Episode 2: Overlooked

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Voncid: what exactly is an “urban explorer”

Luca: when urban locations become abandoned, forgotten, and then dilapidated some people enjoy rediscovering them.  It seems to be about the creepy aesthetic and visual incongruity?

Voncid: I see.

Luca: Why do you ask?

Voncid: I’m reading over the details of tonight’s interview.  It says here that she was discovered in an abandoned shopping center by “urban explorers”.

Voncid: Investigators initial analysis suggests that she had been there for decades.  Totally mummified apparently.  Impossible of course, considering the mall would have been in use for half that duration.  Too strange not to accept the case.

Luca:  Oh…yeah, damn.

Voncid:  Thank you for driving me.

Luca: not a problem *beat*  you don’t drive?

Voncid: *Voncid’s voice is slightly warped with some supernatural glitch/interference* 

I do not 

*Coughs, covering it, and continues normally*

Pardon me.  No, I do not drive.

*The audio cuts out and then returns, we are in a police morgue.*

Voncid: Hello, are you back with us?  Might I ask your name.

Jennifer: Jennifer S.

Hey, I'm really thirsty, do you have anything to drink?

Voncid: certainly. 

*pause, sounds of drinking*

Can you tell me what happened to you?

Jennifer Slaughter:  I’d never made a big impact.  I’m one of those people you see in the background of a picture you and your friends are in and go “oh woah, that’s right, Jennifer S. existed.”

The same thing happens to me, I’ve looked through the yearbook and seen a bunch of people who I spent hundreds of days right alongside who my brain had completely jettisoned.

Just because I’m one of the forgettable people doesn’t mean I don’t do it too.

I’m both a ghost and a maker of ghosts.

Every year, every life benchmark it got easier and easier to get lost and to lose people.

All of my friends got slippery and slippery over the years, more and more things in their lives started getting stamped “Important” with a big red stamp. I didn’t have any such stamp, so their kids and spouses and jobs just got stacked up on me until I fell out the bottom.

I don’t mean to throw such an epic pity party, but, I’m dead and how it happened was extremely lame, so I’m gonna go ahead and indulge.

Voncid:  At your leisure.

Jennifer: I just… I think it’s funny.  Not “ha ha” funny but like total bummer funny how when you are a kid something like a crazy last name, oh the S. in Jennifer S. is Slaughter.  Slaughter. *sighs* So that made me hard to forget.  Slaughter girl.  Murder name girl.  

Of course, that doesn’t cut it forever.

But I was nervous talking to people.  Not super rich, not poor, not dumb not smart.  

I just kept falling in the middle on everything.

So, it was a few weeks away from my twenty sixth birthday and I decide I’m going to do something a little extreme.  I’m going to do something wild.

I don’t know what yet, but I know I’m going to.

Then I see this ad for a new salon.  It’s opening with big discounts at Apricot Valley Mall and I decide I’m going to go in there and find the gayest stylist they have and I’m going to ask him for the wildest hair he can give me.

He’ll gasp, do you really mean it?

And I’ll say, I want Geri Halliwell, Gwen Stefani, over the top, like, I want to blind people.

*Jennifer laughs at the silliness of it, but has a fondness for these simple thoughts because they are before the bad stuff started.*

So it’s Saturday, at the mall, so of course it’s going to be insanely packed, new place, discount, but as I go in, leave my name at the front, I don’t even care.

Not like I had anywhere else to be.

The lady gives me a buzzer thing, says they’ll buzz me when I’m ready, could be an hour or two.

But it’s the mall, not like I won’t have enough to do.

So I just sort of walk around, look at stuff I can’t afford, get an Orange Julius, just sort of killing time until this guy bumps into me and I drop my drink.

And, it’s fine, it’s busy, it was obviously an accident.  He didn’t see me I don’t think, what else is new, and I’m totally ready to give him the whole “oh not problem, accidents happen” routine but he just…

He blows me off.

Just breezes past me.  Doesn’t even look back.  Doesn’t say sorry.  This… jerk doesn’t even slow down.

I’m not expecting much right?  It’d be nice if he apologized, offered to replace it, something like that, but at least a passing “sorry”.

No.  Not for me.

I am seething, but I’m not gonna let it ruin my day.  Maybe he really didn’t notice.  I don’t know how, but maybe he’s super distracted.  Maybe his mom just died, you never know.

So I head back to the Orange Julius place.  The guy there is talking to a co-worker behind him and I don’t want to interrupt but I have orange slushy stuff all over my shoes and shins so I kinda clear my throat, and 

I ask for napkins.

He doesn’t turn around, he’s locked in conversation.

*putting on a deep voice*Yeah I saw that movie, it was ok.

 *in her own voice again* Nothing life altering, nothing important, just basic stuff, but I cannot break him away from it.

So I just help myself, like, I reach up over the counter and grab a bunch of napkins.

I’m thinking, I'll deal with the spillage and then I can get a replacement, but when I go back to ask he 

still won’t pay any attention to me.

“Hey, slushy vendor” I didn’t know what to call him, 

“Can I get a small, someone knocked the first one out of my hand.”

He doesn’t hear me, again, so I’m like saying “hey, hey” louder and louder and then.

*pauses*

This girl just shoves past me and stands at the counter.  She doesn’t even have to say anything.  He notices that she’s there and turns around right away.

“What can I get for you,” he says to her.

I can’t believe it.

I’m used to getting ignored and passed over and lame shit like that, but what the hell?

I think they must be friends?  Must be a joke.

But it’s not a joke.

Another person, this bleach jean wearing mom pulling two kids along bulldozes into me on the way to the counter, sending me fully sprawling to the floor.

I bang up my elbows and fall under a table, and before I can get up, some guy sits at the table.  I’m horrified as I am now, like, looking right up his basketball shorts so I scramble away, but as soon as I’m not under the cover of a table people are stepping on me.

*eerie music in the background begins to intensify*

I am getting kicked and stomped on and I start to scream, but nobody does anything.  Some guy in boots steps on my fingers and I can feel one of them crunch *crunching sound* and this lady falls over me, pulls herself up and kinda shrugs like “oh well, no big deal” as I’m screaming bloody murder in her face for her to help me.

Eventually I crawl under another table.

I was fully panicking at this point.  This was crazy, it had to be like some sort of hidden camera show or something and I’m waiting and waiting for someone to come and get me and tell me I’m on candid camera and I I’m ready, I’m ready to tear their head off and start suing everyone I can find.

But nobody comes to get me.

Nobody stops to ask if I’m ok.

I realize my hand is bleeding pretty bad.

There’s this red puddle spreading out from under the table.

Before I can do anything the guy in the basketball shorts gets up and he slips in it.  He slips in my blood.

He fell onto his seat, his bright white basketball shorts are all red on the back.

He stood up and looked down, but I could see his face was not… it was not the kind of face you make when you’ve got blood all over you, it was like an *lightly* “oh darn” kind of face.

I just watch as he stands up, goes over to a janitor and points back at the puddle of blood, my blood, on the floor.

The janitor goes over with his push bucket and mop and just starts mopping it up.

“Hey, sir?  Sir, can you help me?  I’m hurt.”

But he just mops.

Just does his job.  No big deal.

I tug on his pant leg trying to get his attention but he just mops.

“Can you help me?” I’m asking everyone who goes by.  What’s happening?  What’s going on?”

No one will even look at me.

The buzzer from the salon started going off in my purse then, I think.  I was bandaging up my busted fingers with a maxi pad when the buzzer started going off.

I grab it like a lifeline and practically run back to the salon.

I’m having to dodge people because no one is moving aside.  

I got back to the salon and I could cry because the lady looked up at me as I came in.

“Oh thank god, you would not believe what is happening to me.”

“Jennifer S?”  She says.

And I’m like “yes, that’s me, can you call 911, I’m hurt, some guy stepped on my fingers…”

“Jenner S?” She says it again, and I’m like “I’m here.

I’m here.  That’s me.”  

When I walk over towards her… she just snatches the buzzer away from me. She wipes my blood off it.

She… I don’t… I don’t think she even saw me.  I think she just saw the buzzer.

*affects an annoyed voice* “Jennifer S?” she says it one more time, then she scratches my name off the list and yells for the next person.

I sat, stunned, terrified, in the salon waiting area for, I don’t know, a while… until this lady tried to sit on me, I guess the chair seemed empty to her.

I…

I was there for hours.  I tried to get out, and just dodged people until I got the doors.

Bet you can guess.

They wouldn’t open for me.

I jumped up and down in front of them, but they wouldn’t open.

I tried to walk really close behind someone, to hurry out before the doors could close, but…

I don’t even really know how to describe this part.  I couldn’t?  I just sort of got pushed back in.

Something I couldn’t see pushed on me, it felt like a soft invisible wall just shoved me back.

I got really scared then. Not that I wasn’t freaking out, but when it felt like something pushed me I got really scared.

I started thinking about invisible people.

If I was invisible to people, what if there were things that were invisible to me?  What if there were a bunch of invisible people in front of me and they were pushing me…

I went to the food court, and sat at a dirty table with melting ice cream on the bench next to me, because I figured no one wanted to sit next to melted ice cream so I could just have a minute to sit and breathe.

I totally… what's the phrase, checked out?  I like, disassociated? 

By the time I got myself back together it was getting dark.  I suddenly got super scared that I was going to be stuck in here after the place closed.  Like, was I going to be stuck here all night?

It got darker and darker and the crowd thinned more and more which was good, but I still couldn’t get out.  I tried looking for other ways out, I followed that janitor into the back and tried to get out when he went out some service door, but the invisible people were there and something just kinda shoved me back inside, but harder this time? And I was too scared to try again.

The whole place was pretty much shut down except for the movie theater… So I went in.  There was this movie, uh, Event Horizon, I thought it was like a sci fi thing, which sounded fine and mindless,but it was not.  A little ways into the movie the people in this spaceship listen to a distress call.

And there’s so much screaming.

All I can think is I wish I could send someone a distress call, but I tried a few phones and no matter how many buttons I push, dial 9, whatever I get nothing but dial tone.

Like the phone is ignoring my pushing the buttons. 

Ignoring me.

I didn’t make it far in the movie so I went and saw the second half of Batman and Robin again.

When I got out of the theater, everything in the mall was dark.

It was really eerie to be somewhere that was so full of people earlier that I got trampled, and was now completely empty. Well, I mean, not completely every once in a while I would see a security guard’s flashlight wave around, or hear some night janitor working somewhere.

I am just walking around in a daze trying to think of what I can do, realizing how hungry I am, wondering if I can just raid some stuff from the food court, like, what are they going to do, arrest me?  I mean, that would be amazing and I’m thinking all that when I saw the first mannequin move.

After everything that happened… Clearly something totally messed up was going on but… I held out hope that it would all go away.

But it wasn’t going to.

The mannequin was one of those all white ones with no face.  It turned its head, right to left, like it was looking out of the front of the store it was standing in.

I realize it’s looking down the way at that night security guy and as he comes towards us, it turns its head back, it goes back how it was, and holds still.

The light from his flashlight passes over it, lights it up, shows how totally normal looking it is *pause* You know, as normal as those kind of mannequin ever look, who thought things with no faces were a good idea to sell clothes?  I don’t know, the other kind aren’t any less freaky.

Anyways he walks past it and as soon as his back is to it, its faceless white head sloooowly turns to follow him.

Another one moves, I can’t see it very well in the dark but I can see it jerkily moving around.  Then another one it… it, like, walks out of the front window all herky jerky and clatters into the back.

It’s some clothing store I've never heard of called Jumbles.  Everything is real blocky and mod and it really looks super eighties and I don’t know why I’m thinking how ugly the sweater on the manakin that’s moving around is, but I am.

I am so scared I can’t even be scared.

I’m just not prepared for this level of freaked out.  

My brain doesn’t know what to do.

Then…

One of them turned towards another one and I get the weird impression that they were… talking?  There’s no sound but that's what it looked like.  Behind the two looking at each other another one skitters by, but it's too dark to see what they are doing clearly.

Then I hear this tapping.

Tap tap tap.

*tapping on the glass*

It took me a while to realize what it was:  one of them, was tapping on the glass with its hard plastic hand.

*tapping continues*

I almost run, the tapping one is looking right at me, or I think it is, it’s hard to tell because it has no eyes, right?  And I’m thinking “does it see me?  Is it trying to get my attention?”

But then the security guard comes back and I realize their heads, their faces, are looking towards him.

He hears the tapping.

He’s coming towards the store.

As he does, one of them must have pushed something over, because there is this crash.

The security guard, this sort of pudgy dark haired guy, waves his flashlight around

“Hey, is someone in there?  Mall is closed,” he yells in.

The mannequins have frozen up again as he’s looking at them.

He’s yelling into the dark store “Hey!  No one is supposed to be in there.” and he takes out his keys.

And as he’s fiddling with them…

He’s looking down and he’s distracted so he doesn’t see.

But I see

I see these faceless white shapes turn to watch him and they seem… it seems like they are getting excited.  

They are sort of jittering.

I got so terrified, this time for him.

They are luring him in.

I don’t want to yell, I don’t want to draw attention to myself, but then I realize, they can’t see me either.  No one can see me, and if they do, well at least that will be something.

So I shout, I shout and I run over and I pull on him.

“Hey, don’t go in there!  Don’t go in there, there are, someone is in there, they are tricking you, they are going to do something”

But no matter how hard I pull on him he just ignores me.  I yank and yank and I almost pull him over but he jerks his arm away.

I stumbled backwards as the security guard lifted up the rolling gate and went into the store.

They… they didn’t go after him right away, it was like they were toying with him.  Making sounds or knocking things over, moving but then holding still when he looked.

*eerie music swells*

It was like… It was like a cat playing with its food.

When they… when they eventually went after him…

I… One of them sort of pinched his arm in between its arms and twisted.

His arm just like, burst.

They were all on him.  Like a school of piranha where 

one had taken the first bite and then they just sort of go after the same spot, they were flinging him around by what was left of his arm and I don’t know why but I ran in, I tried to help him.

I grabbed a sunglasses display and picked it up and swung it at them and it shattered to pieces on their backs. 

One of the mannequins slashed out its arm behind it and caught me in the neck.

I could feel blood running down my chest and I ran out.  As I looked back, they were all staring at where I was, confused, even with no faces they seemed confused. 

They hunted around the mall for me for hours, but they couldn’t find me.

I don’t know how they cleaned up the body, I never went back to that part of the mall.

That morning people came in and went shopping and walked around and no one noticed me.  The janitor just walked around cleaning up my blood.

The gash in my neck, I guess that’s what did it.  I tried bandaging it, but it kept bleeding, eventually it got numb.  I got really tired, too tired to be scared.  After dark, the mannequins came back out again, clattering around in this rapid stop motion looking for me, looking for the invisible girl.

I know I wasn’t invisible, it was more than that.

They never found me.

No one ever saw me again.

Until you did.

Thanks for listening, whoever listens to this.

That’s what happened.  That’s all I’ve got.

Are you there? Can you still hear me?

Voncid:  I can.  

Jennifer: Oh good.  I thought… I thought maybe I’d gone away again.

*Click*

Voncid:  Reclaimer’s final notes.  Jessica’s absence from others' minds seems to have persisted post mortem from the summer of 1997 until the time of this recalling.  Being compulsively forgotten by those around her has several explanations most likely linked to the location and not likely having anything to do with Jessica herself.  A thorough search of the abandoned Apricot Valley Mall and surrounding buildings will be conducted to look for anyone else who may have gotten… out of step.  I do not believe the camouflage and ambush hunters among the mall's mannequins are related to her disappearance.  Most likely a case of two phenomena colliding.  Without a steady supply of potential prey they have likely moved on, however investigations should still proceed with extreme caution… and be done using the buddy system.  Requisition order:  Thermal imaging goggles.  Further information will be labeled under The Hunting Hidden.

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