Phyllis’ Mini-Mall Mania

Things had been going exactly as Phyllis wanted. From the creation of Lich House in her attic, down to Ishara’s awkward blue-balls moments. She was pleased. Very pleased. Especially by her tiny ruby and the work he had been doing.

Everything is going according to plan, everyone. Phyllis thought as she slowly made her way through the mall promenade.

After a few clicks of her rifle cane against the porcelain tile floor, she stopped and looked around wildly.

“I said everything is going according to plan,” She paused, waiting for a response that would never come.

“Everyone!” She screamed, her voice echoing through the mall and back to her ears.

With a shrug, she continued mumbling, “Damn, idiot, simp voyeurs. They don’t even interact. This is what’s wrong with this media. Meh, kids these days.”

Phyllis continued to walk slowly but consistently. Her pace was always the same, with one foot over the other until she eventually ended up where she needed to be. It was important for her to take meticulous steps. One trip-up, after all, could spell her demise. She was over ten thousand years old after all, but who was counting?

“I’ll tell you who, Phyllis. Phyllis is counting.” She muttered to herself, thinking about her age and what she had seen. Or, more importantly, all the things she’d missed after being cursed to live a sheltered life inside her shoppes.

To say Phyllis was spiteful was an understatement. She harboured anger, resentment, and a fiery passion never to forget. It had been rumoured—primarily by Phyllis herself—that if her spite were to ever be fully released, it would burn hotter than the creation of the cosmos itself.

Allegedly.

“Truthfully. I’ve seen it, trust me.” She muttered to herself, traversing her own inner monologue with equal care.

The spite she harboured fueled her survival, even after the Caering Pantheon—those crappy Gods—destroyed her body and her soul was split into hundreds of tiny fragments. This ferocity and hurt held true in every atom of her being.

After all, they had slain her first love and cursed her to a broken, tormented life until a mortal death would eventually take her. At which point she knew that her fate was to arrive at one of their hells and be eternally tormented in the afterlife. And, knowing all that, she never gave up her fight.

In the past, some had asked her if it was hope that kept her going. But Phyllis had no room in her shrivelled heart for hope, and she made sure to make that painfully clear to those who brought the stupid question forth. Hope was for suckers.

It wasn’t something as lovey-dovey as hope that allowed every fragment of Phyllis’ soul to retain her memories and strength to reawaken to their reality. No. It was the selfishness, anger and determination to seek retribution against the beings that ruined everything.

So, after murdering some three crusades' worth of divine followers and consequently being cursed to live in the cave she called home, Phyllis began to wonder what else she could do to keep herself entertained.

That was when she realized two important things.

Firstly, capitalism was equally as evil as divine religions. Both aimed to control the masses, but while one promised treasure in the afterlife, the other provided them to the people, today, for a low-low cost of too much.

If she wanted to remove the game pieces that the divinity played with, she merely needed to bind those morally malleable mortal minds into a stack of ‘terms and conditions.’ This would put their souls in aetheric limbo and make them unable to move on to become spirit batteries for someone else.

Secondly, the next step in her capitalistic pseudo-religion was obviously franchising. So, with the magic and resources that Phyllis still had at her disposal, she lured and tricked adventurers into stepping through portals to faraway lands. Once there, the only way to return to their normal lives was to find and present her other cloned fragments with the deal of a lifetime.

And over many thousands of years, the Mini-Mall Dimension was made to connect every fragment and store belonging to the four hundred and twenty pieces of Phyllis.

No longer was Phyllis trapped in her lone store; she could move freely through the mall to any other stores. And, as an added perk, she was no longer alone with hundreds of versions of herself to keep her company.

Then, some three thousand years ago, the mortals screwed the pooch, angered the Caering, and everything changed—again. Phyllis was forced to liquidate all but one of her shoppes and consolidate all fragments back into a single body.

“Long story short, I’m bored.” Phyllis cried loudly as she looked out at the empty mall. “I demand entertainment.”

Snapping her fingers, Phyllis thought of whom she would want as a company. After all, so long as they were in her shop, she could forcefully move them to the Mini-Mall Dimension.

“Oooh, Ishara.”

“And that’s when we—wuh?” Ishara appeared mid-conversation.

Glancing around, confused, he eventually settled his irritated gaze on Phyllis.

“Phyllis, what the hell? I was busy.”

“I’m bored!”

“I’m sorry? You should have considered that before sending your majordomo Vathos away to oversee the group setting up your Magosdromes.”

“Vathos is great, don’t get me wrong. Three thousand years with one person allows you to grow attached. But that big sack of himbo flesh isn’t what I want. I want to be entertained!”

Phyllis tapped her rifle on the ground, and a plastic wading pool appeared. Pointing at it, she shouted at Ishara—

“Get in!”

And followed up with a spell—

“Lubricate!”

The pool was filled with a clear, gooey solution. Ishara looked at it suspiciously and then back to Phyllis.

“Now, do you want to wrestle a bear or a cougar?” She asked.

“Phyllis, no. I have the triop in my room, and we’re talking strategy about—”

“They can come too!”

Phyllis snapped her fingers, and three figures appeared in the small pool. Rionriv, Aesandoral, and Sharzin had arrived at Phyllis’ mall and, with a bit of careful thought-processing, she had pulled them in with only their underwear on.

“Mwahahahaha.” Phyllis cackled maniacally.

Looking over to Ishara, she savoured the anguish on his face and the tension in his shorts as he stared at the girls through his fingers. She continued her cackle loudly as the coed triop fumbled around in the pool, swearing at Ishara and threatening his life.

Eventually finding their footing, they stabilized themselves long enough for the one named Rionriv to cast a spell at Phyllis’ little ruby. And while Phyllis hoped it would pull him into the fray, giving her the late-night entertainment she longed to revel in, she was left wanting as the sorceress used her thunderous force to instead send him tumbling over the railing to the first level.

“Eh, good enough.” Phyllis shrugged, snapping her fingers.

The pool disappeared, and the girls were cleaned up and clothed. Ishara, on the other hand, became caught between two fixed portals, quickly gaining speed as he fell.

“My apologies, children. I just wanted to play with my little ruby jujube.”

“It’s fine.” Rionriv sighed, investigating herself thoroughly before training her eyes on Phyllis. “Where even are we?”

“This is something from the realm of World Eighty-Two. It’s called a Mall. People mostly buy things here. Kids your age go to, umm—I think do drugs? Skateboard? I-I really don’t know. But the younger ones come here for one thing. The food court! Come, come! Follow me. I think Pips Pizza is open.”

“Umm, Miss Phyllis, where’s Iz?” Aesandoral asked as she looked out at the mall, enjoying the bright colours and flashing lights that appeared to stretch out forever in each cardinal direction.

“Who? Oh, right, the jujube!”