I’ve never understood what made people say they were afraid of liminal spaces. The bare, empty spaces devoid of other people, away from nuance and judgment called out to me with open arms. Maybe that was why I liked Elm Lake Mall - the maze of barely-open stores, the vacant outdated children’s playgrounds, the vast and yet eerily silent food court - it spoke to me. It beckoned me into its silent depths, away from the chaos of reality.
I know it’s weird. I understand that. I know not everyone can appreciate unending emptiness the way I do. But wandering the mall, getting lost amongst long-forgotten relics of the early two thousands - it became a hobby. And each time I went back, I found something new. A store that sold something so niche I knew they’d never made a single sale. A full arcade, abandoned behind the frosted windows of an old storefront. A millionth goddamned Spirit Halloween. There was always something worth finding if you knew where to look.
When I went into Elm Lake mall today through the sprawling glass doors of a department store, I was shocked to see it was packed with life. There was a quiet hum in the air, not quite excitement but just the background noise of life happening around me. The noise that I’d come here to avoid. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt a shiver down my spine. Something about the whole store had an almost staged quality, like a movie set. Each person’s expressions were too pronounced, too scripted. The usually comforting fluorescents shone too brightly, like the lighting of a movie set. I rushed through the department store as quickly as I could, hoping that the crowd was due to a sale and wouldn’t have infiltrated the rest of the mall. As I left, I realized that not a single person had been walking in the store, simply standing in place. Another shiver ran down my spine.
No such luck, that the crowd would be limited to one store. All around me, the air was thick with the sound of feet against linoleum and heat from the countless bodies that filled the overwhelmingly large hall. I was used to feeling insignificant in the face of endless, boundless space. This was the exact opposite, I felt I was a speck amongst a sea of people. Too many to even focus on one. It would be another thing entirely if these strangers respected my space, or even if there was any way to get through the wall of people, but I felt claustrophobic in the unending crowd as I realized they now also surrounded the way in which I’d come.
I couldn’t move, forward or back. On all sides were unmoving people, unfazed by my distress. All I could do was stand and wait for a path to clear. As I did that, I noticed that the man in front of me seemed at first glance to be wearing a shirt from a retro video game I liked, but it wasn’t until I spoke aloud that I realized the logo was slightly off, and the title was entirely different.
“I like your shirt!” I remarked over the noise that surrounded us.
“Thanks, dude!” Said a voice, as the man in front of me seemed by all appearances to say something entirely different.
I can’t read lips, especially when I’m not expecting to. I almost considered continuing the conversation, just to see if I could make out what his lips seemed to be mouthing, but I decided against it. The sensation was odd, but not altogether alarming. Maybe the words just sat in his mouth oddly, I know I heard them coming from somewhere. I gave it up, in favor of trying with all my might to make my way forward. It was odd, for all the lack of need for personal space when approaching me, people all but dove out of the way as I approached, clearing a neat path for me. It was then that I came upon another problem.
While people certainly moved out of the way, that didn’t mean that they didn’t still consume every square inch of space in the large open room. Even when I tried to go into stores, I was met with wave after wave of people, too many to even notice any distinguishing features. After seeing too many faces, they all seemed to run together. I told myself this as I seemed to recognize the same faces multiple times, in an almost ominous line of the same people walking towards me over and over. I wanted at this point to simply leave, but the space where I had walked before closed back behind me with bodies, ones that did not move. Besides, I didn’t want to walk back through the oddly stilted department store, to see what felt like a play just for my benefit, I had thought in an effort to convince myself that the choice was my own.
After a while of wandering, I realized that not only was the back wall of people behind me immovable, but now the sides were too. I almost thought about shoving someone, but it seemed an over-the-top reaction to say the least. I simply moved forward, as the crowd seemed to will me to. There was no harm in it, as I was hoping to leave through anyways and this could make that simpler.
I don’t remember who first touched me. Was it an exact copy of the man with the retro shirt, or one of the many people I’d seen directly copied from earlier in the crowd? Either way, it sent a bolt of electricity down my spine as I realized just how wrong their body felt against mine as they pushed past. It was cold and had absolutely no give, as if the person had been a metal statue of a person, brought to life. I shuddered. As if now permitted to touch me, the space around me became smaller and smaller as people rushed past, bumping into me, or pressing nearly against me in an attempt to move me forwards. Each felt the same as the first person, distinctly inhuman. As the bubble of space I had became smaller and smaller, I began to scream amongst the crowd of people. If any among them heard it, they did not react.
That was when the people on every side of me began moving. I was ushered forward, deeper into the unfeeling and uncaring crowd of people. It felt like a miracle when I finally hit something that wasn’t a mimicry of flesh, when I finally hit a glass wall and was able to stabilize myself as my knees grew weak with fear. I grabbed at the slick glass, trying to take some hold, and came up short as my hands slid across its surface. I realized I was still screaming, unable to stop myself as each imitation of a person pressed me closer to the glass. I could feel their hot breath against the back of my neck, could feel the cold metal underneath their clothing. I realized that I was being crowded towards the glass as my body was pressed closer to it, though not fully against it. Not yet, anyways.
Rushing to take in my surroundings, behind the frosted glass I saw the abandoned arcade I’d discovered a few days prior. I slammed the whole weight of my body to the side, desperate to find the door. I knew it was my only chance at escaping the horrible mass of people. As if a spell had been broken, people moved out of my way. I fell to the floor, having been expecting to have to fight my way out. From my spot on the floor, I found myself in front of the door to the old arcade, as people filled the space I left and quickly overtook me again. I pulled against the handle, to no avail. The door was locked.
Having been locked out of my house once before and looking up how to pick a lock with Bobby pins, I now carried some with me at all times. I quickly pulled them from my pocket and began unfolding one. I put the other directly into the bottom of the lock, yanking left. I set to work and clicked the first pin into place. The crowd behind me was getting closer than before. Now where my body had been pressed against the glass, my head was beginning to be pressed into it. I somehow knew that they intended to crush me inside a sea of endless mechanical bodies. It strengthened my resolve and I continued pushing the pins into place. At last, with a satisfying “click” I was able to unlock the door.
I used the handle to pull myself up from my knees, sliding my skin against the glass where it was pressed. At this point, it felt like my head was being pressed hard into the door, almost as if someone had placed a hand on the back of my head. Maybe they did. It was hard to find a space on my body untouched, hard to remember a time when I had skin that was my own. I yanked the door handle and pulled with all my might against the bulk of the crowd leaning against the door. Clearly, they knew this to be an escape attempt, as they pushed back harder against the door, nearly shutting it closed on my arm. I allowed myself to be pushed more, nearly flattened in an attempt to get into the door I’d unlocked, and finally managed to do so.
The relief was immediate, and I fell to the floor sobbing, unable to hold myself together after the bizarre experience. I stayed there for some time, waiting. Listening to the gentle clinking of the glass as people’s inhumanly hard shoulders tapped it as they walked past. At some point, I had the thought to check my phone and realized that the mall should’ve been closed hours ago. The mob was still there, as vast and unending as before. Maybe even thicker with people in my absence. Luckily no one tried to come in, as I had no way of locking the door, but I’m sure if they had the arcade would be flooded.
Never have I felt such a deep appreciation for the smell of dust and mold. The arcade that had saved me lay blissfully vacant. The room around me was dark, but with glow-in-the-dark stars hand-painted all across the walls and ceiling. The machines were obviously vacant and turned off, but there was still comfort in having large objects around the room - cover to hide behind if the things came looking for me. There was no electricity, no music, not even the hum of an air conditioner. But it was safe from being crushed to death. I knew I couldn’t live out my days inside the arcade, but it felt almost like a personal checkpoint - safe from danger, between two battles - one of living, the other of getting out. Another liminal space, I realized with a start.
A few hours after I’d arrived, when I’d had time to settle down, I began to try and think of a way out. My phone had no signal, and the only exits were the glass double doors that led to the masses or a door labeled “staff only”. I knew I couldn’t make my way back through the crowd, and entered the staff door. It led to a hallway, bare but lit with a single hanging lightbulb, twisting and stretching in either direction. It was small enough that, had there been anyone with me, we would’ve had to walk single file. It also had the scent of dust in the air, but a different one too - one that smelled almost like the inside of a cave, of mildew and minerals.
I closed the door behind me and began walking to my right. After turning a corner and walking for a few minutes, I realized I hadn’t seen any doors connecting the hallway to the backs of any of the other stores. It was as if the hallway had been built just for the arcade, the one I realized that I’d never actually seen open in all my time wandering this mall. I’d only ever snuck glimpses behind the frosted glass and the sign in the window promising a new store soon.
As soon as I realized that it didn’t seem connected to other stores, I turned around. When I rounded the corner again, the door back into the arcade was gone. I don’t know why it surprised me, after all the horror I’d gone through, but it broke me. I had only turned one corner, I knew that I wasn’t lost. The door had simply vanished, cutting me off from any form of life. I stared at where I knew it had been for a long time, willing the door to suddenly appear. When that didn’t work, I walked deeper into the hallways, turning a different corner. It was the same setup - old-fashioned mustard-colored wallpaper, linoleum floors, a single lightbulb impossible to turn on or off, and a corner in the distance.
I have been wandering this labyrinth for hours, if not days. I have stopped checking the time, as all it did was make me long for a time when the numbers on the clock meant something. I am so tired, but I know that if I stop I will give up hope entirely and condemn myself to die inside the endless passages behind the mall. I have been writing down my experiences, for… I don’t even know, posterity? Maybe I’ll post it somewhere if I ever get phone signal, or if I ever leave the hallways that haunt my every waking moment. The walls that I know will haunt my nightmares.
I think the worst part is when the hallway leads somewhere closer to the mall. If I listen closely, I can hear the thrumming of people talking, can hear the clink of whatever chased me into here pressing against the walls. I’ve thought before to punch and kick the wall down in those moments, but even if I were successful I know I would yet again be crushed. For all my love of liminal spaces, I will surely die in this one.