Pushing and...

...pulling.

Push an' pull.

It's how our interactions work. We give, someone recieves.

They give back, we recieve, and we work together, pushing and pulling.

I feel like today I was pushing when I should have been pulling. Like the blood in my veins was flowing in the wrong direction.

It's easier to roll a stone downhill than uphill.

Finger traps can only be undone when you move the fingers closer together.

Today is a day where I should have been pushing.

There was no real finger trap today, no drama no negativity.

Nothing I really needed to overcome.

But I feel like I should have stayed quiet, and watched from afar.

Instead of trying to push my way into things,

I should have been pulling in the essence of what was around me, the conversations, the people, the atmosphere.

If you push too hard, someone can pull you and you can fall.

If you push too hard against a wall, you can even end up pushing yourself backwards.

Away from it.

Who was pulling when I was pushing?

Should I have been pulling today?

Or should I have stayed still and listened to your voice?

I'm just a kid.

I'm just trying to find the answers for myself.

***

I had a dream.

There was a deserted mall. 8 floors, circular. Boxes littered the walkways, filled with products and toys that no one would really ever need; clothes that no one would buy. Lawn chairs, umbrellas, leftovers of a summer sale gone wrong, and even the leftovers from the previous winter. People wanted to leave. Move their unpurchased merchandise. Try to find someone who might be interested in a swimming pool fit only for a baby sea lion. The stuff of dreams. Maybe the owners had thought that someone would be interested in the dream, the ideal; and that by purchasing this stuff, one would be that much closer to living the dream.

The stuff only ballers can really get to.

And there I was with friends. No-faced friends, but friends nonetheless, picking and scrounging through the leftovers of what could have been another mans table scraps. The crumbs of biting into reality.

Sifting through the trash, we eventually made it to the top floor.

A man had beaten us to the top. But then again, he had probably been there for a while.

A raggedy face covered in whiskers, curtained by oily hair asked me if we had been here long, and what we had found.

I replied that our visit was short, and that we would be leaving soon. His voice reminded me of someone truly only concerned for our benefit and safety. To impose on him wouldn't be nice at all, and I felt guilty about loving what I could see; for the sunroof at the top illuminated the decaying infrastructure and made the whole mall seem serene.

The man stood up.

He had the body figure of something along the lines of a spider monkey. The sunken eyes hovered over me and each of my friends before he barked, with a voice unlike the one I had just heard, that everything in the mall belonged to him, that this was his domain, and that we were to give back everything that didn't belong to us, that wasn't wanted, and leave.

I said that I didn't want to, and he reached for my bag

I struggled, pushing and pulling until he became enraged, and proceeded to jump around the mall; literally leaping from wall to wall.

At that moment the beautiful sky had disappeared and the sunroof became full of clouds. The mall instantly became intimidating, mysterious, and forboding.

Each time the light would flicker, a friend would be missing, snatched up by the mall master.

As we made our way down, we were continuously hindered by odd obstacles and junk. The man's now-booming voice that reverbereated off of the walls continuously reminded us that he needed everything back, that he wouldn't stop until he got everything back and that he would kill all of us if he had to.

We made it back to the bottom only to find the entrance blocked, and a large creature in front of us.

A chicken.

Oh shit.

White and green, and big enough to potentially drop kick all of us, it chased us around the front of the lot.

We managed to kill it, beating it over the head with a crowbar and a sledgehammer as it chased after us.

And all was calm.

I was in a store when she came in.

So pale to the point where she was grey.

Seemingly young enough to be one of my cousins.

It might have been nice to talk to her if the situation wasn't interrupted by the screams of "She's a zombie!"

They had been let loose into the mall. Just a handful. But they had slowly been eating at those who were living. And those who were bitten didn't become enraged or bloodied. Rather, they became grey, slow, lifeless, and still able to speak.

This girl begged that we help her,

that we let go so that she could

play with us,

spend time with us,

eat us.

My friends urged me to kill her, to be done with it before we had any chance to think again. They handed me the sledgehammer, told me to hit her over the head, as hard as I could.

I pulled back, and reached over my head.

Hammer in hand.

Duality filling me up, overflowing me.

Tearing me apart.

"Kill her, she'll eat us if you don't."

She was old enough to be my cousin, my family.

Her eyes had not lost color. They looked at me, helpless.

Her mouth was not. Acrid, stinging words that belied her grey, creepy complexion.

"Please let me go, I am so hungry, please... please.... help me... don't kill me..."

I swung the hammer.

It bounced off her forehead.

She cried out in pain.

I had hesitated.

She opened her mouth to speak again.

Before she could speak again I swung down, harder, and harder over and over again, eyes closed until I heard a crack.

I opened my eyes and noticed a dent, like that of a watermelon, forming on her forhead, growing larger and larger with each hit.

It wasn't until I noticed that there wasn't anything recognizable on the small zombies' face that I stopped.

I ran.

I ran away, up floors, and down floors until I made it to a small room.

Who am I to decide what lives and what dies?

What had I done?

It begged for its' life.

Where do you draw the line?

I heard people walking down the hallway. No voices. A slow laboring, funeral march.

As I poked my head out the door, the sea of grey made my stomach turn.

I ran. Ran up the stairs, away from the zombies.

Doing whatever I could to escape.

Even if it meant

waking up.

***

Word.

I'm just sifting through the Mall Master's junk trying to run away from those m-fin zombies.