: Ropes & Vines

The Hidden Mall has a landing page here: http://www.lynthornealder.com/verses/the-hidden-mall/

⛲

Abby and skinny-Liv slept in beds bracketing Liv-1, who had been tied down probably more thoroughly than she needed to be.  Abby had thought she’d have trouble falling asleep – a strange bed, a strange world, and with no idea what might be out there – but she was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.

She woke to a streak of light coming over her eyes from a window far overhead.  The vines seemed a lot closer than they had been the night before, but they hadn’t made it over her or – she glanced over – to the Livs’ beds, and both Livs were there.

And awake, too.  “I have to pee,” whined Liv.  “I mean, I really  have to pee.”

“Let’s see how good the bathrooms are here.  I seriously need a shower,” Abby sighed, “but that’s not happening any time soon.  How are you feeling, Liv?”

“Other than having to pee?”  Liv considered. “I want to see the Beavers.  But it’s not.  Um.  it’s not urgent. Peeing is urgent.  And eating.”

“So we can’t tell,” Skinny-Liv mused, “if she’s getting better or if the compulsion is just overridden by biological compulsions.  Come one.” She unbuckled all the restraints and dropped them in her bag.  “So, Abby, you found something that wasn’t trying to kill us, in terms of settings.  Not bad.”

“it’s still a ruined mall, though.  I mean, like you said, thy planted kudzu, and it’s going everywhere.”  Abby tidied up the area, not sure, as she did it, why she was doing it.  “Everyone have everything?”

“We slept in the mall,” LIv whispered.  “We slept in the mall.  In a dead mall.  That’s kind of weird.”

“Yeah, but everything is weird right now.  Here’s the ladies’ room.”

“What, do you think some guy is going to walk in on us?”  Skinny-Liv wrinkled her nose.  “Never mind, it’s probably a mess.  Men’s rooms usually are.”

“I want to go home,” Abby admitted in a small voice.  “I can’t, I mean, I don’t know how to get us there.  So uh.  I’m gonna do things as normally as I can.”

It was hard to pretend to be normal when they picked big fruits off of a kudzu to eat for breakfast, or when they wandered out into the mall and bathed in a big fountain.  They took towels from housewares and picked up a bigger backpack and a little camp stove and propane tank in sporting goods, cooked some of the fruits, and made a lazy circuit of the mall.

They had almost decided this mall was a benign one when Skinny Liv made a choked sound.  At first, Abby thought they’d come back around to where she’d left her bag, but no.  They were next to a Cinnamon Hut; they hadn’t gone by one of those yet.  And that backpack was too worn to be hers.  Too… She took a step forward.  It had the same patches.  It had the same broken zipper with a twist-tie.  It had

a semi-skeletal hand holding onto it, emerging from the vines.  The hand had bones showing through flesh; it was definitely no long alive.   Abby, driven by something between horror and curiosity, moved forward.

“Abby… don’t.”  One of the Livs pulled at her arm.  “Abby, you don’t want to-”

“I want to.  I – people keep telling me I don’t want to know, but I do.  If all of me but me have died, I want to know how.  I want to know why.  I want to know if I’m gonna fall over from a brain tumor in twenty minutes and leave both of you alone in here, and, if so, who’s going to help you?”

“Abby?”  Something about the voice told her this one was her Liv.  “Abby, I can take care of you, too.  It doesn’t have to all be on you.  Do you want – do you want me to look?”

Yes.  “I can do this.  I think I can do this.”  She used a towel she was still carrying to push aside the vines a little at a time.  They writhed and reached for her, grabbing at her.  “And if Abby is here, what happened to her Liv?”

“Probably ran off.  It’s – when something is eating your friend and you can’t stop it and she tells you to run, when it starts to eat you, too… We’re cowards, Abby, sorry.  Her Liv probably grabbed the nearest back door and ran.  And Abby? We should, too.  We should go, because those vines are acting a lot more energetic now.  We should go.”

Want more?

• Landing Page: The Hidden Mall
• The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
• The Hidden Mall Part II
• The Hidden mall Part III
• The Hidden Mall Part IV
• The Hidden Mall Part V
• The Hidden Mall Part VI
• The Hidden Mall Part VII
• The Hidden Mall part VIII
• The Hidden Mall part IX
• The Hidden Mall part X: Plastic Bullies
• The Hidden Mall Part XI: The Narnia Thing
• The Hidden Mall Thirteen: Deep Water
• The Hidden Mall Part XII: Rescue
• The Hidden Mall Fourteen: Books and Bad Decisions
• The Hidden Mall: Blood, Thicker Than
• The Hidden Mall: Into the Woods
• The Hidden Mall: Cozy and Clean?
• The Hidden Mall: Liv, Liv, Liv
• The Hidden Mall: 🔥 Where There’s Smoke…
• The Hidden Mall: 👭 Pairings
• The Hidden Mall: Moving On
• The Hidden Mall: Ropes 🌱 Vines
• The Hidden Mall: Normal ⛲
• The Hidden Mall: Circles 🔘
• The Hidden Mall: Back the Way They Came ↩️
• The Hidden Mall ⏳ Rip Van Winkle
• The Hidden Mall: Reunions
• The Hidden Mall 28: Clean✨
• The Hidden Mall 29: Say What?💬
• The Hidden Mall: Aberrant! 🤖
• The Hidden Mall 31: Stay Alive 🏹
• The Hidden Mall 32: Advice 📝
• The Hidden Mall 33: Copies 👭👭👭
• The Hidden Mall 34: Ordinaire 😐
• Hidden Mall 35: Miss Piggy
• The Hidden Mall 36: Further up and further in
• The Hidden Mall 37: By a Thread
• Hidden Mall Thirty-Eight: Open Air ☁️
• The Hidden Mall 39: Don’t Look Down 👇
• The Hidden Mall 40: Bad Ideas 💡
• Hidden Mall 41: Big Ideas 💨
• Hidden Mall 42: Rescued
• The Hidden Mall 43 – Vic(tim)
• Hidden Mall 44: Story

First: The Hidden Mall – a beginning of something
Previous: The Hidden Mall: Moving On

The Hidden Mall has a landing page here: http://www.lynthornealder.com/verses/the-hidden-mall/

🌱

The door stuck at halfway open, but the gap was wide enough to slip through, so Abby led her Livs through the crack.

They pushed through a curtain of Vines and flowers and into a vine- covered beauty parlor.  The door was right next to an old hair dryer bonnet, vines dangling from it like a  hairstyle.

 “Or at least it’s not making my skin break out.”

“Let’s not try that more,” the other muttered.  “This reminds me of Sears  You know, the photo place ought to be right over -”

“-There,” agreed the other one.  Abby wasn’t sure if she liked them getting along well enough to talk in sync.  It could mean her Liv was getting better – or it could mean Skinny Liv was getting worse. Continue reading →

♪ I think this line’s mostly filler ♫— the Buffy Musical

“Um.”  Abigail looked between the three of them and held out the candy in her pocket.  “I took it, but I didn’t- hey!” She closed her hand around it as her Liv grabbed for it.

“Yeah, I’d say throw that out, but you’d have to destroy it utterly.  Okay, you should be fine, but try to get rid of that now that Liv notices you have it. I’m not saying that it’ll get you home, by the way, but there’s something about the -hey!” Continue reading →

They ran through the smoky halls, looking behind them for the source of the rumbling, looking ahead of them for Rue 21.  They were dodging obstacles they could barely see in the haze, looking for flames they couldn’t see, and holding hands, Abigail so she didn’t lose yet another Liv – Liv, presumably, for the same reason.

Neither of them saw what grabbed them and pulled them through a door.  But as the floor shook and shook and something outside crashed, Abigail decided that whoever it was, was probably a friend.

She wiped her eyes, turned around, and saw two Livs and Vic Carter.

She turned to her side.  Liv, skinny-and-clean Liv.  The one on the left there, that was probably her Liv – she was wearing the same clothes, at least.  The one on the right was clinging close to Vic Carter and staring at her in horror.

She took three measured breaths. “Liv?” Continue reading →