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            It’s been a while now since I had a good night’s sleep.

            It wasn’t so bad for a while. After the war, things were tough, sure. Things were tough all around. A lot of people couldn’t sleep. A lot of my friends, we all had the same problem. Some of them killed themselves. Guess they just couldn’t take it. I don’t blame them, though. Maybe they had it worse than I did. I don’t know.

But after a few years, things calmed down a little. I got a job. I got a new house, out in the suburbs. Even better, people who saw me on the street didn’t scream at me anymore. No one called me a murderer, or a baby-killer. Eventually. Even better, the nightmares stopped.

But that was a long time ago. Things have changed since then. I retired a few years ago. There’s no place in the world for old men like me to be working. Then again, the world has changed, too. The world changed very suddenly one day, now five years past. People were scared. Everyone was having bad dreams. But I slept just fine.

Until one day. March twentieth, two-thousand and three. That was the first day of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

That was the day the nightmares came back.

It’s hard to describe them to somebody who wasn’t there. I’ve tried. I tried going to a shrink for a while. It didn’t help. No matter how hard I tried, I could never explain what was happening to me. So, I guess it’s not really his fault.

I’ve tried support groups, too. I’ve tried to explain it to people like me. People who were there. People who saw what I saw.

No, that’s not right. They didn’t see the same things I did. Maybe that’s why they didn’t understand, either. Anyway, I don’t blame them. They’ve got their own problems. Maybe they have it worse than I do. I don’t know.

But it doesn’t seem likely.

Used to be, it was just the dreams. I’d wake up terrified, screaming, and drenched in a cold sweat. But I’d wake up. And I was safe. These days, it’s not that simple. Maybe it’s because I’ve all but given up on sleeping. I’m only half-awake all the time, now, maybe that means I’m half asleep, too.

Maybe.

But I can always hear them. All the things that happened. All the screaming, and all the crying. I can always hear it.

So I try to drown it out. And that’s why I come here. I sit here, on this bench, every day. I watch people come and go. I see families, couples, kids. I see black people, and white people. I see men and women. I see everyone.

And I listen to them.

I’ve never been asked to leave, even though I never buy anything. I think it’s because no one notices. They look at me, and instead of seeing a grey old man, all they see is an empty bench. So I sit here. I sit outside the electronics store, so I can watch the news. I sit here and I watch footage of the war. I watch people talk about the war. About why it’s necessary. About why it’s pointless. Everybody’s got something to say about it, and me, the invisible man, I can’t do anything.

Then again, maybe things haven’t changed all that much.

This is where I’ve always sat. And this is where I’m sitting, right now, at this very moment, when I hear the music stop and the feedback screeches over the loudspeaker and my life changes forever.

            “I’m sorry, uncle. This one won’t work either,” Rick Hollifield said, shoving the fifty-cent piece back into his front pocket. The coin had landed on tails again, noting that the surfboard wasn’t the present he wanted. He let out a sigh and led his uncle into the next store.

            “It keeps coming up tails, no matter what I find. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to go shopping today” he added with a sigh. Uncle Andy just laughed, telling him to keep trying.

            Richard was turning sixteen today, which is a special day for any teenager. The sixteenth year meant the halfway point between childhood and maturity. Rick, like other sixteen year-olds, would still be able to act how he wanted, but also had a better chance of obtaining respect for his actions. At least, that was how he always imagined that age—a rite of passage. However, this was also a day filled with tragic memories.

            Five years ago, a few weeks after Richard’s birthday, there was a horrible incident involving his father’s place of employment. As the building was collapsing, Richard’s father called. “I love you both,” was all he had time to say before his death. Blaming himself, the eleven year old child was thrown into a case of juvenile depression. Being too apathetic to make his own choices, young Richard depended solely on his mother doing everything for him. Rick failed to notice when his mother’s mental condition also began declining, until it was too late to help.

            Unable to bear life without her lover and a caring son, Amy Hollifield took her life. Locking herself in the garage, Amy started her car. Meanwhile, Richard was out with his uncle, getting a haircut. When they returned, she was dead, due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Although he was emotionally unaffected by his mother’s passing, Richard realized he was in need of a person to be decisive for him.

            A problem arose with Richard’s dependence on others. The only person left in his life was Uncle Andy, a man slowly going blind. Struggling to find a way to make decisions, the youth flipped a coin to find out what he should do. Upon asking if he should use the coin to make decisions, it landed on heads. This coin was to be his sole tool for decisions.  

            Everyday was spent flipping the fifty cent piece,  asking it questions, and following what it told him. Due to the coin, he joined the soccer team, which he deeply enjoyed. The coach would tell him what to do, and Rick would follow the orders. Rick moved from team to team as he aged, until the coin told him to stop playing.  In order to keep up his current build, Rick began working out, always making sure to build up what the coin wanted. Also, in that time, he became more emotional, and eventually accepted, and coped with, his parents’ deaths.

            Uncle Anderson Hollifield was turning more into a father figure for young Richard, and the two spent a happy life together. Richard was doing well in school, although he was never one of the popular kids. There were a few problems involving kids getting into fights with Richard, but he had the knack of never getting injured. After he nearly beat an older teen unconscious in school, Richard was suspended for a few weeks. That caused the teenager to become upset, since he was afraid to make his uncle feel ashamed. However, Uncle Andy was caring and reminded Rick that he was always proud of his nephew.

            On the morning of his sixteenth birthday, Uncle Andy was able to surprise Richard by having breakfast and a cake prepared, despite his lack of vision. His only explanation was “I did it by ear,” something that Richard didn’t fully understand at the time. Regardless, he was happy not only to be turning sixteen but to know that his uncle could cook without burning down the house. After breakfast, Uncle Andy mentioned that they should go out and get Richard’s gift before it got too late.

            Buying the gift turned out to be harder than they expected, since every flip of the coin ended up being tails. It only came up as heads when Richard asked if they should get lunch. Going by that outcome, Richard led his uncle to a nearby bench, and went off to get food for the two.  Life hit another speed bump the moment those loud speakers were activated.

    Anderson Hollifield was your typical fifty-year old American man. Disenchanted with his life and the world around him. He was losing his hair and he was losing his vision. The man could barely see anything anymore. He took his nephew Richard wherever he went. Not that he minded the company.

    Anderson had never been a particularly popular person. He had made his living in real estate, and the most recent boom had provided an amount of money to retire on that made him feel particularly comfortable. But even then he was disliked by some of his fellow realtors. Anderson seemed like some kind of inhuman machine when it came to selling houses. When he could still see to some extent he was even better. As his vision began to fade, so did his ability to properly sell houses. Luckily, he had been out of the business for awhile.

    Presently, his nephew Rick sighed.

"Maybe I just wasn't supposed to go shopping today", he said, looking at the tails side of that unholy fifty-cent piece.

    Anderson tried as hard as he could to hold onto his patience.

"Haha.. that's.. okay, look just try the next store. Help me along, Rick..."He muttered the last bit as he held onto his shoulder.

"You know I've been thinking about lasik, Rick. I don't know if that could help me or not but I'd like more information on it. I don't want to keep having to live like this."

"I dunno either, Uncle Andy.".

    Richard Hollifield was Anderson's brothers son. Anderson had been raising him since he was eleven or twelve years old, and today was his sixteenth birthday. Richard was trying to find something he wanted, but Everytime he had to decide he had to flip that accursed fifty-cent piece. It drove Anderson quite near rage at some points, because he was letting luck and the logistics of coin flipping decide almost every dumb, mundane decision for him. Sometimes he wanted to strangle the kid, smack him across the face and tell him to decide for himself. Luckily for Richard, Anderson had developed the keen power of self-control in his years as a realtor. Along with this, however, was his disregard for the feelings of his fellow man. He felt numb.

    As he walked along with Richard, he saw silhouettes of people, vague shadowy images. Blurry. Unfocused. This was no different than before he began to lose his vision. He had slowly become desensitized to the thoughts and feelings of his fellow countrymen. He listened to them now more than ever, but he only heard their complaints, their aggravations and irritations.

    It made him kind of sick.

"Hey Uncle Andy I'm gonna grab some lunch over here real quick, you want to sit down?"

"I‘d love to sit down, actually, so if you don't mind at least standing me in the right direction and letting me push my way forward…"

"I think I'll just take you over to the bench if that's okay, Haha."

"Well, personally I'd rather do it my way, but if you insist I will let you take me over..."

    Anderson sat down and sighed. The world was a colorful mess but it was all done with watercolor. None of it seemed focused. A couple behind him were talking. There was a man with a light calm voice and another with a louder voice. The loud one was speaking right now.

"... and y'know he emailed me ...uh... the other night, or like three days ago or something like that-- anyway he told me that.. uh.. that since they've had to start fighting in Baghdad he's had to do more and more translating because ...uh.. what... he said a lot of the translators were quitting or something like that."

"Why would they be quitting?" the quiet one asked

"I dunno he said in the email but I forgot like exactly what he .. uh,.. what he said. I'll forward it to you or something later if you want."

"I don't have email anymore."

"Wh.. Why not, why don't you have email?"

"Well I have a hotmail account still, I don't remember what it is though, I never check it. No one ever sends emails, Don."

"Yes they do, I get jokes and stuff all the time! wh.. what uh.. like what emails do you expect or whatever?"

"I just like to write letters, I guess. I've always like having pen-pals. I had one from Australia once."

"You had pen-pals? What the hell?"

"Why, what's wrong with that?"

"T.. Why couldn't you just call them, or.. uh.. or something."


Anderson stopped listening because everyone stopped talking.


A loud feed-back sound echoed over all three levels of the mall and into every store.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any personalities or events are based solely on the imaginations of the writers and are not related to any specific persons.

In 1986, Cherry Grove Mall was completed. It is a three-level shopping mall built in a cylindrical shape. Picture the “Leaning Tower Of Pisa“, but shorter and completely modernized. For twenty years ago, at least.

As of this year, however, the mall has been renovated with a variety of new security features. Most highly regarded of all was the addition of a “Lock-down” feature. When activated, this special security system will completely shut off entrance and exit to the mall electronically, and is intended to be used in case a particularly violent brawl was to break out, or large-scale shoplifting, so that the suspects can be apprehended without a chase outside the mall.

The average amount of people inside the mall vary, but during the weekend numbers usually range from two to three hundred.

Prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, another, smaller group of al-Qaeda members infiltrated the United States. Their attack was to be less powerful (In terms of loss of life), but with much more media coverage.

This is the story of three ordinary American heroes who were caught in the middle of the storm, while their flag waved above them.



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