Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
I try to forget about everything with a trip to the mall I’d frequent as a kid. I park my car in a lot with seven, maybe eight other cars, spread out by what seemed like miles between them. I walk through the quiet lot to the door. Through the door, I see the food court. The last of the food joints closed about a year ago. Most of the shit in this mall is closed. There’s a record store, a department store, a leggings store and a vape shop. I might be forgetting something. I like the record store. I also like taking the escalator to the second floor, or, rather, I like walking up the escalator that hasn’t run for a few months now. I like stepping off the top of the escalator and making my way to the middle of the mall, overlooking the spot that used to house a great toy store where I’d get action figures and other bullshit when I was too young to know what a tax return is. There used to be these annoying little toy piggies and doggies that would robotically skip around and make these bizarre noises outside the toy store. I loved those things. I can also see, right in front of where the toy store used to be, the mall’s big fountain, still here after all this time. It hasn’t run for a year or so now, but now, as I’m looking at it, I see water shoot out from the top, and then I see water shoot from more spickets circling the middle layer of it. It sprays so quickly and, before long, fills the entire fountain with water, clear as can be, and I dig in my pocket for a coin and flick it into the fountain. I turn away from the railing, walk to the wall, then turn around again, closing my eyes. I breathe in, then out, real slow, then I sprint forward. Once I approach the railing, I leap. I push off the railing with my right foot, and then I press my hands together and point them toward the ceiling. Soon, gravity bends my hands toward the fountain, and I dive toward it. I feel the cool water as my body plunges deep, deep, so deep I’m seven yards below the mall then eight then nine, and then I can hear those annoying little toy piggies and doggies, sounding just like they did before, those toys, their noises were probably supposed to sound like oinking and woofing, but as they bounced around on the floor, they always sounded like ruddah ruddah ruddah ruddah ruddah ruddah ruddah ruddah ruddah rudahh ruddah
Matt Petras is a writer and educator. His journalism has been published at The Daily Beast, Kotaku, PublicSource, The Mon Valley Independent and more. His fiction has been published in The Dillydoun Review and Drunk Monkeys, and he is working on his debut novel. He is an adjunct professor for Chatham University and tutors writing for Point Park University. He lives with his wife Libby, his dog Bentley and his cat Bob in the Pittsburgh area.
