The department store was empty, save for the squeak of a cart wheel. Braiden followed his mom and their wobbly cart through the aisles. When they passed the brightly colored aisle of toys, his young eyes caught and stuck. He snatched a squeeze ball filled with fish.
“Mommy, can I get a toy?”
“Do you have any money?”
He huffed and dragged his feet along behind her, plodding out into the vast open clothing section. He squished the fish inside their rubber bowl, bulging them out in a bubble of gel.
“Mommy, I'm bored.”
“Hi, Bored, I'm mom.”
He chuffed, then swung around the cart and his mother's legs, herding her toward the exit. “Stop it, Braiden.”
He drifted around the racks of clothes, hands extended to bless each piece of fabric, squeeze ball still gripped tight. He looked back at his mom, she was sliding hangers around with shh-clicks.
He ducked into the clothing, emerging in the center of the rack, the eye. Here was calm, quiet, safety. A secret world, hidden from the tall eyes of grownups. Braiden clown-fished in and out of the fabric, watching his mom, pretending he was a spy. He crouched low, darting across linoleum into a larger rack of hanging cloth and fallen hangers. The garments stretched down to the floor and when the curtain closed behind him, the sound became stuffy. It smelled familiar, like hide-and-seek closets, summer yard sales, and cleaning out the attic.
Deep in his denim anemone, he heard no shh-click of hangers on racks, no cart wheels or voices. He looked up out of the eye. High above, fluorescents hummed, their light barely reaching this midnight zone in the center of soft things. Braiden waited to hear his mom call him, hiding and listening, smelling and feeling the clothes, squeezing and unsqueezing the fish. But she didn't call. He sat crouched on cold white tile amid dust and lost shirts. He waded into the sea of clothes, pushing aside patterns and textures, intending to poke his head out of the clothes and spy on his mom.
But the fabrics kept going.
Braiden kept pushing through, parting weaving, swimming in the soft sea. The jeans drew nearer with their heavy dark presence, cotton shirts brushed against him to gently slide soft hands across his skin, khakis pushed closer to box him in. The further he threaded his way into the clothes, the deeper he dove into the blue jean well, the darker it became. The light didn't reach this deep. This was the home of ghostly glows and monstrous fangs. When he looked up, the clothes stretched and grew taller, darker. He was sinking into this place.
“Mom?”
The fabrics swallowed his voice. He heard nothing. He smelled mothballs and saltwater. Then, off to his right, shh-click.
“Mommy?”
He moved toward the sound, hands extended ahead to part the silken sea.
Shh-click. The sound was closer now, just ahead of him. The clothes went on, a kelp forest extending endlessly.
Shhhhh-click.
Braiden stopped.
“Mom?”
Sh-click.
Braiden swallowed. The sound was close. His heart was beating faster. He backed away, turned and ran. The fabrics batted at his face as he ran, tugged on his limbs.
Sh-click sh-click sh-click.
The sound followed. He looked back as he ran, then stumbled out onto hard open tile. The wall of clothes rustled, then fell still. Braiden looked around but there was only darkness, impenetrable, and the clothes behind him stretching high into unseen places.
“Mommy?”
Braiden’s voice cracked, tears threatened. He looked up, only fixed darkness. A squeaky wheel whined into the silence. Braiden looked and saw his mother pushing her cart away from him.
“Mommy!”
The tears came as he ran toward her, but she turned and pushed her cart into the wall of clothes, disappearing into the fabrics. He reached the place where she disappeared.
“Mom! Mommy! Wait! Don't go, mommy!”
Deep in the blackness behind him, something moved.
Shh-click.
He ran after his mom into the clothes.
Far behind, a deep, guttural groan shook the ground. Braiden ran through the clothes until he fell out into a clearing. Panting, crying, trembling, he crawled to the center of the square, four walls of clothes surrounding him.
Shh-click.
The clothes rustled. Somewhere in the unknown, an immense clicking groan rumbled.
Shhhhh-click.
Cloth parted, revealing a void, a hole in the fabric of the universe. Something pale moved slowly into view until it jellyfished soundless from the void and into the clearing.
It was his mother, but she didn't touch the ground and her face wasn't right when swung into the clearing with a long, Shhh-click, and Braiden screamed as her legs swung limp like seaweed.
She was hung on a hanger.
A deep creaking groan strained through the air, the ground shook, and a limb stretched down from the fathoms of darkness above to hook the hanger his mother hung on, pulling it up into the interminable black with a dense, reverberating chhhh-clack. Braiden screamed, but no one heard. He was lost in the racks, and the cloth muffled his cries.
Thanks for reading. Here’s a clicky button to push. There’s a cool zine for sale in the shop there. (And stay tuned for some nice Loser’s Fiction shirts in the near future)
Here’s another clicky bit, it’s a story you might like if you liked this one.
Excellent use of the TARDIS effect. You captured the sensation of experiencing the world as a child, where every nook and cranny is its own universe. Also enjoyed the underwater feel and the repeating sound of hangers clicking together on a metal ring. Very eerie and dreamy.
Damn, this reminded me of that wardrobe scene in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, but much darker!