In the Strip Mall (Pt. 10)
Steve staggered through the parking lot, groaning to support the dead weight of his fallen friend. People were running pell-mell from out of the supermarket and the second story. It was as if there was an invisible or impending disaster of some sort going on, like a tornado poised to rip through the arcade that everyone saw or was clued into except Steve.
“Figures. Fucking figures I get stuck helping you, man, at a time like this. Oh my God! Monique?”
It was Monique, stopping in her tracks amid the helter-skelter like a bunch of data suddenly extracted from a stream of bits, coherent information instantaneously rendered from static, stochastic resonance.
“Steve? Jesus Christ, what happened to Murdoch?” Taking a closer look, she surmised, “Ezra did this.”
“She’s dead. My friend just shot her. Who was she?”
“My landlady. Our slumlord. Good. I’m glad she’s dead. That must be why we can all leave now. Jesus,” and she began crying as she hoisted up Murdoch on the other side, slinging his other arm around her neck to help Steve, “we were all hostages, Steve, hostages for so long. It was cheap, you know, real cheap, and it seemed like it would be a good idea, but then, I don’t know…” She trailed off.
“There was like this invisible field, you know, in the ‘apartment’. It was like a clear meniscus, an invisible sphere, and it crystallized over the door to my apartment. The bubble locked me in, but, um, it also attracted me, like it had a kind of gravity. It faltered just then: that must have been when he killed her. I felt it, so I ran. Everyone else must have run. I could feel it. I could feel the energy well up from the center of the building where she has her tourist shop like an invisible fire pillar of souls.” She looked at Murdoch. “Oh my God, I’ve seen this before.”
Steve looked back at the building where all hell had broken loose. On the second level, in the open aperture of the pink stairwell, two Pokemon-type characters, at least six feet tall each, like people in big mascot suits, danced and pirouetted in twin synchronization.
God, get me out of this Hell-on-Earth, he thought.
[Pt. 11 here: https://medium.com/@purevillainy/in-the-strip-mall-pt-11-f6650b7ee300 ]
