Likes
Dislikes
Personality
Mental Disorders
He was born the middle child of five in a mixed family. His parents owned a small minimart, and from the time he could stand on a stool, Jason was stocking shelves and running the register. With two younger siblings constantly needing attention and an older sibling shouldering more responsibility, Jason often slipped between the cracks. He was quiet in school, never quite fitting in, but still managed to gather a handful of friends who stuck with him.
The Moretti household was devoutly Catholic, rigid and traditional. As Jason grew, he realized he liked boys as much as girls, but his parents constant homophobia carved deep wounds in him. He became hypersensitive to the subject, quick to anger at even a joke, spitting back his own brand of homophobia as a shield. The disgust wasn’t real, it was guilt, self hatred he didn’t know how to process.
What he did find was music. By middle school, Jason moved whenever he heard rhythm, snapping his fingers, tapping his feet, dancing when no one was watching. In high school, he started copying choreography from TV, sneaking into talent shows, and even forming a dance group with friends. Dancing became his escape, the one place he felt in control of his body and joy.
His parents didn’t see it that way. They disapproved, calling it frivolous at best, sinful at worst. When Jason was invited to a national event with his group, he begged for their support. Instead, his father scoffed, his mother scolded, and his father’s words cut like knives, 'Fairies dance. Men work.'
The argument escalated in the back of the minimart, near the unloading truck. His father, red faced and fuming, swung a box aside, not realizing he’d triggered the metal door. It slammed down on Jason’s head, crushing him against the truck. He survived, but his right eye went blind, his hearing damaged forever. His father never apologized. His mother never spoke of it. His siblings tried to cheer him up, but Jason sank into a quiet bitterness, keeping his distance from the family as he scraped together money to leave.
He lived the rest of his young adulthood drifting, clocking into odd jobs, staying out late at arcades, watching from a distance as his old friends rose to fame without him. His will to live thinned, but stubbornly, he kept moving forward. Then one night, leaving the arcade, Jason stepped into the street just as a drunk driver swerved through the lane. There was a blare of lights, then nothing.
Jason argued, protested, tried to run. Every attempt to leave spat him back at the food court. He was told his role, work shifts, accumulate life points, and eventually earn the right to move on. Quotas. Write ups. Employee perks. It sounded like a joke. For weeks, Jason tested the system, sprinting for exits, hiding in stores, refusing to work. Each time, he respawned back inside, his apron already tied around his waist, scooper in hand. It was purgatory, and there was no way out.
Eventually, Jason stopped fighting. He accepted his job, scooping ice cream, rolling out cinnamon rolls, plastering on a smile when customers appeared. His coworkers were no better off, trapped in their own stations, living the same lie of a mall. The only difference was that Jason still carried the bitterness of his life, the resentment, the pettiness, the sharp edge of a man who once had dreams but lost them all.
Horizon Mall is a spirit work sector disguised as a suburban shopping center, permanently trapped in the 1980s and 1990s. By day, it looks like any other mall of the era, pastel food courts, neon storefronts, arcades buzzing with life, and advertisements plastered with slogans like “All your favorites, right here on the Horizon!” Shoppers laugh, eat, and spend as if nothing is wrong. But beneath the surface, every store, every transaction, and every moment spent inside slowly drains energy from the living. Horizon Mall feeds on the lifeforce of its visitors, leaving them sluggish, hollow, and desperate to return.
When night falls and the last of the lights flicker off, Horizon Mall shifts into its true form. The escalators stretch endlessly into voids. The food court booths are stained, warped, and echo with whispers. Storefronts flicker between their daytime branding and corrupted, half missing letters. Music on the PA slows into warped tones, its lyrics distorting into static laced voices. Humans who remain inside after hours risk being lost forever, turned into mannequins for window displays, or drained until they fade into wandering husks.
The mall operates like a workplace for the dead. When souls with unresolved debts arrive at the Afterlife Bureau, some are assigned here, forced into endless shifts as employees. Each spirit is given a job in the mall, food court worker, arcade attendant, shoe clerk, often ironic and humiliating compared to the life they once lived. These jobs come with quotas, measured in work hours. Spirits are told that once they’ve served long enough, they may “move on.” Yet the quotas are deliberately excessive, stretched into decades, sometimes centuries, keeping the mall fully staffed. Any misconduct, from slacking off to tormenting humans during the day, leads to write ups, which extend quotas even further. For good behavior, spirits may gain back small amounts of time, but the system is designed for endless servitude.
Each spirit is tethered to the mall. They cannot leave beyond the parking lot, attempts to do so simply warp them back inside, often at their work stations. During daytime hours, spirits are bound to their human roles, they cannot teleport, float, or break character. They must serve customers as if they are still alive, keeping the illusion of the mall intact. At night, when the mall transforms, spirits regain freedom. They can teleport across halls, float above the floors, or retreat to their personal rooms, doors hidden in odd places throughout the mall, each one warped into a reflection of the spirit’s personality or death.
The only reprieve from this cycle comes in the form of the Employee of the Month reward. Once per cycle, a spirit is chosen and given a coveted ticket, a weekend pass to step outside into the real world. These tickets are dangled like bait, used to pit employees against one another. Most spirits return on their own after the weekend, unsettled by how much the world has changed, but some never come back, their absence left unexplained.
At the top of it all sits Mr. Sterling, the demon owner of Horizon Mall. Residing in his suite office on the third floor, he rules like a corporate CEO, demanding performance and quotas while rarely dirtying his own hands. To shoppers, he appears on advertisements and directories as the slick, smiling face of success. To his employees, he is a tyrant, charming, threatening, and inescapable. His voice can echo from the PA system at any time, and his influence runs through the escalators, elevators, and fountains of the mall itself. For him, Horizon Mall is not just a business, it is a machine that turns human lifeforce into profit.
Horizon Mall is more than a shopping center. It is purgatory disguised in neon. To the living, it is a place of nostalgia, color, and convenience. To the dead, it is a prison of quotas, endless shifts, and the looming promise of release that may never come.
An omega that hates all genders alike. Finds the scents of others overwhelming and revolting rather than comforting. Every instinct that should draw him in just grates against him, leaving him frustrated, bitter, and constantly on edge.
Jason joined hockey for all the wrong reasons, not out of passion. Rough, foul mouthed, and always hunting for a fight, he surprised everyone by being good at it. And as the team climbed the ranks, Jason found himself swept up in it.
Coming soon.