Dreams Of Malls

Two brothers reunited

"Hey man, check it out, that city we're going to has a huge abandoned mall. It even says here that it was meant to have living quarters inside it and all, but they supposedly didn't finish them and eventually the mall decayed and fell into disrepair"- my older brother said while looking at his phone.

My eyes lit up, I had this weird ironic obsession with malls ever since I was 14 or so, so this was the opportunity of a lifetime for me. Thus, I replied with clear excitement in my voice: "where exactly is it located?".

He clearly noticed the enthusiasm in my voice and smirked. Then he said: "Chill dude, we'll see about all the details when we get to the hotel. For now, just enjoy the thought of possibly being there"- "honestly, I'm kinda excited for it too, but the TSA is up ahead so focus on that for now".

"You bastard, why did you tell me that now then? To have it haunt me through the flight?" I replied jokingly.

"Of course. Hey, at least you won't be so bored in that 7-hour flight. You know with your whole over dramatic business and all."- He said while patting me on the head. And then laughed, and then sped up a little, which put an end to our very short conversation.

After that, I smiled, I was honestly excited. You know, a few hours earlier I had finally reunited with my older brother after three years of not seeing him since he went away to Australia to finish his doctorate. And, I could possibly be going to one of the coolest trips of my entire life. I mean, a huge abandoned mall with and unfinished living complex? I'm sure those magnificent weirdos at the urban exploration subreddit would love some pictures. But, more importantly, would be jealous as fuck for not being able to go there. I said to myself.

After that we kept walking through the airport's corridor and catching up on several things. For example, I learned that my brother had finally gotten a girl for the first time in his life. He described her to me, making her out to be some sort of perfect ultra-being with the best personality in existence, that had the face of an angel and some sort of magical aura of sweetness surrounding her. Oh, and, she was supposedly some kind of female Adonis in terms of overall looks.

Honestly, I was a little jealous. He seemed to have met a wonderful person while I was stuck with my manipulative boyfriend who constantly played me for a fool and cheated on me with whoever he could. But overall, I was just happy to see him again after such a long time; the house felt really empty without him around, my parents where always busy so I had no one to talk to on meals and stuff. I really missed him, but now we were together again, I felt nothing could go wrong. I just expected a fun reunion trip where I could be with my bro and have fun doing stuff we both enjoyed, like going to abandoned malls for example.

We went through the TSA in which, no surprise there, I felt as uncomfortable as ever as they were checking my body and my bags. I don't know why, but whenever I entered a screening I felt like a criminal of some sort. Shortly after, we went to one of those big airport screens where they show the departure schedules and boarding rooms for every flight coming in at the moment; we located our flight, went to boarding room number 27, and waited for a while since the flight took its sweet time to arrive.

During this time, we went to get some donuts at a nearby Dunkin Donuts that was strangely empty for 2:30 P.M. And we caught up a little bit more. I told him I had recently discovered some really fucked up things about my school. I'm not going to enter in any detail here tough. To which he replied with his usual snarky comment: "Ah, kids these days. You have ruined my alma matter. That perfect safe-haven for moralistic repressed pedophilic teachers and drugs. Soiling it with your youthful ways". Thanks to that we both laughed our asses off and got yelled at by a nearby old lady who seemed to be sleeping before our sudden outburst. For which we kindly apologized afterwards.

Suddenly my brother got an idea and said: "hey, how about we post on the urban explorers subreddit about the mall to see if people there can fill us in a little about it? I finally got the name, it's called Future Sky mall."

"Sure" I excitedly said again- "That will let us skip the work of searching it for ourselves. Heck, we might even learn something that's not easily accessible on the net".

"Alright then, let's make the post" he said.

The post went something like this: "Hey guys, we're two brothers in a reunion trip and we are abandoned mall enthusiasts. We plan to go to and abandoned super-mall with semi-finished living quarters included on it. The mall is called Future Sky mall. We would really appreciate it if any of you guys could fill us in on information about the mall. It seems to be somewhat hard to find, so we would appreciate the help. Thank you guys in advance".

We sent the post and my brother said: "Welp, let's wait for the replies" to which I simply nodded, still with a smile on my face.

We talked a little bit more, and like twenty minutes after we had done our reddit post, the plane finally arrived. After the lady announced the arrival of the plane my brother smiled at me and said: "You excited?".

To which I replied: "Heck yeah" while aggressively nodding my head.

After that little exchange, the passenger block which contained our seats was called into the plane, and my brother urged us to go. But first I checked on reddit to see if anyone had replied to our post. And I was unpleasantly surprised. As the only comment that had responded to us at that moment read: "Please don't come to this mall. For your own safety. Trust me, I've been there. I cannot give any more details, but if you value your life DO NOT COME HERE. I don't wanna see more lives ruined by this place. There are plenty other abandoned malls around the area that you can go to. I'll give you a few suggestions if you want."

As soon as I read that, I felt a shiver run down my spine. Surely this guy most be trolling, right? I said to myself, I mean why leave such a cryptic message if he's really worried about us going there in the first place? While I was having those thoughts my brother told me: "Hey you dunce, didn't you hear the announcement? Let's go".

"Oh yes, sorry, I just spaced out a little there" I replied, awkwardly laughing afterwards while following him into the plane. Finally shrugging the frightening reply off as just another troll comment meant to make fun of us and scare us a little.

We walked down the plane and finally located our seats, sat down, and relaxed while the plane took off. My brother then pulled me into a friendly hug and told me: "I really missed you man".

To which I replied: "I missed you too bro, a lot more thank you think".

As that was happening, the plane took off and I forgot about the worries that that reply had given me. I smiled... Maybe I really shouldn't have just forgotten about it at all...