THE MALL CHALLENGE

Being fifteen is stupid.

You do stupid things to impress people you don't even like.

My friends Ryan, Sam, and I decided to do the "Mall Challenge."

It’s simple. You find a hiding spot in the big department store before they close at 9 PM.

You wait until the staff leaves.

You spend the night eating snacks, trying on expensive clothes, and leave when they open at 8 AM.

We chose a massive store in the suburbs. Three floors.

We hid in the center of a circular rack of winter coats in the Men's section.

9:00 PM came.

9:30 PM. The lights dimmed to half-power.

10:00 PM. The cleaning crew finished and locked up.

We crawled out.

"We did it!" Ryan whispered, high-fiving Sam.

It was exhilarating. We had the whole place to ourselves.

We ran around silently in our socks, sliding on the polished floors. We ate chocolate from the checkout aisles.

Around 1:00 AM, we were on the second floor (Home Goods).

Sam stopped. "Shh."

"What?" I asked.

"I saw something move."

"Where?"

"By the mannequins. Over there."

He pointed to a display of living room furniture.

There were three mannequins sitting on a couch.

"You're seeing things," Ryan laughed. "It's just shadows."

We kept walking.

But I looked back.

There were only two mannequins on the couch.

I grabbed Ryan’s arm. "Ryan. Look."

He looked. "So? Two dummies."

"There were three," I whispered. "I swear."

"Dude, stop trying to scare us," he said.

But he looked nervous.

We decided to go down to the first floor. Closer to the exit.

We took the escalator (it was stopped).

Our footsteps echoed loudly.

When we got to the bottom, we heard it.

The PA system crackled.

It wasn't a pre-recorded message.

It was a voice. Breathing heavy.

Then, a whisper echoed through the entire store.

"I see you, little mice."

We froze.

"Is that security?" Sam squeaked.

"Security would just yell at us to get out," Ryan said. "They wouldn't whisper."

We ran. We sprinted toward the main entrance.

Glass doors. Locked. Metal shutters down.

We ran to the loading dock. Locked.

We were trapped.

And we weren't alone.

We hid behind the cosmetics counter.

Mirrors everywhere.

"Who is that?" I was crying now.

"It's a homeless guy, probably," Ryan said, trying to be brave. "He's probably scared of us."

Then we saw him in the reflection of a perfume display.

He wasn't a homeless guy.

He was wearing a store uniform.

But it was old. Ripped.

And he was holding a fire axe from the emergency wall case.

He was walking casually down the aisle, dragging the axe tip on the floor.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

"I know you're in Cosmetics," he sang out.

"I can smell the fear."

He stopped at the end of our aisle.

We held our breath.

He turned his back to us, looking toward the jewelry section.

"Run," Ryan mouthed.

"To the Manager's office. It locks."

On the count of three, we bolted.

We sprinted across the main aisle.

The man didn't chase us.

He just laughed. A deep, wet laugh.

We made it to the office. Ryan slammed the door. I threw the deadbolt.

Sam dragged a desk in front of it.

We were safe. Panting. Crying.

"We call the police," I said, pulling out my phone.

"No signal," Ryan said. "The walls are too thick."

"We just wait," Sam said. "We wait until 8 AM. He can't get in."

We sat in the dark for an hour.

We listened.

No scraping. No footsteps.

Maybe he gave up.

Then, I noticed something.

On the manager's desk.

There was a row of monitors. Security cameras.

One of them showed the hallway outside our door.

Empty.

Another showed the second floor.

Empty.

And then I looked at the monitor labeled "Manager's Office."

The room we were in.

It showed us, sitting on the floor huddled together.

But in the corner of the screen... behind the tall filing cabinet...

There was a shadow.

A shadow of a man standing very still.

He hadn't chased us.

Because he didn't need to.

We had run into his hiding spot.

I slowly looked up from the monitor to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room.

A hand, holding an axe, slowly curled around the edge.

He was already in the room.

I didn't scream. My throat had seized up, tight and dry like I’d swallowed sand.

Ryan was the closest to the filing cabinet. He turned his head, following my gaze.

He saw the hand. He saw the axe.

But his brain couldn't process the geography of the room fast enough.

"What ?" he started.

The man didn't step out like a movie villain. He didn't make a speech.

He just swung.

It was a short, brutal, horizontal arc.

The heavy metal head of the fire axe caught Ryan in the chest with a sound I will never forget a wet, dull thud, like hitting a side of beef with a baseball bat.

Ryan didn't fly across the room. He just crumpled. He dropped straight down, wheezing, pink froth instantly bubbling at his lips.

Sam screamed.

The man stepped out from behind the cabinet.

He was huge. Up close, the smell was overpowering a thick, sour reek of unwashed skin and stale rot. His uniform name tag hung by a single thread. It read: Dave - Maintenance.

He looked down at Ryan, who was pawing at the carpet, trying to inhale.

Then he looked at us.

He smiled. His teeth were brown.

"You blocked the door," he whispered. "Thank you."

He raised the axe again.

Adrenaline finally hit me. It wasn't bravery; it was pure animal panic.

"Move the desk!" I shrieked at Sam.

Sam was paralyzed, staring at Ryan.

I grabbed the nearest thing a heavy ceramic planter on the manager’s windowsill and hurled it.

It didn't hit the man. It smashed against the filing cabinet next to his head.

He flinched, just for a second.

"Sam! The desk!" I kicked Sam in the shin.

Sam snapped out of it. We both threw our shoulders against the heavy oak desk we had wedged against the door just minutes ago to protect us.

The irony was suffocating. We were clawing to remove our own shield.

The man laughed. He didn't rush. He stepped over Ryan’s twitching body.

He enjoyed the panic.

Scrape. Scrape. The axe dragged on the carpet.

I shoved the desk. It groaned and slid a few inches.

The man swung the axe down.

It buried itself into the wood of the desk, inches from Sam’s hand.

The wood splintered.

The weapon was stuck.

"Go! Go!" I screamed.

I yanked the deadbolt back.

We tumbled into the hallway, falling over each other, scrambling on hands and knees before sprinting.

"The exit!" Sam yelled, running toward the stairs.

"It's locked, you idiot!" I screamed back. "We need to hide!"

"I'm not hiding again!" Sam cried. He turned left, toward the loading docks.

I turned right, toward the Men's Clothing section.

We split up.

The worst mistake you can make.

I dove into the center of a circular rack of trench coats. The same kind of hiding spot we started the night in.

I pulled my knees to my chest, shaking so hard my teeth rattled.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

The store was silent again.

Then, the PA system clicked on.

He was back in the office. He was on the microphone.

"One little mouse in the dark," his voice crackled. "Two little mice in the dark."

I heard Ryan.

Over the PA system.

He was still alive in the office. I could hear him wheezing into the mic, a wet, gurgling sound.

Then a heavy crunch.

The wheezing stopped.

"One little mouse gone," the man whispered. "Where is the second?"

I bit my own arm to stop from sobbing.

I listened.

Footsteps. Heavy boots on the tile.

They were moving away from me. Toward the Loading Docks.

Toward Sam.

I wanted to run. I wanted to help. But I couldn't move. I was a coward.

Ten minutes passed.

Then, a sound from the far side of the store.

A loud, metallic clang. Like a shutter being hit.

Then Sam’s voice. Screaming. High and shrill.

"Open! Open, please!"

Silence.

Then, a sound that haunts me more than the screaming.

The sound of the price-check scanner.

BEEP.

Then the man’s voice, yelling from the darkness, joyful and sick.

"Price check on Aisle Four! Cleanup on Aisle Four!"

Then silence.

Long, heavy silence.

I stayed in those coats for six hours.

I urinated on myself. I didn't care.

I watched the sun slowly rise through the high skylights, turning the grey terror of the store into morning light.

At 7:45 AM, the morning stock crew unlocked the front gates.

I heard the chime of the door sensor.

I burst out of the clothing rack, screaming, running toward them.

A young girl stocking shelves dropped a box of shoes.

"Help me! He's in here! He killed them!"

The police arrived in minutes. SWAT cleared the building.

They found Ryan in the office.

They found Sam near the loading dock, stuffed behind a pallet of dog food.

But they didn't find him.

They checked the cameras.

The footage from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM had been deleted.

Manually wiped from the server in the manager's office.

But the detectives found something else.

They found a ladder in the back of the maintenance closet on the third floor.

It led up to a crawlspace above the drop ceiling.

It wasn't just a crawlspace.

It was a home.

There was a sleeping bag. A bucket. Food wrappers.

And a wall of monitors.

He had tapped into the store's security feed.

He had wired his own monitors up there.

The detective showed me a photo of the "nest."

On the wall, taped above the sleeping bag, was a calendar.

Certain dates were circled in red.

Yesterdays date was circled.

And written in the margin, in shaky handwriting:

Inventory Day.

They identified him eventually. David Krell.

He had been the head of security for the mall five years ago. Fired for "aggressive behavior."

He hadn't left.

He had just moved upstairs.

I tried to move on. I went to therapy. I graduated high school.

But I can't go into department stores anymore.

Because they never caught him.

And last week, I got a package in the mail.

No return address.

Inside was a small, plastic price tag.

The kind they shoot onto clothes with a plastic barb.

It was pinned to a piece of paper.

The price tag read: $0.00.

And the note said:

"Discount applied. See you at the next sale."

I checked the tracking number.

It was mailed from the distribution center of the grocery store where I just started my new job.

I have something to tell you, i wrote my first short story book.

It's name is "THE PLACE".

If you want to check it out *click on the title*.

Thanks for you support