Animal Control

by Jessica Dawn

The mall has already died and come back to life once, and now it is dying again. Not everything gets two deaths in a lifetime, but the mall is managing. Don’t tell Lem it’s on the way out, though, he won’t hear it. Ask him how the mall’s doing and he’ll say that it’s great, that it’s so busy. What does he know about busy? He only got hired when things were on the decline, when standards were getting tough to keep up so they had him filling out the paperwork before the interview was even over. It’s because I’m so good at this, he thought. I’m so desirable. Not like anyone would tell him that wasn’t true, but anyone who paid attention would know the score. Paying attention wasn’t one of Lem’s strengths, though, even if he did put it on his resume. 

He for sure wasn’t paying attention when the family came up to him swearing they saw coyotes in the food court. One second he’s dreaming about being the hero in a shootout with some thieves in the jewelry store, never mind that security guards don’t get guns, the next there’s two kids tugging at his work-issued polyester slacks babbling and crying while the parents translate the toddler gibberish. Coyotes, they tell him. Inside, grabbing food off trays. 

“It was just dogs,” he says and shakes off the sticky little fingers. Those lanky, pointy eared dogs were all the rage a while back, and so was letting them trot along with no leash. Gotta let them stretch their legs, the owners said. Gotta let dogs be dogs. Rainy days they’d shuttle their dogs down to the mall, let them run inside, let them form little packs that would race from one end to the other, nipping feet and sneaking snacks from under strollers. Either someone put a stop to it or the owners quit coming on their own, no point with all the stores closing, might as well find a place it was easier to spend money. Could also be that the rain stopped, or at least it doesn’t rain the way it used to. Even if the dogs don’t come around anymore, it still made more sense to Lem because he’d never heard of coyotes in a mall. 

Finally the family left, the babies still blubbering while mom and dad scooted them away. He recognized the looks they gave him, had seen it enough from his own parents. Not mad, just disappointed. Whatever, he thought. What did they know. 

Happened again a few days later, but this time it was a quintet of old ladies in windbreaker pants with matching jackets. The powerwalkers. He heard them coming, swish swish went their pants and squeak squeak went their shoes. He thought they’d glide right by him but no, one of them tapped him on the shoulder. They didn’t say coyotes but they described gray tan hair and the long noses and perfect triangles for ears and guess what that sounds like. They come to the mall to walk, the ladies told him, because it’s safe from the sun and from whatever else is on the streets these days. They’re not ready to deal with animals in here. 

“There’s no animals in here, grandma,” he says, smiles. Tells them to be careful by the fountain, he doesn’t want them falling and breaking a hip. One of them flashes him the bird as they power walk away, bright red nail polish on her neat middle nail. Senile old bats, he thinks. They should be banned from the mall. He’ll have to put that in the suggestion box. 

Third time gets the bosses’ attention, though. They send a memo over to the whole security team and say they’re investigating a potential non-domesticated animal encounter, a PNDAE they call it once and then never again. What happened was a coyote popped out of those decorative fake plants around the elevator and stole a corn dog from the head of some committee for the City. By the time they got the memo the government guy was saying that the coyote had his whole arm in its teeth and he had to fight for his life. Never mind that there wasn’t a mark on his arm. Why let facts get in the way of a story. 

Third time gets Lem’s attention, too. I need to act, he thinks. They’re expecting me to do something, he thinks, even though that’s not what the memo says. It’s important to read between the lines. Lem knows that. 

The security team isn’t so many people. Five counting the new guy, Chet, but he walked out about an hour into his shift and no one’s seen him since so probably safer to say there are four of them, Lem and Chip and Danny and Maya. Took a while to catch a day they were all working, that they were all in the break room at the same time, but Lem was patient and when his moment came he for sure was ready. 

“I need everyone’s attention,” he says, standing on a chair and half-yelling to three people. “I’m going to train you all to hunt coyotes.” 

Lem has never trained anyone to do anything before, but he has no reason to think he couldn’t do it. Ask him and he’d probably have a tough time thinking of something he couldn’t do. So he’s imagining a training montage where they’re crouching in the bushes and doing little rolls out of their hidey holes, ambush style, but now the day has come and they’re all sitting there waiting for him to tell them what to do, like he has to do everything here. Worst of all they don’t even see how rolling out of hiding places would even help so he’s just supposed to hold their hands through everything, apparently. No wonder people hate teaching. 

“Maybe we could try setting traps,” Maya suggests, like he wouldn’t have thought of that on his own, like Jesus Christ why is she rushing him, hasn’t she heard of fundamentals. But he humors her because he knows she has a crush on him, knows she’s probably just trying to impress him. 

It’s easy enough to find videos of making traps. Lem likes the deadfalls but they all tell him they’d need something just about the size of a car to smush a coyote. He still thinks it’s possible but tells them fine and looks up snares instead. What a weak ass name, he thinks. Snare. Not like deadfall. There’s a name that’d scare the piss out of a coyote if they could understand words. At least the videos make it seem easy enough. Just need some string, really. Sure, they can’t find any at the moment to practice, but Lem’s sure it’ll be there when they need it. 

Course everyone has a bunch of questions, like how will we tell a regular dog from a coyote or what do we do if we actually catch one or what do we do if they actually bite someone on the arm. Lem can’t believe he has to tell them that the catching is the most important part. They should already know that, Lem thinks. 

In the end it’s Maya saying they should really practice the traps and Danny and Chip are taking turns howling and putting each other in headlocks, which isn’t what the video showed but Lem likes the energy. 

Probably going to have to do this by myself, Lem thinks. 

First things first, gotta look the part so Lem gets one of those tactical vests, the kind that are all straps and loops and velcro from the surplus store down the street. Even finds the perfect patch to slap on it. Coyote Catcher, the patch says, which probably means something other than what Lem thinks but that doesn’t bother him any. Who cares about secret meanings when the literal one is so on the nose. Never mind that the vest isn’t part of the security guard uniform. Never mind that he’s never caught a single coyote in his whole damn life. 

Next thing is a little goddamn flair, some showmanship. He makes signs telling the mall patrons that they don’t have to worry about coyotes while he’s around, though they probably didn’t know they should be worried about coyotes in the first place. He puts up banners that say this is the safest mall in town because everyone knows the first step toward getting what you want is saying that it’s already true. He digs the old Easter Bunny costume out of storage and paints it all splotchy gray and brown, coyote colors, sure, but the ears and the teeth are still all rabbit. Lem slips one of the kids in maintenance twenty bucks to put the thing on and hand out lollipops to kids. Mixed messages there, seems bad from an evolutionary standpoint to encourage children to walk up to coyotes and stick out their hands, but don’t tell Lem that. 

The centerpiece is the cage he sets up by the escalators, somewhere to show off the first coyote he was going to catch. Of course Lem didn’t think about how long it’d take to catch a coyote. He figured get all the pieces together and it’d just happen. Turns out no one explained that to the coyotes. No one told them it was their job to waltz right into the cage so it stayed empty all day and then all week. Total flop, though no one says it to Lem’s face. Plenty of laughs behind his back, though. Even the kid in the bunny suit gets in on it, never mind that he’d been willing enough in the first place. Don’t even ask where the suit ended up. The kid swears up and down he doesn’t know but one of the food court guys says he saw it in a dumpster. Who could blame the kid for trying to get some distance from the whole thing. 

Doesn’t matter that no one says it to Lem’s face, he knows it’s a failure. The bosses tell the closing crew to get the cage the hell out of there so out to the loading dock it goes, where it keeps up its perfect record of holding zero coyotes. Only thing that ended up in there was Jerry from payroll, who got in on a dare and couldn’t get himself back out. The maintenance guys had to smash the whole thing apart to free him. Meanwhile there was coyote piss splashed up the sides of the permanently busted escalators and shit piling up in the dressing rooms, which got ground into the carpet so the smell would never go away. 

All this gets Lem mad and mean, and both things probably spell embarrassed but not like he’d say so. He starts wearing the vest to work every day. He starts following around anyone he said was encouraging the coyotes, just don’t ask him what that means. He starts writing the bosses about how they needed to be prepared, build up an arsenal. We at least need cattle prods, he’d write. Guns would be best. I’d settle for tranquilizer guns, he’d tell them. Every week they’d tell him no, Lem, absolutely not. Every week he’d try again. 

It’s Maya’s idea to set traps and check them in pairs. For safety, she says, but Lem knows what she really wants. She’s looking for some time alone with him. Lem is proud that he’s so good at reading human behavior. Danny and Chip don’t mind working together, they’re still howling and headlocking, taking turns being the coyote and getting captured. Never catch anything but each other. One day they’ll get married. Lem will not be invited. 

So they meet at the food court, Lem and Maya, start their route, work down one side toward the old Penny’s and then back. First trap is empty, surprise surprise. So’s the second, and then the third. 

“Should we be using bait?” Lem asks. He makes his voice lower when he talks, reaches down toward octaves where he doesn’t belong. He’s read girls like that, a deeper voice. Explains how Mufasa got so much pussy, he thinks. Thinks it real serious, doesn’t even see the joke in it. 

“What, do you want to seem desperate?” Maya asks and no, of course he doesn’t, so he doesn’t bring it up again. 

They’ve finished the circle, or at least Lem thinks they have, but when he starts back the way they came Maya tells him they’ve got one more stop, points at the movie theater. The place that used to be the movie theater, anyway. The marquis says FOR LEASE is the only thing playing, has been the only thing for as long as both Lem and Maya have worked there. Things only move out, nothing ever moves in. Except the coyotes. 

“We can’t even get inside,” Lem says, kicks at the thick chain and padlock wrapped around the double doors. Maya pulls a key out of her pocket and then comes the heavy clunk of the lock opening, the unbearable scrape of metal on metal as she unwinds the chain. 

Inside, birds have built and abandoned and rebuilt nests in the thing that used to be the popcorn machine. There is squeaking from the rafters that Lem thinks are birds, but if he’d ever been more curious about animals maybe he would have known they were bats. All he knows for sure is that he doesn’t like it, the dark and the smells and the way a place that’s supposed to be dead sounds alive. Not that he’ll admit it. 

“This is dumb, no one comes in here,” is what he says instead. 

“That’s why it’s a perfect place to set a trap,” Maya tells him. 

One more set of double doors brings them into the old theater, the seats falling apart, screen torn, little bits of lights coming through in the places the roof has fallen in. He likes it even less in here. Some years back and this place would have smelled like butter and salt, would have been filled with booming explosions and swelling scores. Couples would have sat in the dark, some on their first date and some on their hundredth. They would have reached for each other, maybe cautiously or maybe comfortably, would their fingers together. Lem can’t picture any of that, though. He just knows his eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark and he can barely see what’s right in front of him. 

“The lights still work,” Maya says and points toward the screen. “Switch is that way.” Lem wants to tell her to go find it, then, wants to stand right the hell where he is and wait for the fluorescent glow to flicker on. Same time, though, what does it say about him if he’s afraid but Maya isn’t? Nothing he wants said, that’s for sure. Down he goes, then, along the steps that bring him down the aisle, one hand on the dusty upholstered wall feeling for the switch he’s sure he’ll find any second. Almost there, he tells himself. Almost there. 

Before he finds anything there’s the sound, unidentifiable at first and then unmistakable. Sound of the chain wrapping around the door handles, of that heavy lock clunking into place. Too late by the time he gets back to the doors, Maya’s gone and they won’t budge. He pounds and kicks but they don’t give, doesn’t matter how strong he is if the chain is stronger. He wails, makes demands, screams. Somewhere in the dark, something howls back. 

Jessica Dawn lives on an island in the San Francisco Bay with a failed farm dog. Her work has appeared in HAD, Rejection Letters, Barren Magazine, and more. Find her on BlueSky if that’s your thing: @jessdawn.bsky.social