MallWalk

By: Celia Maddux
  • Summary

  • On November 11th 2004, 14-year-old Conrad Cliff jackhammered into the water main at The Royal Galleria near Belmont, California. Twenty-three people drowned. Three people were electrocuted in the arcade. Two people were fatally bitten by a hammerhead shark that escaped from the mall's aquarium. And the teenager responsible was never found. No body. No trace. Blair Van Auken was with Conrad at the mall that day but refused to speak about the incident for 18 years. Until now. This is a 6 part series on madness, machines, and melancholy in the MallScape of America. This is MallWalk.
    All music and sound herein has been granted to this project by artist permission or is part of the Creative Commons.
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Episodes
  • Ep. 6: Negative Space
    Dec 2 2023

    After the flood, Blair shouts Conrad’s name into the void and befriends the silence that answers.

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    27 mins
  • Ep. 5: The Hammerhead
    Nov 26 2023

    Confused animals thrash in the flood waters. We try our best, as Dr. Peter Kimley suggests, to tell the story from the shark’s perspective, among many others. No matter our angle, the scene is wet confusion, horror, and death. Is God watching from above, as His waters prevail over the mall? Or is that just the eye of another survivor, clinging to life in the false sky? And when Conrad finally reaches the dead avenue from which he began, what is his plan? Or was there ever a plan? For any of us?

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    43 mins
  • Ep. 4: The Trap Door
    Nov 18 2023

    Conrad finds himself within the body of the mall, at the bottom of the strange portal. Is it delusion or epiphany? Either way he emerges from a cloud of smoke and chooses his weapon for the final deluge. Multiple witnesses tell of that moment; the whir of the jackhammer, the burst of the pipe, the wall of water. Details seem spurious but accounts rarely differ. Meanwhile, Blair tries to seize the moment, against the nature of his flighty mind, until the moment drops from the sky and seizes him.

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    50 mins

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