(no subject)

[seymoure]

Chapter 12
“The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of”

     TD wondered where all these monsters were coming from, and what might be shaping them.
     They all seemed to be from our childhood nightmares.
     He had to stop and smack Mr. Toad and a Weasel from “Wind in the Willows.’ They returned as Speedy Alka-seltzer and Tony the Tiger. He dispatched them likewise and they didn’t return right away.
     After a few moments. He came upon the body of Topzepopoulous.
     Now he was going to cry. And now he was going to get mad.
     That old man had never hurt anyone.
     He didn’t deserve to die like that, with horror on his face and neck broken.
     The thought leapt into his mind that he wondered what he had done with that red licorice?
     Then a roar came from behind him.
“Put ‘em up! Put ‘em up!”
     He turned in time to shoot the cowardly lion full in the face. The large creature fell to the ground without a sound. Then the body broke into a thousand wiggly worms and slimed away.
     “Hadn’t seen that before,” he thought.
     Maybe the worms were the new form?
     He saw the exit doors by the Popcorn Shoppe.
     With a moment of genuine creativity he reached past the body of his Greek friend and retrieved a bag of un-popped popcorn.
     Taking a handful, he tossed it at the doors.
     With a spark there was a flash and popped kernels of popcorn flew back from the doorway.
     Without a thought he murmured, “Cool.”
     He put a handful of un-popped in his right front pocket for further use testing exits. He then reached over and took some licorice ropes to chew on.
     “Good stuff, Mick,” He told his dead pal, “Always the best.”
     He walked on, and resumed his thought process.
     It was like these things were actually brought up out of our dreams. They couldn’t just be happening.
     He then remembered.
     All the other things he had seen fell into that same category. The demonic toys, evil clowns, invisible voices, black cats and rats, it was all things that had been in nightmares.
     He wondered what kids feared Pink Flamingoes?      Maybe just those that had seen the John Waters film.
     Even the naked children/small people were right! They looked like UFO aliens! How many people had bad dreams about them?
     Okay.
     Now all this was starting to make sense.
     The pattern was making sense, but not sense that touched the real world at any time.
     Why were nightmares coming to life in this Mall?
     Maybe the Mall builders had signed a pact with some evil entity that…hated Tony the Tiger?
     He took another bite of rope and turned to the sound of the oncoming growl.
     He let a shot go and dispatched the little red monster from Sesame Street. He couldn’t remember its name.
     He put the last shell in the shotgun. He was going to have to use it sparingly. There were no more, and there were no gun stores in the mall. Tuppences had had some sporting goods, but they were gone. And since they were here, no other sporting goods stores had sought them out.
     Only shoe stores.
     Maybe he could throw some Nikes at Godzilla when he came around the corner.
     A second later he cursed himself for his own stupidity.
     A familiar roar came from the Food Court.
     “Where’s King Kong when I need him?”
     The giant green lizard turned the corner and stomped towards TD.
     The thing’s tiny arms flailed, and Jackson recognized the movement. He was about to breath atomic flames.
     He leveled the shotgun and took a shot.
     What did he have to lose?
     Turns out, what someone was afraid of wasn’t the monster from the movies, but the balloon outside of a car lot.
     A helium filled balloon.
     The explosion was massive.
     TD Jackson flew across the mall.
     His fall was broken by displays in the Linen store.
     But, then, this is where you came in.

Chapter 13
“Been There, Done That!”

     His cell phone rang again.
     “Honey?” came the voice on the line.
     “Molly?” he responded.
     “We’re safe in the vault. But it took a while to get a cell phone that would work from in here.” She told him.
     “I thought Barry said there was an emergency land line in there.”
     “It’s not working, for some reason,” she told him, with concern edging into her voice, “None of the land lines were working once this stuff started.”
     “I’m sure it’s involved with whatever kind of electrical charge is making the doors impassable. Did anyone call the police?”
     “The cells only work now and then in here, and nothing outside of the mall seems able to pick us up. We’re alone in this.”
     “Damn,” he thought.
     “We’ll be okay. I’ll figure out what is causing this and then I’ll come and get you out.”
     “Be careful,” she begged.
     “Don’t worry,” he reassured, “I don’t plan to do anything heroic, just survive and figure this out.”
     She started to say something, but he stopped her.
     “Honey, I got to go.”
     He tossed the phone down and answered the attack of the large purple dinosaur that jumped at him.
     With undue vigor he bashed the thing to death.
     It became a copy of some member of a boy band (he recognized the type if not the actual person) and he smacked it down again.
     This time it wafted out of view.
     “Aw, just when I was enjoying it,” he muttered.
     At that moment a throbbing in his side took the humor out of him.
     The pain reminded his body of all the other pain.
     He didn’t have time to think about that as the Frankenstein Monster, Dracula and the Wolf man lurched out of the video store at him.
     Before he could move Janey Milgrain brought a shovel down on Dracula’s head and the vampire faded away.
     “Janey?” he said as he was surprised that the 40 something shoe sales lady was here fighting monsters.
     “Shut up and kill these bastards!” She shouted.
     She took the Wolf man’s head off with one lopping movement of the shovel.
     At the same time TD put his iron bar right through the monster and it fell backwards through the plate glass window.
     As the pair of them panted in their victory, trying to get their breath back, a smile came over each of them. It was good to find someone else out here.
     “Have you found a way out yet,” He asked, and then realized what a dumb question that was, “Of course, that’s why your still here fighting monsters.”
     She was suddenly serious.
     “There is no ‘out.’”
     “Huh?” he asked, putting as much intellect into the ‘huh’ is as possible with such a word.
     She took his hand and led him to the nearest door.
     “Don’t touch it,” she waned, “Just look!”
     He thought about showing her the popcorn trick, and then he looked beyond the door.
     It took his breath away as well as any battle he had fought in the madness.
     About a hundred yards out into the parking lot, the parking lot just…ceased.
     Like it had been sliced out of some kind of Mall cake, the asphalt just ended.
     Beyond that he saw stars and a whole lot of black.
     He drew nearer the door, cautious not to touch, and scanned the sky.
     About where the moon should be in a night sky he saw something that shouldn’t be there.
     A blue-green ball with a moon at its right, was barely recognizable.
     “Holy shi…” He began.
     “Yes, that’s Earth.” Janey said, “And we’re farther away from it than we were when I first saw it, about an hour ago.”
     Every thing got deadly quiet for a moment.
     That was when he heard it.
     “Listen,” he told her.
     “What?” was her irritated reply.
     “Listen,” he said and put his ear near the crack between the doors.
     There was a definite hiss.
     “The air,” he whispered.
     “Hu-huh?’
     “It’s leaking out!”
     They were in outer space, moving away from home, and the air was leaking.
     The day just got worse.