The Great Mall Mirage

Silence, Please

As soon as you're out of sight of the elevators, Jack grabs your arm. His eyes are wider than a doe's facing headlights at 60 mph. He pulls a hand through his hair, pulling fistfulls out with it.

"Those glasses..." His voice shakes.

"Glasses? You're not going to talk about her face?"

"That's the thing -- with the glasses — I saw her face. She looked just like that old lady from across the street. I didn't think anything was wrong." He pulls the glasses off his face, inspecting them, then squints off into the distance. "But I have to wear these. I can't see anything without them. But I don't see things with them either. Why would anyone make these?"

"Forget the stupid glasses. That thing -- what was that supposed to be? What's that doing in a mall?"

He puts his hands on your shoulders, trying to stem the rush of words. "Let's find another way up. Some way that doesn't try to make itself a haunted house."

His hands bring you back to earth, but your heart pounds anyway, and you're still feeling that tingling in your stomach as if you're free falling. You try to force the image of the woman's face out of your mind, but it keeps coming back. Shark's teeth. Teeth designed to rend and tear. Jaws designed to snap and crush.

You force yourself to look around, but your thoughts stay scattered. Where are you? A bookstore? You reach for the nearest tome and flip to the back cover. Edwards Airforce Base: A History, it reads. The corners of the cover are just a little love-worn; there's not a price tag in sight.

So a library? A library in a mall. What a world this has become.

As far as libraries go, it's a nice one. Square wood shelves, soft lights, and thick white carpet — a quiet space. Almost too quiet. So quiet that the quiet screams in your face like the void that you saw in the woman's mouth.

You weave your way past the shelves, letting your fingers trailing on the book's spines. A User's Guide to Linux, The Mechanic's Shop Handbook, Version 13, Metalworking.

You pass the display of books on automobiles and reach row upon row of desks, each equipped with an outlet and a lamp. Some people read, some type, and one student with straw colored hair and a mossy green shift pores over a mess of wires, glass and what appears to be lead.

You recognize his hunch, the way he pushes his wire rimmed glasses up his nose and brushes the hair out of his eyes. He's that quiet, thoughtful student from your history class; an endearing nerd. You walk up behind him and tap his shoulder.

He straightens a little too quickly and looks at you without meeting your eyes.

"An experiment I'm working on," he says. "Measuring the breakdown of plutonium. I'm trying to see how close I can get it to critical."

Jack doesn't say anything; instead feigning interest in the glowing mess on the table. You grab his arm and back away. You know from the books you've read that this isn't something safe. It definitely isn't legal.

"It's really quite interesting." He reaches for his glasses, pulling them off his face, something you've never seen him do before.

It's not just his glasses that come off.

His face crumples in on itself and peels away, revealing a void behind it lined with jagged teeth. Shark's teeth.

You and Jack jump away. Screaming.

You walk as fast as you can without drawing too many sharp looks from the librarians. Once your'e out of sight of the desks, you slow down you pace, scanning the labyrinth of shelves. Uou could have sworn that the shelves behind you weren't there a moment ago.