This Saturday last I found myself on the road to the exotic and far away West End, most magical of all the realms of the Richmond Metro Area, on the most agreeable purpose of meeting parents and innumerable siblings of Amy, whose charms and beauty excel any title or description such as I am wont to attribute to those of whom I write.  At any rate, the appointed meeting place for the evening was at Short Pump Mall, which legend has it was hewn from the very living rock by the gods of fancypants outdoor shopping over two years ago.  Now, owing to my unerring sense of direction and the fact that I drove through some sort of a distortion in the space time continuum along Route 288 on the way there, I arrived a few minutes late, and having no idea how the mall was arranged, managed to park on the exact opposite side of the parking lot from which I ought to have.  Happily, though the parking lot was very crowded, my van happened to be older than all the other cars on that side of the mall combined, and as a result did not blend in so well with the sea of Miatas (Miati?) as one might have feared.

So, throwing on my mighty Mongolian battle scarf, I rushed headlong into that fabled and aeon-storied expanse of commerce, where dwell preppies of so many fantastical and amazing sorts that were I to relate them all you, gentle reader, would think be a madman and laugh me to scorn.  All manner of wondrous and new boutiques and kiosks flew past as I hurried to my destination, but at length I met up with Amy and her various and sundry relatives and learnt that we still had an hour to go before the restaurant would have a place for our merry horde.  What followed is a brief adventure into the hitherto unexplored vastness of Short Pump Mall, where the red-litten flagstones are trod endlessly by those who seek cardigans made out of unicorns and women walking dogs so small that a half dozen on them might easily be sequestered in the nose of Adrian Brody.

The first thing that one must know, before venturing into such a place of unearthly wonder and dark magick is that nothing is as it seems.  Like Alice through the looking glass, I had wandered into a realm of untold freakitude (now to merely be a realm of told freakitude).  I saw a store called Crate & Barrel, and foolishly assumed that they would carry at least a few crates and barrels.  Alas, I was mistaken, for they sold neither, which seems terribly unfair, especially had I been Donkey Kong or some guy who needed to ship himself somewhere.  Likewise, the Pottery Barn sold precious little pottery, and the Cheesecake Factory trafficked only in chainsaws.  By this time I was beginning to have grave doubts as to whether the pizza place we were going to actually would be selling pizzas, or if instead they’d have, like, cashmere panda hammers or something.

Right outside they pizza place, some fiendish mage had wrought and awesome thing, altogether unlike any other which ever I have seen in a mall before.  It was a flaming cage pit full of fire, just sitting out in the middle of things.  You know how at most malls they have like, little kiosks where you can get a grainy picture of your grandchildren on a coffee mug?  Well, this was like a kiosk where you could get an unholy portal to the eternal and blasphemous abysses of Tartarus, where the tormented denizens of the underworld forever gibber and dance wlatsomely in places which would light your mortal dreams with terror unparalleled.  Also, you could make s’mores over it, if you’d didn’t mind your marshmallows tasting all stygian and demony.