Cold Glass
Cold Glass
The mall felt half-asleep, a vast, echoing chamber slowly shutting down for the night. Most stores were already down, their doors locked tight. The few remaining lights stretched across the polished tile in long, cold streaks like reflections on black ice.
Somewhere deeper in the corridor a cleaning machine hummed low and rhythmic, like machinery breathing underwater.
Gigi and Kris walked side by side toward the pharmacy. Gigi clutched Michael’s prescription paperwork so tightly the edges bit into her palm. Her purse strap kept sliding off her shoulder no matter how many times she hiked it back up. Every step felt heavier than the last.
Kris glanced toward the second level. “Sometimes they have to mix the medication. It might be a few minutes.”
Gigi sighed, the sound thin and worn. “Probably.”
“The bookstore upstairs might still be open. I’m gonna go look before they close.”
Gigi’s eyes flicked immediately toward the escalator.
The moving metal steps climbed endlessly upward beneath the fluorescent glare. Her stomach tightened hard.
“You could wait.”
“I’ll stay inside the mall.” Kris already sounded distracted, her thoughts halfway among shelves and clearance bins.
“Phone on?” Gigi asked quietly.
Kris lifted the little coffin-shaped wrist purse dangling from her arm and gave it a small shake.
“Yeah.”
Gigi still didn’t look happy. The worry sat on her face like an old bruise.
“I’ll be right upstairs, Mom.”
Kris headed toward the escalator while Gigi slowed several feet away from it, as if the machine might suddenly lunge forward and pull her in.
The mechanical clatter filled her chest with heat.
For one sick second she was six years old again.
Small hands slipping.
Knees smashing metal.
The bright shock of pain.
Blood.
And that awful split-second feeling that somebody had pushed her from behind.
Maybe nobody had.
Maybe she had simply lost her footing.
But Diane had laughed while she cried and strangers stared.
The memory tasted like copper and shame.
Gigi turned sharply away and forced herself toward the pharmacy entrance instead.
Inside the pharmacy, fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like dying insects. Cold air poured from vents near the floor, raising gooseflesh along her arms. She waited. And waited. The pharmacist discussed insurance and costs in a quiet clinical voice that somehow made everything feel even more expensive.
The medication needed mixing.
More waiting.
Gigi felt herself thinning out beneath the lights. Michael was sick at home. Kris was somewhere upstairs. Her shoulders ached. The exhaustion wasn’t just physical anymore. It was the deep marrow-level weariness of carrying fear for everyone all the time.
Upstairs, Kris stepped off the escalator and nearly walked into Lovena standing outside a darkened clothing store.
“Oh. Hey,” Kris said.
Lovena blinked slowly. “Hi.”
Something about her felt off tonight. Not dangerous exactly. Just disconnected somehow, like half her attention was somewhere else.
“Did you ever get more Milk Stalker texts? Or strange emails?” Kris asked.
Lovena frowned faintly. “What?”
“The Milk Stalker stuff.”
Lovena’s expression changed oddly then, not confusion exactly but distance.
“No,” she said quietly. “That’s not what’s happening.”
Kris hesitated. “What do you mean?”
Lovena leaned closer, lowering her voice.
“They swap heads sometimes.”
Kris stared at her. “What?”
“Bodies too,” Lovena whispered. “But the heads are easier.”
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
“Lovena…”
“You can tell if you look at the neck long enough.”
Kris felt the back of her neck prickle.
Was she off her medication again? Or was she acting? Sometimes Kris genuinely couldn’t tell anymore.
Before the conversation could go further, Kris noticed the bookstore lights still glowing at the far end of the corridor.
“Oh no, they’re still open.” She pointed quickly. “I wanna run in there before they close.”
Lovena just watched her silently.
Inside the bookstore the air felt quieter somehow, almost sacred. Dust and old paper hung in the stillness alongside the faint vanilla smell of aging glue. Used books leaned together on crowded the discount shelves like tired old friends.
The tension in Kris’s shoulders loosened almost immediately.
She drifted slowly through the aisles, fingertips brushing cracked spines and folded corners while her thoughts wandered inward. Somebody had shoved a gardening book into the horror section and Kris automatically stopped to put it back where it belonged before realizing she’d done it again.
Her phone vibrated once inside the little coffin-shaped purse hanging from her wrist.
She never felt it.
One shelf leaned crooked slightly lower than the others and the unevenness tugged at her attention until she finally nudged the books straighter with careful fingertips.
The smell of paper calmed her.
Dust.
Ink.
Aging glue.
Predictable things.
Safer than people most days.
Her eyes drifted across handwritten notes inside an old hardcover. Purple ink.
Not blue.
Not black.
Purple.
Kris wondered briefly who underlined entire paragraphs in purple pen and what kind of life they had gone home to afterward.
Her phone vibrated again against her wrist.
Nothing in her body registered it.
Lovena’s whisper still echoed faintly somewhere in the back of her thoughts.
You can tell if you look at the neck long enough.
Kris found herself glancing unconsciously at strangers passing the storefront outside before feeling stupid for doing it.
Then she saw it.
Half-hidden among several crowded stacks near the back table.
The missing book.
Everything inside her went still.
Downstairs, Gigi finally left the pharmacy with the prescription bag clenched tightly in one hand. She checked her phone.
No answer.
She texted.
Then called.
Still nothing.
The mall suddenly felt much larger than before.
The corridors stretched longer beneath the cold lights while distant storefronts darkened one by one.
Gigi headed automatically toward the staircase only to stop short.
Yellow tape blocked the entrance.
Fresh paint smell.
A crooked handwritten sign.
STAIRS CLOSED.
Her chest tightened instantly.
Escalator or elevator.
Neither felt survivable.
Panic started low beneath her ribs like electricity under her skin.
The memories came anyway.
The sick lurch of falling.
Metal teeth moving beneath her body.
Diane laughing.
People staring.
Helplessness.
Always helplessness.
Gigi walked blindly until she reached the closed flower shop at the very end of the mall court. She slid down the wall slowly and sat on the cold tile floor with the prescription bag crinkling in her lap.
Her hands shook badly.
The dark storefront glass reflected her back pale and frightened beneath the fluorescent lights.
She unscrewed the cold bottle of water with trembling fingers.
The nausea rolled through her hard enough she thought she might throw up.
Not here.
Please not here.
Her chest hurt.
The mall hummed around her in long empty corridors while somewhere far away another gate slammed shut with a metallic crash that made her flinch.
Then her phone chirped softly.
Kris’s alert tone.
Gigi grabbed for it so quickly the water bottle nearly slipped from her hand.
I am fine ran into a friend got to chatting be down in a minute no worries about the moving steps sorry mom
Relief hit too fast and too hard.
For a second she thought she might cry.
Instead she bent forward slightly, pressing one hand hard against her chest while she fought to steady her breathing.
In for five.
Hold.
Out.
Again.
The cold water bottle rested against the side of her neck while she closed her eyes.
Gradually the mall began loosening its grip on her mind.
The fluorescent hum faded first.
Then the smell of floor cleaner.
Then the endless mechanical clatter of the escalator somewhere behind her.
In its place came wind.
Strong steady wind pulling hard against a sail.
Gigi pictured the old sailboat leaning sharply across dark water, the deck tilting beneath her feet in that familiar way that always felt frightening for half a second before settling into rhythm again.
Cold salt spray burst over the bow and splashed against her face.
Back then she hadn’t feared things on the water.
Not with her father there.
The mast straps clicked softly overhead in the wind.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Water hissed along the hull while the sail pulled tight above them.
She could smell the ocean so clearly it almost hurt.
Salt.
Wet rope.
Fish.
Sun-warmed shells drying somewhere along the shore.
The heavy living smell of seawater and old wood baking in the Florida heat.
Her father stood near the ropes in his faded red polo shirt and white boat shoes, steady against the shifting deck like the wind itself couldn’t move him unless he allowed it.
Calm.
Certain.
Safe.
Back then Gigi trusted the boat because she trusted him.
Trusted the water not to swallow her whole.
Trusted that if she stumbled he would catch her before she hit the deck.
On the water she didn’t brace for disaster every second.
For a little while she could just exist.
The sailboat cut steadily through the dark water while moonlight scattered silver across the waves.
No moving stairs.
No fluorescent lights.
No walls pressing down around her chest.
Only open water and wind and the slow breathing creak of the boat beneath her feet.
Her heartbeat gradually loosened its grip on her ribs.
The panic did not disappear all at once. It drifted back slowly like a tide pulling away from shore.
When Gigi finally opened her eyes again, the empty mall corridor returned piece by piece:
the dim overhead lights,
the dark storefront windows,
the lonely flowers locked behind the cold glass.
Still shaky.
Still embarrassed.
But breathing.
Gigi got up off the floor slowly and walked to go met Kris.