The Mall That Held Time: Delilah and Kate's Fifteen-Year Shopping Trip

The fluorescent lights of the MegaMall hummed, a monotonous drone that echoed the emptiness of the deserted corridors. Delilah shivered, pulling her black hoodie tighter over her short blue skirt. Beside her, Kate, still clad in her slightly grubby Elsa dress, hummed a tuneless melody, her braids swaying with innocent cheerfulness. It had been a simple trip, a quick run to the mall for new school clothes. 'The mall closes at 8 pm,' Delilah remembered her mom saying. 'Be back before then.' Now, the digital clock above the deserted Orange Julius stubbornly displayed 9:17 PM.

'Kate,' Delilah said, her voice tight with a fear she tried to conceal, 'Do you realize… we're locked in.' Kate stopped humming, her bright eyes widening. 'Locked in? Like… a princess in a tower?' Delilah sighed. Trust Kate to find a princess analogy in any situation. 'No, Kate. Like… stuck. The mall is closed, and we're trapped inside.' Kate’s lower lip trembled. 'But… but Mommy will be worried!'

The initial panic subsided into a weary exploration. Delilah, the self-proclaimed pragmatist, led the way, her long black hair swinging behind her as she checked every exit. Locked. Every single one. Kate, despite her age, proved surprisingly helpful, using her impressive spelling skills to decipher emergency exit instructions (which, predictably, didn't work). They raided a pretzel stand for dinner, the stale carbs doing little to soothe Delilah's frayed nerves. Sleep came fitfully, curled up on a display bed in a furniture store.

The next day was a repeat, but with a growing sense of unease. The silence of the mall was oppressive. The mannequins in the store windows seemed to watch them with vacant eyes. Delilah started having nightmares.

Days bled into weeks. They established a routine. Wake up in the furniture store. Scavenge for food in the abandoned food court. Explore, endlessly exploring, the labyrinthine corridors of the MegaMall. Kate, surprisingly adaptable, seemed almost to enjoy it. She created elaborate games amongst the store displays, building castles from shoe boxes and staging fashion shows with the bewildered mannequins. Delilah, meanwhile, grew increasingly withdrawn. She started keeping a tally mark on the back of a discarded sales flyer, counting the days. Fifteen. That was how long they’d been trapped, Delilah thought. Fifteen days. But something felt… off.

One afternoon, while scavenging for batteries in a long-abandoned electronics store, Delilah found a newspaper. The date on the front page made her stomach drop. Not fifteen days. Fifteen YEARS. 2038. It had been 2023 when they'd entered the MegaMall. Fifteen years. A wave of dizziness washed over her. How could this be possible? Kate, oblivious, was busy attempting to operate a vintage arcade game. Delilah sank to the floor, the newspaper fluttering from her grasp. This couldn't be real. She looked at Kate, who was still six years old, her face lit with innocent glee. This was not possible.

The truth hit Delilah like a physical blow. The mall wasn't just trapping them; it was warping time. Somehow, some way, the MegaMall existed outside the normal flow of time. Delilah remembered seeing strange electrical equipment in the back storage rooms, now she knew it was not ordinary equipment. The mall was creating its own reality where the time was different, and the flow of the time in the mall was much slower than that of the rest of the universe.

'Kate,' Delilah said, her voice trembling, 'We have to get out of here. Now.' Kate, sensing the urgency in Delilah's voice, abandoned the arcade game. 'But… where do we go?' 'Anywhere but here,' Delilah replied. 'This place… it's not right.'

Their escape plan began, not with a grand scheme, but with small observations and tiny victories. Delilah noticed that the power flickered at precisely 3:17 PM every day. The security cameras, powered by a separate generator, seemed to have a blind spot near the old Sears entrance. They also noticed that the mall was clean every morning, even though no one was there.

The plan started forming in Delilah's mind with all the observations she made. Delilah started creating distractions, like putting stickers on mannequins' faces, so the workers would be distracted by the mannequins. Delilah started using walkie-talkies to communicate with Kate. Delilah would then hide them in trash cans so the workers had to smell them to get them out from the mall. Delilah had to do everything she could in order to buy them some time to escape from the mall. Delilah thought that they needed to escape as soon as possible.

The generator that powers the security cameras was one that was being maintained everyday by the maintenance staff. Delilah knew that they have a small blind spot near the old Sears entrance. That was where Delilah and Kate would execute the escape plan. Delilah checked the newspaper that the workers were reading and she found that they were also reading about the sports team that she was supporting. This gave Delilah and Kate some time to escape the store, as now the staff was not only dealing with other trouble that Delilah concocted, they now had to avoid people seeing them supporting another time.

One week, Delilah noticed on the newspaper that there were electrical workers coming to fix the generator. Those two days were when they would escape the MegaMall. The electrical workers would go to a secluded room in the MegaMall to fix the generator. The two would then hide in the closet where they would not been seeing by the workers. At the same time, Delilah had to also distract everyone else in the mall so that the workers were not disturbed. Delilah then broke the walkie-talkies that they had, so the staff had to clean all of it up. The walkie-talkies were filled with water.

Delilah prepared herself, knowing that this was the critical moment. As soon as the staff went out to clean, the two were free to run out from the doors. As soon as they did, they immediately ran to the Sears exit. This was it. This was when they would be able to escape from the building. They ran to the front doors, and tried to unlock the doors, they were not sure how to escape using it. Delilah could not find the keys in the office, and there was no instructions. Delilah and Kate were stuck again.

Delilah took a deep breath to reassess the problems. They still had to find the key to get out of the door. There has to be another way that they had not seeing. Delilah looked up to the ceiling. There was an air conditioning vent. Perfect. The air conditioning vent would lead them up to the roof. Once they get to the roof, they would then take the stairs down to the back alley. This was the solution that they had not thought of.

The two then started working on the vent. They pushed everything they could to climb higher and higher in the vent. This was another problem. Kate could not reach to the top of the vent. Delilah then remembered that she had the backpack containing the rock souvenir that she collected earlier at the rock store. She asked Kate to stand on it, then they would climb to the top together. With Kate on the backpack, they were able to open the doors.

The rooftop was not easy to traverse. There were many gaps that they had to watch out for, and they could not just dash around because of the risk of falling. Delilah went first, as she was bigger than Kate. As soon as she ran to the exit door, a large gust of wind appeared and threw her out of balance. She was dangling out of the rooftop. The wind almost threw her out. Kate then had to crawl at an incredible pace to save Delilah. Kate pulled as hard as she could to save Delilah. Delilah was saved.

The two finally were able to safely reach the rooftop stairwell. This part of the escape was easy and they were finally able to reach the back alley. They exited from the back and saw people. Everyone was surprised to see them. Everyone thought the mall was closed for a long time, so everyone was surprised to see them come out. This was how the two were able to escape from the mall. The first thing that Delilah and Kate did was to call their parents to confirm that they were safe. The parents were devastated when they lost the two kids, but they were happy to get them back. This was the end of the adventure.

Fifteen years trapped in the MegaMall, time warped and stretched, had changed them both. Delilah, once selfish and scared, had become resourceful and brave, fiercely protective of Kate. Kate, despite her ordeal, retained her innocence and kindness, a beacon of hope in the desolate landscape of their captivity. They had entered the MegaMall for new clothes. They left with a bond forged in the fires of an impossible journey, a bond that would last a lifetime. The MegaMall remained, a silent testament to their extraordinary adventure, still humming its monotonous tune, forever holding the secret of the girls who defied time.