Several things battered my abused senses all at once—the slatted bench I was sitting on...the black and white checkerboard floor tile under my feet that was smeared with redness...the blood dripping from my fingertips and watchband. From the tip of my nose. Images floated around me half-noticed, unimportant.

A tissue dabbed at my face. When it pulled away, I saw it was spotted with blood. Voices faded in and out.

"I don’t know how—"

"Have you talked to any of the other eyewitnesses?"

"Oh, God, I can’t believe it! Oh, God. Oh, my God!" This last voice was soft, very soft, and full of raw horror. Then I realized it was mine.

"...exploded, Officer. Blooey!"

I heard retching sounds. Remnants of an arm were draped over the YOU ARE HERE map. There was a wedding ring on the hand. Probably belonged to some poor soul who got caught in the blast. The once white trash container nearby was now spotted and runny with pinks and reds.

"She was so proud of it," I managed to add, not knowing if anyone heard.

The security officer of the mall jumped, stared at me, then rushed over to the candy counter to fetch the policeman who’d been interviewing others.

"Ma’am? Would you repeat that, please?"

"Dannielle was so proud of it. I remember the day she got the acceptance letter in the mail. It said, ‘Congratulations! You’ve been pre-approved to own the OmniCard’ or something like that. But Diana and I told her she already had more credit cards than was healthy, and she was at her limit on most of them anyway. Besides, she rarely paid more than the minimum every month as it was. But Dannielle...status was all important to her. She said you were a nobody unless you had the OmniCard. Do you have the OmniCard, officer?"

He tried to smile at me, but circumstances turned it into a sad grin. The place reeked of blood and steaming entrails. "My wife does," he replied gently. "Look, can we get you something? A cup of coffee?"

"I want to go home." I made a move as if to stand up, but my legs refused to obey. They felt as weak as rubber bands. Someone placed a warm, firm hand on my shoulder and gently shoved me back onto the bench.

"We’ve called for an ambulance," someone behind me murmured. "We’re going to get you out of here as quickly as possible."

I nodded to let him know I’d heard and understood. All around us police officers were rolling out yards of yellow barrier tape, wrapping the entire corner section of the food court like a package. And here I sat in the middle of the gift, a gift for the police to open and examine and report about to the news media. A gift for the reporters to shoot. I vaguely wondered if the picture on tomorrow’s front page would be black and white or in color.

The place was eerily quiet for a mall. The only sounds you could hear came from a distance. A child laughed. It gave me the willies.

"She said she was going to get an OmniCard, or die trying..." My voice trailed off, and I realized the irony of my last remark. I tried to chuckle but it came out as a hitched sob. Tears were dangerously close to overflowing, yet I was determined not to fall apart in front of them. Later, I promised myself. Later.

"She’s delirious. Let me have your jacket. Has anyone seen the EMS yet? Someone wait for them over by the north entrance, over where the carousel is. Hurry!"

I glanced up to see a badge reading R. PHILLIPS. Above the badge was a veteran face reflecting many years on the force. "Bet you’ve never seen anything like this, have you?" I asked him. I could see myself reflected in his dark brown eyes. He was trying very hard to remain calm and professional. It wasn’t working.

"No, ma’am. Never."

Something heavy was pulled over my shoulders, and cool fingers pulled my hair out from around my neck.

"Diana, Dannielle, and I are always together, you know. Or were... The Three Musketeers, or the Three Stooges as my husband sometimes calls us. We work in the same building but in different departments...worked. We... took all our breaks together, and lunch periods, and on some occasions we’d all call in sick and spend the day going crazy at the mall. Like a mental sick day."

Something tickled at the corner of my mouth. I raised my hand to wipe it away. My hand was white. Cold. Trembling. I tried to take a deep breath, but failed.

"She’s going into shock," the voice behind me whispered.

"I’ll keep an eye on her," Officer R. Phillips replied. "Go over and help Washington with the witnesses."

An older lady with blue-white hair and wearing a green print shift came into focus. She was standing on the other side of the yellow police tape, and she had that look of motherly concern on her face. She saw me glance at her, and she called out, "Can I get something for you, honey?" Her offer was genuine. So was the sympathy and fear. I wondered why she hadn’t passed out from the sight of all the gore. "How about some water? Or a Coke?"

My nose tickled. When I rubbed it, my hand came away with a tiny piece of bloody pink meat on it. It reminded me of raw chicken.

"So that’s what we were doing here today," I continued, trying not to puke again. It felt good to talk. I was afraid that if I kept silent, in the end it would all come bursting out of me, the same way...

"We were playing hooky from work because Dannielle needed a birthday present for her mother. Things have been so busy lately, she’d forgotten it was this Saturday. So she convinced Diana and I to tag along."

I wondered if I should tell them how much I had worried about Dannielle. Things were hard enough for me and Randy to pay the bills and keep the baby in diapers and formula. But Dannielle only had the one company paycheck that came at the end of each month. Her credit was so over-extended, by the time she got everybody paid the minimum amount, she was usually left with less than fifty dollars to eat on for the next thirty days. So she charged her groceries and charged her movie tickets, and charged at the restaurants when she rarely ate out. And her balance due totals gradually rose instead of dropping. It became a vicious cycle she was irrevocably stuck in.

"Ma’am? The EMS is here to check you over."

"I’m not hurt. Just... needing a bath."

"The doctors will still need to check you over to make sure you weren’t injured."

I was helped to my feet. Blood was in my shoes, cooling, congealing. My toes were slick and sliding around the insides of the matted loafers. I couldn’t remember how the blood got into my shoes. My jeans and blouse were drenched with ichor. I could see the EMS guys standing over to the side, waiting for me with their little tackle box kits.

I was led away from the scene and made to sit on a tiled planter containing a bunch of greenery I couldn’t identify. The technicians quickly wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm and stuck a thermometer in my ear to check my vitals.

One of the note-taking police officers came into view again. "Excuse me, Miss, uhh, Mrs. Sanders. Do you feel up to making a statement? I can ride with you in the back of the ambulance." He looked nice and very clean with his freshly-shaven face and uniform shirt with its creases paralleling down his chest when he glanced at the techs.

"Her vitals are stable, but it would be wise if she was held overnight for observations. The doctor might want to take x-rays. You can never tell if there’s any internal bruising or bleeding after that kind of explosion until you look inside."

I nodded as several hands helped me onto the gurney, and the two attendants guided me down the mall walkway, past the massive crowd of rubberneckers and gorehounds, past the video game place and shoe shops and jewelers and public restrooms. Officer Note-Taker stayed to my right.

"The victims were a Mrs. Diana Lieber and Miss Dannielle Mandama, is that correct?"

"Dannielle uses two Ns and two Ls," I emphasized. "Please get that right. It’s important to her. I mean... it used to be."

It was becoming more and more difficult to concentrate. My ears were starting to ring, and things were beginning to grow fuzzy and hard to remember. But I would never forget the blue funk Dannielle had been in for the past four or five months. Things were so bad, she was starting to get phone calls at work from her creditors. Her cell phone was shut off by the company due to non-payment. That wasn’t counting the letters in the mail and e-mail. Some were almost threatening letters that said they were about to turn her over to a collection agency—and later from those agencies about to turn her over to a lawyer.

When Diane and I tried to talk to her, tried to offer help, she would only laugh and say, "What’s the worst they can do to me? Throw me in jail? I’ll pay them. It’ll just take a little more time!"

"They’ll cancel your card," I told her. "It’s happened before with the other cards you’ve owned. Remember? Remember when you were charging that coat and they turned you down? Like they did at the restaurant? Remember when you came over to my place because you’d been declined when you tried to charge your groceries? Remember how humiliated you felt? Why would you want to put yourself through that again?"

"Yeah, but the OmniCard is different. They don’t pull delinquent cards. They promise they can work out payments with all their clients. They even say so on their commercials," she’d argued.

I remembered those commercials. I also remember reading the warning letter that came with the card. Something about a computer chip being inside the card, so that if the card was ever revoked, the chip would receive some sort of signal put out by the company, which would render it useless until the debtor paid up. Then they would send a signal to reinstate. It was a new kind of deterrent the company was using. It didn’t matter if you were buying something at a store or over the internet, your credit status was instantaneous.

I turned to the officer sitting next to the gurney. Both he and the saline packet above me swayed with the motion of the ambulance.

"She was going to get a pound of fudge. Her mother has a soft spot for maple fudge, and the only place in town you can get it is at the Sugar Shack in the mall. It was the perfect birthday gift. She was going to charge it on her OmniCard. My feet were hurting so I sat down on the bench across the way to watch and wait. Diana was behind her, holding her bags and her drink so Dannielle could get to her purse."

My throat tightened up. Warm tears slid down my temples and into my ears. I could still see it in my mind’s eye. I remembered the awful crack, and the sound of rain as blood and bits splattered across the tiles.

And the smell. That horrible, god-awful smell.

"Somebody must’ve canceled her card before she could hand it to the salesclerk. But the chip must’ve somehow malfunctioned. Or the signal they sent was wrong."

Today was permanently carved into my brain. No telling how many nightmares I would have because of what had happened... to my friends... at the mall.

"The signal?" someone gently prodded.

"Yeah. It didn’t cancel the card like it should have. It... the card... exploded."

Cancellation by Gail Smith
Copyright© 2008 Linda Mooney
Please note that Gail Smith is the horror personification of Linda Mooney. This book is published and owned by Linda Mooney.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. Due to copyright laws you cannot trade, sell or give any ebooks away.