Return to the Mall of Death

18 months after my initial visit, I returned to the Mall of Death to check its pulse. This mall, nestled in an upscale Eastside Seattle suburb crammed with frantically-escalating condo development, should by all rights be stuffed to the rafters with ubiquitous middle of the road retailers like Eddie Bauer and Starbucks, and yet I report back to inform you that it remained as lifeless and wizened as the husk of Mrs. Bates.

Into the mall I crept, a wide-eyed baby in my arms, to experience the cold, rattling breath of dead retail space. The infant clung to me in silence, eyes round and dark like Dilly bars.

The decrepit antiques resale hut was long gutted, but the Christian Supply house stood firm, bullishly displaying god-themed board games like "Bibleopoly" and "Teen Choices." Across the way there stood a gaping storefront where the fossil shadows of massive stick on letters for a Gottschalks remained. In this abandoned store husk, a Halloween supply store had taken seasonal root, like a wood-pile scourge of wolf spiders. Countless empty store fronts on either side were closed off by massive chain link drapes. A zombie loner male or two crept in the long shadows down by the closed-off restrooms.

The baby emitted a tiny squeak of despair. I wrapped my arms around her and raced for the exit. What had I done? How could I have exposed such a small dab of innocent human life to such a deafening vacuum of retail culture?

Good lord.