Last-minute shoppers were making frenzied purchases as the last rays of warmth died outside the mall. Seasonal malaise whistled in through cracks around the windows and doors and through the bullet holes from last summer’s drive-by shooting. Security had tightened, then, just like it tightened when that little boy went missing the summer before that and that makeup counter girl was strangled in the parking lot a year or two before that. Somehow, the mall only ever had its big problems when the weather was so hot the glass roof of the food court sweated. That’s why the security guard was playing on his phone when Santa Claus pulled an AR-15 out of his sack.

– AJ Miller