Caught Between Worlds

    

PREFACE:

This is a long-ass piece I wrote over the course of like a year I believe. I think it's good, but I will be adding more in the future.

Caught Between Worlds

Special thanks to Charlie, Infinity Frequencies and Beny Tchaicovsky, and–as always–Jillian

“She Vinge on my Riley till I’m caught between worlds”

The sky was a sheet of complete black that covered the city, with all the light from the stars stolen by the fluorescent bulbs of the countless high-rises. Shuttered and desolate were the stands that littered the streets, locked in a perpetual stasis, sitting outside shops which had not been opened in years and some which had never been open. There were no voices in the air, and the only signs of life were mere hints of human presence: echoing footsteps in the distance belonging to unknown people, a light on in an apartment building showcasing a blurry silhouette, the occasional sound of a door slamming shut. Above a derelict bar someone was watching the news on an old television, and even from afar, Riley knew it was another story about whatever they found beneath the ground. Yet another missing person reported, their last known whereabouts being the demolition site, their last known actions being to explore whatever was still left over. Someone else had gone in there with them, only to leave early upon discovering an endless-looking pit under a bunch of rubble–the only one to do so and the only one to make it back. Riley aimed to be the second, but he wasn’t going to stop halfway through. Cramming his bloodied knuckles–cracked and dry from the winter-chilled air–into the pockets of his coat, Riley quickened his pace, eyes stinging as the wind seemed to blow through him. He had packed too light, only carrying a single handheld flashlight in the pocket of his puffy green jacket which he could feel the cold go right through, but it was all he had. 

Crossing under a stoplight which swung violently in the wind, Riley made it to where he needed to go. Before him, beyond a fence which wrapped around the whole of the area, sat the crumbling remains of a once-vibrant mall, flash-frozen in a state of decay. Spires of yet-untorn concrete and rebar stood in place of the once massive parking garage, and mountains of steel capped with broken glass and tile reached high above the fences. They shimmered under the harsh lights of the site, ones which gave suns to this walled plot while tinting the whole area with a washed-out orange color. An array of letters, logos for businesses, map kiosks, benches, all laid detached from their bases and scattered upon the ground, with a few having left their shadow on whatever walls were still standing to cast them upon. Shopping carts were flattened upon the ground, next to torn pieces of paper notifying shoppers of the mall’s last day open, most of which joined together in the wind, bunching up in a dead bush. A whole ecosystem once thrived there, but that was gone, lost to the memories of those who had been before its destruction. 

Riley vaulted over the fence and started on his way, stepping past any lights and the multitude of construction vehicles which lay within the perimeter. His entrance into the remains was facilitated by the gaping holes in the walls, which crumbled away independent of any wrecking ball, creating valleys in the concrete and glass. The ruins kept the chill at a lower temperature, although the wind still broke through the many openings in the walls and the completely torn-off ceilings. His eyes, when they weren’t bombarded with a sharp breeze, were peeled searching for what the bottomless pit that was described. Most of what he saw was consistent with the outside: racks for clothes twisted inside ruined stores, the stores themselves in the process of caving in from their walls having been smashed, happy people on formerly wall-bound posters had their printed faces ripped and blown across the hallway, being caught on invisible shards of glass sticking out from destroyed storefronts. Parts of the roof littered the cracked tile flooring of the place, its neon colors now faded beyond recognition to become a fragmented light-brown mess, with some parts still falling as Riley trudged along. 

Riley came across the pit as described by means of nearly plummeting into its depths, with one foot slipping on the outer edge and the other just barely on the other side, bringing him to the ground. He was examining the fountain, noticing a distinct lack of the fountainhead in the middle, completely oblivious to what was below him as he climbed into the basin. An abyss of pure black faced him when he stood again, the only mode of traversal being down a badly-rusting ladder, which disappeared into the gaping mouth in the earth. He reached into his pocket for his flashlight, shining it into the hole to no avail, as darkness broke through the barriers of its beam and consumed it, as the wind continued to blow over the lip, creating a low humming sound. Riley picked up a small piece of tile from off of the floor and let it plunge into the blackness, although after several minutes of waiting, he never heard it hit the ground. He figured he would have to go and find it. 

The creaks and groans of the rusted rungs echoed on the cement wall of the hole; each rung bending beneath the weight of Riley’s boots. The ladder was so close to the sides and the sides themselves were so jagged that they scraped at Riley’s already bloodied knuckles, opening old wounds and making new ones. As he descended further, the walls became narrower, to the point where he was hardly able to move his legs enough to climb further. He could feel the imperfections in the sides of the hole through his jacket, hearing the sound of ripping fabric more times than he was comfortable with. For a very long time, there was nothing except darkness and the sounds of Riley’s boots echoing throughout the pit, until a faint light emanated from an indeterminate source far below him; an inconsistent pool of brightness that flickered constantly, fading slowly before coming back as luminous as before–the ever constant death spasm of decaying technology. Even so, the light was almost blinding to Riley’s darkness-stricken eyes. He could see it spreading to more of the area below him, before finally touching down on solid ground. Riley turned, shielding his eyes with his arm. The light was coming from a singular long fluorescent bulb, one side completely out while the other side just barely clung to life, with the buzzes produced from each flicker like death rattles. Just below the decaying light was what looked to be the metal doors of an old elevator, so warped that Riley could hardly see his own reflection in them. The lone button to the right of it signified the only direction the lift would go: down. 

The doors slid open, revealing a claustrophobic and unnervingly pristine elevator on the inside, with a smooth orange glow coming from a light overhead to complement the muzak pouring in from invisible speakers. It was only when stepping inside that Riley looked down and began to notice the toll that the walls had taken on his hands and jacket. His knuckles were ground nearly raw and had begun to stain his hands in shades of red and black, just then only able to be felt after however long he spent ignoring the pain; now biting instead of dull. The jacket he wore did not fare much better, having been turned into ribbons from the jagged rocks in the tunnel, causing the fuzz within to spill out and stick to the floor. The wall opposite the doors had a foggy mirror with its edges broken off, the only imperfection in the entire place, showcasing the faux-wood wallpaper that had flaked off and begun to peel back. Riley hardly recognized the person in the mirror; this flat-lit figure staring back into him with sunken eyes, wearing a heavy, dark grey jacket and a shirt covered in stains. Their pant legs had been split open, thickened with a dark substance that coated the outsides, while their boots had dirt caked all around the outside. The figure’s face looked like it had been through hell, every deep crease being harshly amplified by the overhead lighting. Past the threshold of reflective silver, the elevator stood in a heightened state of disrepair: the nearly perfect tiles on the floor became cracked–some totally broken–and a growth of moss existed in the corner where it was not in his elevator. Riley then noticed that the walls were nearly stripped entirely of their paneling, with much of it being scattered on the floor in chunks or small particles of dust, leaving the wires inside exposed, and the frame of the elevator had grime smeared all over it. Riley stared again at the figure in the mirror, and noticed that their hands had no blood on their knuckles. 

The lift suddenly shook with movement and began a descent. Cables above rattled, humming and squeaking as the metal box lowered, drowning out the piped-in music. Riley didn’t even remember pressing a button. His head snapped up as one of the two lights flickered into death, and when he looked back down, Riley caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His  hands were soaked with blood. He was alone again.

***

A jolt and beep pulled Riley out of his half-awake trance. He checked his watch instinctively–forgetting in his groggy state that he had left it at home–and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands, scraping off flakes of dried blood to fall upon the tiles. The indicator above the door, which had creaked its way open, read “G,” the faint glow emanating from the display coating the elevator in a reddish hue. Riley crossed the entrance of the lift and stepped out into near total darkness, the only source of light being from the metal box he had just left, scantily lighting the area immediately surrounding him. He clicked on his flashlight. The beam caught itself on the concrete pillars which dotted the landscape Riley found himself in, all other places absorbing the light into a void of darkness, save for the few white strips that lined the floors. Riley knew he had seen this place–or a place like it–before, but for some reason he couldn’t remember the name for it. Something about it was just off enough for him to be unable to associate it with his past experience. 

The elevator doors shut behind him. Sounds of creaking metal bounced between concrete pillars as the lift rose, sending the noises reverberating down the interminable abyss then back–straight into Riley’s ears. He shot around to face behind him, light shining back at him in splinters due to the warping of the doors, listening as the elevator climbed further and further up the shaft. Riley’s only connection to the world he knew was gone. Anxiously, he turned back to face the void.

Riley’s footsteps were the only things to break up the unrelenting silence which plagued the area, producing a soundscape of never-ending hollow thuds which echoed off each wall and pillar hundreds of times before dissipating. The silence which prevailed if Riley took too long to catch his breath almost became a sound in and of itself, making his head feel like it was being pressed in and pounding against his ears; a sound unable to be stopped–only compounded upon by more walking. Without any measure of time or distance, he had no idea how many times he had passed the same gray pillar–or white line, or letter-number combination on the wall–before reaching an opening: a wide clearing in the concrete that looked out over an abyss of blackness, extending past where his light showed him. Riley couldn’t make out much about the area beyond the waist-high barrier; a few glints off of what seemed like glass gave him only a vague idea of what might be out there. He thought about jumping through the opening, but decided against it when he found he couldn’t see how far it was to the bottom; the beam of his flashlight only revealed more floors to the stone hellscape. More floors meant a way down though, and a quick turn of his light around him showed a metal door to his right. A check of the door showed it to be locked–a quality changed by a few swift kicks to the handle, breaking the silence and filling the air with a reverberant crack. Beyond it was a narrow stairwell with steps looking as though they had just been built, Riley’s boots being the first to step upon them. The sole path presented was to descend, for down was the only way the stairs went. The realization that he was potentially several miles beneath the surface of the earth–and only going deeper–was one Riley tried his best to push out of the conscious parts of his mind.

Riley met a world infected with a plague of darkness as he stepped through the doorway at the edge of the final landing, so suffocating that it began to seep into the beam of his flashlight. Some things were just barely nicked by the light; reflecting back at him was the glare of a few metal signs, which he thought he recognized, and a couple of dull gray slabs. It came to him upon walking over to the signs that he was standing in a parking lot, one with freshly paved asphalt and completely devoid of cars or any signs that cars had ever been there–not that Riley knew how any cars could have gotten down there anyway. Arrows pointed in the intended direction of travel, looking like they had just been painted on yesterday, and Riley followed them to the exit of the parking lot, where a slight sound of squeaking metal revealed itself far above his head. A stoplight, dangling from a wire which blended into the black sky. His beam revealed nothing up or down the street, nor across from him, though it was then that he realized the toll the darkness was taking on his light, as it seemed to be dimmer than it had been earlier. He wasn’t sure how much longer it would last.

A hollow silence played a tune for Riley as he followed the white lines back to the entrance of wherever he had come from, as his light tangled itself in the branches of two small trees which sat nearby in semi-spherical pots on the concrete sidewalk. The buds seemed to have sprouted already, as a smattering of emerald-colored leaves were present on the trees’ light grey arms. Riley became increasingly uneasy the more he stared at the trees, which seemed to be waving in a wind he did not feel at his back. He figured they must have been artificial, not knowing how anything could grow in a place like that, but the branches felt real to him. He didn’t even want to consider how they might have gotten down there, much less were able to stay alive. Past the trees were three sets of double doors–and past that were three more–reaching at least a foot above Riley’s head, with metal handles spanning most of the height of each one. He was reaching for one of them when he realized that the tall windows showed a dim reflection of himself, the first one since the mirror in the elevator. A face creased with worry met his own, eyes intensely dilated from the lack of light. Riley glanced at his hands. His knuckles weren’t bleeding anymore, the wounds having long since clotted and turned black from drying. It was only when he broke sight of the reflection that he realized his flashlight was out. Whatever was causing his reflection couldn’t have been from him. He peered through one of the windows to see a small part of a dim golden orb on the inside of the building.

***

There was no ambiguity this time. He was in the mall. Cream-colored granite tiles patterned the floor like a quilt, each one so perfectly square and polished that Riley felt worse about having his shoes on with each passing step. A massive spiral staircase snaked its way through dangling, unlit lights, standing in the middle of two escalators humming quietly with each revolution of its stairs. Glimmering banisters and displays of gold and silver caught every ray from the blindingly bright lights that had been set up, reflecting across the whole of the winding, two story hallway. Shops lined up and down each side of the place, some with their own beacon of light emanating out of the wide open doorways, showing that these ones were fully stocked with items. In the middle lay several kiosks, benches, vending machines, gumball dispensers, plants, claw machines–as well as many lights placed strategically to light as much as possible without using too many, which left the lit parts shining and the unlit parts shrouded. He remembered coming there many times in his life, though never had he seen it looking so clean. Riley found a directory and–remembering the mangled coat he still wore–started his way over to a store to find a new jacket, settling on a heavy, dark-grey canvas one to replace his torn-up puffy one. It looked familiar, but he couldn’t remember why. 

The mall seemed to stretch on forever, with its long and narrow corridors of tile and glass disappearing beyond a vignette of darkness where the light from the lamps could not reach, faintly outlining where a glass elevator and spiral staircase stood. Flowing water poured from a fountain in the middle of the mall–the same one he found the pit in–rushing shimmering clear water out from the top in eight directions, before landing in a circular pool, picturesque in its impeccable cleanliness. Riley took a sip from the water and sat at one of the cushioned benches nearby. There was a three-dimensional octagonal skylight far above him, the panes looking to be almost dripping with the dark blackness of the sky outside. A banner advertising an annual show hung beneath it, swaying back and forth ever so slightly, the year printed being outdated by two decades. Everything shone bright as if it had just been opened the day prior, and something about that made Riley uneasy. Nearby the floor descended into a ramp, surrounded on either side by a large tile plot that had the inside hollowed out and filled with dirt and small, blooming trees. The ramp led to a department store, with a sign outside on a metal stand advertising a 20% discount in big white letters on a crimson background. Pale mannequins leered at Riley from the darkness, harshly backlit from the few lamps inside which cast shadows on their dead faces. Each end of the corridor surrounding him was enveloped in a dark gray fog, concealing all which laid beyond it. The buzzing of the lights was subconsciously prominent, the sound bouncing ever so slightly off the linoleum and making Riley’s head fill with static. He couldn’t help the feeling of being watched, torn between whether or not he should be concerned if he was. Surely someone must have up the lights, or they would not be there. But if that was the case, the same had to go for the building too, Riley figured, and the street outside and wherever it led to. Someone else had to have been there. He didn’t know if he liked that conclusion better or worse than the one which assumed everything around him simply came into being, and that he was the only inhabitant.

A numb pain of hunger began to seep into his stomach, one he had been too distracted to have noticed before; a stab at his insides with each passing second. He had forgotten all about food up until that point, but now it was all he could think about. Riley checked the map on a nearby directory pillar, and it appeared that the food court was further down the never-ending hall. Twisted reflections of his body watched over him as he stumbled through the vaguely familiar corridor, bending towards or away or meeting him somewhere in the middle. Were it not for the different stores, Riley would have assumed he had made no progress at all. Alternating groups of benches, massage chairs, t-shirt and watch repair kiosks passed him by, repeating with almost mathematical precision, each having been placed a perfectly equal distance from the other. If there was any substantial light, Riley figured for most of his journey that he would be able to see clear to the other end of the hall–wherever it was–given the general flatness of the place, so he took notice when the floor began to curve at an upwards slant, meeting another sitting area like the one Riley had just come from. An aura of luminescence pushed the darkness back greatly up ahead. A wavy yellow sign with neon blue and pink undertones and block letters denoting the food court sat high above on a catwalk, the concentration of lights even reaching to the reflective metal shape. Riley picked up his pace, stomach stinging with every step. The food court itself was a large horseshoe of a place, with tables and booths in rows up and down the floor, made to seat hundreds. A variety of restaurants made up the back walls of the great hall, their menus showing their multitude of items behind their empty and unmanned counters. Great round pillars supported the stairs and escalators and the walkways they reached, all circling the central hub of the food court, with the steps of the staircase building around an elevator of glass in its middle. Faux-wooden tables glistened under the many glowing lights placed about the area, done seemingly strategically to ensure the least amount of darkness could enter; a physical barrier between light and dark. Riley could almost hear the place, the white noise of a hundred voices, each sound reverberating across all of the concrete walls and granite floors of the amphitheater of food.  

Riley was brought back to reality by his shoes getting caught on something laying on the floor. A quick turn of the head gave him the sight of twelve bedrolls on the ground, all zipped open. There was a switch in the middle of them, looking like a power strip which the whole mess of cords from the lights ran into. Three stacks of notebooks–a big one, a smaller one, and a lone one–manila folders, and loose-leaf sheets of paper were left on the ground, once seemingly in a neat stack, but looked like they had been toppled over by someone. Nearby there was a small bag with some rolls of film inside–though, oddly, no camera, despite there being space for it within. Next to one of the sleeping bags, as Riley found upon picking it up, was a watch, the digital face displaying the time and day of the week. It was three fifty-seven on a Thursday morning. Riley had been on his feet for five hours, and he couldn’t tell if he realized. He strapped the watch to his wrist and went over to the backpacks. They held bandages and ration cans–government issued–and water bottles; some had gas masks with extra filters, others even more papers and pencils. One backpack, inscribed with the letters J. V., held a pack of cigarettes in its side pocket. Riley took the bag and heaved it onto himself.

He thumbed through the first–of seven, if his counting was correct–of the notebooks in the bigger pile, filled entirely with drawings of the interiors of every shop on the first floor of the mall, some of which Riley recognized, as well as a list of every item in each store, although the author, who seemed to have been a researcher that was studying this place, stopped after the second list. There were also three pages dedicated to the lighting system: how all of them worked, how they connected to the generator, and detailed drawings of the lamps from multiple angles. The last fifty pages or so, however, gave descriptions of places Riley hadn’t seen, ones outside the confines of the mall: several restaurants built onto the mall but not accessible within it; a grocery store beneath a movie theater, with a description of how it was accessible by going through the department store exit and crossing the long, dark parking lot; an entire separate mall almost directly across the street from the one Riley stood in. A primitive map of the outside was the last thing drawn on the very last page, with all going past the confines of the parking lot–or the main street nearby–completely unknown and undrawn. Riley moved onto the second notebook, which was entirely about the food court he was standing in and, much like the previous one, listed the complete stores of each shop in the place. What Riley found interesting were the multiple experiments done with the food in each of the restaurants, and how, regardless of the amount taken, it always seemed to restock when the researchers weren’t looking. One entry talked about how someone had been chosen to watch the food within a Chinese restaurant overnight after all the researchers had it for dinner. The person chosen to stay up said that the food appeared between the times they blinked. No matter what, everything in each shop was fresh and fully stocked.

Something else that caught his eye was in the seventh one–the one that was set off on its own–about a concept called “Mirror Incongruity”, with a collection of thirty pages of descriptions, drawings, and detailed experiments, all pertaining to a phenomenon where the researchers’ reflections in mirrors did not match their counterparts. Most of the experiments stemmed from one event, the time when Doctor Polasky was washing his hands in the bathroom by the food court and, upon looking up, noticed that the room his reflection stood within was not the room that he was in. Other stories included situations where researchers would be in the bathroom and one person would look into the mirror. Those in the room described being stared at through the mirror by others around them, even when the person was in actuality turning their head away. The notebook even stated that a reflection began smiling at someone named Doctor Bornhald, causing him to have nightmares for several days, and what the writer described as “an acute psychotic episode”.

The last entry in the notebook listed an experiment where one researcher, Doctor Vinge, touched fingertips with his reflection in the bathroom mirror, feeling cold silver, until suddenly pulling his hand from it and backing away. The experiment reported that as soon as Vinge locked eyes with his reflection, the cold metallic feeling on his fingers turned to warmth, and Vinge said he could feel skin on the other side of the mirror. The report concluded by saying further testing with the mirrors is needed, listing possible experiments, including a note about needing to run a trial in the department store in addition to the food court bathrooms. 

Then, after he turned that page, the entries stopped. He skimmed through the rest of the notebook and, unlike the others, this one had only been filled about a quarter. He checked the remainder of the stack. Every one was blank. 

***

Some food and some rest did little to quell Riley’s wandering mind. He swore he could still feel the warmth of whoever had been in the sleeping bag before him as he drifted off, woken from an already light sleep for the first time mere hours later, all because his watch’s previous owner had set an alarm on it for eight in the morning. Whenever he shut his eyes, all he could see was the harshly backlit mannequin head, staring at him down a pitch-black hallway. He knew it was the one by the department store, the same eyeless gaze piercing through his body, as all he could do was sit helplessly until sleep finally came. Whatever sleep he did get was marred by dreams which made him feel uneasy, only worsened when he realized all the ones he could remember took place inside the mall. Riley wished he knew where the researchers went.

He had put the rolls of film and camera inside his bag alongside each notebook with writing in them, as well as making a couple of sandwiches using ingredients from the food court’s sandwich shop, putting them in the plastic container that once held the camera. Riley wanted to stay away from the main bathroom, not just because he had begun noticing a terrible smell emanating from it, but because of the notebooks. Upon using the employee restroom of a pizza place–the only one lit up, for some reason–he found shards of glittering silver in and around the sink, and a corresponding broken mirror above it. Small splashes of reddish-black were present in the middle of the mirror and on some fragments in the sink, seeming to have been caved inward by someone’s fist. 

Riley spent the next couple hours looking through the shops above the main semicircle of the food court, taking the spiral staircase to the second level. Most were nothing new, more of the standard stores, kiosks, fake plants, tile floors, but everything seemed more dismal on account of there being less light spread around upstairs. A gumball machine, one which–like everything else–was uncannily fully stocked, sat as flush against the wall as it could be, cold black metal pressed up to the sheet of glass behind it. A hallway which led off from where the stairs took him was totally enveloped in darkness at the end, with one light fighting to maintain control around where the floor turned to a slant. He decided to go the opposite direction. 

More of the same met him as he walked down the way he had come from the day before, some stores were even repeated on the upper level. With the aimless shuffling of his feet, rambling about with no real place to go, Riley began reminding himself of when he used to frequent there. He couldn’t remember a single thing he ever bought from it, but many hours were spent in his adolescence wandering the halls of a place not unlike the one he was inside of, taking breaks by the neon-lit fountain while being deafened by the hum of hundreds of voices reverberating off every wall thousands of times. If he really focused, he could hear those people in the empty mall as well, picking out words from the white noise of human voice at high concentrations, but never truly being able to discern anything more than fragments. A light sound of rushing water grew heavier with each step, replacing the fantasy sound of conversation Riley had wrapped himself in. He almost wished he could stay enveloped in his fantasy, as the once shimmering glass and tile that made up the walls had begun to lose their luster in Riley’s eyes. As the fountain came into full view, he noticed that the water could not catch the light the way it did the day prior, with it too seeming duller than it had when Riley first came across it. He sat on the bench nearby, staring at each petal of the wilting rose of streams spouting from the fountain’s top. From the corner of his eyes, Riley spotted the plastic husk of a mannequin from within the shadows of the department store nearby. The shadowed face of it, eyeless and featureless, and its body wrapped in designer clothing; it was nothing but a cheap imitation of life, yet was the closest thing to another human being Riley had seen the whole time he had been down there. It beckoned him, giving him an invitation that he uneasily accepted.

The layout of the place was built around two concentric squares, with the outer layer being home goods and the inner being clothing, although many places led to dead ends or didn’t follow this pattern–like it was deliberately designed to make someone lost. This caused Riley to get turned around a fair amount before eventually remembering the map drawn in one of the notebooks. Outdated goods lined the walkways of the outer layers. A spectrum of things shifting ever so slightly from one to the other, transitioning from bedding to suitcases to toys to kitchen appliances, and eventually opening to a great hollow cylindrical shaft, escalators positioned on the edges of a white marble circle, complementing the brilliant silver and gold of the chandelier hanging down over the direct center of the place, which refracted every little bit of light given off by the several beacons put around the area. Cases and shelves were placed artfully around the pillars holding the second floor above the first, containing all manner of trinkets Riley swore he had seen in his grandmother’s house: small, wooden signs with hollow messages on them, miniature plastic things with some brand plastered on the front, a metal tapestry of a soda brand, done up to look like it was older than it was. Displayed pieces of glassware and plates stood on shelves pressed flush against the inside walls made by the parallel escalators, boxes for even more varieties sat on the floor beneath them. Perfectly framed between the two revolving, motorized stairwells, was even more to the maze of departments, a long and much darker hallway than the one Riley had just walked through. 

The bulk of the store from that point onwards was made up of carpet floors where the clothes were hung up on racks or folded neatly onto wooden stands, separated by tile paths which had the same clean look as the rest of the mall, albeit in a lighter shade. Every shelf and rack brimmed with brand new clothing, tapestries on each of the walls with people on them wearing the latest fashion commodities. A section dedicated to sports merchandise had been set up in one corner, the cartoonish eyes of a bengal tiger on many of the shirts staring back at him through the racks, the old logo of his local football team, sitting among the perfectly laid out jerseys, hats, and socks. Lights, like the ones outside, had been placed on almost every island of carpet, giving the area a flat look as all the colors seemed to meld together into one large orange mess. This sunless space combined with the harsh industrial lights made the twenty or so mannequins–some of which were like the one standing near the doorway, others having perfectly painted-on blue eyes, a light salmon pink skin tone, and either blond or brown hair–all the more disturbing, however infrequent they were in such a sprawling store. Riley couldn’t help but jump a little bit each time he saw one nearby him. Mirrors on pillars passed him by as he walked, every single one being shattered, displaying a cobwebbed image of his increasingly disheveled visage and sunken, wild-looking eyes. Some details didn’t look right in these reflections, like how the floor tiles and clothing displays behind him looked weathered, as if years of disuse had run them down, although Riley moved quickly on from these, writing it off as him imagining details in an unclear picture. To his surprise, there was one mirror left intact by the changing rooms: a floor-to-ceiling sheet of thin, perfectly polished silver displaying a near-complete view of where he had just walked from, a path that seemed to stretch on forever in the distance. 

Riley took a quick glance at the person in the mirror. Whoever they were, they looked terrible, with deep-set, nearly black bags beneath their eyes, which popped out because of their comparative lightness and obvious weariness. The coat, the brand-new coat, was already discoloring from an apparent grime that had been smeared across the front, and the knees of the person’s pants had frayed open. He could almost smell the reflection through the metal, with their unwashed hair shimmering in the flashing lights behind them. 

Flashing lights?

Riley looked past the figure. The carpet islands had been torn up, and the stands which once held clothes looked burnt, tipped over on their sides or upside down, or in pieces. Mildew stained around the edges of the striped wallpaper and the impeccable tile floors looked unkempt–many were cracked and dirty, and some were completely missing. Moss grew beneath where the wallpaper had peeled, its hue a sickening shade of green. A thick fog enveloped the area further down the hallway, but it seemed to Riley that there was shattered tile and glass protruding from the edge of the mist. A few rods of metal could just barely be made out, but only whenever the lightbulbs spasmed the right way. Shafts of light popped into being within the fog irregularly; faint, glowing, fleeting bursts of electricity showing themselves for a fraction of a second, before returning to their dormant state. Riley’s eyes focused back on the figure in the mirror. It seemed that his double had not followed his movements, never averted his gaze from Riley’s eyes; an incongruous reflection. He knew the figure’s face, he had seen it so many times since his descent, with its torn clothing looking even less intact since the last he saw it, its eyes infinitely more bloodshot than Riley ever thought they could be. He couldn’t be sure if the figure’s hands were shaking, or if those were his own. 

He thought back to the notebooks and extended one arm outwards. Fingers met fingers, palms met palms, and both reflection and human had expressions of pure shock, realizing in that moment what they felt: the warmth of skin. He wanted desperately to pull his hand away, to run away from any mirror in the hell he was trapped within, but something compelled him to stay stuck to it, hand against duplicate hand; a morbid sense of wonder and dread unlike anything he had ever experienced. Riley gazed into the eyes of his double, and it stared back. A sickeningly pale face with dark, ringed bags around the bloodshot lenses of its mind, its hideously unshaven and grotesque features, its tattered clothing with muck layered on thick to nearly every article, and a black-red substance that had seemingly splattered itself up from the bottom of its boots, were all the clearer when up close. Thin scabs of dirt and blood spotted the face of the reflection, accentuating whatever non-covered bits of sickeningly white skin were left.  Still, something in Riley recognized it as being not just human–something he had craved for every minute he was down there–but, even through the grime, to be himself. 

Riley was given enough time to see his reflection breathe deeper, quicker, and begin to froth from the mouth, leaving salivic residue on the ground around him, before the threshold was broken. Hands left mirrored silver in a fraction of a second, breaking the surface and letting it ripple as if it were water, grabbing Riley by the arm and pulling him through to the other side, flash-freezing through the silver barrier before coming out onto the side seen only in hazy reflection. He landed hard on his back, wind pushing up and exiting his body, shooting instant pains throughout his body, as he stared up at the flashing lights above him.

Flashing lights?

The replica stepped through to the other side, waves coursing through the metallic sheet which once kept him imprisoned. Riley’s vision was failing him, he could feel himself fading from consciousness, but from the tops of his eyes he saw his double reach into a bag and pull something out. A rectangular object landed on Riley’s chest, rolling off of him. He couldn’t find the strength to move, neither to go after his reflection, or even just to pick the thing up from off of the floor. All he could think about as he nodded off, not sure if he even wanted to wake up, was whose life he would now have to replicate.

***

The others believe me. Tomorrow I prove that I’m not making anything up. Finally. I can’t live with the possibility that these may be people that need help. I have vowed to myself to assist their escape, and I will be true to my word.

The excitement and anxiety are too much for me to handle. I’m not sleeping tonight.

***

He dreamt of the mall again. 

Fountain water rained down from the spout and into the basin, collecting and spouting and collecting and spouting, ad infinitum, perpetually, forever. He sat and watched for a while, waiting for something to change, but nothing ever did. It was only when he looked away and then back that anything was different. The fountain wasn’t there. 

He met someone there. He didn’t know who they were; he didn’t know who anyone was. Nobody ever spoke to him, for they all lacked any facial features whatsoever. Faceless, voiceless beings, only existing to shuffle around the mall, to show Riley around the shops he remembered. Not the one from his youth, but the one underground. Although they were the same place, they had different places, different shops, different fads. New features, old features removed, renovation, but what worked was what was there originally: this self-sustaining ecosystem of people and products and employees and food, all feeding off of one another and supporting one another. A living organism.

The fountain came back between blinks of his eyes. Cool blue, to the point of looking artificial, tinted ever so slightly so you couldn’t see the mountains of coins under there. They were there, just obscured by something greater, and you had to really look to see them. Insignificant things that as a group mean nothing, but to the person who threw one in, they mean everything. 

***

Riley awoke on a bed of moss and grime, his body leaving a silhouette of dust which had settled in layers around his unconscious body. He had almost forgotten where he was, reminded upon the focusing of his eyes on the place around him. He checked his watch to find it was Saturday afternoon. Riley’s other hand slid on something as he tried to rise, and looking back he saw the thing that had been thrown at him, small and black, with a helix of aluminum on the side. It had the look of being water-logged at some point, with almost all of the stiff and yellowed pages on the fringes of tearing, and as he opened it up, he saw an address scrawled across the inside cover and a “return to” message. Something Riley wished he didn’t know was blood had seeped across much of the book. 

Doctor Vinge had written this one, seeming more like a personal diary than a detailing of professional studies like the others. Riley tried to remember why the name sounded familiar as he thumbed the sheets that were covered in research, hoping to find something to help him before going off on his own. Scrawled across the first half of the notebook were a fragmented account of the doctor’s experiences up to that point, experiences paralleling Riley’s own, and experiments he had done with his fellow researchers. Then the topic of Mirror Incongruity came up. Vinge’s once scientific prose began to be replaced with diary entries of sorts, logging his self-experimentation with mirrors in and around the food court, oftentimes staying in the bathroom or somewhere else where his reflection could be seen for hours on end, each minute of which was accounted for. Extensive notes on the appearance his double took, worn down even more with every “visit,” as he called it, and the effect was amplified as he moved to different mirrors, at one time witnessing his shadow reach out towards him, as if to plead for help. His double, on multiple occasions, held its hands to the silver surface of the mirror, eyes begging to be set free, staring deep into Vinge. A few times, he even saw hazy figures which looked like other members of the research team. The entries eventually turned to several-page long ruminations on the nature of the reflection, and whether or not it could–or should–be let out, and different methods to do so, dwelling on the shame he feels potentially trapping another humanlike entity within the confines of a place he does not know of. 

The very next entry was titled Mistake. 

Vinge wrote of going into the bathroom to conduct another test, this time with the full team present to monitor him. They were concerned for his well-being, as he would disappear from them for hours–and a few times even a full day–and come back raving about his mirror experiences. They gathered, staring at the ground to enter, before looking up into their respective eyes. The eyes of unfamiliar people stared back at them, desperation screaming at them from the fringes of their sockets. Lights flashed behind them, flickering on and off as the standoff ensued. Vinge walked towards the silver and met his double at the mirror. The reflection brought its arms up as it had so many times before, shedding a tear as through shadowed eyes it locked on Vinge, shaking but never breaking its gaze. Vinge held one hand to his double’s. He could feel every callous, every cut and bruise, which layered the skin on his hand; feel the blood within its veins and the frigid fingertips of the figure; feel the grip on his arm as he toppled through into the mirrored realm which his double, and all the other doubles, resided. He saw as the reflections ran past him, through to the side he called home, brandishing makeshift knives to puncture their counterparts with, leaving behind a crimson mess of pulp that Vinge once called his colleagues–his  friends. But they could not hear his screams, even if they had been alive, nor could they hear his pounding on the now-solid metal surface of the mirror as he watched the life wink out of them, and looked on as his double, his replacement, waved him goodbye. The entry ended with incoherent scratches of pencil, words used more for their collective emotional meaning than to convey a coherent point. Cries to his friends, his wife, his God, with the only legible part being an acknowledgement that no matter what he wrote or how much he screamed, nobody would ever hear him. Vinge all but signed his name with the dried teardrops left still visible on the bottom of the page, and Riley couldn’t help but sign his, too. 

Riley felt drained as he pulled himself from his dust-laden tile bed. A headache was forming within his skull. He began slowly trotting back the way he came, knowing that the real way back was in a different reality entirely. He didn’t know where else to go. His eyes were strained from the background of flickering, dying bulbs, some of which swung from their broken encasements on their wiry entrails, still barely holding on to their lifeline. Some had not held on tight enough, and lay shattered upon the similarly rotting granite floor. Distorted muzak played from unseen speakers, warbling as it spilled from every direction all at once; a tinny hum designed for submission. The once carpet islands had turned into the foliage-ridden underbrush of trees, which grew up and out of the store, shattering window panes and tiles with its branches and roots. Spaces where the ground had been cracked through sprouted plants, clovers and flowers and fungi, growing out of control over their decomposing host. Racks had collapsed in on themselves, spilling hangers onto the floor and leaving clothing on the ground for moss to grow into. Wooden shelves had been debased, split in two, or remained otherwise intact in spite of some chips to the side, but all suffered the same fate as the clothing racks, consumed by the wrath of nature–the entropy of time. Nothing could be salvaged from any of the fabric heaps upon the floor leading back. Many of the articles once housed by both of these looked to have been in the process of disintegration, leaving husks on the floor of what couldn’t be broken down; once popular commodities reduced to nothing. Much of the area on the outer ring of the store, the home goods section, was nearly impassible, and the exit Riley had read about but had only passed by had disappeared behind a mountain of decaying objects, the slightest glimpse of a building just barely visible beyond the doorway. The boxes of products, piled up in an overstock which had spilled over into the main paths of the place, had completely wilted away, leaving hunks of aluminum kitchen appliances strewn about the walkways, requiring that Riley climb over many or spend tens of minutes at a time clearing a path through the glut of household machinery. None of them, unlike the ones from the mall on the other side, seemed modern through all the rust, with many having technological elements Riley hadn’t ever seen before. 

Eventually he made it to the center with its marble floors and twin escalators, but found it in complete disarray, torn apart and destroyed beyond even the most basic recognition. The revolving stairs had both completely collapsed, leaving a mess of steps in a hollow grave of drywall and decaying metal, the belts which once propelled the machines locked inside the gears they once attached to, stuck forever to be taken over by the moss that had begun to creep its way into the exposed machinery. The handrails laid tangled across the back half of the circle, peppered with the shards of glass and porcelain which once made up part of the guardwall, cups, and dishes, forming a glittering black snake of unreal proportions. Fallen upon the brown-white of the ground were the shattered remains of the once brilliantly shimmering chandelier, a million tiny shining pieces reflecting the disastrous landscape back into Riley’s eyes, showcasing the few lights which waved in perpetual motion beyond him. He saw his double’s face with each swing of the light, remembering yet again that they were one in the same. The shimmering image made visible the wreckage that once was the exit, covered with thick vines which snaked their way up and around the open door-frame. Riley made his way towards it, passing more displays completely overwhelmed by the natural world. Stepping over roots and leaves and underbrush, he passed a humanoid figure constricted within the dense foliage, only faint glimpses of an off-white color could be surmised from within nature’s prison.

The ramp leading up to the fountain was nearly unrecognizable from its counterpart in Riley’s world. Moss rugs and mushroom colonies had broken through tile to form patches of lush green and brown interspersed with whatever flooring had survived the overtaking. The tiling left was covered in muddy boot prints–which Riley added to, noting the similarities between his and the ones which were there already–and leaves that were continuing to fall as Riley walked. These, as he would see when the rest of the mall came into view, had come from a number of massive trees that sprouted through the building, their branches having long smashed through the windows of storefronts and the walls of the mall itself, leaving piles of rubble beneath where they had grown in from. Some of the remains had landed in the base of the fountain, which had long since overflowed, making streams which ran down the pathways or pooled in one of the many holes in the ground. Riley realized then that he had not seen the sun in days as it burned its image into his eyes, requiring him to grab onto a handrail, one which was smothered underneath an uncountable number of thin veins of root, in order to catch himself. It took a while for him to get used to sunlight again. Even after he could open his eyes and take in the disastrously beautiful decay of the hallways, for a while he still stumbled, a hazy film spread over his face, smoothing the edges of the foreground into the deepest recesses of the background, flattening everything into a swirl of colors instead of shapes. Music sang from the trees, birdsongs of smooth, instrumental jazz which prodded at the mind, manipulating it, telling it to buy until it could buy no more, even when there was nothing left to buy. Even when there was only one left to hear it. 

The glossy haze melted from over Riley’s eyes as he continued mindlessly down the leaf-laden corridors, finally giving definition to the place. Branches spread themselves across several areas of the roof, looking as though they wanted to break through to the ceiling and overtake the entire building from the outside; some had weaved themselves through broken panes in the skylights up above; though, oddly, they were leafless at the top. The sun–which Riley was still in disbelief over–snuck its way through the arms and leaves, shining light down from above in isolated and shimmering shafts, in some places producing shadowy imitations of the branches upon the floor or being blocked entirely by the roof or walls or trunks of the trees. A few of the bodies of these great beasts had coagulated with the metal beams and glass sheets of the second-floor walkways, as if they were trying to become part of the mall themselves, replacing the half-overtaken support beams of the sky paths. Elevator shafts existed without the lifts themselves within them, just empty glass coffins breaking through the floors above. Some of the trees had left gaps where the walls they had broken into had continued to rot away as nature flourished inside of them, letting Riley peer out into the parking lot to see it for the first time un-blanketed by darkness. Through the fissure of drywall and brick he laid eyes upon the very parking lot he had crossed to get to the demolished mall what seemed like days ago, this time layered with a semi-transparent fog which limited his view beyond a certain point. Riley could feel wind blowing through the hole. He pulled away and went to the nearest exit, slipping across the shaggy, dew-laden moss. 

The sign denoting the way out had been completely overwhelmed by a tree which grew around it and up through the skylight above. One of the branches had sprouted through each side of the second-floor balcony, causing one to tilt at a downward slope and the other to crash to the ground, leaving behind a mess of rubble that spilled into the anteroom beyond the first set of doors. Broken glass shot up from between the concrete like clear mountains, while vines grew all around everything. Riley went over and tried to clear away some of the blockage, eager to feel the sun again. He pulled at a few pieces and threw them aside–carried further by the wind breaking in from the broken doors–ripping at vines, careful not to slit his hand open. A few parts of the pile began to cave in, spilling either way through the bottleneck of the hallway and flattening out onto the ground. Riley stepped back for a second, wiping the grime and sweat from his brow, when a creaking sound averted his eyes upwards, seeing that the threads that tethered the upper walkway were fraying. Pieces of tile cascaded down the slanted balcony, then bits of concrete, until another louder snap made Riley sprint away from the exit, just in time to see everything come crumbling down. Shattering glass and crumbling drywall shot in every direction, as the noise produced in the collapse reverberated throughout whatever surface the sound was able to bounce off of; a hollow thud that left Riley’s ears ringing and body shaking. His arm felt warm, and looking at his jacket he saw multiple ripped holes up the sleeve, through which were shards of glass lodged in his skin. Unable to stand any longer, he took a seat on the ground, a mist of white covering every inch of the crash radius–which included him. For a while he remained there, unsteadily ripping out whatever glass he could get a grip on. He tried to stand a few times, but couldn’t find the energy to until long after the dust had settled. The sun mocked him from behind the hill of rubble. He turned his back on it.

The next exit was far down at the opposite end of the mall. Upon hitting the food court, he realized he had gone the wrong way, even though he was sure he was reading the directories correctly. Initially, he didn’t even recognize it as the same food court; nearly all of the stalls had been switched out to be different restaurants, a freestanding booth sat in ruins near the left side, and the entire place had vines hanging from every conceivable ceiling space. Moss grew up the sides of most of the walls and floor, obscuring many of the logos above the stalls. A couple parts of the ceiling had caved in, blocking entrances to the few restaurants not completely trapped under plantlife. Being in the food court made Riley remember the sandwiches he had made, still sitting in his backpack–his last tether to the reality he once lived in. He took them out to find that all the wrappings were soggy, smelling of mildew, mold infecting each slice of bread and meat and cheese. Riley threw them all on the ground and left the food court behind.

The way out was a stop along the stream produced by the fountain, which Riley followed like a river in a forest. How colorful the mall was never ceased to be strange to him, the hallways acting as incubators for all sorts of flowers that grew along trees with leaves that shone gold in the light of the sun, making even the most disastrous scenes almost beautiful. Every plant popped out from the cream-colored tiles–each leaf and stalk having its own unique shade of emerald–while the flowers which grew closest to the ground provided accents of blue and yellow that made the environment overflow with a vibrant hue. Storefronts that passed by Riley all held some new combination of greenery: ivy, moss, shrubs, ferns, branches, all made their habitats within the wreckages of the shops, weaving between holes in the remnants. Some were recognizable to Riley–remembered from his trip beneath the earth or from before the demolition–but nearly all were nameless, trapped beneath the unrelenting weight of nature. The destruction was so universal that he passed by the exit by accident and had to backtrack, as the hallway to the outside blended in with the rest of the mall. The double-doors were encumbered by a number of vines which wrapped themselves around the rusting frames and hinges of all of the sets. Easily inch-thick glass had been shattered as though it were nothing, the glistening shards still visible to Riley’s eyes within the blades of grass beneath it. He tore them away on one, separating root from door until the mid-afternoon sun could be seen through the broken frames of the windows. His hands were glistening with blood from the rough ivy, but he stopped feeling them after a while, losing himself in the rhythm of ripping the tendrils and the desire to experience the sensation of sunlight on his skin again. Riley didn’t care where they went, scattering the red-green limbs all across the floor in a mess, as he physically dug his way to freedom. By the time he reached the end, he could have ripped the door from the inside of its metal casing, but there was no need to. They slid open for him.

Breeze swayed the overgrown trees, which bent and twisted wherever they had not been uprooted from the earth, leaving holes in the strip of dry, decaying grass that sat parallel to the parking lot beyond the double doors. Cold and biting winds–at odds with the strangely mild climate of the area–swept across each inch of the asphalt, blowing the leaves off of the few branches which stuck out from the shattered glass of the mall. Riley’s eyes stung, especially as he strained to see through the fog which limited his view past a short distance. Objects became shadows in the undefined haze. What he could see was what was right in front of him; the splintered asphalt of the lot, hardly the pitch black of the place prior, now a graying and messily-repaired plot, with strips of newer tar painted over old in a cobweb of age which had no beginning or end, or at least none that Riley could see; exposed, rusted shafts of rebar protruding from the holes which once housed the now upturned or shattered slabs of concrete, which had thin vines growing out from within, their source being the low and dying shrubbery that had sprouted up around the spiral cylinders of metal; signs having been eaten away by rust, few of which stood upright, with most laying in misshapen agony on the ground. The sun accentuated the features which would have been brought out by his flashlight in a different world, an undefined blob in the sky which stood as a detached observer, influencing the world below but scantily touching it. Oddly, the monolithic form that Riley was expecting to see–the place which he had entered on the other side–was nowhere in sight, leaving a plot filled in mostly by stray plants and mist.

Riley was paralyzed with options. He had everywhere to go, but no reason or drive to go anywhere, for he already knew where he was. He had walked the streets which lay beneath a covering of fog and plants just a day prior, but–especially in the state it was in–it seemed like a lifetime ago. Hope sparked within him as he remembered Doctor Vinge. If Riley could find Vinge, or where Vinge had been, the two of them might be able to figure out a way to leave the place they were in. Or, at the very least, Riley could have someone to speak to. Riley hadn’t heard anyone’s voice in so long, and was beginning to forget what his own sounded like. Forming words with his mouth seemed like a foreign concept to him. 

Riley turned to the book for any semblance of direction, sitting down behind the concrete slabs which once held small trees out in front of the entrance. He tried to skip to the back of the book to find out where he ultimately ended up, but a number of pages had been ripped out, leaving traces of now-dry paper stuck to the aluminum coil. The only thing on the last sheet still there was a detailed depiction of a house on a farm. Before that, from what Riley had skimmed, it described Vinge walking down a path as things started to change. Flipping back to where Riley had left off earlier, Vinge had produced a map of the area outside, similar to the one in the other notebook, yet different in some of the building placement and was drawn with an obvious manic frenzy, the lines squiggling about the page as if Vinge had never held a pencil, lines stopping and starting in odd places, spilling over into the adjacent sheets. The entries following were hardly legible, with the few words Riley could make out not really helping him all that much: “companion,” “station,” “home,” “log,” “lost,” and “mistake,” were about the only things Riley could surmise in between the scratchy handwriting of the doctor, along with what Riley believed to be the phrases “can’t stay here,” “writing instead of speaking,” and “don’t go mad,” although he had no way of knowing for sure. Mentions of the elevators and mirrors could be deduced through much scrutiny, how they all seemed to have gone missing after crossing over, although Riley couldn’t tell if this was actually the case, or if he was picking out shapes from white noise. A childlike drawing of a box with a sign out front accompanied a description which got progressively more readable the further it went along–Vinge’s hand steadying in real time upon the page. From this, Riley found that Vinge had exited the mall and made his way over to a gas station nearby in the hopes of finding some unspoiled food and water, although evidently there wasn’t much left of the former. He made do until he ran completely out, going to another mall nearby hoping to find an elevator or mirror. The last part didn’t make much sense to Riley, and the more he read, the more it just devolved into rambling.

Riley sat reading the entry until the sun was exiled from its position in the sky and the moon took over, dim rock up above giving some light as he got up. He thought a while about where to go, eventually deciding he would enter the foggy expanse in search of the station to find some water and maybe a sign of Vinge, as he was doing alright on food, even if the food itself was barely edible government ration cans. Riley wanted to be sure that Vinge was–or at least had been–in the same world as him.

The map in one of the notebooks he had picked up on the other side gave him the only semblance of confidence in his journey, as he stumbled through the hardly visible streets lit by a few struggling streetlamps, finding difficulty getting level footing due to the overgrowth of plants and moss. White lines upon the road passed by endlessly when they could be seen at all, the ones behind disappearing out from existence not ten feet from him, while the ones ahead popped into view as quickly as they left. Smeared rectangles of light appeared in the periphery of his vision, signs he had no way of making out the meaning of, blurry prisms materializing in the far reaches of the dense vapor. Sometimes Riley thought could make out the buildings the signs belonged to, spotting parts where the fog grew darker, showing the shadows of what the pervasive beast had consumed, but Riley never strayed from his path, so he had no way of knowing for sure. Nothing filled the air except the sound of the wind, which still raged if slightly less in fury than before, and even through the dim light, Riley could almost see the particles of mist as they changed, blasted to the sides by the greater forces of the sky. He clutched his coat tighter, trudging uphill against the currents of wind. He was sweating from the mugginess of the fog, sweat which was immediately frozen off by the breeze on his face, but beneath his coat was an icy-hot feeling of damp chills he was unsure how to fix. 

It was only when his eyes had lost all moisture from the constant barrage of wind that he saw, through the thickness of vapor plaguing everywhere around him, a flickering sign high up above, standing tall on a cylindrical shadow as the road turned to become level again. Lined asphalt became visible, making way for windows, walls, and half-dead fluorescent bulbs before the whole of the figure came into Riley’s view. An overhang appeared from out of the mist, the logo of a gasoline company faded but barely visible on the side, and pumps showed themselves as Riley approached. A small, single-level building, it's already dim lights choked by the vines that had broken through to the inside and the smell of spoiled food spilling out through the holes in the glass. Riley could not see the other side of the store he stood to the right of, the wall tapering off into the blurry miasma of fog, only somewhat defined by the flickering rectangles of light that made themselves visible somewhere in the mist; nor could he see the very edges of the parking lot, even though he knew it couldn’t be too large. Greens of moss met the aging gray tar, filling in the breakage left by doubtless years of neglect. Some of the moss had made its way into the building itself, and was thriving, it seemed, coating most of the floor in a lime color to match the other plants which had sprouted up through the many cracks in the tile. The door was partially blocked by shrubbery that remained half-dead on the outside of the store, the only living parts–albeit still visibly decaying–being the ones which stayed within the confines of the place. Riley stepped over what he could, breaking off branches of bushes that crumbled like ash when he touched them, as the already pungent smell became almost unbearable and only worsened by the humidity trapped within the walls. Vines hung from the ceiling, drooping down to nearly touch Riley’s head, wrapping around some of the lights which had broken from their glass and hung down, emitting the faintest glow from within their harness of woven root. Decomposing products littered the floor, places where fruits and vegetables once rotted stained the moss and tile, leaving outlines of decay in impressions on the floor. Many of the rows of chips and candy remained untouched, but the cans which lined the shelves in some areas rusted away where they stood, their labels having long since turned to dust. Some had broken in two from weathering and trails of soup wound down from their places–puddling, sometimes falling upon the floor in heaps of liquid and reddish tin. A few sat dormant in the back, their shells cracked and leaking, covered in the fluids and contents of the ones around them that split open, all of which gave off the stomach-churning stench of spoiled food. Riley gagged, nearly adding to the chaos, the medley of once-demanded products now largely reduced to nothingness, but, remembering the gas masks in his bag, he was able to breathe again.

Refrigerators made up the majority of the wall on the side furthest from him, sticky from the soda and beer which had come free from their aluminum confines and burst all over the glass, running down in streaks of unnatural browns, greens, blues, yellows, and grays, sometimes seeping out from beneath the doors to become one with the all-encompassing moss. Only a few doors still remained fully intact: some had their handles broken off, many had their glass shattered, leaving the streaky, multicolored panes to litter the floor, and one was altogether missing and nowhere in Riley’s sight. A few bottles in the alcoholic fridges had been shattered, but oddly none of the spaces which should have held any others were filled, like someone had taken all the ones which weren’t destroyed. A majority of the plastic soda bottles were still there along with some of the water bottles and a nearly full fridge of milk jugs, which even through the gas mask, Riley swore he could smell. He filled his backpack with however many extra water bottles he could carry and continued searching. The ground squished beneath Riley’s feet as he walked around the rest of the place, mainly in search of any sign of Vinge. Remembering the cigarettes in the side pocket, he checked the counter near the exit, though most of the packs had nearly fully decomposed, leaving small strips of paper and ground tobacco in their wake, the torn plastic once housing the cartons having long since melded with the overgrowth below, which seemed to be even more prominent behind the register than within most of the store, stalks reaching up to meet the lip of the counter, leaves grasping at its edges. Some packets were grooved where they had been broken in half, like someone had tried to grab them but instead turned to mush at their fingertips, their remains stuck somewhere beneath the thick brush. Behind a table with a rotting leg and a couple chairs in much the same shape, there was a door past the counter marked “EMPLOYEES ONLY,” beyond which Riley found a room no bigger than an elevator shaft, lit with a singular, pulsating bulb, turned on by a short cord dangling down from the ceiling, turning the room into a flat pool of orange. Taking up much of the space was a makeshift bed beside an open bottle of Tylenol, tens of decaying cigarette butts with burns all around their exterior, and a cheap lighter, which upon testing Riley found to have been completely used. The bed was nearly flat to the ground and made of salvaged foliage piled up in oblique stacks, with barely noticeable indentations in the shape of a human. A multitude of empty cans and bottles were scattered on the floor, their small amount of residual contents leaving sinuous brown shapes caked into the tile flooring, mixing in with the sprouting greens that had just barely begun to continue the reclamation of the entire building. Vines from the ceiling had wrapped a few of their tendrils around a stopped clock on one wall, the logo for a beer company glowing slightly behind the stationary arms. Below the clock, right near where the head of the bed laid, were scratches etched into the drywall. 

Riley had found his sign. 

***

Running low on food, dangerously low. Don’t know if I should go out or not. I’ll decide tomorrow. I can feel every hour of the day it’s been, it weighs on my body and mind. Trouble thinking straight, foggy mind. Lack of food, lack of sleep, I don’t know. 

Forty-eight hours, I think. Shakes are setting in. Numb pain in the front of my skull. Not much makes sense to me anymore, and I don’t know if it’s the aches or this place getting to me. 

Only a few cans left. Triple-checked the shelves, quadruple-checked behind the counter, still nothing. Plenty of water, though. More than I can carry.

Been thinking. Maybe mirrors are the key to getting here and getting home? Or elevators? Don’t know, haven’t seen either yet. Will have to test if I get the chance. Maybe in the other mall.

Caught myself talking to nobody again tonight. 

Can’t stay here anymore, provisions are out. Ate my last a few hours ago, numb pain in the stomach. The shakes and headaches are unbearable, I can’t feel myself thinking anymore. Can’t sleep anymore. I dig my hands into the walls but the walls give way. It’s the parasites, weakening the place, growing when I’m not looking, faster every day. Tomorrow morning I leave.

Leaving shortly. Can hardly find motivation to get up anymore, but I do anyway. There should be another place not far away, up the road a little. The other mall. Maybe I’ll find any hope there, because as of right now, I have none. Mirrors, or elevators. Eyes peeled.

I would pray to god, any god, but I know they wouldn’t hear me. I’m too far down for them to even notice. Maybe this is what I deserve.

***

Riley didn’t realize he had fallen asleep–and in his gas mask, no less–until he awoke to the sound of the clock shattering on the floor. The vines had knocked it from the wall and nearly onto his head, which he had to check for glass shards. The light above flickered with an intensity it had not had last he checked, a strobing yellow effect which made his movements run at half speed, the tendrils of root choking the cables which held the light to the ceiling, sounds of electricity sputtering out of the tearing and partially exposed wiring. The room seemed in a greater state of decay than before, even though it was only eight hours since Riley last remembered checking his watch. Cracks in the floor had grown into fissures, with the fissures that were there already having become even larger, overflowing with moss and containing more small plants than Riley recalled. Some had even begun to sprout up from in between the spaces in the makeshift bed. It was like nature was trying to cover up any memory of Vinge–and Riley. Outside of the room fared no better; the ground was almost entirely green, with the few spots of white to be seen smothered beneath the brush. Fog had begun to spill in through the cracked or shattered window panes, blown by air which was cold and biting and had not previously been present inside of the building, violently shaking the many bushes or small trees that had grown in through the windows. Fearful of the roof coming down on him, Riley got out as fast as he could.

It was no colder nor any less windy when Riley stepped over the bushes through the shattered frame of the door than when he had been inside. The sun above did little to raise the temperature, serving only as a way for Riley to see where he was going, courtesy of the few columns of light that broke through the dense vapor outside, particles of water hanging in the air sending the beams cascading into Riley’s eyes as he wiped some condensation from the cover of the notebook he held. The place written about in Vinge’s ramblings matched up with Riley's own memories as well as descriptions in one of the notebooks of a second, smaller mall down the road from the large one, with drawings of the inside showing a nearly identical style of build, though toned down considerably more than the pristine gleam of the main one. Riley could only imagine what it looked like on this side.

Signs passed Riley by, only slightly more legible than they had been during the night hours, and the facades of buildings in much the same state of disrepair as the convenience store made themselves visible for a short while in Riley’s sightline before slinking back into the endless abyss of fog on all sides of him. The mist ran in streaks of red, yellow, and green as he passed beneath unseen stoplights, painting his vision with colors, causing a glare that made him remember he still had his gas mask on and pull it from his head. The road could hardly be identified as its namesake, looking more like a path in the forest than any paved street. A few resilient trees hung over the jade-tinted trail and blew in the winds, which still raged on with the same intensity as the day prior. Several times, Riley stumbled–sometimes falling–his foot stuck in any number of roots or vines that criss-crossed nearly the entire forgotten pathway, or within the large potholes which had been eaten away at by the very lichen which replaced it until Riley jammed his boot into them on accident, no matter how careful he was. He wanted to go check in some of the other buildings he saw on the way, his morbid curiosity getting the better of his judgment as if he had forgotten where he was, seeking out grocery store off the beaten path, through grass and asphalt and between dismantled buildings–following his map to navigate the foggy wasteland like it would lead him to treasure–only to discover that the roof of the grocery store had collapsed in on itself, unable to support the vines on what used to be the roof, nor the branches which had fallen off neighboring trees and made their new home lodged within the increasingly structurally unsound concrete on top of the former building. Glimpses through rubble and vine showed him what little there was left of the inside: a black vignette, light hitting a few industrial-sized freezers or caved-in shelves, but that was all there was that couldn’t be lumped in with the amalgam of decay, all melding together into one big lump of products. 

Riley sat for a moment in the plain that was once the parking lot, a field of grass and clovers and moss stretching as far as his eyes would let him see, in order to drink some of the water he had scrounged from the convenience store. The wind was better down there, but blew blades of green into his face and occasionally small shards of glass or pieces of the crumbled building, leaving spots on his face wet with trickles of blood that ran with the flow of the gusts. He barely noticed them anyways; the constant breeze had made his skin raw, with most feeling in his face having been stripped away. It was an effort for Riley to move his jaw enough to drink, for his skin felt stretched to its breaking over his bones, his muscles weak from constant shivering. Riley took one last look at the store before getting up and going back. He could have sworn the way back was the same he had taken, according to the map at least, but everything around him seemed to have shifted slightly. The gutted remains of the buildings looked displaced, their waste off from where they were just minutes before. Riley hoped this was just the wind's work, or his mind’s. He trudged on. Glass from the shattered obelisks of a half-intact structure shined light back into Riley’s eyes from somewhere unknown. The street became nearly unwalkable without Riley twisting his ankle every second, the road alternating between spots of overhanging trees and open air while the road became even more decayed accordingly. Riley could hardly tell where the man-made path stopped and the nature-made one began, and he could not even see an outline of where the sidewalk that had been on the other side existed where he was now, as was the case for many other things written of in the notebook. Buildings listed were either absent, or more commonly reduced to shattered remains, partially enveloped in fog or entirely taken over by nature, constricted within layers of vines which ran up and down every spire of concrete that it could, destroying any evidence that man had ever been in this place, or that there had ever been anything but nature. Signs lay powered off or flickering in the distant fog, perhaps connected to some building, perhaps not. Riley came across what he thought was a small mound in the middle of the road, but found it instead to be the plastic casing of a once illuminated marquee for an auto repair shop, half smothered under a blanket of moss and smeared with dirt. He stepped over it and trudged on. 

The stretching, semi-intact walls hatched with long tendrils of unfettered vine remained a constant for a long time as Riley walked deeper into the fog, never seeing the end in either direction, only the point where the brick-plant amalgamation tapered off into the thick mist. Every time he thought that it could not go on much further, more of the wall spat out from the far reaches of his view, sometimes split by a tree seeking shelter inside of it, or having already grown up and out from the interior, with only the arms and leaves of it visible where Riley’s eyes strained to see. Eventually, after a lifetime of walking, he found one building with an opening large enough for him to cut through. The place had all but toppled over onto the road, its remains spilling halfway across, the wind having long since weathered away any rough edges from the bricks and carried whatever small shards or rubble that was small enough–and not pinned beneath mountains of other, larger pieces, or buried under plantlife–off down the endless road. The map showed a parking lot on the other side, one which connected with the entrance to the mall written about in Vinge’s notebook, so Riley stepped through one of the many fissures, hoping what walls were still standing–albeit slanted–would not collapse as well and crush him. A counter sat inside, half ripped off of its foundation with domes of glass shattered beneath mounds of brick from the caved-in walls, which similarly crushed the ferns, blades of dying grass, and the remains of what used to be bushes underneath the heavy weight of the collapse. The ever-present vines still made themselves a home, wrapping around anything they could; Riley figured they were the only reason some of the walls hadn’t fallen yet. The door to the place had long since been ripped from its hinges, sitting on top of a pile of bricks with nature halfway along with its reclamation of it. Outside the endless strip of shops continued on in the direction he had been walking on the other side of it, and laid out in front of him was the parking lot, nearly identical as all the others. To his right, a building’s facade made a barely perceivable outline from within the fog, though his map told him he would need to pass it to get where he needed to go. 

The sun floated as a blurry yellow ball somewhere above Riley, its rays showing as spotlights across the road, when he finally caught a glimpse of the entrance to the mall. Massive window frames with glass existing in fragments along the edges sat above two sets of motion-activated doors in much the same state, a litany of shining shards scattered across the vestibule of the place which Riley stepped carefully through. He entered into the cavernous indoor plaza, which shone with a flickering, inconsistent brightness courtesy of the dying lights above and the smothering of most of the reflective surfaces in the building, all to the soundtrack of faint muzak playing from speakers above. Intricately patterned tile flooring had been done over with a coat of dirt and fauna, ferns growing from every perceivable corner of the semi-octagonal chamber and waist-high trees sprouting up from within the rotting furniture that sat dormant in the shop that took up all of the first floor. Bits of stuffing from the products on display had yellowed and remained decaying on the floor for what had to have been an extremely long time, and the leather or cloth coverings of the couches looked as though they had melted into the ground. Escalators whirred along, the gears within squeaking with an almost subconscious sound, and many had been built up above Riley, giving the impression that they were somehow lighter than air, connected to the floating islands on the second and third floors. A few even seemed to sway a little bit. Hanging vines covered most of what used to be just drywall or concrete, snaking up the sides of the escalators and all around a crumbling elevator shaft directly in the middle, made of half-intact glass. Riley’s heart skipped a beat when he saw that the elevator itself was still in its shaft, stuck in stasis at the very top floor. Vinge’s notebooks came back to him. He understood them now 

Riley stalked forward and pressed the down arrow repeatedly, to no avail–the elevator would not budge. He checked again, and the lift looked to be blocked by a growth of vines that had attached to the bottom of the elevator, breaking in from all sides at the top. He made his way up the escalator, which gave a little as he stepped up it, causing him to lose his balance and split the knee of his pants open on the serrated edge of the stair and a few stray shards of glass. A numb, wet pain on his leg began to radiate from the impact point. Picking himself up, he limped over to one of the escalators on this floor, noticing but not fully feeling the blood that stained the outside of his pants as he started his way up the black stairs. This one gave even more, requiring Riley to catch himself on the moving railing on the side, as the sound of creaking metal rippled through the building. He did not have to wait for the further sounds of tile hitting the bottom floor to sprint up the escalator. The bottom began to dip just after he made it to the landing, looking back to see vines snapping one by one, crumbling tile flooring and dull aluminum crashing down hard onto the second floor before rolling out onto the first, sending steps spraying out from the bottom of the now broken stairway and making impressions in the tile and plantlife below. An open dropoff replaced the escalator that now laid two floors down, tiles barely clinging to the jagged edge of the landing. More fell every second that Riley sat there, so he scrambled up and went as fast as he could to the elevator in the middle of the landing, surrounded on all sides by bushes and ferns and moss, as well as once potted plants that had broken free of their confines to join the rest of their kin. Riley tried the buttons, but neither worked, leading him to pry the doors open with his bare hands, ripping off a few of his fingernails in the many attempts before the successful one. They slid open after a great amount of effort, and Riley rushed inside to find the only button to be an arrow pointing upwards. The elevator hummed to life when Riley pressed it, and began its ascent. 

Through the roof of the building the elevator floated, black on all sides before coming out clear in the misty abyss. The all-glass sides and floor and ceiling gave Riley a view of the empty space surrounding the wasteland he had just walked through, as he quickly lost sight of the lights, the buildings, and lastly the mall from which he had risen, all of it disappearing beneath him, engulfed by an encompassing fog with no beginning or end. Floating with the only reference point being the sun–which the mist still obscured even so high up–he couldn’t tell if he was even moving anymore, or if he had stopped. The celestial body shifted from above to the side and below the horizon to be replaced by the moon, then again and again until Riley lost count of the days. He did not eat or sleep, he just sat, ripping glass shards from his leg and bleeding onto the floor from wounds that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to stop, all while staring out over the vast sea of emptiness he was floating through. He just hoped Vinge would be on the other end of the elevator ride. 

***

Unsure of date, have forgotten to write. Salvation at last. I have walked far and long, and now I believe I have reached my reward. I can finally rest.

***

Blackened blood covered the otherwise pristine glass flooring of the elevator. Riley didn’t know if he was alive or dead until his body began to lift itself up, the dried pool beneath his unfeeling legs breaking off, leaving his impression in what remained below. His head felt fuzzy as he nearly fainted upon rising, catching himself on the shining metal guardrails that reflected bright sunshine back into his retinas. Riley rubbed his crusted eyes and through the polished glass saw that he was on a dirt road stretching far off into the horizon, with fields of crops grown nearly to his head lining the path on either side. A baking sun beat down from a cloudless sky on all that laid beneath it, undeterred by the mist that had blocked its path where Riley had just been or its position in the sky indicating that the air should have begun to cool down by then, heating the inside of the glass elevator to an unbearable temperature. Sweat poured from every orifice on his body. Riley tore off his heavy jacket and shoved it in his bag, limping over to the half-open doorway–its path clogged with dirt–squeezing his backpack and himself through with hardly any room to spare, ripping the scabs from Riley’s legs. He sat, still questioning why he should not just let himself bleed out, and bandaged his legs using the gauze in his bag while looking before him. Anything in the distance was blurred from the heat rising off the ground, with the crops–wheat, from Riley’s best guess–that ran up and down his surroundings tapering off into a hazy wobble the further he looked in either direction, and the fact that the road noticeably inclined did not make it any easier to see. The elevator behind him was sticking out of the ground, stuck a decent bit into the dirt road like it had crash landed, with mud on its top and streaked down the sides. Riley didn’t remember ending up here during his ascent–he didn’t even remember falling asleep. He stood again, still having to catch himself and burning his hands on the hot glass walls of the elevator, he looked to his side, spotting what looked like a rooftop over the sea of wheat, which seemed to be somewhat nearby. Riley, through memory just as hazy as his vision, remembered Vinge writing something about a house, so he began cutting through the field, keeping sight on the housetop. The plants provided a little shade from the unbearable sun, though only stretched to Riley’s eyes when he stood up straight, so he crouched low to stay out of the heat as much as he could. In his vision, even as he walked further in the direction of the house, it never deviated in its distance from him, always staying just out of reach and ever-obscured by the sheet of crops in Riley’s view. For hours he felt like he was walking on a treadmill, passing the same plant every interminably long second, before finally he saw an opening in the plants–only to end up on the path again, the rooftop still in the distance, the elevator still there. Riley tried again to no avail, and then again and again, until he finally gave up. Once more he sat, wishing he had made the decision to bleed out and roast to death inside the elevator, drinking and eating until he was unexpectedly bludgeoned to sleep by exhaustion, spilling the rest of his water in his stupor. A lingering memory from a dream saw Riley watching himself walk down the path that lay before him, disappearing off in a mess of haze beyond the hill.

Covered in sweat and his own blood, he sat in his filth, staring once more at the road. There was no wind in the air, no trees and thereby no birdsong, nothing to tell Riley that there was life anywhere except the spot he occupied. Nothing except Riley’s breath broke the suffocating silence in the area, until the sound of shifting cloth added to it as he finally stood, his footsteps on the foam-like soil adding to the growing cacophony of noises, the only ones Riley could perceive. Zippers clinked against his backpack, provisions rustling from within, as he climbed the short hill to wherever it led. Atop the crest he saw a valley, his eyes following the gradual yet constantly descending slope that inflected at some point, growing once more to a mound in the far reaches of Riley’s vision, a long, stretching distance in its totality. The crops followed the hillside, giving a perpetually masked view of the house in the distance, never changing its location but always out of reach. Down and up again, he found himself overlooking another thin parabola of dirt, and directly at its center lay the elevator, still partially obscured within its muddy rut. Riley couldn’t shake the feeling that it was lower than it had been previously. A cursory look behind him only made the situation more confusing, for the elevator still existed where he had started from. Another trip over the hill ahead yielded the same results, a nearly identical empty valley whose topmost point revealed an elevator, slipping slowly into the depths of the dirt half a foot at a time, like a stop-motion film running at one frame every hour. The elevator sank until the top was just barely visible through a layer of dirt, a snapped cable laying stagnant on the dusty ground and covered in grime, before the next cycle passed and left no trace of anything being there except undisturbed soil. From the apex of the hill, Riley could no longer see anything around him aside from the crops, the road, and the house off in the distance to his left. He could feel the skin on his neck and arms cooking with each second he stood outside, branding him with the sun’s image. Riley checked his watch, hoping for night to fall soon, to see the digital display reading midnight. 

Another cycle came and went, as the wheatfields let up suddenly and completely. At the end of the road sat a run-down shack of a farmhouse, with the entire facade leaning to one side and its wood having darkened and begun to rot from visible decades of weathering. Bricks that were missing from the slanted chimney had fallen in a pile on the side of the house, and all the windows in the house looked as though they were in the slow process of being crushed, each one splintering into a cobweb of cracks. A tree that Riley had no recollection of seeing over the hilltop loomed over the entire yard of dying, overgrown grass, its branches reaching far to the other end of the house. Although the tree was completely barren–aside from a tire swing which hung in stasis–each arm was so unrestrained in their growth that they cast most of the area in a shadow; a welcome change from the excruciating heat of the beating sun he endured on the path over. The path–as Riley would find when he looked behind him–that had completely disappeared, replaced by a thick wall of wheat. No trace of the road he traveled on could be seen, either; when he tried to look over the tall stalks, he only saw an infinite sea of their brothers on a completely flat plain. 

Moving closer to the house, Riley found himself tripping on what he thought were rocks, but turned out to be stray junk covered by brush: rusted toys, wagons, a shattered computer, baseball bats, rotting clothes, and mounds of discarded plastic were among the litany of trash that scattered the lawn. The front porch of the building wrapped around half of the outside, covered by a mostly caved-in roof, and had many missing or rotting floorboards which Riley tried to make steps around, only to fall through one anyways, scraping open the wounds on his legs yet again on the splintered wood. Scrambling his way out of the fissure, he saw that the front door was slightly ajar, with the frame of it warped in a way that didn’t seem like a natural decay but a forced entry. Riley wished he had something to protect himself as he slowly pushed the door open, calling Vinge’s name and startling himself, remembering that he had not even opened his mouth to speak in days. A pungent odor filled his nostrils and landed in his open mouth and on his tongue, suffocating him with a stench which smelled like the rotting carcass of an animal, one that had been left to fester in the sun on the side of the road. He turned around, gagging as if to vomit, before heaving the door as closed as it could be and frantically pulling on his gas mask. He sat with his back to the wall of the house, debating on whether or not he should even enter, wondering what in the hell could have made that smell. It had to have been something dead, there was no doubt in Riley’s mind; he just hoped it wasn’t Vinge. Gathering himself, Riley entered once more, still calling out. The interior was normal, no sign of whatever was the source of the smell; a small living room with a couch at its center, tilted in the back due to a missing leg. A tube TV sat on an old sewing table nearby, off to the side of a fireplace–though bricks from the collapsing chimney had filled the kindling area and spilled out into the room, along with some sort of wooden railing that lay in snapped pieces. Sunlight shone through a sliding glass door on the other side of the porch, as well as the few windows whose shadows cast on the floor had been broken in accordance with the shapes of the shattered glass. Across the room was a kitchen, though the only things in there were saucepans hanging on hooks above the sink, all of which were either covered in dark mold or had fungi growing inside of them. The cabinets were empty, as was the cupboard, and dust coated nearly every object in each room. Dirt and a few plants broke in through damaged floorboards and grew up walls alongside puddles of what Riley hoped were just water grew bigger each second, added to by drips from the floor above. A few droplets landed on his shirt, leaving stains in a dark color. Riley quickly left that room, again calling Vinge’s name and climbing the exceedingly narrow staircase on the wall near the kitchen’s exit, the way up plastered with frames devoid of photos. Upstairs was an entirely open room, save for two doors behind Riley–a master bedroom with a balcony overlooking the first floor, its banister missing in several places, and an octagonal window above a decomposing mattress on the floor, which gave a panorama of the front lawn. The carpeted floor was smothered in dust, with grime flying up every time Riley took a step, covering a camera near the bed so well, he nearly tripped on it. He picked the camera up–finding it to have its film still inside–and stuffed it in his bag, knowing that Vinge had to be there. Moving to the doors at the top of the stairs, he pulled the handle to find a tiny closet, with a gun cabinet that never seemed to have been locked and boxes of buckshot stacked on the inside, though only one had been opened–missing a singular shell. Three of the four spots on the back wall’s gun rack within were filled. 

Riley hesitated as he moved on to the next door, trying to shut out thoughts that were all but confirmed by now, his hand hovering above the knob.

He pulled it open and found Vinge. 

***

How quickly I find that my salvation was a sick lie. I have given up. My final day will be one of regret.

I should never have looked at my double. I should have known better. Now they are out there. Living as us. They have become us. I cannot find my way back now. I’m sorry. For days and days, I walked. For years, it seems. It doesn’t matter anymore. I have lost. I yearn for an exit, but now I must make my own. I cannot take the starving feeling in my stomach any longer. Hunger pains my every second, my thirst insatiable. It is a struggle to pull the barrel to my mouth. If any poor soul has the misfortune of finding this, don’t try to escape. Please. It isn’t worth the effort. For your sake, follow my lead. 

Maria, I love you. Maybe I’ll meet you in another world–a better one. I just wish I could have said a goodbye worth leaving on. 

***

Within the bathroom, Vinge had sunken to become one with the floor, decomposing into a puddle of viscous fluids, a nearly unrecognizable shape sitting next to a splattered shotgun. A single piece of paper doused in dried blood stuck to the sink basin, a ripped notebook page covered in the last messages of the dead man whose final days were wrought with starvation and suffocating loneliness. Much of it made no sense, or was obscured by the man’s own blood, but Riley could tell by the way it was written the emotion Vinge was conveying: hopelessness. Riley didn’t stay in there much longer than he needed to–certainly longer than he wanted to–stopping only to grab the cigarettes from his backpack and leave them on Vinge’s body; maybe he could use them, wherever he was now. All the shock left his body as Riley as soon as he left, sliding down against the bedroom wall, shivering, unable to get up. He had known what was waiting for him and still couldn’t handle it; he couldn’t get the images out of his head. Riley couldn’t compose himself. Nothing he tried stopped his incessant shaking, his slight cries breaking into full sobs upon fully realizing that the only reason he had to keep going was gone, spread across the wall and floor of a bathroom in a never-ending hellscape, and had been like that for long enough that his body had begun to decompose; food for the plants that would take over this house in the unending march of time. In the tangle of wood and vine which the house would inevitably become, Vinge would be forgotten–and likely, Riley would too, if he heeded Vinge’s advice. The dead man’s gun seemed evermore alluring the longer his mind forced replays of the scene in his head; his only salvation. A few times he even held the handle of the door, trying to think of reasons not to give in. He knew he had enough food and water to last him at least a little while, but he figured he’d just be delaying the inevitable. The provisions could allow him to look for an exit longer than Vinge was able to, but even if he did search for a way out, he figured if Vinge hadn’t found one, he most certainly couldn’t. He doubted there even was an exit.

He had his mind made up, about to join Vinge, until Riley remembered his double. His double had found a way out. 

He pulled his hand from the doorknob. 

Riley lifted himself and took off his gas mask, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. He gagged again, but was beyond the point of caring anymore. He looked away from the door as he went down the stairs, starting his escape search with rooms he hadn’t noticed on his way up. A cursory glance in one showed it to be a laundry room with nothing out of the ordinary, even upon moving the washer and dryer to check for any sort of exit. The room was cramped and visibly tilting to one side, with the cracks in the walls showing sunlight through them, and was all painted in a sickening off-white color. Next door was a bedroom, though it was more like an extra storage area colored in the same way as the laundry room, just with a bunk-bed thrown haphazardly into the center of the room, which had collapsed in on itself, being taken by the few plants which emerged from beneath the gray floor. In the corner, however, was a large antique cabinet, covered with an ornate pattern of flowers and with a bedsheet tied around one of its handles. Inside he found what seemed to be a makeshift darkroom, with a baking sheet set up next to an undeveloped roll of film, though it seemed Vinge had given up part of the way through, as the baking sheet was devoid of any liquid. Riley took the roll and went out into the living room. He turned over every single thing in the place: every lamp, every cabinet, the entire couch, but found nothing. Even when ripping up loose floorboards and looking beneath the house, all he saw within the void were an array of plantlife. He tried to turn on the TV to no avail before smashing it on the ground, going instead to check the collapsed chimney and removing brick after brick until giving up when he understood the task was futile, and one brick would always replace another no matter how quickly he dug them out. Outside he fared no better, the sun making it impossible to do anything without Riley first having to wipe sweat from his palms and eyes, setting fire to his already burnt skin. He ripped toys out from beneath their cell of vines on the lawn, wondering if they might be blocking some hole or ladder or some way to escape, but none did. Riley’s mind remembered in that moment that he truly didn’t know what he was looking for, but the frantic nature of the search provided him enough distraction to let doubt seep into his mind. 

He tore up all the vines or thin roots he could from the yard, throwing them behind him until he could make his arms pull no more, looking up to see he had made it around to the back of the house. An entirely rusted playset sat shaded under the looming branches of the great tree. A forgotten swing had snapped from its rope and been left to rot, the set’s metal poles sagging inwards, ready to fall at any moment. Behind the house itself was a dilapidated shed, slanted in much the same way; a windowless mass of black and gray that was split in a jagged line up the side of the wall. The landscape around it was similar to the front, with mounds of forgotten goods choked beneath latticed piles of vines, with the same decaying brown grass carpeting whatever wasn’t taken up already. Riley moved closer to the building, leaning on the wall to catch his breath, only for his hand to snap right through the wood and send him headlong into the shed, his ribs crashing onto broken wood. He scrambled up, pulling out the splinters that had found their way into his side. The room was much the same color as the outside–and tiny, barely big enough for him to stand up straight in, with nothing inside but an object obscured by a yellowing sheet. When removed, the sheet revealed the reflective silver surface of a mirror, with a golden trim around its edges.

Riley hardly recognized the person beyond the threshold of the mirror, with his unkempt hair glistening with grease from days of not washing it; his t-shirt, stained by his own blood and sweat in nearly every place, seemingly breaking apart at its seams; his jeans which had turned red from reopened wounds, bits of glass he missed glistening in the light of the sun which entered in through the shed’s fissure; his posture telling the weariness he felt; his eyes shot and wild; his creased face displaying all he had been through; and collectively, all of this painting a picture on the silver: a portrait of a person with a frantic desire to escape, trying to cling to far fetched hope after far fetched hope. He lost sight of himself, eyes losing focus on the sorry character sitting beyond the barrier–as if even he couldn’t look at himself anymore–and instead staring into the shining metal of double doors that had appeared behind him. Riley turned to look in his own shed, seeing nothing but the blackened, rotting wood of the shed’s exit. Yet it still existed beyond the polished silver when he checked back again. Riley looked at Riley, eyes staring until understanding crossed both the faces at once, as Riley put his hand to the surface which rippled like water at his touch. Pushing further into the cool metal, the mirror wrapped itself around him–first his wrist, then elbow, then shoulder, until he found himself sharing a room with the battered doors of the elevator. He pressed the only button, a down arrow which flickered to life for a second before dying off again, the lift sliding open to reveal that it was the one he had taken all those days ago. Yet, as he stepped beyond the boundary of the shed and entered the elevator, he realized something was off about it. This one had mold and moss growing up the sides of the walls, filling one corner entirely. The faux-wood wallpaper had peeled off of a few of the wall panels, and much of the tile had eroded or cracked away, leaving the floor uneven, shaking as the lift sprung to life, descending by some means unknown to Riley. A dull hum of unseen machinery sounded above Riley’s head as he sat on the ground, still half wondering if he should have gone with Vinge. He wished he knew if he was out of whatever this place was, or if he was just going deeper into its madness. 

Somewhere along the journey, Riley had fallen asleep, awoken finally by the feral screeches of rusted metal which hadn’t bothered him until that point. He had pulled his coat on, an action he hardly remembered doing, and his legs were aching for some sort of movement. As he stood and stretched–the sound of his bones popping drowning out the barely audible muzak for a moment–he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Or at least, he thought he did. The person he saw had an anxiously excited look on his face, and eyes that lacked the deep bags of his own. Their coat was a garish bright green and completely torn to shreds on the back, much in the same state as their hands, which were turning black from their cut-up knuckles. 

He stared for a while at the blood on their hands and it finally clicked. Riley knew what he had to do.

***