Merry Christmas! I'm Sorry.

I wrote this what feels like a week ago, driving by an Orange County mall. It's a bit anti-commercialism, and I really do apologize for that. Commercialism is like the original murderer of Christmas, and now anti-com is killing our new commercialized (yet still festive and happy!) Christmas. Sorry for the preaching. Don't let it get you down!

Bright white lights shoot through the vast lack trees and invade my backseat. They're the kind of lights you can't look at directly or the backs of your eyes will seem to shrink back into your skull,as if orange juice is being squirted directly at your optic nerves. It's so strange- the lights are elevated slightly above the trees, but whatever they're attached to is ensconced in the foliage. They seem to loom over some concealed commercial world, cold and concrete, like prison lights or authoritarian UFOs. They don't belong up there, or back there; so close to yet so isolated from the freeway. I'm not used to the imperious placement of malls that is common up here. The Orange County shakily maintains a facade of humble living by keeping the family friendly department stores and larger so-cal youth oriented chains prevalent in their malls.
I haven't noticed before, but at night, when you get just close enough to skip the view made to impress you, there is a sinister air about the lighted malls. The mall's intentions are easier to doubt. A sign with seemingly alien letters, big and with the same eery, invasive light behind their black curves, comes into view. In the dark of the night, Macy's is not my friend. I forget instantly of the commercials which convince me daily of such a belief. Macy's is an alien base, sent by the Colony of White Lights to draw us in.
The trees, surely creepily intertwined in focused light, block most of the building with their leaves. They cover. They conceal. They know. With a concerned, brotherly air, the trees struggle to block the vast alien settlement from our views, lest we fall for the martians' manipulative ways. Poor trees. Ever they try! But, as the mall swallows up even more oblivious humans, I, young girl in a borrowed sweater and an old truck's backseat, observe their efforts in solitude. I observe the invasion in solitude.

-Lily Fuentez