Work Text:
[CLICK]
[A door opens and closes, not too far away. While it's open, rain can be heard outside. Someone breathes and fabric rustles.]
kenadian
Wato? Where the hell have you been?
wato
Another mall. Got lost in the basement level.
[Wato sounds exhausted. Their tone is flat and nearly emotionless. More fabric rustles.]
kenadian
Lost? What? Wato, it's been, like, months.
wato
Has it?
[Wato does not seem particularly bothered by this.]
kenadian
It's June. Dude, I—I haven't seen you since winter. What happened?
[Hissing static rises under his words, then fades.]
wato
I was just trying to make another video. I dug up this old place, big abandoned mall where it looked like not even the landowner was touching it. It's a few hour's drive away, but that's fine. I can do that. Plus, I had a really good feeling about it. I had to go there. I had to film it.
I know, I know, usually the projects I feel like that about go weirdly, but I thought it would be different. I felt called. I thought I could make it work.
[She laughs humorlessly.]
Maybe someday I'll learn.
Anyway. I drove out there. It was this huge, sprawling complex, with half the parking lot grown over by weeds. I parked and the padlock was pretty easy to get through. I mean, it's like people don't even try to keep me out. Like I'm meant to get in. Once I got past the lobby, there wasn't even any graffiti. Nobody had touched this place in forever.
It was perfect. It was a paradise.
I set up camp in Target. They still had all this canned food on the shelves—I guess they didn't ever clear it out—and it was… okay if I heated it up. I picked one of the food courts as my centerpiece, and went to work.
You've seen my projects before. It's hard work, clearing all the rubbish out and seeing what the space wants to be. Old places build up a lot of trash, and the signs start falling over, the paint peels… there was a long way to go. I was making progress, though.
But one time, I was walking over to the food court to keep taking out the broken tables, and when I got there it was completely untouched. The exact same mess I had started with.
I thought I was dreaming. Or maybe the work I had already done was the dream? But I was achy from it, and had blisters on my hands, and you can't get those from a dream. After walking through it, thank god, I noticed that some of the restaurants were different. Like, a Juice Locker instead of a Starbucks, things like that. Turns out, the place had two food courts.
Well, I knew that already. It was huge. But, yeah, somehow I got turned around and ended up in the wrong one.
And then it kept happening. I went out looking for more food, and ended up in this enormous maze of halls between the atrium and the bathrooms. I tried to leave to get paint to redo the walls, but gave up after I walked so long my feet started hurting.
I was in the basement, but there were skylights. But they were frosted, and the whole place is in one of those overlit suburbs by the highway, so the light was always this twilight yellow. Sometimes it was enough to see by, and sometimes I needed a flashlight. I lost cell service, but my cameras never died, so I thought, y'know, surely too much time hasn't passed. How long can a camera battery be, anyway?
Either way, I kept getting lost. I can't even guess how many people that mall could have held when it was full, but it was only me in there. I was the only person in years to see any of this.
It scared me. If nobody could see me, was I even real? Was any of this real? I tried to edit together part of the video, but none of the footage was any good.
I got a text. It woke me up—I had no idea when night or day was, but I was in the middle of sleeping. I got so excited I almost threw up and had to take deep breaths before I could actually read it—I finally had someone wanting to talk to me. I thought maybe you were gonna tell me I was late for game night.
It was a scammer, though. I asked if they were a real person, and it said, "Please text YES to confirm, then open this link!" I asked if I was a real person, and it said no.
Anyway. I almost finished with restoring the food court into this cute little event space. I thought maybe I could throw a party there. A grand re-opening. I made some signs to help point people towards it from the doors. All the markers in the Target were dry, so it was really difficult.
So, yeah. I went to put up my signs! I was feeling, like, kind of good? I was taking coverage shots of all of them in place, thinking about how soon there would be someone else to see how empty the mall was. I'm not, like, popular, and the mall was just ridiculously big, but maybe it would be a bit less like a vacuum if there were a few more people to fill it. At least, there would be less space with just me in it.
I got all the way back to the front doors, and realized I didn't remember the last time I had seen them. And I was looking at the sign in front of them, which said, "Right this way!" and I realized that people were gonna get lost in there. Maybe they wouldn't make it back out.
And y'know? Ken? For a second, I wanted that. Maybe it would let me go if I brought it more… victims. And then I thought that maybe I would be bringing myself victims, like I was the one who had to let me go. I wasn't really sure what to think of that. Crazy, right?
Maybe if I didn't go through the doors, I would never see them again, though. I could have spent my whole life walking around in there and never seeing all the halls. Never seeing another person, even if there was someone else inside. And I had plenty of footage. I don't need to invite people to see every project.
So I… left. I had to break through the padlock again. I'd forgotten the right way to do it—it took a couple different tries. The sun hurt my eyes when I stood outside; I thought my skin was gonna burn off. But I was too scared to go back in. I wouldn't do it.
My car got towed while I was in there. I guess that's why I'm home late. Sorry.
kenadian
Jesus, Wato.
wato
Did you remember to water my plants while I was gone?
kenadian
Uh… yeah, every once in a while. I think they're okay.
[A beat of quiet passes. Wato is audibly dripping water onto the floor.]
kenadian
I, uh, I didn't mean to make you say all that. Sorry for that.
wato
It's fine. It was gonna happen anyway. I could hear your recorder turn on as soon as I walked in.
kenadian
Seriously? Shit, didn't mean to do that.
wato
I said it's fine. Don't apologize. I know you don't mean it.
kenadian
…I'm glad you're back.
wato
Yeah, good to see you too. I'm gonna go nap, okay? I've been driving for a while.