just words

Arcades are like children, you just hate to see them die.

I live in this little crime-ridden port town that once had a prosperous, populated mall, back in the early 2000s, before online shopping really took off. Back then, you’d go to the mall on the weekends or whatever, and there’d be at least a hundred people there at any given time, snot-nosed kids running around all wild with ice cream cones, escaping from the little play area with the jungle gym above the massive skylights, parents off shopping at Belk or Bath & Body Works or American Eagle or whatever, and teenagers, some dressed in all black with fishnets and Converse and those baggy Tripp pants with all the belts, others in name-brand polos and designer jeans and the newest Jordans or whatever, both groups rebelling in their own ways, all congregating in their little corners of the food court, snickering and scowling at each other, like some sort of prelude to a teenage suburban war or something.

And there I was, sixteen, clumsy, and shy, at the FYE with my mom, buying CDs. I remember I bought some of my favorite CDs from that place, like The Smiths’ Louder Than Bombs, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance, all sorts of Prince records, Bowie, The Cure, Radiohead’s OK Computer. That stuff saved my life. And when I was done, my mom would go shopping by herself, over at the Belk or the Bath & Body Works or the American Eagle or whatever, and I would wander off to the arcade, which was right next to the food court, and I’d spend the next hour, with my mom’s spare credit card, just playing all sorts of arcade games. I was a huge Tekken fan, even competed in a tournament for Tekken 4 one time, Jin and Lee were my favorite characters of course, and I’d even play Dance Dance Revolution a good bit, with some anime-obsessed girls who seemed to just be there all the fucking time, no matter what time of day you showed up, and I liked DDR so much that I bought the PlayStation 2 version and the pad accessory, and I would play it upstairs in my room, and sometimes my mom would play it when I was at school, for exercise I guess, and I knew this because of the in-game records and whatnot, but she would never bring it up, and I figured there was a reason for that, so I never brought it up either, so I guess it was something we shared in silence, which was cool, and I thank the arcade for that, not only for introducing me to Dance Dance Revolution, but also for enabling me to spend time with other kids with similar interests who just knew how to have fun.

But when I go to the mall now, as an adult, there are like ten people in there at any given moment, tops, that’s including myself, a single security guard, and like eight cashiers, and the most exciting thing going on is the black mold growing on the cheap ceiling paneling, which I swear you can watch grow in real time if you’re paying close enough attention, and the old play area is now just an enclosed pen with that weird soft pebbly flooring because all the kid gymnasium stuff broke and they obviously didn't have enough money to replace it, so whenever there are kids in there, which is almost never, they're miserably trying to climb over the walls, begging to be let out, and the skylight now shines this sickly green hue over everything because of all the algae growing on it, like nature is trying to reclaim the whole godforsaken building, and there’s only like two restaurants in the food court now, and all the name-brand stores are gone, replaced by places like “Asian Body Rub” and “Touch of Wireless,” although Belk is still there, attracting approximately one demographic, sixty-to-eighty-year-old grandmas, which, at this point, are probably the only people keeping the mall alive, and by “alive,” I mean like oxygen, feeding tube, urinary catheter, you know, the works, serious life support, because I’ve literally never seen anyone buy anything from anywhere other than Belk, and even the other business owners seem to know this, the old Indian guy with the beard who owns Touch of Wireless just sits in his kiosk all day looking at his phone, he doesn’t even try to wave me down like he used to, because he sees the writing on the wall, he knows the mall is dying, that it’s on serious life support. And honestly, someone just needs to put the place out of its misery at this point, because it’s just sad now, it's just a reminder that everything fades and nothing lasts forever.

And we all know why this is happening. It’s simple, really. It's the internet. Nobody wants to purchase stuff from malls anymore, nobody wants to exert the energy, they’d rather just buy everything online, get it shipped directly to their homes with Prime shipping or whatever, and I’m not above this, I do this too, so I’m not like casting judgment here, this is just what’s happening, these are the facts, we’ve exchanged a community experience for convenience, anyone would do it, if given the opportunity, as evidenced by the mall itself, and it wouldn’t really bother me so much, normally, but today, when I went to the mall, with my son, to let him run around the wide corridors, get some energy out, because we can’t really go outside, on account of it being like six million degrees out, I walked by a certain empty retail space, all locked away behind a security grille, and I was overcome with this certain feeling of loss that I can’t quite put into words, so instead I’ll just describe what I saw.

There, behind the security grille, in the darkness of the unused retail space, there were about twenty arcade cabinets, randomly spread across the room, their once-colorful screens now pitch black, their power cords all twisted like rat kings on the floor, some of the cabinets were turned on their sides, face down, others stood with their guts ripped out, wiring harnesses and coin mechanisms spilling out all over the floor, and in the back of the room, there was a single flickering bulb, casting a light just bright enough for me to make out two distinct machines in the very back, so I narrowed my eyes, and that’s when I saw them, that’s when I saw Tekken 4 and Dance Dance Revolution, and I swear, for a moment there, I saw those anime girls, dancing on the pad, having the time of their lives, and I wanted to go join them, I really did.

But then my son pulled on my pant leg and said, “I wanna go home,” so we went home.