MallWalk

Ep. 6: Negative Space

After the flood, Blair shouts Conrad’s name into the void and befriends the silence that answers.

Ep. 5: The Hammerhead

Confused animals thrash in the flood waters. We try our best, as Dr. Peter Kimley suggests, to tell the story from the shark’s perspective, among many others. No matter our angle, the scene is wet confusion, horror, and death. Is God watching from above, as His waters prevail over the mall? Or is that just the eye of another survivor, clinging to life in the false sky? And when Conrad finally reaches the dead avenue from which he began, what is his plan? Or was there ever a plan? For any of us?

Ep. 4: The Trap Door

Conrad finds himself within the body of the mall, at the bottom of the strange portal. Is it delusion or epiphany? Either way he emerges from a cloud of smoke and chooses his weapon for the final deluge. Multiple witnesses tell of that moment; the whir of the jackhammer, the burst of the pipe, the wall of water. Details seem spurious but accounts rarely differ. Meanwhile, Blair tries to seize the moment, against the nature of his flighty mind, until the moment drops from the sky and seizes him.

Ep. 3: Otranto

The dark of the movie theater, the light of the arcade, our two boys’ melancholic quest bifurcates into love and death, romance and oblivion. Blair navigates the sudden fortune of teenage affection as Conrad obsesses over an arcade cabinet from the 80’s. Little is known of the lost game Otranto, but our research presents some clues to its content. Dark dungeons, living paintings, giant knights, and an ill-fated tragedian who shares a name with ours. Moments before madness, before finding further depths into which we might descend.

Ep. 2: The Crucible of Creation

Having successfully evaded security, our tragedians arrive at the mall’s central fountain, which is mocked up with lights to look like fire. There they brave a multi-character convergence with an old man mid-flashback, a mischievous set of bowlers, and Blair’s crush from the escalator. Chaos looms by the food court, and in the dust out back, just shy of the megaplex, where wicked beacons call.