Graham, Meghan and Evan walked around an outlet mall, the sun high overhead and warm on their shoulders. They navigated their way around and through other families vying for sidewalk space on the crowded Sunday afternoon. Their boredom drew them to the outlet mall. Evan had been playing the Fortnite video game all morning and got snippy at Meghan when he was told he had been playing enough and maybe, just maybe, he’d benefit from some exposure to the sun and playing with his friends outside. Evan argued he was already playing with his friends. He was playing with them online and on the TV, the sun shone pretty bright and a bonus was that the TV sun didn’t cause skin cancer. Is that what she wanted? Evan asked with headphones covering one ear and the glowing controller sweaty in his hands. For him to get skin cancer? Would that make her happy? Meghan walked over to the TV and turned it off. Evan wanted to yell, wanted to scream, but Meghan’s face was able to convince the self-preservation part of his brain to keep his mouth shut. He turned off the console. His face was red and his eyes were shiny. They ate lunch together at the kitchen table. Meghan and Graham talked about how to fill the afternoon without video games and when Graham was scraping his plate into the green bin, he saw a flyer lying on top a folded down Corn Pops cereal box in the blue, recycle box. The flyer was a glossy, colour photo of a smiling family standing under the sign for the newest outlet mall. He plucked the flyer out of the bin and opened the folded advertisement. Everything they didn’t know they wanted, but needed, was at this outlet mall. Graham noticed the name of running shoe stores which he liked, an H&M store, a Forever 21 store which he knew Meghan liked and yup, a few video game stores which Evan liked. He showed Meghan the flyer and after cleaning up, they loaded into the minivan and drove to the mall.
Eight different running shoe stores later, with all of them promising in giant letters that they had the best sale, the best deal going, or the best prices for all your running needs, he was shoe-stored out. Besides, Graham didn’t think the deals were better. He’d seen a better deal at a specialty running store for a pair of Newton runners minutes from their home. The flyers delivered were a way to draw you in, getting you to walk around and going into stores for things you didn’t know you wanted until you saw them and buying them for no other reason than that you could. They had been walking to the food court for an afternoon snack. Evan had gotten over what he thought of as an injustice done to him this morning and was actually smiling. Graham could smell the cinnamon buns before he saw the sign for them. Evan wanted a blue slushie. Graham had thought of getting a coffee and a tea biscuit, but that cinnamon bun scent was changing his mind. His mouth fairly salivated at the thought of the sweet icing on the warm bun. Meghan hadn’t decided what she wanted but it would probably be something obnoxiously healthy.
Meghan said, “Is there a Booster Juice here? I could really go for that vegetable smoothie. What’s it called again? And is it weird that I’m craving one, you think?”
Graham said, “Yes. Yes, it is. The one you like is called Tropi-Kale, I think. It’s gross and it has Kale in it.”
Graham stepped behind a concrete pillar to let a heavyset man, laden with shopping bags, grunt pass with a sweat dotted forehead. The man nodded at Graham in acknowledgement of the courtesy. Graham returned a corner-of-the-mouth smile and a red hole appeared in the man’s head spraying Graham with a dark, red liquid before the man dropped to the ground, spilling a Lego Star Wars set from one of his many bags. Graham flinched and froze. He frowned. A loud bang made him twitch. A piece of the concrete pillar by his head burst. The powder and grit puffed into his eyes. He felt a sharp pain above his right eyebrow. Warm blood leaked down his face. Graham blinked. Tears flooded his eyes, a biological reflex to flush out the concrete grit. He opened his eyes, trying to focus on the scene around him. Mouths of people stretched open, an orchestra of undulating screams pierced his ears. He stood straight while people around him were dropping to the ground either because they had been shot or because they sought cover. Graham didn’t know. He didn’t know anything except it had been a beautiful day with his family, window shopping for things they didn’t need and now what? Gunshots? They were thunderclap loud. Graham had been aware guns were not quiet, because, well everyone was aware of that, but this, he had no idea they could be this loud. Not in the way that experience teaches you.
“Graham! Get down!”
He knew that voice. He spun to see his wife, Meghan, crouched low like everyone else. She was holding Evan in her arms, her long dark hair fanning out over Evan’s pinched and shiny face. Evan had the look of a child in some war-torn country, like those terrible pictures Graham had seen on a TIME magazine cover wanting to expose child soldiers in some far off place on the other side of the world. Everything became real then. The blood on his face, the screaming crowd and the dead man at his feet. His body joined the present. Adrenaline palsied his hands. Graham ducked low, putting his body in front of his family, and spotting an open doorway he yelled, “That way! Let’s go!”
Screams rent the air. Bullets kicked up bits of sidewalk and whined past like angry wasps. To the left of Graham, a woman’s face exploded into a red mist. Warm liquid covered his face and his hands. He tasted her on his tongue.
“Go!”
They got into the doorway and Graham saw brightly packaged candy lining the shelves, a fridge filled with sodas and a slushy machine spinning red, blue and green.
“Behind the counter!”
They crawled behind the counter and crouched beside an elderly man in an apron holding his hands over his ears. His eyes were giant shiny plates behind the lenses of his glasses. The elderly man flinched with every gunshot. The frequency of the shots merged into an endless angry popping. And then the firing stopped. Graham’s ears were ringing. Meghan’s eyes leaked tears, Evan’s hands were clamped firmly to the sides of his head and his eyes were squeezed shut. He reached out to touch Meghan, just to feel her and before his hand touched the T-shirt on her shoulder, he heard something hard, something metallic, hit the ground nearby. The silence after the constant shooting and the metal sound striking the ground made Graham think, rifle magazine, he had dropped the empty magazine and the man was reloading. He didn’t know if the person shooting was a man except he’d never heard of a woman spree killer. The calm part of his brain wondered if he was being sexist. Faintly, so light he considered he might be imagining it, he thought he heard the sound of sirens approaching. He glanced at Evan. Snot glistened on his upper lip. His body trembled in Meghan’s arms. He was quiet. Graham’s heart jerked in his chest thinking about how brave Evan and Meghan were. He had frozen. They hadn’t. They woke him from his stunned immobility when the insanity started. If Meghan hadn’t yelled, well, he might be dead right now.
Outside he heard a man wailing, “Yusuf! You wake up now! We have to go! You have guitar lessons and we’re going to be late!”
A flat, deep voice said, “He’s dead.” A gunshot made Graham flinch. The same voice said, “And so are you.” How close was this man now? He wasn’t in the store. Not yet and with luck, he might walk right on by.
Footsteps crunched over broken glass. Other cries and moans and Rick Astley’s voice singing, Never going to give you up, never going to let you down, playing through the outlet mall outdoor speakers competed with the noise of approaching sirens. More shots followed. More moans and cries were silenced. The heavy footsteps moved closer, sounding as though the man had stopped right outside their hiding spot. Graham glanced at Meghan. Her liquid eyes quivered. A dribble of blood spilled from her lip and Graham knew she had been biting it. She did that when she was stressed but only a little bite, an endearing nibble on the bottom lip. She had never bitten herself to the point of bleeding.
The steps came closer.
Graham waved at Meghan to get behind him. Quiet as could be, she patted Evan’s hair down and quietly crawled behind Graham. She hugged Evan to her chest. Footsteps thumped towards them. The old man covered his ears and closed his eyes. He turned his back to them.
Graham saw the top of the man’s head first. Wearing what looked like something a tactical officer would wear before going into a house like he’d seen on those stupid reality TV shows. A black shell, like the black carapace of a beetle or large insect and for a second, Graham was convinced that’s what he would see, a giant bug with multitudinous eyes studying him. The arrogance of revenge, the narcissism of murder.
Graham shook, his jaw clenching. The helmet came into view above the counter and under the black shell was a man. A regular man. Glasses foggy, jowls heavy with sweat. Someone you’d see in a Staples store wearing a pocket protector and asking you if you needed help setting up your home network. A harmless yet helpful salesman. The comparison was shattered when the barrel of the rifle cleared the counter and Graham found himself staring into the end of it. The indifferent eyes were anything but harmless.
Graham squared up in front of the man hoping to block the man’s view of his family behind him. Graham’s hands were up and his head was bowed, a posture of submission. He kept his gaze on the man through the hair of his eyebrows. Graham said, “Wait, wait, wait. Whatever you think it is I’ve done to you, I haven’t. None of us, we ha-haven’t done a thing to you,” Graham said.
The man sighed and said, “I’m tired.” Graham heard the sadness in the voice. The man’s gaze went above Graham’s head while keeping the rifle pointed at Graham. The man blinked a few times and then his body shook as though a sudden chill ran down the back of his neck.
The man said, “None of this is real.” The man’s face crumpled. He whispered, “What am I doing?”
The man canted his head to the right side until his neck produced a cracking sound. He straightened his head and inhaled a gulp of air. He exhaled it. The man’s breath fluttered the hair on Graham’s head and Graham caught a scent of coffee. With one hand, the man wiped away the sweat under his glasses. He placed both hands back on the rifle and lifted it so Graham could see the man’s one eye staring at him from the back of the rifle sight. The man shot Graham in the face.