It was somewhere in the depths of this place. There could be a city here. One wrong, or right, or left step and you'll find one of those deserted bars in a failing part of town. They have a lot of those on the coast. The reminding of it strikes me as curious, if not surprising.
Long white isles like perfect teeth, but ruined with gaudy, commercial... popular... colors. The shapes reaching the top of the bell curve with a variety of slightly different sized cubes. Boxes.
My God, the ceiling. There was enough to fit twenty of these places right on top of each other while still leaving room for extra stock on top, like a hat with a hockey team emblazoned on the front.
A twenty story tower dedicated to confusing you into buying too much. Coming into this space and buying just what you needed was simply not an option. The architects here spend their PhDs and Master degrees ensuring that would never be a possibility. There will be more, or nothing. Always, the more.
It was too easy to imagine myself standing at the top and looking down at where I was right now. The top of my head, slightly balding, and a stomach too pudgy only for myself. I can indulge the disassociation for a time. If only for a time. A small fragmented second in which the beautifully empty soul of this place isn't a scorpion dancing on my brain.
I didn't know I needed it until they appeared. A helper wearing neatly matching overalls and t-shirt. Sir, if you may, could you be looking for this? Or that? I could have fallen lost for days. Maybe I would never return and months would pass before a night janitor discovers my desiccated body among the novelty-sized glitter poinsettias.
He must have gotten lost in the aisles, he might think. Not the first and not the last. Maybe his final moment was spent looking at these poinsettias. Gaudy as they are and wafting in a plastic stench. It probably fooled him only enough for him to die. His final moments a wisp of dashed hope followed by a chaser of a new Sears catalogue lying flat in a recycle bin.
But no, thank you so much for asking. I might longer on a bit more. I know it's not ideal, but I hope a certain part of this overall-clad guide might take comfort in not having to indulge any more time entering my orbit of the end-stages of a very long middle age.
I won't be finding what I need here anytime soon. Perhaps my freedom to maneuver this place, in the manner I so choose, will help me hold at bay those dark thoughts that push down on me from above like a million cold fingers. Or perhaps not. I might take a gander at these poinsettias I keep hearing about.