"When did the last store close?"

"Only a few months ago, but it had been the only thing open for nearly three years. It sounds like it was basically just operating as a ghost kitchen for DoorDash and whatever-- so, yeah, this place died so hard that even ghosts are vacating the premise."

Dylan shifted in the passenger seat, flipping through the pictures Talia had downloaded from whatever UrbEx forum had lead her here. "Everything looks... so normal. Like everything just closed for the evening, then just never opened again."

"Right? I mean, those are a few weeks old, so anything could have happened by now, but I think it'll still be pretty pristine."

"Definitely the cleanest place you've ever brought me," Dylan teased, looking up to take in the driver's profile. Talia's gaze moved off of the road temporarily so she could turn the full force of her smile on Dylan.

"So that's why you felt safe to dress all cute?"

Dylan looked quickly back down at her phone, feeling her cheeks flush. "I've got jeans in my backpack if it looks like--"

"This'll be perfect," Talia said, her eyes back on the road, her right hand moving to rest on Dylan's bare thigh. "I just don't normally get to see you in skirts."

"Well, I don't really own any," Dylan said.

"Where'd this one come from, then?"

"Oh, it's--" Dylan fell silent. Confusion stirred in the back of her brain, then faltered as Talia gently squeezed her thigh. She sighed in relief as the feeling dissipated.

"It looks great, anyway. Like something I would have bought you for fun. Hey, maybe we'll find some sick new outfits in here, huh?"

"Oh, I dunno..."

"We can pretend we're in a makeover montage. Oh, shit-- let's find a song for it! Aux cord in the glove compartment."

They spent the rest of the drive trading increasingly corny 2000s hits, gesturing at the speakers when the song seemed particularly appropriate for their imagined movie. Eventually, Talia eased the car into cover in the overgrown area behind the mall, letting the song play out before turning the engine off.

"Where are we going in?" Dylan asked as the final notes faded.

"One of the old anchors. Some department store chain that went bankrupt almost a decade ago. Nothing ever replaced it."

"The beginning of the end?" Dylan guessed. Talia nodded, her eyes already appraising the building. They walked across the parking lot together, weaving around dumpsters overflowing with rusted clothing racks, cracked shelving units, and other broken bits of mall infrastructure and ephemera. 

"This was a mall-ass mall," Talia commented as they passed a crumbling massage chair laying sideways on the pavement, its mechanical guts spilling through the leather to mingle with the plastic remains of a quarter-driven carousel for kids. "Ready to see what's left of it?"

Dylan nodded, a smile spreading across her face. Talia's ramping enthusiasm when the trespassing began for real was always contagious. The tracks on the loading dock's sliding door were crumpled, leaving it stuck slightly open, just high enough to crouch under.

"So from how people were talking, all of the entrances into the actual mall on the ground floor are sealed up tight. But if we can make our way up to the third floor, those doors are easy to get through, and then we're pretty much free to go wherever," Talia explained. As they walked through the final staff entrance-- all of which had helpfully had their hinges already popped-- the PA system crackled. Dylan grabbed Talia's arm, digging in her fingers in surprise. Talia put her hand over Dylan's and squeezed lightly.

"It's okay! It's okay. It's not an alarm or anything. One of the PA system's transmitters is probably just swinging around or something. Listen-- you can hear when it hits the wall."

As Dylan focused on the sound, she realized there was a rhythm to it. The speakers emitted a low level of ambient static, spiking into a full crackle every few seconds. Her grip on Talia's arm loosened. She hesitated, then pulled her hand away entirely.

"Sorry. I nearly took your arm off there."

"C'mon-- no complaints from me about the strength of your grip," Talia teased. Dylan flushed lightly, looking around the room as an excuse to hide her face. Reluctantly, she finally admitted to herself that she couldn't stop thinking about how going to the mall with a girl was so... normal. Granted, they were still technically breaking and entering, but most of the other places they got into felt much further removed from real life. This one was so much closer to something... date-like. Like a... date that regular people would go on. As a date.

Her eyes finally settled on something divert attention to. "Looks like there were escalators this way," she said. Talia helped her step over the gate cutting off access and they made their way up the unmoving stairs. As they got to the top, they both stopped moving abruptly, frozen in the shock of finding that the room was filled with people. No-- their eyes adjusted to the emergency lighting-- not people.

"Holy shit, you also didn't think those were mannequins for a sec, right?" Talia whispered, the excitement of surprise evident in her voice.

"How-- how many of them does a store like this even need?" Dylan marvelled. In the absence of their footsteps, she became aware of the hissing of the PA system again. The loose transmitter must be beside a busted window with a solid breeze coming through, because the rhythmic crackle was still coming at that same steady speed. Ts... ts... ts... ts...

"Not this many, right? There's no way," Talia said, turning and walking away to investigate. "They've gotta be from other stores too."

"Did someone... move them all here?" Dylan took a couple of small steps toward a clump of mannequins, stopping several feet short of them. Some of them were clearly permanent installations, secured to the floor. Others were loose, balancing on unsecured bases or their carefully positioned feet, strengthening the theory that they came from multiple sources.

"Maybe... they... moved themselves," Talia said, appearing behind Dylan and grabbing her waist suddenly, laughing as Dylan barely choked down a startled scream.

"Don't say that," Dylan gasped.

"Oh, come on-- all the haunted shit we've investigated, and you're scared of... what? A big weird Barbie? Didn't you play with dolls?" Talia squeezed Dylan's waist once in a silent apology for scaring her, then let go.

"Not really," Dylan said, a little dizzy from the adrenaline.

"Well, there's still time," Talia said. "Let's take a look and see if there are... I dunno-- brands or something. This is crazy." Talia moved forward into the mass of bodies, disappearing. Dylan took some time to collect herself, carefully surveying the horde of human-shaped figures. There had to be dozens-- maybe hundreds. The ever-present static seemed to thicken as she slowly moved towards them. She knew Talia was braver than her, but still had no idea how she'd been so comfortable walking into the crowd.

The majority of them were just standing neutrally, but Dylan started to notice that some had been deliberately posed. One had its hands up in a mimicry of self-defence; one had its limbs arranged in what could pass for a salute, given its limited joints. Across the room, a number of them were on the ground as if they'd fallen over from kneeling, heads bowed. It was surreal, but also immediately comforting: of course they'd been arranged by someone. The sort of person who found these sort of places was always doing pranks or weird art Dylan couldn't quite wrap her head around.

Her nerves more under control, Dylan finally stepped close enough to touch one of the mannequins. She reached out to turn out its arm, looking for a brand or a serial number. A soft click echoed in the room as the plastic hand somehow slipped past her palm, locking its fingers around her wrist.

"Oh-- shit."

"Everything okay?" Talia called from somewhere else in the room.

"Um..." Dylan tugged. The hand stayed locked in place, and the mannequin barely moved. The pole securing it to the floor wouldn't budge. Dylan sheepishly laughed into the long pause as Talia's returning footsteps stopped behind her. "Yeah, I might need help. Thanks."

"Of course! I'll be right there."

As Talia spoke, Dylan realized-- too late-- that the person who had walked up behind her came from the opposite direction that Talia had vanished. Another hand locked around her other wrist. There were more footsteps, stilted and echoing strangely, like something hollow hitting the ground. Two plastic arms folded clumsily around her torso.

"Tal?" Dylan called, but her voice was swallowed by the sudden increase in volume of the static crackling through the PA. The wall of sound rushed down over her, like stepping into a waterfall: the firm, consistent pressure of white noise seemed to fill her ears so completely that it began leaking back out of them, creating the sensation of pressure on her jaw, her neck, her shoulders, all the way down her body.

She could no longer hear the mannequins moving as they continued to gather around her. A pair of single-joint fingers, only able to bend at the knuckle, squeezed her breasts clumsily. Four hands stiffly pulled her shirt above her breasts and her bra below them. She felt slow to catch up, like she was experiencing the moments on a delay.

The static continued to pour into her. It pressed so insistently that it started to break apart, letting her hear more of the rhythms that made up the chaos, each regular pulse and swell breaking on her brain like waves on the beach. Dimly, distantly, she remembered advice for surviving getting caught in the tide, and stopped trying to work against it. Her body went limp, but stayed upright, held fast by the constructed limbs that pressed into her. A hand lay flat under her chin, keeping her head up. Two or three or five mannequins grasped her legs and pulled them apart. Ten or twenty plastic hands moved continuously-- exploratorily-- over her body.

"They're really interested in skin, I think."

Talia's voice was like part of the static, riding that same wave directly into her. Dylan's head was held fast, but she could still move her eyes, and they were immediately drawn to her companion: Talia was leaning against a pillar a few metres away, something that looked like like a walkie-talkie held close to her smiling lips. Her thumb teased the button on the side, and Dylan shivered. She pressed it, and her whispers were carried directly into Dylan's ears, a message in a bottle on the tide.

"I can't really blame them. You have beautiful skin. You're just... built to be touched. Admired. Don't you think?"

The static settled thickly in Dylan's skull. She experienced her thoughts like something said underwater: sound that never quite resolves into words, trapped in a bubble, rising from the mouth and popping on the surface without delivering its message.

Talia's voice moved through the pool of white noise and brain matter like a ripple from a skipped rock. "I know you do. That's why you buried that little skirt I ordered to your house in your closet so deep that the next time you saw it, you wouldn't have any reason to believe it's brand new. And when some part of you resisted wearing it today, you didn't change your outfit. You just put jeans in your bag, just in case. Your mind is already so, so good at justifying ways for me to admire you."

Briefly, for the first time, Dylan had perfect clarity on how she'd ended up in the day's uncharacteristic outfit. The memory that Talia described played jerkily across the fuzz in her brain, stuttering like an old film projector. Then-- tss, pop-- it was gone.

"And me... I'm very good at admiring, Dill. I am. But we're here because they're the experts in the art of display."

Every hand on Dylan's body stopped moving at once. When they began again, it was in perfect concert, meeting no resistance as they adjusted her posture and position. Her legs were folded up underneath her, a couple of feet off the ground. They pinned her arms behind her arched back and held her head up tall and straight. They pulled her knees apart, and everything went still. Talia's eyes, still locked with Dylan's, gained an increasingly delirious sparkle. She rubbed the bulge in her jeans hungrily and pressed the microphone button down.

"It's so hard to be patient, Dylan. You're already so malleable-- look at how well you take to the posing. Part of me just wants to stop here... but that would be selfish of me. Wouldn't it? You're always so curious; I know you want to know what comes next. Don't you?"

Dylan's cunt throbbed.

"I thought so. That's the thing, Dylan-- I know you. You know that I do. It's always really surprised you about me. You feel like I really, really see you. I do. And I'm going to make it even better. We're going to show you how good it can feel to be seen."

A couple of plastic digits slipped into Dylan's cunt, thrusting in and out mechanically. Single fingers pushed into each of her ears, multiplying the feeling of pressure that the sound from the PA had put there. A pinched hand pulled her tongue out of her mouth, leaving it hanging there. Talia's lips moved briefly, and though Dylan couldn't hear it-- she was still across the room, and the button wasn't pressed down-- she could see that Talia was swearing ecstatically. A finger from another hand pushed into Dylan's cunt alongside the first, moving just out of time, so there was never any relief from the feeling of fullness.

"This is what it feels like to be seen by me, Dylan," Talia said into the microphone, her voice tight with arousal. "Everything you're feeling is just how it feels to be seen by me." In the silence after that command, the PA hissed, and the figures crowded around Dylan melted out of her perception. She hovered in the air on the strength of Talia's gaze. Talia's gaze alone bound her legs and arms and built the growing heat in her core. Everywhere Talia looked, Dylan felt touched. When her eyes finally wandered down between Dylan's legs, the orgasm that rolled over Dylan's body was clear, pure, and violent.

"Fuck. Again." Talia hissed. Dylan's body was pulled and rotated, her knees pushed up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. "This is what it feels like to be seen by me, Dylan."

Whenever Dylan tried to focus on a thought, she only found the overwhelming pool of static in her skull, so thick and loud that she couldn't help but bounce off of it to focus back on Talia. The gaze filled her holes, pulled her nipples taut, left bruising fingerprints on her thighs and wrists. This is what it feels like to be seen by me, Dylan. She was spread out on the floor, exposed and pinned, and Talia was watching her cum again. This is what it feels like to be seen by me, Dylan. She was bent in half, her face pressed into the ground, drool pooling on the old linoleum, and Talia's gaze pounding into her made her cum again. This is what it feels like to be seen by me, Dylan. She was standing with her spine stock straight, her legs locked together, her hands pushing her tits up. Talia's eyes flicked down to Dylan's chest, and she was cumming again. This is what it feels like to be seen by me, Dylan. And again. This is what it feels like to be seen by me, Dylan. And again. This is what it feels like to be seen by me, Dylan.

"Now... stay."

Dylan's muscles froze. She was standing under her own power. The plastic hands on her body had disappeared-- she wasn't sure when, or when Talia had crossed the room. They were very close together now. When Dylan tried to pull up the memory, she only found soft spikes of white noise that gently, persistently subsumed the motivation to remember. When she tried to grab hold of it, she only found the tide of sound lapping continuously at her brain, dutifully enacting its relentless erosion.

Experimentally, Talia pushed on her shoulder, and quickly had to put another hand out to stabilize her.

"You're perfect." She clicked the PA microphone again. "Open your mouth." Dylan's jaw fell open. The mic was still hot, amplifying Talia's excited breaths as she savoured the moment before speaking. She licked her lips, then continued, "On your knees."

Dylan sank to her knees, then froze again as the PA clicked off. Talia almost hissed in excitement, and unceremoniously shoved her hard cock into Dylan's open mouth.

"Fuck. Fuck. Oh, you're so fucking perfect, Dylan. This is going to be a hard one to let go, I think. Like, the temptation to just leave you like this--" She cut herself off with a groan. "I know I can already have you whenever I want, but it's still gonna be tough to give up the idea of you as an empty, posable fuckdoll. Good doll."

As Talia fucked her mouth mercilessly, occasionally spouting delirious fantasies, Dylan couldn't stop playing out the images. She was at attention beside Talia's desk, waiting to be put underneath it. Waves of pleasure radiated through her as Talia wrapped Dylan's hand around her cock, then her own hand around Dylan's hand so she could jerk off with it. Talia dipping her fingers repeatedly into Dylan's mouth to lubricate them while masturbating, then cumming on Dylan's face as a reward. Talia bringing a date home and letting them ride Dylan's blank face while Talia filled her cunt. Talia having a party and keeping Dylan spread out in the corner, like a party favour her friends could pick up whenever they felt the urge.

"Are you too brainfucked to suck?" Dylan couldn't respond. Every signal her brain sent out fizzled before it succeeded. Talia laughed. "I guess so. That's okay. You're a perfect hole. A perfect hole and a perfect. Good. Doll."

It was blissful agony. Dylan's muscles had limited ability to contract, so the heat just built up endlessly. When Talia came, it dripped slowly out of the corners of Dylan's hanging-open mouth. Talia groaned, smearing it across Dylan's face. She sank to the floor beside Dylan, cupping her shining cheek and looking directly into her eyes, and raised the microphone to her lips.

Click. "Give me a smile, Dill." Dylan's face shifted into a big grin. Click. "Good doll. Stick out your tongue." Her body obeyed without hesitation. Click. "Good doll. Hold up your tits." Talia's gaze drifted down Dylan's body, and the orgasm that had been building inside Dylan exploded. Her vision went black as her eyes rolled back into her head.

Click. "This is how it feels to be seen by me, Dylan." Talia slipped a couple of fingers into Dylan's shaking cunt, pumping almost lazily. "This is all you have to remember: how it feels to be seen by me."

The soft electronic thud of a signal terminating echoed across the room. Dylan's muscles relaxed, all at once, and she collapsed forward onto Talia.

"I hope you can walk," Talia said softly. "We're pretty close to overstaying our welcome. Let's not actually stay to find out where those mannequins come from, alright?"

Dylan came to halfway across the parking lot, leaning heavily on Talia.

"Oh-- sorry-- I was-- I'm--"

"Cold, I know," Talia teased, tugging lightly at the bottom of Dylan's skirt. "You're gonna have to toughen up a bit if you're gonna dress like this."

"I guess so," Dylan laughed, shaking her head slightly, disoriented from the temperature. Her muscles were sore from shivering. "I guess I-- thought-- because were going to be inside..."

"Nah-- it's way colder than they said on the weather. Honestly, I'm forcing myself not to shiver so that you think I'm tough," Talia said, opening the passenger door and gesturing inside the car. Dylan sunk into the seat gratefully, laughing. She clicked her seat belt on and looked thoughtfully back toward the abandoned mall.

As Talia got into the driver's seat, Dylan said, "I really... liked that one. Does that make me boring?"

Talia laughed. "What-- because the floor wasn't threatening to collapse at any moment?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"You're not boring, Dylan. Or, if you are, so am I. I like stuff like this, too. Why else would I have brought you here?"

"Good point," Dylan said, smiling out the passenger window. Talia's hand found its way to her thigh again.

"Let me see," she said casually. Still looking out the window, Dylan spread her legs, pulling her underwear to the side. Talia's hands probed inside of her gently, then retreated. "Nice. I'm gonna be getting on the highway in a sec, and I think we'll give everyone a little treat-- tits out, alright?" Dylan lifted her shirt and bra up to her clavicles, turning to smile at Talia. "Good doll."

"Good doll," Dylan said. Then, continuing as though she hadn't just spoken: "I appreciate you saying that. This was fun... wanna keep looking for montage songs? Just in case?"

"Great idea," Talia said, plugging the aux into her phone. "Let's get a little more 90s with this round. Maybe test out some Spice Girls?"

"Oh, that sounds awful," Dylan said, delighted. She settled back, shifting so that the seat belt wouldn't catch on or obscure her exposed nipples. "Turn it up."