A/N: I was going to make this longer and I had ideas for how it connected to the prompt but then I got bored whoops lol.

The mall seemed unnatural, a giant obtrusive fortress in an otherwise quaint landscape of small houses and quiet people. Or maybe it was more fitting to say it was a relic of a time when the town could boast such importance. Despite the slow erosion of the building—the cracks in the white brick and the earth stretching its thin green hands across the surface—it stood tall above, casting a long shadow over the two of them. Lauren pulled her jacket closed a little tighter. It hadn’t been her idea to come here.

“You ready?” The perpetrator called behind her. Lauren turned to see Sarah, brightly grinning at her as she hastily grabbed her pack and dug out a flashlight. Lauren had quickly learned that Sarah’s proclivity to danger hadn’t changed since they were kids, and it seemed that Lauren’s resistance to it hadn’t either. She supposed it was somewhat of a comfort that neither of them had really changed after ten years. If only their childhood meetup spot had remained the same. 

Turning back to gaze on the building, Lauren quietly nodded, and they both began their short trek across the parking lot. The deeper into the building’s shadow they went, the colder it became. It almost seemed the sun was setting rather than it being morning. Occasionally, the sound of a car speeding by or birds chirping reminded them that they hadn’t stepped into some vacuum sealed off from the rest of the world. It wasn’t long before they reached the entrance of the building. Strangely, it seemed that no real measures had been made to protect the place from intrusion. No wooden boards, no keylock—in fact, one of the glass doors had been shattered, and cold air brushed up against their faces. 

“Well, I guess that makes this thing useless,” Sarah said casually about the bat in her hand. Lauren hadn’t been very pleased with the idea of needing to smash a window, so she was somewhat grateful for the mercy. The gratitude didn’t last long, though. As Lauren gazed at the door longer, an image began forming in her mind of jagged rows of sharp teeth and a gaping void of a mouth. An involuntary shiver crawled through her.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked her companion in a small voice, but to her surprise Sarah was already climbing through the door. “W-Wait, Sarah-” 

“Come on, don’t be a pussy,” Sarah chided dismissively. She turned back to Lauren, each on opposite sides of the teeth. “This might be our only chance to see this place again before they tear the building down for good. I promise you we’ll be fine. Nothing bad is going to happen. I’ve done this before, remember? Come on, take my hand.” 

There were several things that Lauren had been learning about Sarah that hadn’t made her too happy. But… still. Sarah had been Lauren’s rock. Lauren had always made her confident enough to do things she never thought she could have done. And so the words were enough for Lauren to take a deep shaky breath before tightly clinging to Lauren’s hand as Lauren dragged her through the door. 

“See? You made it through! No need to worry with me around,” Sarah jested playfully. Lauren felt that Sarah was exactly why she worried.