The Mall by S L Grey Page A

elephant thing.
    The trio of rag-people mill around at the kerb of the parking lot, grumbling. They have a grey, mouldy sheen over their skin, like potatoes forgotten in the cupboard under the sink. The rags
that used to be their clothes have the same coating, so when they move, they look like parts of the concrete walls and floors shifting in chaotic patterns. They have grey eyes, too, mole-eyes
atrophying in the barely lit cavern. They must have lived here for years.
    After all this running, I don’t know if I’m relieved or depressed or terrified to know that we’re still in Highgate bloody Mall. We must have been running around in circles for
hours. A few years ago there was talk about opening a new wing of the shopping centre. Working at the bookshop, we heard the subterranean thumping of jackhammers and mallets for a couple of months,
then the financial crisis hit and everything went quiet. Talk of the new wing just petered out as if it had never really happened.
    Here we are. The new wing. I’m amazed they got this far and then just left it. But what’s weird is that this place should only be one level underground. We’re way lower than
that. There’s no hint of sunlight, or moonlight, or anything outside. I have no idea what time it is. My watch is broken and the cellphone seems to be fucked. Currently its time reads:
<27:79>.
    ‘Come on,’ Rhoda says.
    I hesitate.
    ‘They’re not doing anything, Dan,’ she says. ‘They’re staying where they are.’
    ‘What if they try and grab us again?’
    ‘They got a fright, that’s all. You stood on one of them.’
    I feel like a complete fucking moron. Middle-class white boy runs away from poor people. I follow her into the food court from where we’ll have a better lookout. The tables and chairs
bolted into the centre of the food court, never used by diners, are dusty and slashed in some places with dark stains, a sticky substance long-since dried. We sit down at a table facing the parking
lot. Twenty metres away, the three grey people stand at the kerb, discussing us in low tones.
    ‘Now what?’ I say, out of habit.
    ‘Jesus!’ Rhoda pokes her dirty finger at my face. ‘Can’t you make a decision for yourself? Just once?’
    ‘Fuck you,’ I say wearily. I didn’t really expect an answer. This is my dream. I have to decide what to do next. ‘You dragged me down here,’ I remind her.
‘I’ve got nothing to do with any of this.’
    ‘You’re supposed to know where we’re going.’
    I get up and stalk back into the restaurant. I need to piss, and right now if I have a choice between sitting next to that putrid freak and a hand-to-hand battle with the fucking elephant thing
with my dick hanging out, I’ll choose the latter.
    When I get back, the table’s empty. Rhoda’s at the edge of the parking garage, her dirty clothes blending in with the bums’. I suppose I don’t look any better.
She’s standing about two metres away from them and I can’t make out what’s going on. I hear raised voices but I don’t know whose. I almost follow the impulse to go and help
her out, but I think twice. She’s probably the sort of feminist who objects to chivalry, and I’m not going to risk being embarrassed or sworn at or smacked by her again. She’s
made her own fucking bed.
    The middle figure of the three comes forward, raising herself taller than the men, who stand around staring at nothing. She’s just as grey and dusty as they are, but her clothes are not
quite as ragged; she’s fashioned herself some sort of robe and a headcloth.
    She takes a step up onto the kerb and Rhoda shifts a couple of steps backwards. The grey woman swoops along to the table where I’m sitting. I try to stand up, catch my foot on the leg of
the table and sprawl backwards, knocking the back of my head on concrete. I lie there trying to get up but my foot is still caught as she comes to stand right over me.
    ‘What do you want here?’ she says in a