Speaker 1: At two forty three in the morning, with the night
siren fullescent, all the world seen pared down to fake
tile and humming overhead lights strange and cellular. The back
aisle at Hypermart pressed close with stat boxes, the kind
that never quite fit in the shelves and seem to
multiply each time I turned around. The store sprawled in
the dark, rose upon rows of consumer goods under a
slack black sky. Electric fans collected dust, obo security monitors,
and across the linoleum you could hear your own heartbeat
when you stood still. I balanced a case of hand
soap on my hip and adjusted the box, cut a
clip to my waistburned lighting, the chill of the vinyl
four seeped through my sneakers. One of the overhead lights
bird then steaded. I was alone, or at least it
felt that way. The only noise besides the hyperventilitia system
was my own forced attempts at rhythm, the gentle clack
of labels as I lined up bottles of shampoo no
one would buy. Then came a different noise, a single
heavy thud somewhere behind the staff only door at the
end of the consumable It wasn't the chatter of ventilation
or pipes. This island was singular intent, the sort of
thing you only detect when you are already strong tight.
I froze the case of so, clamped awkwardly mid left.
Maybe it was a cleaning crew finally rousing to mop
a corner, but the cots always hiss faintly on the tile,
Trailing paper towels and lemon sented aeumonia, and anyway, nobody
had cleaned to see a cleaner all month. I waited,
letting the silence press back in, feeling the echo was
slowly away. A minute ticked past. My phone's clock said
two forty four. I gave up, pretending not to care,
set down my box, and ducked toward the dull corridor
that led past the staff bathrooms and into the brake room.
The aisle displays were gerished, with all night TV pitches,
all cardboard cutouts perched on warp stands, shadows dragging behind each.
The flicker of a monitor caught me off guard as
I passed security defeats, napping once twice, then cycling to
grains me as still off house was. The break room
was its own world, always five degrees colder than the
rest of the store, with mismatched chairs and the drooping calendar.
I pulled the stained kettle forward and thought distantly of
making tea. But my hands it felt restless electric. I
paced circles of thin plastic ground against each other under
my shoes. On impulse, I noticed a scuff panel just
above the microwave, the sord view pry opening only a
very board or very anxious. It jetted out at an
angle the second I pressed a finger to it. Behind it,
wedged between yellowing drywall and a forgotten box of tea,
was a notebook, battered, spine so softening edges dotted with
old coffee stains. Its cover was blue, the kind soole
for a dollar a dozen two miles away. I held
it just so inflict to open with my thumbnail. The
pages fluttered with cramped, frantic handwriting, loops of black ink
stitch between wild under lines. I blinked through altered inventory
locks and lesser product numbers, over ridden, canceled, corrected, several pages, bore,
crypt messages, rings in markert time circled and double circled.
I rose, connecting dates to short, desperate sentences. One note
sharpened as I read three seventeen in date block digits,
surrounded by a halover red pen underneath in her messy
caps don't be in houseworse three seventeen. My scalp prickled.
My first instinct was to laugh it off, but my
hand wouldn't a plnch. The clock next to the fridge
whispered three four. I flipped through a few more pages,
each back type with warnings at its times, names half familiar,
so I'd glimpsed on old locker tags. Then a crackl
jerkmight give overhead. The pier system warbled into life, the
speaker's coughing a run and finished thought. All the lights
blink once off on like a series of slow and
blinking eyes. The store was still. I don't mean the normal.
After IROs calm, but something else waiter. I felt as
if the silly might peel away at any moment if
I didn't move. I snapped the notebook shut, tucked it
under my jacket, and pressed into the wall shadow for
a breath. A second I was certain someone watched from
beyond the mound of locker's patient, waiting to see what
I would do. But then my memory reeled back cut
into how all this began before the notebook, before I
thought twice about the rules of hypermot, knight chif survival.
My name is Karr, twenty six. Never finished college, too
many debts and not enough recommendations. Hypermott was my fifth
job in as many months. I started at the beginning
of December, half a week after a car with misseriplace
hydroplane through my temp agency's front window. It's funny how
none of the other jobs stuck, but hyper Mutt always
needed bodies for night shift to no one asked too
many questions. This doll sat on the edge of town,
cranned in a half dead mole whose only out of
tenants were a dullar cinema and a military recruiter's office
decked with empty pamphlet racks. My apartment was three blocks away,
above a dentist office that kept irregular eyros. Two nights
before the thud behind the staff door. Are trudged in
at ten fifty four p m. Barely for orientation, hoping
to make a good impression. The parking lot was a
sigma of dirty light puddles reflecting the potmark moon and
saw it. The air was all I saw on stale far, grease, persistent,
a little sire. Everything after eleven p m. Felt slack,
as if by locking the doors the store seiled itself
against the pace of ordinary life. The night crew filtered
in by one's and shows. The first to greet me
was mister Griggs, the overnight manager, a man with the sad,
patient eyes of someone who'd survived at least two different
story brandings. He wore his badge sideways and introduced himself
like this. Don't ask me about the lights, and don't
try to clock out early. He handed me a generic
time time card in a safety form I pretended to read.
His voice carried the nasal fatigue of too many years
under flickering bulbs. The other staff didn't say much. Rena,
slim and taught as a wire, nod at once as
we passed in the back corridor. Her pona tail swung
behind her like a metronome. Corey was harder to ignore.
A guy maybe thirty five, beard half kept quick with
a joke, except when he asked about the shift. Then
he always fiddled with his badge one shoot, tapping rapidly
while he changed the subject. He's said, you're better off
learning the aisles and not by asking about the extra
inventory forms. And then there was Loomies, our ostensible knight supervisor.
I only ever saw the back of his head, disappearing
into an office that stank of sheep, polish and something
with sinous, the door clicking shut a second too slow.
His name was taped over a plaque that read lost
Prevention Lead, but nobody answered if I knocked an ore.
Overall bound, silent authority drifted out of the vents whenever
he was present, thickening the air. The process was always
the same. Clock in signed out, A box cutter with
your locker number, punched into the central computer and collect
a tangle of her stock lists from the print out tray.
I learned the cadence and IROs. There were meals to
shelve and produce to rotate, though nobody ever seemed to
eat the fruit. Past midnight, the intercom chimed for price
checks every hour, but half the time the stall was
as dead as the moon outside. Once, whilstacking detergent, Cory murmured,
you hear stores about this place. I shrugged, reluctant to
a thin veil over my interest. He smiled, not unkindly.
Don't go looking for trouble, That's all I'll say. And
if you ever see Griggs with a clipboard at quarter
past three, get out of the fruit section. I didn't
ask what that meant at the time. I cataloged ats,
generic work play, superstition. The break room was rarely occupied,
chares tacked in, crumbs scattered, and a vending machines that
hadn't worked since the Bush administration. Some nights the room
was so dull I checked to make sure nobody was
sleeping on the couch behind the coat racker habit hard
to break from busier jobs. Nobody talked about the cleaning crew,
but the floor always glimmer stickily after three a m.
Though I never saw a marp or herd, the echo
of a vacuum security roomed in Pez franc a retiree
with a suspicious gaze, and sometimes a woman whose badge
always flipped the wrong way. They cut through the aisles,
never stopping, never speaking to anyone on staff. Nothing felt
overtally dangerous, just deeply impersonal. But even that blank Kusha teeth.
By the time the second night rolled around and I
found that notebook in the break room, I'd already started
to feel reality getting thinner every hour past midnight. It's
strange looking back, had the oddities forst seen merely like
bad luck or ware has carelessness. After finding that with
the notebook, I waited until the next lull to fifty
six would only count music for company to examine it
at my locker. Counting on the safety of a spare
bob overhead, I thumbed through the pages more carefully. The
interest skipt in tone some times halfway through a line,
one hand heavy, another lighter, as if several people had
kept track. Halfshets of inventory. Lists were taped to the inside,
covers altered in jagged pen Electronic inventory for small appliances,
immersed blendos, balluted speakers, power banks appeared again and again
with numbers mustmatch to store records, products erased or double,
as if someone had tried to mark what was an
accounted for but never caught up. I couldn't shake the
feeling that the time circled in mark wall was some
time between two fifteen and three forty five in the morning,
were more important than the listings. One page simply labeled
an airy MIP sketched roughly with arrows safe by employee lockers,
watched by the back stairwell in the margin, over and
over warnings, don't linger at the coolers past three five.
Never accept a call to the warehouse Before two forty,
I've always avoid housewors. Three seventeen, I cross chapped my
own logs out of idle prudence. Sure enough, my ricker
from the first night didn't align with the computer inventory.
I caught the boxes delivered and unpacked. Yet a whole
crate of phone charges registered is never arriving. None of
it made sense, not unless someone was altering the inches
While the rest of us worked the laide shift that night,
Curiosity at wagcaution. The paper's warnings dogged at my mind.
My resolve loasted until three eight I tested the theory,
walked past houseways, phones and lighting aisle, watched as nothing
seen to occur. The ale was still, save for a
feint electronic wine from an uncalibrated TV. At three sixteen,
I drifted closer, stale, hot in my throat, ice peering
over a cardboard display. That's when, not at the stroke
of three three seventeen, but just before reen appeared expression
unreadable and flagged me down by the pain supplies with
a distracted, urgent nod. Need help that back, she said, flatly,
I hesitated, looks quite here, Breena Didlumy's ask for something,
her lips barely parted, eyes flicking to the mirror dome
security camera above housewars doesn't need stocking, come on. Her
tone was oddly final, so obliged following her away from
the circle time like a dog wary of an unsoun fence.
After we moved to the next aisle, lights briefly dimmed.
The silence that fell in Housewarves was denser than before,
as if an invisible curtain flicked between us and the
rest of the store. There was no great event, no
shouting or crushed, just the sense of a puzzle piece
snapping quietly out of place. For the rest of the night,
I caught, for agmented glimpses a distant voice echoing in
pet Supplies when nobody should be there. Loomy slipped by
with the clipboard when the cameras flickered black. Twice I
caught Corey hossing through a locked aisle, his cot loaded
with bags he kept covered with plastic sheeting, shooting me
a ghost of a grin. As he vanished in the
security camera's blind spot, it was impossible to ignore herm
My steps were quietly steered away from certain areas during
certain minutes. The times in the notebook stopped feeling like
sculls from a board employee in more like a synchronized
schedule one I was expected to obey without ever being
told the rules. After an hour of failed to sleep
the next day, I started copying down pages from the notebook,
partial lists, altered locks, every warning that was repeated or revised.
While the store idled After two in the morning, I
made an excuse to slip from my section entrail Corey
as he abandoned his cleaning rotation to hang around the
loading dock, glancing at his phone, only to vanish through
the employees only corridor when the clock ticked toward three ten.
Once I spotted both Corey and Rena glancing at the
watches in unison, drifting away from visibility the paths winding
around storage rooms that never unlocked during day shift. Whatever
was going on, I was the only one playing the game.
Reno only spoke to direct me away, never toward a
crime in process. Corey played the part of the perennial
goof off, unless someone less familiar got near the freezer
doors of the run are, in which case he'd become
business like in bolt mid conversation. The longer I watched,
the more unnoticed side effects, lockers being emptied like they
would never used security Budge's reissue to new hires whose
names didn't match anyone I'd seen on the floor. If
a person vanished from the schedule, the records were scupped
so thoroughly you couldn't determine when they'd lost clocked in,
let alone, how and why they'd left. Some people just
drop off the list. Reena had explained one night, eyes
brief and tight, like she was rehearsing somebody else's dialog.
A rumor skinned the break room that Tammika from Receiving
had gotten a new job moved to boys, but nobody
had a forwarding address, and nobody ever found her box cutter.
Whenever I tried to flag down mister Griggs, he'd be
climbing into his office or pouring over paperwork. And though
he always managed to distract it all right there Karrer,
his tone implied every question was best left and asked
Desperate for better evidence, I spent a full shift trying
to access the security system from the batter break room
terminal left over computer with a sticky arquy and a
login prompt. I failed every time. What I did find
at the bottom of a sheffolder were lists of stored
camera feeds, short segments several minutes each overlapping the same
deserted isles where the notebooks so called its warnings. I
began cross reference in the Times and my notes with
the video feed directories. If a camera cut out between
say two thirty nine and two forty four, there was
always a matching warning in the notebook two forty ah
eighteen inaccessible. The glitches had a rhythm. They never happened
in the high traffic areas, only by corners, stockroom corridors,
and most often the Houseware's owl with its haunted reputation.
One morning, just before my shift ended, I watched from
the break room as the cameras started to blink out
one by one along the outer aisles. At three seventeen exactly,
the Houseware's feet went fuzzy, then returned three minutes later.
The notebook had predicted it so precisely. I almost laughed,
except the coal prickle and my lungs wouldn't let me
exhale comfortably. The next ile was spent standing at my bay,
pretending to face product labels, while my mind shined between
fear and calculation. The urge to confirm burn me. The
following night, I fixed my phone at the ready, determined
to see from myself if anything happened at the prescribed moments,
I got as close as I dared to the forbidden zone.
At three thirteen. The store was empty as always, but
this time I heard two distinct voices overlapping in the
warehouse behind a rolling fire door. I spoke too quickly
to decipher, but the tone was urgent, tense. I duffed
behind a pillar, cracked my phone just enough for audio recording,
but when I peered around, the voices fell silent, and
the swinging door creaked open on its own. I slipped
closer and saw Corey, his cap pulled low, shoulders tight,
passing a sealed cardboard box, black tape pinching the edges
Tolomy's who scribbled rapidly on his tablet with style as
clenched like a weapon. A minute later, renappeared exchanging a
cardboard touch with Limmies, and after a quick nod, they
both left through the maintenance only corridor toward the loading dock.
I cut, clattered on the tile, and disappeared round the corner.
Instinct kept me hiddenuntil I heard Rubisol's queak on vinyl.
I spun and found Greggs standing between aisles, arms folded
neatly behind his back, like apparent catching a child, his
mouth pressed into a thin smiley, learning the layout to
night Cora A loaded question, soft but not mused, I
managed to shrug, fumbling my phone back into my pocket.
I just wanted to get head on stocking. Thought I
heard something, but nothing. He peered at me with the
dull wisdom of someone who'd spent too lawn indoors Beneathas's
ficial lighting. A word of advice, don't let your curiosity
run ahead of your paper. Ad If you don't belong somewhere,
don't try to make out your business. His gaze linger
then moved on. My hands wouldn't stop shaking for ten
full minutes after he left. That night, I started keeping
my own notes on a beronapad, cataloging obsessive, scaredy every clue,
circle times, missus, stock, glitch cameras, staff with blank records.
The list of vanished employees grew, as did the tempo
of my own dread. Each time I thought about quitting,
I told myself I wanted the money, but the truth
was deeper. I hunger for confirmation that I wasn't imagining
the secret shape of the night shift's machinery. It wasn't
until my fifth overnight, in the shadow of another blacked
out camera fee, that I finally cracked the notebook's repeating coats.
I had made a spradsheet of circle times and compared
them with the lost signal logs from security. Every single
one match exactly down to the second, at the moment
a camera dropped, the moment the notebook worn to stay away.
It was as tight as a compulsion. Fueled by paranoia
and lack of sleep, I sknuck a trip to the
only working printer. Reno was off for stocking, and Corey
was hiding in the manager's office. I printed several logs
showing which cameos went dead, when and for how longb
Always in the part of the store superficed by Loomis
was two silent runners the roster changed, but the faces
never did. The operation, whatever it was, staved, laser focused
and inhumanly consistent. Next, I tried comparing old employee lists
pieced together from break room masters and the stack of
outdated print outs the every person who'd vanished at work
several shifts that overlapped in pattern, assigned to the isles
marked and safe in the notebook. Almost always tagged during
those very camera lapses. People I'd never met, but whose
locker tags and initials match the logs. Deborgy Marquess, Tamika Rick,
someone who had only ever signed their name of h.
Someone saw something was timing these disappearances with clock like precision,
and the logs proved it. I found a final look
that night, en exception report with my own name at
the top. Beneath it three seventeen housewhers next shift. The
entry was unambiguous, appended by a line that sent a
vein of ice through my chest. Observed review action pending
supervision loomies. When I finished reading, every instinct screened around
quit hied. But when I scanned the empty aisles and
felt the oppressive hum of the lighting, I knew it
was too late for any easy exit. Hypermart's nightshift had
noticed me. I wasn't the observer any more. I was
on the list. I didn't finish my shift, not really
afore free. I was still in the clock, standing in
a narrow maintenance corridor by the vending machines, stirring at
the after image of my name on the exception report,
the word pending echoing in my ears. I tid in
my print outs deep in my coat pocket, checking every
few minutes to make sure the thin sheaf of paper
wasn't poking out on the surface. Everything was perfectly the same,
with the quiet rhythm of shelf stocking, the oil is
shimmer on the bakery counter, the persistent hum of the overheads.
But behind a glass of the lock stock room, I
could sense changes, movements out of sight, the weight of
some one watching, all alert. When my badge beat for
break of four fifteen, I slipped out as usual. My
legs carried me almost on the pilot to the bathroom
furthest from the main office, where midday sunlight was only
a rumor and the ceiling noted every movement. I leaned
over the sink, water running too cold, tempers pressed to
the porcelain if there was a way out, It looked
narrower every second. I left early, feigning illness. Griggs raised
an eyebrow when I said my stomach was churning, but
he only nodded, shifting paperwork on his clipboard clock off
at the main reader. He told me, his tone identical
to when he warn me not to pry. Loomis was
nowhere in sight. Reena and Corey worked the back of
the store, careful not to look in my direction. By
the time I got outside, the sky had begun to
blee blue dawn, brushing the horizon uber strip molsolouettes. My
mind retraced every step of the past week, searching for
something I'd missed. I should have felt free, but the
after taste of surveillance remained an invisible hand tugging at
my shoulder even as I left the fluorescent well behind.
That day, I tried to sleep. I failed. Shadows from
the blinds, crept over the little box of stolen print
outs in the battle blue notebook, Cowering under my jacket,
I swore I heard the elevey to stop and start
outside my apartment every few minutes, though nobody ever knocked.
Even the groan of all plumbing sounded like the cautious
avouns of unseen feet. Around three in the afternoon, my
phone chined reminder hive a mout nights ship ten fifty
five pm. My stomach twisted, dreading a return, but a
sense of inevitability weighed harder. Each time I considered not
showing up. I'd see my own name on the exception list.
That wasn't something I could ignore, at least not if
I wanted any sense of control. If I failed to
show would they chase me? Or would my record simply
scrub itself like Termochas or marc Es s raised from
the road to one pixel at a time. An hour
before sunset, I ran some basic searches on my laptop.
There were no headlines, no lawsuits, no stores of vanished employees,
just the usual trickle reviews complains about slow service and
out of stock items, and annual banners for bulk matter sales.
One review, three stars read quiet at night, floors always clean.
I wondered which staff member had mopped the floors after
I left, and why nobody ever saw them marking. I'd
debate a call in the police or the head office.
How would I sound, paranoid, confused, spinning urban legends about
a big box store in its vanishing night's staff. The
evidence in my pockets was thin, some falsified inventory records,
a notebook full of cryptic warnings, and a handful of
camel log It was to crime until someone named it
out loud at dusk. I opened the note BECO on
my kitchen table, this time pouring over every margin and
in line, looking for a crack in the code. Some
skulls mapped at new employee rotations, arrows linking names and times,
always circling back to the forbidden minute three seventeen. One
page was covered in an inventory grid headphones, raders, prepaid phones,
all quantities, altered, checks and xs in far columns. I
flipped backward and found old warnings crossed out and rewritten.
Jon't train knew higher and receiving past two forty. They
never approached colored doors alone. I wondered how many people
had written these. Was the same hand behind every warning,
or did the fierce accumulate with each new recruit. I
traced the schedule backward and found three vanished names. Tamika,
Rick Debrisch, assigned repeatedly to high theft stock areas precisely
when the cameras dropped offline. The pattern was mathematical, pitiless,
and complete. You didn't have to guess what happened next.
The sequence told you everything. I spent the rest of
the evening rearranging evidence on my table, trying to assum
new solution interview. When the time came, A clocked in,
right down schedule, keeping my head low, my face blank.
As I swiped in, Griggs handed me my stock sheet
for the night, his voice cool and scrupulously neutral. Housewares.
At three, he said, plenty to tidy there, don't miss
your window behind him, loom has met my eyes for
a fraction of a second. Let's compress in something like satisfaction.
The night passed in a watery haze. I was dripping
by in stretches of fever sh liitness. I worked my
way firs, signed tasks, canned goods, then pittfood, always finding
my stocking areas kept me one railway from a monitor corridor,
never quite able to touch the core of things. I
kept my notes on me, double checked the time compulsively.
The minutes felt both too long and too short. At
two fifty five, an announcement chimed overhead amid volume, distant
but unmisakable, the inventory cross check and housewares commencing shortly.
Please ensure all stalkers report to section by three. I
checked the posted rohta. My own name appeared at the bottom,
childish and out of place, paired with Housewhare's inspection three
is ireminous three thirty. No such inspection had occurred before.
The note clabeled all similar times with warnings. I watched
Rina round the corner, near by, her cart gliding purposely
down a parallel aisle. As I drifted through the store
and a securitous route toward Housewares, my brain replayd fragments
of conversation and hard glances. The cold at my neck
was brighter than the overheads. Each step brought a greater
sense of crossing a line. At three twelve, I lingered
near the coffee maker's the glow from disposable monk displays
shining up at me in fractured reflections. Was this what
it felt like just before getting fired or something far worse?
I waited poise. By the endcap the store was dead still.
The only sound a brief shutter from the h wreck
above without warning. Rena A purchased smooth, silent arrival. Management
needs your help at the back, she said, her jaw
tight fuddy inspection. Yes, now, please, they don't like waiting.
She met my gaze with an unreadable urgency, her voice
so clipped, bordered on a thread or a plea. I
nodded and fell and stepped, heart tropping with each stride
through the frozen white glare of the Store of Time Compress.
The air thickened, and I felt myself swallowed by ritual.
We crossed into the main aisle as the PA system
flickered again stock check and progress ayle access restricted until
three thirty. Rena led me behind the cutain at the
fruit court to shortcut when his staff ever took and
stop by emergency exits. No fire drills at hypermart, not
in the black of night, just rules drawn an invisible ink.
Suddenly I recognized the maneuver. We wrote distract, divide. The
staff moved on invisible threads choreographed by the Times, and
warnings penned in a notebook. As we came to halt
by the back wall, Rena's mask slipt just a little.
I never asked for this, Kara, don't take it personally.
You don't have to end up like the others. The
hand trembled on her barcoat's ganner. What's really happening here?
My voice was small in the cavernous dark. She squeezed
her eyes, shirt took a breath. The inventory always wins.
That's the rule, the rota. It doesn't let you be
pot way. Either you pull the cad or you vanish
into the gaps. She opened her mouth to say more,
but the sound of rolling plastic wheels down the main
throw of her choke off her words. Lumi strode our way,
his steps too quiet, face and readable in the ghostly glad.
The time was all he said of verdict, not a statement.
Rina nodded and backtracked to her work station. I felt
lumissus Gay's linger as a hesitate, torn between compliance and survival.
I forced myself forward and stepped into house whars. The
isle was deserted. The faint smell of old electronics and
plastic failed the air. The light was fuzzy and indirect.
The PA system stopped. My pulse thundered in my own
ears as I checked the exact time, three seventeen. Nothing
or rather everything at presents the hidden breath behind my own.
Hovering at the end of the aisle, one of the
black domes overhead flicked was the security feed went blank
for a breath. Shadows shifted as some one moved quickly.
At the far end, Corey hunched low, sliding a box
through the shelves, taping it, then hiding it behind a
promotional display with uncanny precision. It wasn't the act of
a kell As thief. It was a ritual performed a
hundred times before. At the opposite end, Groggs appeared just
in time to see me watching. His eyes were hard,
his posture suddenly straight backed, not at all the company's
stews he usually effected. You see enough that he said,
not angry, just resigned, as if my roll had been decided.
The moment I stepped through the sliding doors, all those
nights to go. I didn't answer. I stepped back, shaking
but not running. Griggs glanced Corey, then to the dome
camera above. Litzpersed clock back to your section Kara house
with stock coount stunt for to night. Don't be laid again.
The message was clearer, do not linger. This was a rehearsal,
a warning, not a full expulsion. He moved on Corey,
vanishing into the service corridor. I staggered out of the aisle,
hands tingling, unable to fully process what I'd witnessed. The
empty hush of the store pressed at me, thick with
threat and invitation. My name was on the list, but
my fate vanished or induct it remained uncertain. All I
knew for sure under the brutal, sleepless light was this.
From here on out, everything that happened on Hypermark's night
shift would return to that visible line at three seventeen,
the moment I was no longer just a bystander, but
a participant in the company's secret tally. If survival meant
playing by rules I hadn't agreed to, then I'd have
to stop learning them fast. With the next shift limbing,
I tucked the notebook deeper into my jacket, retreated to
the break room, and began planning one eye on the clock,
the other on every shadow that moved, Waiting for the
game to start all over again. I tucked the note
deeper into my jacket, retreated to the break room, and
began planning. One eye on the clock the other on
every shadow that moved, waiting for the game to start
all over again. For the next half hore, my hands
wouldn't settle each motion, scrawling and note were positioning. My
badge felt freighted with more significance than it or to.
Outside the breakroom's cloudy window, the aisles shivered under the
buzz of dying Galidee approached in the crack final chair
closest to the door and tried to listen for normalcy.
A vending machine cycling, water pipes expanding in the ceiling.
But the sounds layered on each other out of sinc
so even the familiar textures of a nice shift groom
familiar in my mind. The blue note e spoiled on
my knee, pagesplayed under my pointedly gittering thumb. I flaped
or diakroom I hadn't noticed on the fur slipped through
A doodled outline of the stores lay out from above,
full of hurd crossing arrows, different pens, different hands. Some
one had charted movement passed for multiple nights in a row.
Each route devose sharply from the houseware's isle, leaping behind
the load. Duck Cavin passed the supply closets, always sides
stepping every circle times down like a patch of whit cement.
A triangle was drawn over certain intersections. The word observe
appeared again, written twice in boxed and heavy black lines
at the next corner of the page, fainter palmps us
against more recent scribbles. I saw the words no way out,
almost erased by littering. Who'd retten it? I couldn't tell.
My name was nowhere in the map, but I scanned
the chart with a rising certainty that it was meant
for whoever happened to find it. Next, a rustle came
from the hallway, quick nervous steps. I snapped the noble
clothes and slipped it under my folded arms. Corey poked
his head inside, glancing first at the monitor by the fridge,
then at me. Ye seen Griggs. His voice was too bright,
too rehearsed. Just missed him, I said, and hoped it
sounded casual. He fidgeted with his lanard eyes, darting again
to the clock. Be sure to take your lunch before four.
Guy from Maine Securities coming back to check the screens.
He says, it's random, but it never is I let
the sile and stretch A lot of random sat lately.
He offered a little smirk without moving his mouth. Here
well place eats people alive if you're not fast. He
left before I could prod further. When the door clicked,
I breathed out, slowly, flushing away tremor. The room's corners
felt closer in Far down the corridor, the pier system warbled,
nothing in particular, just static and a clip phrased about
routine monitory. I thought of the invisible tally and the
notebook names crossed off substitutes written in hollow hope. At
four sharp, I slipped out, pretending to search for forgotten
cleaning supplies. The vending machine buzzed as I passed. On
the far side of the staff hallway, the maintenance door
stood open a crack, nothing wrong with it, just an
invitation never to be accepted or right. I peered through,
made out the bench shadow of Rhen Inside. She was
methodically stacking boxes, head down, moving as if she couldn't
allow herself to look left or wray. I lingered just
a moment if she noticed me. She gave no sign,
but for an instant her hand paused on a box,
a small square unit emblazoned with a Bluetith logo, then
tucked it behind two larger off brandgarden lights. Another tick
on a lest I was barely keeping ahead of. Back
in the main store it a thin ripple of music
blared from the overheads, the stations set decades ago and
never changed. I drifted along the edge of a dead
end asle eyed a security don stall lens, and wondered
if anyone sat watching on the other end, or if
by this ire of the watchers too had fallen prey
to the rolls written in that batted blue book. I
breathed in a chill and said in myself there would
be another shift, routine inventory the illusion of safety. But
now now the rules applied to me, and every next
second felt perilous, heavy with unspoken agendas. I hadn't yet
grasped the stor swallowed me back into its grid, one
calculated step at a time, my pulse keeping time with
the silent, predatory rhythm of a night that refused to end.
The rest of my shift played out inside a shield
of numb, raw awareness. I barely registered the hiss of
the automatic doors or the dead mechanical wine of the
check out belts. Everything narrowed down to surfaces, cold steel shelves,
sticky vinyl neon lights, fluttering at the limits of my
peripheral vision. My hands did their work almost in secret,
the muscle memory of stocking shampoo and lining up rows
of soup cans. My brain was elsewhere, looping over the
fact that my own name was now circled in a
system i'd only just begun to decode. Every side long
stare from Corey, every clip warning in Rena's voice, every
two long paus from Griggs as he checked the time.
They all felt like private signals in a coat I
was months too late to learn. At far fifty one,
when Rhena brush passed me by the brick room, her
gaze flecked away, as if she was practicing keeping me
out of forcus. Corey didn't even try to muster a
wave outside. The sky was turning flat, pale gray, and
the edges of my own reflection blowed in the freezer door.
As I checked one last cell by date, I couldn't
recall stocking half the items I just handled, but whether
I'd seen Leamy slip out the side office all that
stuck was the iron fisted logic with which I had
been penciled onto a list away. The day's rituals almost
but not quite hid the machinery turning in the shadows.
I barely managed six eyurs asleep. After returning to my apartment,
the saw to paf rest, where every creaking pipe are
passing headlike, kept snapping. My eyel is open. I pulled
the battered notebook from under a pile of sweaters and
leafed through again, as if a new warning might have materialized.
The diagrams, the increasingly disorderly hand dried the marching parade
of names annow as it was as if the book
itself mapped a conspiracy of absences. The negative space where
people had once fitted neatly into the night shift grid
and then were erased, And now my own name stared back,
circled with leaden finality. That next day passed in a
static cloud. My heart let to retire. The phone buzzt
expecting a call from Griggs whore. A noise complained from
my neighbors above. I heard nothing. Pressure to go back,
to show up and preserve my routine ward inside me,
with a growing certainty that I crossed some unseen barrier.
I wasn't just a tempt in a bad economy any more.
Hype and Mart had found a use for me, or
was testing what use i'd serve I'd ask. My options
felt smaller than ever. The notebook stayed sipped, my back
gack tucked inside my locker ready fleece. But it might
as well have been a time bomb. I skipped dinner
and pissed the length of my studio twice before finally
sitting at the kitchen counter and reopening the print outs.
The lost time locks, the inventory anomalies, my own name
at the end, like a mathematical remained of the equation,
refused to tell me how to clear. If I took
the night off, I half believed I'd find my mail
books empty the next morning. My schedule wiped with a
corporate truck, but that didn't feel final enough for Hypermart.
That didn't square with what happened to the are the
names people who vanished so completely even corkers forgot them
within days. It was more likely that my absence would
register as a glitch in the code had left to
be corrected forcely if needed. I arrived, as always under
the sodium wash parking lights. The interior smelled like ammonia,
and over roasted coffee sent the clont to my skin.
Despite the January freeze. I cocked in at ten fifty one,
three minutes early, and found my locker in the stair.
But the padlock turned to a new number in a sequence.
It took me three tries to open it. For a moment,
I wondered if that was meant as a warning, a
test of how observant I'd become. The night ran with
a new current urgency rounding every corner. The store felt
less open. Somehow, the asles shunted closer together, light reflecting
like bloodless water off stainless fixtures. Reno hovered by the
front end with the clip boar, but the way she
marked her papers fell performative, empty. Something to distract me
from watching. Luomies emerged from his office of precise intervals,
his phone glued to his hand. Corey, slouching hard into
the roll slack night worker never once looked up as
I passed, though his hands shook slightly above the bar codes.
Ganner I drifted more ghosts than employee counting camera domes,
listening for the low clicks of the reeks sets behind
the wall panels. I worked my scheduled section half heartedly,
moving boxes just enough to blend in, but never enough
to lose sight of housewares or the back corridors. At
one fifty, I risked ducking into the security bay, claiming
I need its bare batteries for the scanning guns, the
brick room's ancient one. At around a forty second cycle
of camera feeds, this time I noticed something new, a
split second where four feet cut at one sile sixteen
through nineteen precisely with the notebook's danger arrows converged. I
jotted the times down on a receipt, then turned on
my phone recorder, locking it as a silent witness to
the screen. Studying the pattern, the logic revealed itself with
startling elegance that sifts and shifted every few nights, as
of some scheduling algorithm. Inot pace, any employe's attempt to
outguessing the con the handuffs, the missing stock, the non
existent or erace names. It was all mapped, not just
in physical space, but in time time to the vanishing point.
Each old emploise vanishings overlapped with a new crude stepping up.
Every camera shadow was a shadow of a body present
were absent on the wrong side of the game. I
slipped back on to the floor. Pulse cookining in aisle eleven.
Corey intercepted me, all full casual. He ever feel like
time ouside ways in this place, He whispered, checking the
edge of the mop handle, as if looking for cracks.
I tried to probe for more. I guess it depends
on your section. What happens to people who transfer out?
He smiled thinly, the joke never reaching his eyes. Some
people just get promoted. Others they miss a tick and disappear.
The unspoken message don't miss your tick. A two forty
seven a cradvens or to tect goods block part of
the electronics aisle. The tag bore a time stamp two
forty three almost synchronized to my movement. Rena maneuvered passed
with purposeful energy, gently moving me out of the way.
Her touch feather light on my elbow. Break Room. Karra
Griggs wants a word inside the air stank of bumpopcorn
an old sanitizer. Kriggs was there, leaning on a mop
handle the company clip board A shield. He didn't raise
his voice. We all depend on each other here, gettin
the way you mess up the cycle. You on board
with that? I nodded, the only safe response understood. He
gripped them up tighter. Last person who asked too much
is gone. I don't need another. Just to your job
and you'll be fine. His stair hovered in the cold
middle of the wall, as if reading instructions left behind
in some old aversion of the store. When he left,
I felt my inside vibrate, as if the cooling fans
behind the wall were secretly tuning themselves to me. Three
e M hit and the game played out again. This
time I was ready. The PA announced a routine safety's weep,
and Cory Brush passed, twisting a key in the utility
closet before pausing and glancing at me. I followed. He
unlocked the second door, one I hadn't known existed, Mark
lod O r mby the Hengees squeat, but the interior
was silent shells lined with Tait security sealers and a
rat's nest of abandoned plastic bins. He motioned me inside
and glanced both ways down the hole. You keep your
head down to night Kara, don't try to be clever
no matter what you see. The warning sat in my
chest like a weight. Then and the light flickered. I
stepped backward in the world broke into fractured whites and
oily grays. Through a gap in the crack of the
back wall, I saw Loomis directing Rina behind the loading bay, voices,
head sharp with calculation, a dolly stack with mart boxes,
blooted speakers, label makers, pass strip stood parkside, a gap
in the camera's reach. A surge of footsteps sounded. Corey
jerked his head. Go noll, I did heart hammering. I
slipped out just as a pair of uniform guards swept
the corridor, not looking directly at any one but the
radio's court. Just as my foot hit the door frame,
the world outside, a black up dumpsters overlet street, felt
radioactive in its dullness. Back inside, I paced the main floor,
breathing through the chemical tang of cleaner. I checked the
directory by the central computer, looking for any trace of
my own schedule, any sign my shift was about your
end for good. It blinked up a carra at m
house wearers stock count three emince three thirty. The script
was playing out to the minute, with me in the
stoning roll. With nineteen minutes until shift close, I made
a final desperate play for understanding. I trailed Rina on
her rounds, staying three paces back. She moved like someone
working thru drill, pausing only by the lot freezer doors,
checking her watching precise intervals. Corey peeled off, crossing aisles
fourteen and fifteen, whispering into his fun No, not a fawn,
but a walk. He clipped his belt. Hidden from most customers,
My head spun fact stacking up faster than my brain
could make sense. Only one thing made sense. Every movement
on Hypermart's floor, every supply ran, every missing outum and
erase name. It all existed as a system, a feed
that chose who made it through the night and who
dropped off the lists and to night. Every sign pointed
to me as the test case. My hands itch for
the comfort of the notebook. But it was back in
the brick room. I doubled back, waited every step, expecting limmys,
for Greggs or even another guard to jump into my path.
Nobody did. When I reached the door, I found it
slightly A low notebook set impossibly in the exact center
of the table, a challenge or maybe an invitation. The
room was empty. The monitor above the fridge tick to
a new cycle, feeds mostly blank. I snapped open the book.
Any sheet of paper was wedged inside. The handwriting was blocky, deliberate,
clock out clean nor you were gone, no heroes. Next
to it, I circled three seventeen arrows pointing maintenance corridor,
no entry. I scanned the other page as one was
torn out, as if deliberately removed. My skin crawled. I
pressed a notebook into the lining of my coat, stepped
outside and heard footsteps in the corridor shuffle soft just
behind the service door. I moved away hard in my
mouth and made my decision to night. I would cross
the invisible line not to play the game, not out
of reckless courage or even fear, but because there would
be no more chances to see all the pieces at once.
I darted up the aisle, surreptitiously, glancing over my shoulder
by the clocks and pea chimes. The next pattern would
hit him in its three seventeen housewers maintenance corridor. I
made a show for stocking greeting cards. Then, when the
stores low speakers began their warble routine, I slept behind
the displays and waited. Time stuttered. I tasted nerves in
the back of my throat. The well trank sharpened to
grain yellowed wax in the floor, the sweet rotting undertow
of stale candy in the air. Then the housewae camera
blinked out. I clutched my phone and puted the record button,
wheeling myself into silence. As footsteps shuffled behind the stat boxes,
the operation unfolded clean as a ritual sacrifice. Loomis led
first tablet balanced against his arm, moving with impossible precision.
Corey followed, all shuffling, nosness gone, caught stacked high. Rena last,
hands bare, unlocking the far maintenance door with a quich
she wore on a chain inside her shirt. They worked
in tandem. Boxes passed off and cataloged, relaying a coded message.
The maintenance door creaked, swinging open on a thin slice
of black night, A batted white ven idyl just beyond tailgate,
popping As Rena rolled out the dolly, Lomy checked his watch,
a silent metronome, while Corey slid his tope marching into
the band's gut. No shouts, no panic. This was old routine.
Every gesture measured and rehearse. I filmed, knuckles burning from
the pressure on my phone. My breath came shallow. A
figure moved behind me, a reflection in a convexed mirror.
I hadn't noticed. I pocketed the phone, heart ramping, my
feet prickled with the urged to bolt. A shadow stretched
across the tiles. I dipduck, tried to disappear. It was
no use. A hand clamped gently but firmly on my shoulder.
Let's not do this here, Lomy said, softly, voice stripped
of emotion. He steered me, no struggle, only inevitability through
the staff hallway and into his den. The office was
smaller than I have remembered, ere Thic with industrial cleaner.
Greggs and Reno were already there, standing as if for
a presentation. The door snature behind Cory. A moment later,
Lumi's moved with the certainty of lawn habit. Sit, he said,
motioning to a plastic tail that carved lines into my thighs.
Ye know what we are, amess M. I shook my head.
My voice felt swallowed. I know enough, he nodded, where
not thieves were not here. Hypermart doesn't care what happens
past midnight, so long as the schedule's tight, the camera's work,
and nobody fast complaints. But there's always shrinkage, always temptation,
and always eventually some one who wants to look behind
the curtain. He turned and just tablet around on the screen.
Exception car am status pending. You have three choices, Loomis continued, dead,
come go along, keep your mouth shut, get your bonus
and forget the faces. Or you try to walk and
vanish like the ones who thought they could say no.
The third, you try to tell someone, you try to
act the hero, and you'll find the systems already written
you out. We're offering you the only real safety left,
because once you are on the schedule, he tapped at
my circled name, your options are out of your hands.
No threats, no melodrama, just the flat industrial logic of
the place. Corey wouldn't meet my eyes. Rena's hands twisted
her idea lanyard. Griggs leaned against the wall, gaze fogged.
Loomis placed my phone on the table, my screen still open,
recordings stopped decision by dawn. Stay here, we'll know what
you choose. The arrow was heavy and thick. Briggs flipped
the lock, and the four of them filed out, leave
me alone. With the ring of fluorescent light and the
slow tick of the clock. The irow's drag, and my
thoughts scrambled between fight and flight. I fingered the ragged
notebook deep in my pocket. Now and what the tiny
rad recording led blink off on my phone. Chadow shifted
in the chip paint hum of the elevator at bat
Pole's ladder. No windows to count down by, just the sterile,
relentless take of a store that never really closed. Near daybreak,
the latch twitched and Corey slipped inside, tiptoeing so his
shoes barely screaked. He flicked a nervous glance over his shoulder. Here,
he mattered, slipping my phone back along with something heavy,
and called a small security pass with a red over
eyed sticker. His voice dropped lower. If you wand out,
you'll want this the ramp I produce corner stairwell, but
don't get caught in Cora, he faltered. You never really leave,
not once here on the list not all the way?
How did you y help? His map twisted tie resignation
edged deep because you don't get a warning twice neither
did I back? Then now go before they run the
morning checks. With that, he was gone, the door swinging
softly shut behind him. The first thing I did was
checked the pass security over eyde dated that day, badge
number inked in the back. My phone miraculously uncracked, showed
the video file all nearly ten minutes, shaky but visible faces, boxes,
license play visible on the naibil. I pocketed everything, unwaited
for the sound of footsteps to fade along the corridor.
The next shift would arrive soon, yawning and hungry, expecting
their rolls to be uncomplicated. For me, the stores endless
night had narrowed to an exit and two options, run
and pray or make myself a part of the machinery.
I made my choice At six forty two, bodge clipped
in one hand, I moved quickly but not hurriedly, through
the painted, worn holes. My sneakers whispered along the noleum
as I avoided the break room and the maintenance corridor,
steering clear of the places mapped is watched in a
blue notebook. The ramp I produced was deserted. The stow
will be on shadow, gripped and silent. The over eyed
badged chirped as I pressed it to the metal pad.
Somewhere are relay clicked. I edged inside, slipped past a
stack of discarded cardboard and the lingering, lemony wreak of cleaner.
The outside door scraped, letting an early morning light thin
and harrowed. The city waited, gray and slow. For a moment.
I imagined alarms blaring, managers stampeding after me, but everything
remained as quiet. I'm forbidding us before I moved faster,
skirted the outer fence, half waiting for a hand to
grab my shoulder and drag me back into the fluorescent maze.
No one followed. I reached the edge of the lot duck,
behind the skeletal branches of a dicative oak, and watched
as the sun breached the line of roof tops. My
hands would not stop shaking, but I was out for
the first time in weeks. I let myself breathe fully.
I walked past security franket his post never glanced my way,
kept my head down and felt the notebook's weight drag
at my coat. It was over. At least that's what
I let myself believe. For the length of that walk home.
This bled into restless, jittery intervals. The blue note book
stayed si inside my back back. Sometimes when I passed
by the store or heard the far off cutter of
a shopping cart, my stomach would contract, as if expecting
someone to point and drag me back inside. I didn't
return any calls from unlisted numbers, didn't respond to the
generic emails from Pyol, didn't check the break room group chat.
When my phone buzzed with a routine scheduling reminder, I
deleted the thread and erase work contacts. Still, certaines kept
accumulating my mail. Woks never exactly secure, bore scratch marks.
A stan was steaming, windows idled in the street below.
For any or some evenings, packages I never ordered materialized
on my doorstep, as if the company hoped to tempt
me back with silent gifts. At night, I dreamed in
the frozen palette of security feed gray and flickering led,
always hearing the warble Pa system just at the edge
of wakefulness. One afternoon had faced three corners over. A
man in a nondescript jacket, settled at my table, placed
an envelope beside my coffee, and left in silence inside
one sheet, my name, tact and clean, next to a
location in a time, A new schedule, a new address,
identical to the lost row in the notebook, except this
time no familiar co no margin warnings. It sat in
my back as I lay staring at the ceiling that night,
the blue notebook heavy on my chest. My fate was mapped, scheduled,
squared away by invisible hands. Exit was never an option
once your name was inked in the night shift diary.
It never a rased all the way. I began flipping
through the notebook at dawn, exhausted, wanting only to forget
near the back cover. A slip of paper slid out,
wedged between dolgear pages. I frowned. I hadn't noticed it before.
On one side, my own name, block letters, on the other,
in my handwriting, but unfamiliar, as if scrolled in the
grip of a sleep walker. Stock Room three seventeen A
M don't be late. I closed my eyes, breath trembling
on impulse. I turned in my chair, drawn to the
worn edge of my closet's mirror, the place I had
always checked for uniform straitness badge at the right angle
behind me, half seen in a reflections surface of figure
stood hypermarte vesse, face obscured under bad light, motionless, impatient,
My throat seized, every muscle alive with memory and warning.
For a one suspended second, I listened to the phantom
hum of a thousand fluorescent bulbs, the clawckless, endless, night
shift ticking forever just behind the glass. Only when I
reached back and found the blue note but cold against
my skin, did the figure dissolve, leaving my own blood
face gazing back at me spend it in a light
that would never truly count down to morning. For a
long minute, I just sat, letting a chill bleed through
my skin. The figure was gone. My own reflection was
all that remained, eyes wide and stripped of all pretens,
haunted but still present. The notebook lay against my palm,
waited with warnings from hands before mine. I wondered, not
for the first time he had left these messages for me,
or if they left them for themselves, The mind cleaving
under sleep of cycles on watchful lights night stretched on
behind the glass at my window. Head light passed and faded.
My phone screen flushed life on the counter, pulsing with
a red alerts, A new schedule, another routine night audit,
always in a different corner of the city, always with
my name attached. I could delete the notifications, mute the reminders,
but it changed nothing. I was marked now more indelibly
than any badge or uniform. The schedule would chase me
as long as it took. I forced myself up, pausing
on the thin rug. The envelope from the man in
the cafe was tapped in the drawer and touched since
the day he left it. I found myself staring at
its edge, half expecting it to slide out on its own,
multiplying like a virus. I opened my laptop, pulled up
a blank new message addressed to an anonymous tip line,
a police desk and investigate a blog. I hesitated. I
had a video chiky and raw. I had the logs,
the tampered inventory, my own name scrolling across the roster.
But Cora's warning echoed, ye never really leave, not once
y on the list. I heard over the send button,
sweat prickling the back of my neck. The blue note
bok felt heavier by the second, the curse of blink
in time with the throun behind my ribs. I stared
down the possibility of blowing the whole thing open, making
it someone else's problem, pulling a fire alarm before it
was too late for the next name of the one
after a memory surface sharp and unwelcome. Weena's ashen face
urgent as she led me down the forbidden hallway. The
inventory always wins the road. It doesn't let you be
part way. What would happen if I spoke? Was it
just reputations that vanished? Jobs, pensions, records with something messer?
People raised so cleanly that no one asked about them again?
The caution nowd at my resolve. Outside, the wind picked up,
sending a brittle shiver along the glass. Carr's headlight swept
the wall and lingered a few seconds too long. I
stood frozen, harpy thudding and anticipation of a door knock
and arrival. But no one came. Instead, my email pinged
with a new shift, another address, another time slot, a
first set of coal digital instructions. I deleted it, though
I knew from experience that another would appear within the eyre,
and another after that. It was like the schedule itself
had become a living thing, aware of who wasn't participating,
and indifferent to all attemts at refusal. Sleep came in fragments,
formless and without comfort. I twisted between dreams, always returning
to fluorescent lit spaces, a creeping certainty that the world
behind the displays and bulcial encips would never relinquish its grip.
I learned to watch the shadows differently, each idle van
every figure lingering by my mail box became a possible harbinger.
I adopted the small habits of the hunter, scanning parking
lots before leaving, covering up the peep hole in my apartment,
or never returning home by the same Routewise, there were
days when nothing happened, and the silence seemed almost worse,
confirmation that the system had simply shifted tactics, content to
let anxiety be its only sentry. Still, I could not
let go of the evidence. The video file, the logs,
the battered notebookly became my own talismans, reminders that what
had happened wasn't paranoid, but a truth I could navigate.
I kept them hidden, checking for temper and daily, always
half convinced I would wait to find them gone or altered,
rendered usels by unseen hands. It was nearly a week
before saw Kory again, this time across a crowded street
a few blocks from my apartment. He didn't call out,
he didn't wave. For just a second, our eyes met
over the surface of steaming cars, and then he vanished
into the pedestrian flow, as if memory itself had erased
him in real time. I understood the message, no contact,
not unless there was no other way. The city pressed
on around me, worked a traffic and strange as chatter
and broken. But I lived between the lines, circled by
times and places. I could not acknowledge. Everything that mattered
had migrated to the shadow IROs where the road or rolled,
powered by invisible hands and algorithms that assigned rolls, mark exceptions,
and swept the rests away with chilling thoroughness. Late one night,
as I paced the rooms, unable to sleep, the phone rang.
No collar I d I stared as the screen pulsed
and paled, letting it ring out. It rang again. An
hour or later of the same blank number, the same
to cado rhythm. When I picked up silence, answered to silence,
and after half a minute a faint voice, jenderless and
flat and bistatic, intoned, don't miss your shift. Then the
line clicked dead for three days my nerves worth. Then
I found myself weighing options turn over what I had
spark an investigation, assuming any one believed me, assuming the
evidence didn't simply disappear or rewrote back to me. As
the scapegoat, I thought of the names in the notebook,
so many of them lost, not just to the jaw,
but memory, filed away without complaint, never followed upon by
any one who mounted. One afternoon, returning from a cafe
with takeout in hand, I spotted a slip of paper
on my door mat. No one around, no sun but
the elevator humming on the paper roster with my name,
A shift stockrum three seventeen, a m typed neat Blancasin invoice.
The message was unmistakable. I tore it up, scattered the
pieces in three different trash cands around the block, but
I doubted it made any difference. I stuck to routines,
hypervigilant pirosary runs during crowded daily winds. Left open, just
a crack, my phone would bzirely. Some night's calls from
block numbers, work schedules populated with my name always pointing
to properties had never worked in a familiar slogan's borrowed
from the script a Hypermart Reliability matters reporting required a
constant for ab of pressure, unmistikable and permanent as hunger,
they urged to confess, to pass the torch and unravel
everything ebb and surged. I wrote lengthy and sent letters
to the corporate tip line, to the partners I remembered
from those first week's Riena Corey, even luomis always I hesitated, deleted, rewrote.
I understood something elemental was at play, now a principle,
not just a crime. The company's engine preferred silence, and
those who broke routine either bekin gusts or were made
into examples. The wall beyond hypermartt felt smaller, tight as
a utility closet. I saw Rena once across the concourse
at the station, her face paler than before, I simmering
with warning. She molded only one word, don't, So I
tried to forget. I took contempt work where I could
always short term, always somewhere. The roder couldn't find me
for more than a few days, but it didn't matter
no matter where I went. The reminders arrived by digital slip,
phone buzz or a letter folded under my door Stockhram
three seventeen a M. Do not be late. Sometimes there
arrived handritten in my own blocky lots he did script.
I started second guessing myself, doubting whole loops of memory.
Was I waking to new messages shoved under the door
or had they been there all law? Was the warning
in the notebook only Ever for me, time started to
lose edges. Minute by minute. I began to wonder was
I the next in line or merely another in a
chain of exceptions meant to enforce the system for the
ones who followed me. I came home late one night
and found my apartment door unlatched. The blue noteook lay
in the counter, opened to a page I had never written.
Compliance is survival clock out clean, no signature, no hint
of food left it cold run across my neck in
a full body shutter. I sat, eyes fixed on the
then spidery script I should have left run disappeared for good.
But the rules were tighter now. The next shift, the
call came not from the Star, but from an enlisted number,
pining my phone with a location in the edge of
the city and other warehouse, another inventory, a test maybe,
or just the next act in a play that had
been scripted far above my head. I brought the note book,
the battered logs, everything I had. For two hours, I
lingered at cafe, watching traffic and counting every pass by,
weighing the oppressiveness of routine against the danger of breaking it.
The world seemed normal, people hurrying by in their own
cycles of obligation, faces lit by phone screens, not a
hint of conspiracy touching any of them. Before I could move,
someone slid into the booth across from me. No hollo,
no eye contact. He left an envelope, untouched, better mistakable
than was gone. Before I even registered the thud of
the glass door behind him. I opened it, expecting another
shift's schedule, another wrote demand, but instead it was a photograph,
black and white, overexposed me standing in the housewarre's aisle,
my head angle toward a shelf of missing stock at
the bottom. The time stemp three seventeen a m. The
date two weeks ago, not a warning, evidence proof that
some one somewhere still watched. I folded the picture, fingers trembling.
The air in the room was stifling now. I glanced around,
found no one paying attention. Even here, far from the
echoing aisles and florescent lights, the rules of the roader persisted.
A realization snapped into sharpened focus. It wouldn't end with me.
The roder replenished itself, pulled in new faces wherever routine
and need fed into its web. For every venished name,
a new one was ready to circuit. Not a chain
never truly breaking. In the weeks that followed, I obeyed routine,
more out of self preservation than hope. I made no
moose to exposed to operation, nor to join it upright.
The evidence I carried was an insurance policy I didn't
trust to hold up on the scrutiny. But letting it
go myc comantee my own disappearance. I became a shadow
in my own life, never enough presence to invite notice,
never absent enough for them to close the file, caught
eternally pending. One night, the door buzzer went off around midnight.
I waited, breath shallows, footsteps climbed my buildings, echoing stairwell.
No knock followed, no voice. I peered through the peephole,
the whole way empty. But as I turned, I noticed
the blue nopercalf to weak storm, and my back back
had been placed neatly atop my pillow, open to a
new page. This page was dated for the next morning,
a time scrawled in more recent ink three seventeen a
m arrival. Don't be late. There was no explanation, no threat.
It was simply scheduled, as personal as a dental appointment,
as impersonal as a spreadsheet. I folded the notebook closed,
heart slamming in my chest, knowing even then there would
never be a real ending, not for me nor for
anyone entered on the list there is in a day.
I don't check the mirror for the flicker of movement,
or watch for the hint of a supervisor's just behind
glass doors. Sometimes I find comfort in the quiet stretches
of gray morning, the minutes before the alarms start in
the rest of the world resumes a scheduled tom In
those moments, the fear receids just enough for me to breathe.
And yet behind every silence, every familiar ritual, the road persists,
waiting to draw another boundary, mark another name, recalibrate the
unseen ledger of the night. This will go on as
long as there are aisles, shifts, and hands willing to
write warnings in batter blue notebooks for the next to find.
The schedule never empties, it simply updates, And when a
minute hand returns to its forbidden position and the lights
flicker once, then twice, I will be ready alone at
the edge of the stock room, counting out time in
the currency of routine, in silence. Another exception, never truly
off the clock.