Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. There are aisles you never want
to be in at iOS when the light's was just
a little wrong, and you can feel the sense of
bulk of the stat boxes, the impossible density of candy
canes or plastic pumpkins leaning over you in the seasonal
over stock. My knees ache from the cold cement shelf
after shelf, biting into my arms as I left, and
ten matching barcodes to the inventory guns and anemic beep
if I sound tired, I am. It's the third overnight
in five days and the store is always too cold
after midnight. I've been searching from a splace freight tout
for the last iour cursing however, double stacked and then
abandoned the autumn clearance. I push aside a box of
shattered jack o lant in tumbos, sweep a tumble a
plastic spider. We've been on too my rolling cart, and
that's when I spot it. Wesh behind the last crate,
half lost in shadow, a brown paper wrap package edges
crim with the yellown tape, something heavy inside, the handwriting
across The front is hard and neat, black marker bleeding.
Two sharp initials are M. My throat goes to ay.
The break room at Skivy is a land of torn flyers,
fadive rules, and the ancient splintered schedule tacked just inside
the door. Everyone glances at it, no one trusts it.
Two days ago Saundra's careful block letters erased, an entire row,
initials blotted with a smear of blue ink. Ah Am,
that's the name, No one says any more, not since
last week, not since the rumor about someone not clocking
out or just furnishing. After final sweep, I balanced the
package on my thigh, debating, drop it and lost and found.
Pretend I never saw it. Some of the crew would.
That's how these things get left behind in the first place.
The tape peels off with a shuddering rip, thick and sticky,
a sound impossibly loud in that stale, silent aisle inside
old paper. Dozens, maybe forty, of the luminated stor maps
were supposed to hand out to shoppers, but there altered,
marked all over with looping circles, lines in smeared crayon,
big lettered, safe, fast squalls of black marker. Some maps
have time codes chiff three thirty or scribbles a dark
twelve fifteen no solo stick to lanes. One page folds
along a ragged creek. The corner is stained like coffee,
aged to the color of dried blood. As sudden beam
echoes far down the rucks, the crack of plastic on
concrete metal brackets flux in, too loud to be mere settling,
I jerk scatter some maps, heart pounding, The fluorescent tubes
flutter false daylight pontured by the quick twitch of shadow.
Twenty yards up the aisle, I shift the box as
another set of footsteps heard, uncertain echoes somewhere between lottery
and greeting cards. Someone else here, someone watching, or just
trying not to be seen. I scoop the scattered maps
into my jacket, chuff the wrapping deep against my robes.
The sweat on my palm's chills in the air. As
I nudge my cart out of seasonal I catch a glimpse,
just before running for the bakery, of the battered board
by receiving ah m eras to day, not a trace
but a palimpsyst of where his name used to be
a sort of absence, as if his IROs and smile
had never been accounted for it all. I wish I
could say I left it then, but I took the maps.
I guess part of me thought they'd explain something. Schedule
won't my first weeks they say, don't pay attention to
midnight's doors. Easier said than done. The US stuff for
a new overnight restocking manager forms thick with warnings about ladders,
about slip hauzards, and shrinkage about the impossible number of
barkeets till memorized by Halloween. It's a graveyard world. Skyview
at night, columns of products stretching off to where windowless
wall seen to seat their own suburban damped four sunshine
from a million tubes. Even at three in the morning,
there's a drone of can pop music leaping. The relentless
beap of an addendive registers the lower of the eight
track always colder on the insides of your elbows. At orientation,
the crown five of us into the manager's glass. Waldorffice
shoved old pamphlets about guest experience made a stare at
a promotional video where chaper shop is cheered for rollbacks.
The only names I remembered after day one Sandre my
boss then shouldered, and Perisco's Vinegar Jaru, a four kid
whose jokes always swung too loudly for comfort. And Missess
Vasquez in Nextodian, moving with a quiet conviction of someone
whose family built the store with their own hands. Most
of the rest, faces in high vests, half asleep, were
hunched around vending machine coffee. There's a weird culture that
seeps into your skin. Skive who split its night staff
into little cliques. A few staff lounge in the locked
off as County registered slips. Others lingered by loading backs
to the hissing dark doors, always in pairs. When I joined,
the older over I crew looked me up and down,
huddling as soon as I passed. Every phrase stitched with
double meanings. The jobs as straightforward as any Giant's doll
is meant to be. Sowns for every corner produce up front,
electronics boxed in by security, glass clothing lost in a
maze of mirrors a back room. Only half the maps
agree on each night. Schedules print out supposedly random, but
already I see the patterns the swaps. Two people never paired.
Someone always in dairy after four, the youngest always given
light duty near garden Center as a treat. Even the
breakroom has its own laws. My first real lunch may
be my second week. I stepped in at one twenty four,
just after everyone else had opened microwaves and vending machines
and scattered into faded chairs. Jared was cracking up about
some cannedy bar conspiracy. Sandra was hunched over her roster,
mumbling about over eighties. The laughter dropped off when someone's
phone chied. Somebody whispered the NAMA, and the whole room
stilled like a held breath. Clans is rotated as second
of silence, thick as syrup, and then nothing sand which
is unwrapped soda cans clicked, The conversation jerked back in
to gear around me, eyes not quite meeting mine. Some
nights aren't so tense. Late shoppers get lost, always an
older woman in af as you're asking where God and
seeds are after midnight, or tied dad herding, a sleep
walking toddler who wakes up just as he runs for
bulk snacks. Those Irish player a lead point. Try not
to yawn too. Obviously, This staff slide around me like
I'm the nucated cousin's funeral cordial train, but never quite
letting me in on the jerk. After a while it
starts to bother me, all those little things that never
quite fit a pink sticker shade, like an ex under
the aisle free shelf, which doesn't match any reordering system
I now. One night I turn over in mop bucket
by the dairy cooler and fine skulld marker out by
two forty four. Sometimes I catch people swapping shifts at
random just before midnight, for no reason other than the
floes off tonight. The older hands all seem to know
the seeker codes in the dry race map, silid about
what they mean. Sometimes I tap myself out of it. Sure,
it's only stress, workplace culture, the ordinary unspoken rules you
pick up anywhere. But under it all there's the sense
of something expected of me, some unwritten role I'm failing
to play. It's a Wednesday night, quiet only rain rattling
the glass doors when I notice a huddled cluster of
overnight regulars. Miss Swask was in two warehouse skies moving
in a tight pack, silent as undertakers. They walk in
perfect sink past the home appliances, crossing to the registers.
But when they hid the toy section deve not a
one of them, stepping into aisle seventeen after two way
m It happens twice that week. Stock assignment shuffled last
second reroutes issued by Sandra for no reason given, always
pulling people from certain isle's odd ires. Three times I
see a veteran warp briskly out of HealthWays, check a watch,
then double back to stand near another employe until the
clock takes a few minutes over. None of this is
in the handbook the own rotations. The scheduled schifsna mentioned
never alone in over stock is someone always in garden
and never cut through toys after midnight. When I ask,
I get a blank look or a quick not my
call top to the supervisor or an axander. She runs
this circus. I remember clear as glass watching xandraw that
first weaker, Razar m s name from the produce slot
on the big green rotation sheet. Her face was impassive,
the action almost clinical. A name gone a slot given
to Gerrard, who looked away at the time I choked
it up to turnover. But now it sits wrong in
my memory, like they were blotting out mistake, wiping away risk.
The next shift, I'm shelding a circle back clipboard under
arm and try again. Why did we swap all the
late night assignments? Sandra just shrugs, looks past me. Weather's
a mess. Shipping mix up's last week. Don't read into it,
I asked Jerrard later, as we were stock breakfast cereal.
He laughs way too loud because al Sevan's haunted, right.
He keeps chuckling, but his eyes start Sandra, whose pretending
to organize receipts near the ten clock. She shoots him
a glare sharp as a blade his smiled eyes, and
he tosses the next box with a bit too much force.
After my break, I run produce inventory. The dairy cooler
is always freezing a tomb for half spied yogurt. I
reach under too, just some cases and snag my sleeve
on rough tape below the bottom shelf. Someone stuck thin
blue strip with careful block letters save three fifteen. The
phrase leaped out at me matches one of the coded
times on r M S map. My spine tingles I
don't say a word about it. I just slip it
into my pocket, slip off duty, and spend the next
couple ires steering at the match, crumpled to my locker,
searching for the scents behind all these signals. It keeps gnawing. Tonight.
After clocking out, I stalate the break room is empty,
faint scent of instant soups still hanging, humming to itsself
as the ice machine cycles in the dark. I unpack
all the maps, laid them side by side. Compare notes
here save three the Athenovlay's dairy Caution twelve thirty marked
on the loading dock. No solo painted across seasonal with
big alarming access to certain nights. The patterns are obvious
once you see someone tried to make sense of the
right plays of the right ire, but the codes keep
shifting names acrossed off, new zones added in red pen
over and over, as if keeping pace with some schedule
only they can read. I overlay maps on the official
blueprints printed during orientation, never use since they don't quite
match path. Whizzed eater into phantomiles. Back room boundaries never
line up. Several maps are heavily marked around a blank
spot between seasonal and the docks. On impulse, I grab
my phone and find the staff fertile wololl poloids, some
faded to go see outlines. R M is gone, space
empty except for a yellow thumbtack. But the map in
my hand has his name and a dark twelve fifteen
circle four times, then heavily cross out in red pen
Questions burn why are all these safe times and places
only on the custom maps? And where did ar Am go?
If everyone acts as if he was never here? I
stole the package. Step from the break room, I spot
Missus Fasquez slipping mop handles through her fingers in a slow,
steady rhythm, always with the Loham on her lips. Missus Vasquez,
she glances up, old, dark eyes, sharp but kind? Did
you know r M? I ask in a voice I
want to sound casual, but doesn't. She hesitates that, boy,
how Spanish is clear measured? Don't ask about the ones
who don't leave people forget them for a reason. She
looks around, then mutters in half whisper, and then sees
hollow Timo and Salar never be lost to leave her
eyes dre to the far end of the hallway. Then
she hurris her cartway wheel, squeaking like an alarm. The
digital record system always ancient, often glitching, should have r
M s last shifts. When I check, the name's gone
from the night log, as if he was never on
the schedule. I ask Sandra, who keeps her eye stocked
to the manifest. Maybe you're thinking of some one else,
she says, But there is a twitch in her jaw
at some flicker of memory. She quickly smothers. People come
and go. For the first time, I ask to see
security takes quarterly. We're supposed to reviewed him for shrink,
but most never bought her. The night aar Am disappeared,
I searched the list of theirs footage f all zones,
but the delivery doc and sees no display. Both marked
system ere recording lost. The night's supervisor on shift looks
up from his fallen shrugs when it glitches. It's always
the same spots, he says, not quite meeting my gaze.
I start kering and note by the secret color coded
I map stuff routes during my shift, noting always who
walks with whom and were people cluster. The veteran crew
especially never alone on the far side of housewares. After midnight,
I jot down every blue ribbon I see tied to
radio antennas, every shelf with the strange coated stickers. The
night after, as I check inventory in your pet food,
Jared materializes at my side, eyes darting you. Ask a
lot of questions, he mutters, showing me a hand trembling
in his hoodie pocket. Guess you'd better keep this on you.
He presses something cold into my palmer, rusty nail tied
to a frayed blue ribbon. He grins weakly the joke
tap dancing away as I am call a ribbon. It's
for lock, he says, don't use it unless you have to.
He backs away, whistling badly, but looks over his shoulder
three times before ducking behind big goods break them. After
one a m silence, only the gurgle of an old
coffee pot. I step in, and all conversation dies. Three
veterans stirring at the ceiling tiles, A younger woman absorbed
in her phone like its some kind of shield. As
track me faces turned to stone. I busy myself with
the coffee, pretend not to notice the staff closest to me,
fold napkins, tap pencils, glance every few seconds at the
clock and then at the circled names only tacked above
the vending machine. Some nights, oddness seeps into the edge
of vision. Twice I hear whistling, a thin sliding two
neckling from the shadowy dock doors are twelve thirty, when
no one's schedule to unload. Once, I walk the path
myself and find nothing but a ripple of cold air
and a stretch of freshly polished concrete, as if a
crowd justice burst seconds before I arrived. Growing obsessed, A
return over and over to the maps from our m
as parcel. Some pages have names, times, and initials written,
and most crossed off, but always matched to face is
now gone from the ashcork board of staff photos. The
crossouts are thick, angry. I trace each one to its
map on safe time block in every case so late shift,
always along the same border, the dusty gap between the
seasonal store and the back room. It's raining harder now,
pattering against the exit base. I culb my hands tied
around our m s last clues and wonder which slot
off fell on the board when my own names erased
if I woudn't just vanish into the crack between categories.
One night, unable to let go, I stake out what
the staff called the loss zone. The shift is Comraine
Hummer Vengin Sidling at the loading dock a time I
approach to line up with ah M as last known schedule,
watching the clerk drag past midnight. No one is supposed
to sweethe the dock solo on the official Lock two
staff or schedule, but on the annotated map is just
one one to Ray's name. Every time las overhead flicker dim,
the concrete by the dock runs cold, I hunker behind
a display of Reese Hard and Might Road. The hush
feel's electric, like the silence after a power surge. I
see them, Sandra, missus Fasque is two of us from
the veack crew, moving in a fluid pack, eyes fixed ahead,
not looking at the chemra cluster of the double doors.
They whisper too low to hear check their watches. One
tapes a blue ribbon to the dock handle, tying it
in a complicated knot. Then I'll leave the door untouched
and caught before I even know it. Sandra's face swings
to meet mine. Eye's dark. She strides over Joe sat
shoulder squared. You like to watch? Is that it? Her
voice is sharp, low, daring me to deny it. What's
wrong with you? She demands? Why can't you just do
your job? Behind her recess vascos, His hands tremble, but
she won't meet my eyes. It's not about you, It
never is. Sandra Hiss's voice horse a press. Why all this?
Why there zones of the maps, the rituals. She flushes, frustrated,
glancing past me to the warehouse clock, as if calculating risk.
If no one works alone, what's the risk? Huh? Her
tone is so brittle. I hear the words splinter as
they leave her lips. Missus vasque was voice slow and rapid,
says in halting English. We remember some want not to
leave the maps forget. I open my mouth, but the
words twist and stick. Sandra stalks back to the stacked
cones by the exit, rips down the schedule, wipes the clipboard.
I watch a sheer raise as the lost traces of
our m name, time, initials. It's ritual, fast, urgent, mournful.
I catch the movement out of the corner of my eye.
A back of clipboard, supposedly for emergencies, wiped clean of
anything but the present, any past mistake, thoroughly skyried off.
That's when it clicks. The maps laid out on my
hands back in the break room, the scratch of blueprints
filed in safeties locked draw the back room is wrong
in every diagon m both official and hand annotated. The
doors don't match. The pass curve differently on every drawing.
No two routes quite agreeing on where they should bend.
Each employee keeps a different map, a personal chart, some
lines erased and redrawn, as if the store itself shifts
beneath their feet. I go home that morning, unable to sleep,
the whistled melody from the empty dark leaping in my head.
R M marked a duck twelve fifteen crossed out. Every
other vanished staff member mapped a code, a time and
forbidden place. Tomorrow night, I decide I'll be there on
the danger line exactly on time. If I'm supposed to
obey on reton rotation, I'll break it. Someone has to
Sundra rotated three' zone cards in the master's sheet. That
next afternoon, her lips within line hand holding the dry
rais bends so tightly its squeaked. I caught the moment
she switched me off clothing into seasonal slush dark support
for the midnight to three stretch, as flicking up, not
daring to hold mine. The change was random, and she
knew I'd know it. I didn't mention it, just nodded,
pocketed my assignment slip and played dumb through the cross
shift chatter. Gerard, catching this from the corner of his eye,
mad don't and shook his head once sharp enough. I
nearly laughed. Kid didn't even try to hide it. But
if Sandra wanted to keep me out of danger, she'd
picked the rong. Nigh. I'd reblayed that sick, trembling confrontation
at the loading bay too many times to back down. Now,
her voice echoing in my head at brittle crackle of
if no one works alone, what's the risk? The thing is,
people here keep a hundred rules you aren't allowed to
say out loud. If they knew what risk was, if
they could name it, they'd have to stop pretending all
this was normal. I prepped like it meant something extra
layer under my vest thick socks, map crumpleds off at
the fold into my pocket, the blue ribbon nail in
my grip. Whenever I was alone in the stock room,
playing it like a worry stone. I checked exits twice,
doors and latch, then locked, then tested again, brought a
second foam fully charged. If the stare likes decided to
play the usual tricks, I'd want back up. My hand
kept straying to the nail, the ribbon picking at my knuckles.
I wanted to chalk it up to nerves, but the
old sick feeling it might get said otherwise. By eleven,
the store was a stretch of half shuttered registers, the
cold draft wander in the entry. Missus Vask was past me,
wheeling her yellow caution wet full sign how mops wishing
out some ancient rhythm on the poccarck tiles. She nodded,
one sized grave mouth thin as embroidery floss. No one
had to say what night it was not now. Every gesture,
every pause told, even Jarard bounding over to or a
stock candy at the front, didn't try a joke. I
kept miket close, old flaskwife from the maintenance cage snapped
in my belt, battered as hell but reliable. Tucked another
r am mapped in the bottom of my vest pocket.
I took a lap the staff to night kept a
pairs of clustering at the ends of certain aisles. Produced
paired with garden housewars with seasonal always skipping the overstock
corridor after one unless two passed through together. Always a
hum of whisper coulds bounced along the radio, the songs sweep.
At twelve fifteen, Sandra said at line up, she didn't
look at me. Her eyes stayed on her phone, lips
moving as if silently recounting. Headcount were running short, So
mind your rose. The words fell flat, practiced, everyone nodding
and not listening, but no one volunteering for dock duty.
I waited until just past midnight, fiddling with an empty box,
watching the digital clock flick past twelve o four, twelve ten,
twelve thirteen. The tima I am had inked on half
his ragged mass, thick smear pen slashing at dark twelve fifteen,
the back corridor, safe enough in days, seemed to buckle
at the edges after ires. The shape of space shifted
what should be straight now curved, a scuff expanse of tile,
stretching and shrinking as he crossed it. My own steps
sounded wrong, one eck of too many, as if someone
else's shoes trailed just a pace behind, never catching up.
Store lights already dimmed, flickered in a secrets three pops
in halswarz, A buzzing torch at the end cap the
open sign on the door outside, usually shut off by
the night manager, stuttered to life for a blink, then died.
Now everything in me screamed to walk away, break the
cycle unless somebody else be the full But it was
too late. That's when the voice is picked up just behind,
receiving a murmur, then harsh, thenness as fast was as low,
Spanish rising in and out of English. Solo se appeared
and only those alone of the words faded before the end.
Her mop handle ticked an odd rhythm, syncopated, her voice
chased the battered tile, syllable softest thread a duck pasted
empty carts trying to blend. As I slept through the
stock room shadow, I caught a glimpse Sandra standing with
two of the older guys, Mitch and Calvin. Maintenance both
here since the store open. Huddled around the end of
the seasonal aisle, heads close lips, barely moving. One of
them had an old security badge clipped upside down a
weird truck I had never seen before. They watched the
clock as of timing a ritual, glancing to the dop
door every twenty seconds. I counted the seconds. Sliding into
a pocket of shadow behind a palette of unsalt scarecrows.
The space felt tighter at the tile land of a
sticky with old wax. The air heavy smelt chemical, a stringent.
It was the sick, sweet town of stale mop water
laid over a faint, musty note like old paper and
copper coins. A clock rolled to twelve fifteen. My phone vibrated,
no alert, showing as if it just wanted to remind
me it existed. The humming lights above Hiccough three times,
then steaded At the very edge of the seasonal zone.
The blue rub and tigh driller fluttered in a draft
I couldn't feel anywhere else. Movement. Sandra's crew headed for
the dark, always in step, always together, like palpers of
the silent shift change. The cess Vasko was lingered back
fingers was flexing on her cart handle, her gaze flicking
to me, then away, like seeing through me. The formality
of the whole thing was unmistakable. Les shift change more right.
I flattened myself to the batt's stock and wall, half
in loading half an overstock. Sandra, passing clothes, said nothing,
but the line of her shoulder, the edge in her
gate told me she knew she was letting me see,
but wouldn't let me intervene. The men opened the dock
door the night I screened in a shrill of key
shriek too loud for wind. The metal braced up, then shattered,
then fell silent. The blue ribbon glinted in the sodium
glowed three knots, a tag hanging loose. I watched hot beating,
sick and slow, as the chet watches exchanged. A few
words I couldn't hear. Then all stalked back together, not
looking back. For one instant. Just before the door shut,
I could have sworn a shadow flickered on the farage,
a person shaped shimmer, only there if A squinted sideways.
I slipped forward, counting exactly thirteen pieces, each mapped out
and shakey bluing by a vanished hand. The space was cold,
not refrigerator cold, but grave cold, sudden, filling my shoes
with pins and needles, making every breath. I ducked to
the right, croached near the mock closet, hand wrapped tight
around the blue ribbon nail, scanning the dock's fyage empty.
The stuck Christmas box is silent, wreath saging like wilted halos,
and the wrecks only my own breath, and then a scrape,
the low hiss of a shoe on rubber mat. I
froze the clock over the fire exit flashed twelve sixteen.
In the security mirror, come vexing Claudie and another figure, blood
at the very limit of shape, not quite a face,
moving through the palli chatter. The air shiver then stilled
for half a second. My body registered nothing but cold weight.
I could hear every heart beat, every light flicker, no footsteps,
but the feeling of something coming closer. My hand clamped,
tightened the nail hard enough to bite flesh. My muff
formed the phrase safe dark twelve fifteen, just to unchor myself.
I'll whisper. I didn't quite trust the form didn't move closer. Instead,
the colder snapped to gust, all sodden, like a rush
of wings or a body moving past too quick for
the eye to catch. The ribbon twitched, the door shiver,
but stayed closed. A voice, not Sandra, not any one
I knew, breathed in my ear, close as blood. Don't
get lost. It didn't feel like a warning. I held
myself back toward Overstock, every step doubling before, feeling twice
as long. I half ran, half fell through the ladders
of shelves and cheap plastic bins, breaking into the striplet
bakery at sprint, the world wabbled, horizon off kelter he
for a second, then snapped back. All was silent but
for the wine, a freezer, fans, and the distant scrape
of a mop trembling. I ducked into the break rooms,
shoulder pressed, cold, cement, pulse thrumbing wild in my wrists.
The maps were a bundle in my jacket, hot as
if I'd left them in a sunbeam, not the frozen cuppy.
My hand shook as I checked the phones, screen blank, battery,
half drained. Door had barely touched it. Sandra and the
others returned from the dark, slowly in a block, everyone
looking anywhere but at me. I forced myself to get
back on my signed rounds, shifting toilet tissues in the
silent aisle since his prickling for every sound ale four
housewares felt tighter, like the space had silted in around
the edges, but still only me a few creaking floor tiles,
and the muffled beap of someone's word elchistatic. Half an
hour later, Jerry shuffled up, eyes enormous, face pale. He
stopped at the end gap, never quite entering my aisle.
You need to swap with me, he said weakly, voice
cracking as he fingered the edge of an unopn case.
His eyes swept nervously over the racks and the spindly
cam in the ceiling corner. I'll take dark if you're spooked,
not a trace of his usual sarcism. I shook my head,
unable to answer. He nodded too fast and melted away
by two a m. I tried to piece together what
I had seen, voice shadow, cold, the tightening knot of
the crews moving always in sync. I realized something in
three weeks on grave I had never once seen any
of Sandra's old hands alone. All was pears, sometimes threes,
never so low at the dock, never through season, after midnight,
never ever at the margin between warehouse and overstock. The
new Hives didn't obey, not because they didn't care, but
because they hadn't survived long enough to notice the lodge
beneath the rules. The break room was half lit, microwave humming.
The Cesspasque sat hunched over her thermus, lips moving and silence,
prayer mop bucket beside her. I lingered in the doorway.
She glanced up, reading something in my face. She must
have known long before I did. You got cold, she
she said, not as a question. You never get the cold,
just from air. I nodded through. Tide, white, a shelter, white,
a blue ribbons, the schedules. Why do you let it
keep happening? Her face crumpled for a moment. She was
older than her years, her knuckles pale, the cords in
her neck standing out. It's always been since before me.
She chose her words slowly, as if tasting each for danger.
The place below is hungry. The lines they just slow it,
never stop it. She turned her palm out touching the
surface of the breakroom's old warn table, sigil drawn and faded.
Shop by half scud out. We're just keeping the order.
The cycle stops the worst. Sandra appeared behind her arms folded.
Leave it, she said, cold as the freezes. He want
to pull double shifts to night. Go ahead, otherwise, stop
pushing her glare was knife shop, and for half a
second I felt the wild urge to apologize, to pretend
none of this was real. Instead, I held the stair.
What happens if someone breaks the cycle, if you end
up alone at the wrong time. She looked at the maps.
I held, lips twisting. Why do you want to know?
You want to be like him? She wouldn't say er
em s name, but she didn't have to. The implication
hung between us like fog. I said nothing, but I
didn't look away. She turned on her heel, shoving open
the office store with unnecessary violence. Missus vasqu has laid
a hand on mine, unexpectedly warm. In Spanish, she whispered
so soft only I could hear. Do not be last,
never be lost to the line, Not one step pasted
the wrong iro, or it takes you all of you.
She squeezed then stood, hefted her mop, and rolled away,
giving me a glance thick with years of dread. Left alone,
I laid out the map's hands, trembling piece, and connections.
Each safe coat was never more than two. I was long.
Each danger zone matched the cross outs and the staff board.
I never named that Vanish was last seen in a
mock zone outside to give an eyros, always always, always alone.
By three, the staff had drifted toward the eggs a checklist.
Jerard finished his rounds, docking in and out of sight,
always humming nervously, sometimes glancing over his shoulder, as if
expecting to see someone where no one stood. I caught
him by the soft drink fridge as he stirred his vest. Gerard,
what is it with the dock, I asked, as casual
as my voice would allow. He swallowed. You don't go alone.
It's I dunno, Like Sandra says, luck or something. People
go missing, not all at once, just gone last year
before you. He stopped, realizing he'd said too much. Don't
work past your slot, don't play hero. A heavy silence
did ar em. He shook his head, face tight, mouth
opening closing. Don't ask me, asked, Sandra, she was here.
I wasn't on that night. Then he bolted, leaving me
with only the lobaz of fridges in the oscillating fan,
which had started a new clicking rhythm, almost a tune,
almost the whistling night herd by the dock. The shift
ended as slow and sticky with exhaustion. Sandra checked his
own locks, her movements extra slow, racing and rewriting my
name and job in three different colors, as if daring
any one to ask her why she placed the son
as she in the lock drawer, keys flashing in her fists,
then left without a word. At six, the glass doors
near the front jutted open thawn light, dribbing pail across
a frozen tile, the store filled with noise. Day staff
grumbling and clocking in, oblivious to the rituals of night.
I slept badly in dreams. The aisles re arranged, shells, yawning,
open maps folding themselves into shapes. I could almost read,
if not for the buzzing static that drowned out every
crucial symbol. Awoke before noon with the old metallic taste
of dread on might. On the next afternoon, a text
from gerard shifts updated, Sandra move view out of dock
to garden heads up. Someone was watching my schedule, maybe
for my sake, maybe not. I arrived early, blear eyed,
firing off polite nonsense to the crew, drinking stale coffee
in the lunge, and tried to act normal. My sidelong
glances picked up the patterns. Three older staff, always in
housewords between midnight and two. No one not ever walking
alone by the freight elevator, even for trash runs. The schedule,
freshly printed, showed two people for every late shift in
the deep bays. Scratchy pen notes in Sandra's hand doubled up,
then raised in high slashes. I cornered her by the
return's cage, the air thick with lemon gleaner, and the
sun slanting weak through the high, dirty windows. Whatever this
is moving me. You won't stop it, I said, what
are you afraid of? Perr eyes were ancient, ask Vasco's
She buried more here than you'll ever know. You want
to name things, you go ahead, then, voice breaking, But
I won't lose more, not because of you. Now. As
the next midnight approached, I found myself again at the
cross roads over stalks, islent clock sticking two laud the
buzz of the open freeze of facial warning. The maps
in my pocket grew heavier with every eyeur survived. The
staff reorganized yet again. No nims on z own cards,
only initials at the board. Mossasvasque was paused, looked straight
at me and drew a small x and faded blue
shop out beside my initials, then quickly wiped it away.
The lines between places shim at. The path from docked
seasonal was not straight shot to night walking it. I
felt the holstall lean wall was pushing close, all the
lights off. Rihsm A flickered behind me. When I doubled
back for the third time. The pia grown twice, then
blared a distorted version of a pop single, clipped as
a frun backward, blurring a human voice into something serpentine.
This was the moment to decide, let myself be routed
or walk the forbidden loop. I chose the ladder. Blue
ribbon knoted tight round the nail match crumble solved as
old money in my palm. A dozen steps separated me
from the border. I checked my watch twelve fifteen sharp.
The docks stood ahead, blue ribbon waving as if caught
in breathless wind, the map in my pocket burning hot,
I stepped past the line, feeling the cold slapped my
jaw of prison. Surging behind, almost at my heel, something
moved just past vision, hugging the far rack, not quite light,
not quite shadow of shape, in the ghost of an
old uniform, faded blue badge, glinting under invisible stars. I
breathed out, desperate not to run, every inch of me tingling,
vibrating with the pressure of being observed. The figure did
not come closer, only lifted a hand, pump flat, as
if to caution or comfort. The lips moved, no sound,
my own mouth shaped the old words stick to lanes,
no soul. My mind screened, but my body followed the cycle.
Turn left at the end cap, right at the base ery,
back through season or two, where the safe marks lost
in the cheap tile. The air snapped, lights blurring into
run of static, the overheads popping one by one. The
shape faded, something like a voice pressed into my ear,
a single, drawn out breath, thin nothing. When the light
steaded again, I was slumped against the cereal end cap.
The vest sodom was sweat the nails, blue ribbon scored
deep into my palm, at my feet, an old tag,
a safe three fifteen, half torn, nearly washed away. Sandra
passed behind me as if on normal rounds, but left
the tight, hurried whisper at my ear. You are Luckey.
Nothing loves the stubborn you. Higher. She walked on, never
looking back. I realized for the first time what they'd
meant by rotation, Not just coverage, not just teamwork. It
was a ritual erodation of bodies to stave off something
older and crueler than overtime poluses and lost merchandise. Every
erase name was a broken link, a lost rout of
failed ward. Every pause code and swap was an act
of survival, barely holding the place together. The real map
wasn't the paper in my pocket or the blueprints in
the office vault. It was us, a moving network of breath, sweat,
fear and determination, weaving our own perimeter against whatever pressed him.
From the subfloor or the blind spots of the cameras
or the inners called hush were discarded, nns tumbled, and
the air weighted hungry. I was part of it. Now
like it or not, next shift, i'd know which steps
to skip, which uns to double, would to never be
the last alone. But the dread didn't lift, not even
as the lights came back and the morning crew filtered in,
laughing at all jokes oblivis to the names vanished under
the saren wrap of ritual. Dawn never meant safety at
sky View, just reprieve. And at night I went home
clutching the blue ribbon nail, the maps noted ragged at
the edges, and a headful of questions. No one on
the schedule would answer it if I valued what time
I had left at the stacks beneath sky View. The
dawn that comes after it is thinner, more rhnemic than usual.
It slits, slack and form us through the high glass doors,
as if afraid to pull on the tire. No one
says anything about the night before. Sandra just leaves his
own sheet hanging faintly, trembling where someone's hands smudged the
ink around six, the cleaner ship's wheel and faces slack,
sweet ponds and clinging to uniforms, And it feels like
a trick, like watching ghost free house someone else's routine.
I lift boxes in the front block. Hands still shaking,
not from tiredness, but from the memory of stepping beyond
the safe clustering of bodies out into the corridor. The
others won't name. Every sound is too sharp, the snap
of shelf plastic when keening through the dock weather strips,
the faint and sinc tum of the light balanced overhead
on the way out. At end of shift, I glance
back at Sandra. She stands by the schedule borders of
guarding a tomb. There is a scad bruce swelling at
the base of my thumb, where the nail and the
ribbon cut the worst in my palm. When I move
my head the wrong way. Echoes were bound through my
eard from a faint snippet of music, nearly a whistle,
twisting under the bone. The nails blue rub and frays
into threads, sticking to my pocket lining. I keep it
curled tight anyway. I want to ask, to demand answers,
but the air is full of the unspoken, not just rolls,
but gilt, old and fresh as ozom. The routines change fast.
Second night, the locker room is reorganized, Everyone's gear stuffed
into newcubbies as if dispersing sound. The only ones who
seem unbothered ire missas Fasque was moving slow but watchful.
I Mitch, the burly mint Sky, who carries himself as
if the walls themselves might shift if he doesn't keep
both eyes on them. The stuff sheet is all initials
now shop. I swept so deliberate it looks hostile. Sandra's
curt pair up by three, checkin' on radio. Rotate the zones,
no solos at the dark, not even for trash. Her
voice covers. I can hear how little it is under
the routine. Jared avoids me the one time our rotations overlap.
He grabs two boxes for every step I take, as
never lifting above knee height, whistling a two not quite
the right tune, too fast, two tents. He unloads a
case of jandraws with more force than needed, one shattering
in his hands, sticky red, pulling with a faint metallic shimmer.
He curses, but it sounds rehearsed, and it feels like
neither of us are actually there. For a moment, just
two shapes acting out an ancient routine. I want to
talk about the thing in the dock of the shape,
the breath against my skin, the cold, the didn't fade
even after the light's deaded. Instead, I ask Jared about
the rotations. He shrugs, face pinched. He got through. Didn't
you just stick close? Nails are for lack vask? What
says the cycles all we got? He glances around as
if war of the aisles, themsels cells are listening. The
cycle loops tighter now five six staff in the break
room after one a m all hunched and wary pearis
even the cliks collapse together, even Miss eathasquer sits beside
Sandrinie's touching arms, creedling about of thermos, their memory in Spanish,
sometimes English, all words too soft to decipher. The rest
of us cried the bad vending machine, snack wrappers crinkling,
while the sound system JOTT is at that same limp playlist,
always skipping at the same track. Between two and three
in the morning, I try to plot it pencil to
note bed the schedules, never a line on paper. Coverage
is random. In truth, it's the same as before, only
more desperate. No one is allowed alone, even for the
shortest interval. They have safe Mark's bloom on the new maps.
Every night, a new blue strip on a new shelf,
sometimes so haphazard it looks like panic. I walk the boundaries,
counting steps, tracking with a mark, sleep and skip. The
layout is different divershift, I swear one night, i'll twenty
one bends deeper toward the loading ramp than if ort two.
The next it's a straight shot to dry goods. Boxes
appear in stacks where no ready, just to receive claims them.
Tags flicker between prices, but when I bend to check
my own hand shake too badly to trust what I see.
The air feels thick, as if the walls have swollen inward.
Twice I catch a glimpse of a shape, and in
a convex mirror, never more than a trick of the
light gone. As soon as I step close the official
blue prints oren no help. I sneak into the office
careful and unlock the safety file with the manager code.
The diagrams are laughably simple boxes for back room, little
squiggles for a seasonal and overstock. Nor does it show
the impossibly deep doc I know, or the warp dial
the batchwork boundaries. Every staff drawn map says something different
and none agree with what my own body remembers. Near
At the end of the shift, a memo is tacked
by the clock staff. Rotation must be observed. All incidents
to be reported to night's supervisor. Do not enter where
has alone underneath Sandra's signature. Then a skull reply, I knows,
missus vast quizzes seeing progentos always together. The paper is
flecked with soald at the edges, grounded by someone's trembling fingers.
Two nights later, the earthickins and breaks. It starts with
an alarm shrilling from the dark and ol system, loud
enough to piers concrete, but there's no blink on the
security panel. I grab a radio barely tuned and sprint
for the bale onside mitch. The dock lights are flickering
faster than before. A long shadow pulses than a humming
buzzle like soople for feedback. The temperature drops three degrees,
then six. We find nothing but the battered blue ribbon,
now torn loose, flapping from the handle in a wind.
I shouldn't exist in oars. The security camera above his
dead at the feed in the office static whited out.
Sandra meets us back and break face a mask. Nobody.
Nobody goes alone. She manages, clutching the key so tight.
I hear to teeth grind pair up every sweep. If
you see anyone near the back, you call her knuckles
are pink worthy keys bit we do as told, double shifts,
no one venturing even to the washroom alone. I spot
Jarreed organizing snack kicks with one hand, other staffed into
his vest pocket, clutching a blue nail tight enough to
turn his fingers white. The tension never lifts. Staff rotation
is now nervous public spectacle. At the end of every
eye of the break them fills for a row. Call
everyone accounting for their whereabouts. Names are ticked, initials matched
to mats that have been marked and remarked so many times.
The laminade is wearing thin at the corners. Missus Vasquas
keeps salt in her apron, flicking it in a nervous
rhythm under her breath. As we pass through the breach
between aisles, I trace my own route in the dust
of the mop closet, not trussing any schedule made by
other hands. But the danger is only in the schedule.
There are other things, smaller things that begin failing. The
freezer in the bass, stots, malfunctioning ice blims in strange
fractal patterns that melt and refreeze every iro, never matching
the thermostat's claim. I'll center's trip with no one near them.
The chime at the customer entrance triggers at two twenty
two each morning. No one is in the threshold, but
the glass wets and the rubber mat stinks of cold
pond water. Foxes in the back house, mysterious statts, sole vests,
keys without labels, staff discount cards from years before I started.
I find one faded blue initials flaked off in the
old mot pail. It bends when I touch it, snapping
into with a sound like dried bone, each crossing into
the wrong zone. Chunes, mine sides, nasus a pressure behind
my teeth, as if all the stores they are wanted
to force me out. It's not just me. Sandra snaps
at every small infraction, moving with choppy, uncertain gestures. Mitch
sets up new locks in the dock doors, only to
find them. Ratland loves anisle later as if picked from
the inside out, A weak to expye split in splintered ires.
One night, during what the map's claim is the safest window,
Missus Vascus vanishes for four minutes between mop sweeps. When
she returns, there's a handprint marked in grime alaunell left sleeve.
The print is too large for anyone employed here. She
wears a rag cleans it often slow circular strokes, not
meeting anyone's eyes. Sendra is the most changed. She paces
before each shift, triple checks her rotation, and never lingers
for small talk. Her hair is slicked back, Joe clenched.
When the new hire Brian asks for advice moving pallets,
she snaps too quickly, never linger near the dock. No
matter what you hear, Clock says, you leave, you leave.
Jerd is no longer funny, he mutters. Occupy shadowed corners,
returns from every aisle with hands massed into fists, twine
tightly knuckles, pale and angry. He avoids the board and me,
glancing up only to check the time I keep records.
On the third night after the first real breach, the
PA system glitches, burst of static. Then that same bastardised melody,
the whistling tune from the dark, mangled and blurred leaking
in between advertisements for enkept sails. It's there for twelve seconds,
then a staff voice, please disregard technical issue. No one
in the booth will admit to having touched the controls.
The main consequence of the cycle breaking is simple. No
one trusts the space anymore. Every aisle becomes a trap.
Every corner in ambush I see to were on people's bodies, shoulders, hunched,
eyes red from chronic vigilance, trash compact slow now, doors shutter, hinges,
creak without rhythm. The cold in my palm is almost constant.
Sometimes when I grip the ribbon nail, I swear I
feel a heartbeat, not my own. Tension swells larger than
the staff can hide. Conversations are quick clipped the old memorials,
sticking notes by lost work boots, faded maps, tape that
forgotten cup is growed daily. One day, a torn vessel
left on the loading cart, initial scribbled out blue ribbon,
folded carefully in a zip lock, left at the edge
of the cross zone. I understand it now as a
sword of funeral. In the office, I rifle through the
deep files after ires codes and claim forms from before
the sky blue logo era. I find references to special incidents,
confidential logs marked legal do not circulate. Each lists a
staff member, a timestamp, then incident resolved, sudden rotation, updated,
names I have never heard, but there's always two columns
shift companion, every line crossed out in a way that
looks less like bureaucratic reaction and more like an exorcism.
The sense of observation of being cataloged grows. Cameras are replaced,
but their feeds fuzz and pop. The shape in the mirror,
half glimpsed, becomes near tangible. The night I walk through
over Stock at one forty eight, it stands at the
end of the aisle, not moving, not quite occupying the
space like draws for it. The chill is sharp, a
warning an hour retreat without thinking, without picking up the
cases I've come for. But now paranoia breeds error. There
are fewer staff on each shift, cut by scheduling treeks.
On Friday, Bryan disappears ten minutes before the IROJ just
steps out to check the cooler, never returns. His badge
is left, Beads of Marsta collecting along the plastic is
of chilled from within. Sandra calls a shift freeze, everyone
stopping with their until she I f aske was Mitch,
and I sweep the store twice, calling his name. He
never addss. His own is marked through with heavy red,
taped over with a blue ribbon, and two nails driven
into the edge of the cooler. The boarder raises him
the next morning, not with sadness, but with mechanical speed.
This time the drid doesn't pass. People hurry now too fast,
risking sloppiness for the chance to cluster together, even if
it means per call breach. The noise in the woll's
gums itself up. Sometimes a clock on my phone blit
backward the minute, repeating itself, or the time registers as
twelve sixteen three times in the same mire. Gerard, when
I catch him, is not quite himself any more. How
long ye think he'll last? He says once, half mocking,
half panicked voices. Shrill is breaking glass. Everybody's just waiting
to see who goes next. He wipes his brow, clutching
the blue ribbon. It's what the place wants. You just
slow it by staying in cycle. People who break it
go off alone. They're the ones it takes now I
try all the logical stuff, swapping sweet partners, mocking time,
tracking every coated scrap on all the maps, but nothing
lines up. Every time I think I've so staut a
loophole and you break, appears another ribbon in another impossible place.
I ask missus Vasquez, how do we stop it? She
just sighs a lawn without gust of air and says,
we never do. We bargain. Each night, late, one shift,
map in hand, I spots under hunched over the clipboard
by the dark dryer's marker. Trembling in her hand. It moved.
She whispers, low enough that only I closes her breath
hear it. The boundary is shifted again. I think, I
think there's something left of them in the dark. It's
hungry to night. There are tears at the rim of
her eyes, but her hand keeps moving upbating the zones.
Initials were made, lions spun tighter. It's not enough, of course,
nothing feels enough. I lead. The next morning, an alarm
bleeds through the pier, but only for a fraction, for
a second to boast of gobbled static, then silence. The
time on my phone reads to reach three, then blurs
then flickers back to two forty two. I grip the
nail so hard my knuckles ache. Pressure builds every minute thereon.
Enough one board is now to fill the rotations. The
risk snaps at the edge of every line up, the
hush between each sun past, growing frantic. When I suggest
calling off shifts, Sandra only shakes her head. Absence makes
it worse. Gaps make it notice. You want to see
what happens if we stop moving at all. Nobody volunteers
to find out. When the refrigeration guy comes to fix
the back line on a Monday, he's in an out
before dawn, eyes, never lifting from his boots. I spot
him later by the entrance, pausing, steadying his hand on
the eggs at bar, as if to confirm the threshold
is real. He shakes his head, locks his fan, and
never comes back. Every One is tired. The ritual of
Saul brings and blue ribbons is almost automatic now. People
switch jobs midshift and spoken agreements humming between glances. No one,
not even Sandra, hovers at the edge of forbidden spaces anymore.
If a gap opens and another closes it without being asked,
the air presses as if the whole store it's off,
gathers its patients before pouncing. I decide wrong or not
to force an answer, I spend all of tuesdays prep
scanning the ouk have blueprints and the annotated maps overlaying
them over the oldest stuff schedules. I can find every
instant chines with a shift out of cycle a night
when someone covered an extra aisle, or run late off shift,
or try, as Brian did, to linger just one minute
outside the routine. Their names are gone, save for the slips, ribbons,
knotted with notes, initials, crowned into odd corners, vanished on
official paper, but alive and trembling on the things we
dare not show the district manager. The more I see,
the more I know that the back room is wrong
in ways. Blueprints can't touch. The spacewap sharp now on
my third cross, which should be seventy paces as nearly double.
The shelling at odds with the daylight configuration, doors sprout
where I never saw them, then blink out by noon.
Mirrored dome swallow reflections and spit them out in the
wrong corners. I force a path back to the heart
of the dark, driven by the mounting vanishings. All the maps,
soul of them. Even the veterans hidden diagrams showed the
same angry X in the center of the bay. The
night I make my move, the weather turns. A band
of fox slithers up against the doors. Street lights pulsing, weaken, uncertain,
there's an electricity in the air. The whiff of ozon
sharp as bleach. I slip the blue ribbon, nail foot
loops of my vest, double knot the ribbon, and pack
a flask light, two sets of keys, my annotated map,
and a salt shaker into my jacket pocket the staff.
What's left cluster by the register bay. Sandra pallid inexhaustive
calls the rotation. No matter what you walk together, any
one gone more than five minutes you call us, do
do not answer If you hear your name alone only
in pairs. Missus Vasqus looks at me, and I see it.
She knows what I'm planning, and she doesn't like it.
But she lets her eyes linger, as if to steady
my hand. If you're going go before the iro's turn,
she whispers, pressing upon AsSalt into my palm. I tie
my incursion on the turned minute twelve well the clock
on the edge of rebuting the dock, shadow looms, lights
flicker out in a clean, sequentchial sweep. House whirs, then garden,
then the freezer case in the back. The cold rises
in a sudden wave, and my breath frosts in the air.
There's no one at the edge of the dock, but
something is there. The whistling stock arts too low, fur
real tunes, getting up and down the scale, as if
seeking the right now. A shimmer at the corner of
my eye resolves over by the danton carts. A figure,
hunched face flickering in the light, formerly uniformed in a
vest like mine, but old, faded badge erased. The features
are not right, a drifting softness, mouth open as if
to warn. The lips move, but the only noise is cold.
The map in my pocket vibrates, twitching against my thigh.
I hear my name, my full name, call, but I
don't answer. Instead, I circle to approached straight at the
egg group in the nail, in the salt, and the
ribbons so tight. My pump splits at an old sea
as I step into the mark spot where every map,
every old chiflock scored a danger, a cross the shape pivots.
There's a slough of darkness at its feet, black osen
pulling along the dock edge. Another pulsive, cold than a push,
not a wind, but await, driving me to my knees.
The air fills with blurred images, faces from old stuff,
photos flickering through the spectral dock, all map but no voice,
eyes wide and warning or grief. I try to back out,
but the well folds. The dock becomes impossibly long. The
shelf contract lies, pin wheeling away. The shape opens one
impossible palm, blue ribbon spiraling from its wrists and nail
balanced in the center. I hear static swallowed up by
a voice, not quite male, not quite female, not quite alive.
The cycle's broken, the arrow's wrung, no companion, only you now.
Each word is a blade. The blue prints pulse inside
my scull, fighting for a logic that doesn't exist. I
brandished the nail, spill the salt in a shaking arc.
Repeat the coat phrases A safe at dark the time
tho I never alone. Each syllable tastes like battery acid.
But the figure spasms factory uniform, flickering as if it's
losing shape, suppressing or storing infinite pain at the edge
of collapse. I force my gaze up. What do you want?
I croak the entity If that's what it is flickers
human not human? Then nothing. The cold remains. The time
shudder is back to twelve fifteen. The lights stutter, and
the voices in the pa overlap static, chasing snippets of
the old whistle tune. The shape hovers pom open in
supplication of threat. In desperation, I throw the nail blue ribbon,
trailing dead center at the axe. The cold recedes an inch.
The air screams, every box at the dark cratli i
prodest I see for a hot, stopping instant. All the
faces of the lost R. M. Bryan, a dozen faded names.
Their mouths work at the same silent warning, never alone.
Then the Pierre raps and feedback a shriek that bleeds
the air dry of oxygen. The shape collapses, ribbon uncurling,
the neil scattering across the concrete, dissolving into shadow. The
darkness shivers, then implodes, the cold, sucking backward into the
eel's heart. I stagger to my feet, trembling as the
light restore. I see what's left the x rays, the
dark empty but for the glimmer of salt, the echo
of something grief, warning, hunger, humming below the floor. I
limp into the break room. The cisvascos wraps a fresh
strand of salt cord around my wrist. My skin is
clammy pattened in cold bones where I clutch the ribbon
jarred sits, slumped in a battered chair, white knuckled, eyes
emptoed and loss. Sandra, at the head of the table,
surveys the fresh schedule, stones merged, every one paired, no
solo blocks. For a while, no one speaks. The air
is miserable, grateful. We erase the board, all the old exes,
both out, the cycles thinned where the danger was thickest.
For the first time I can remember, the mats are
left and touched for a shift. Messare's vasqui slides me
a battered locker keyp her own trusts finally nodded between us.
Sandra hands over the clipboard in a dryer raise pen,
her grub loser than it's been in weeks. That's the
sum of it. I find myself tracing new patterns into
the dust, tracking the echoes of footsteps. It was pricked
for the pi aklitch, the stray snatch of whistling from nowhere.
The staff gathered tight at his night's buds clustered had
been togethered in shaded vigilance. The cycle is not fixed,
just thin broaden passed gently into all hands. The store
is quieter, but the hush of the dock is deeper.
Some things do not return. The vanished names are never spoken,
The old ex never remarked. The wound and schedule never
fully heals, but a pulse behind the walls is less urgent,
less hungry for now. Late one shift, as I clean
the mot claoset, I find a torn page under the pail,
a map, this time with my own initial circled at
the dock's heart ribon mark spiraling from the ex. No, no,
but I know what it means. Sandra gives me one
soft hand jake as the shift ticks away. You held
it together, she says, not everyone does. Her smile is sad,
but something in her shoulders and wines. I linger in
the aisles that night, shoving boxes with Jerry beside me,
the two of us humming nothing on the pia folders,
the coal presses from a distance, checked but not banished.
The cycle continues. The store breathes heavy, but the hunger
is patient, now sleeping beneath the racks. Late in the shift,
as the fluorescent lights flutter pass the battered board by
the breaker, the blue ribbon tatter, blood tinged at one edge.
Hands from the zone lock. The schedule is rudden again,
my initials powed beside those of everyone left. I sweep
the final asle with Missus Fasquez, both of us careful
not to speak. As we edge past the still sharp
cracks in the tile where the excused to sit. She
grips my arm just long enough to transfer a little warm,
then slips away with her mop bucket, hissing a chromatic scale.
Final action after last weep, I kneel at the dock's edge,
soul called burning my wrist, and press my open palm
against the concrete where the old excused to live. The
cold is weaker, shrunk into a whisper. I trace a
new circle, not an X, with my finger and speak aloud.
Rotation holds. We walk together. The straw air tugs up
my words but does not reply. I let the map
fall into the nearest trash, its lines already blurring. Then
rise to meet the others under the so hum of
the lights closing in a high new silence. After I
stand behind the locked glass doors as the last of
the shift files out. I hold the new keys, the
old ribbon tucked in my palm, feeling the floor beneath me, settling, breathing,
patient as ever, for a long moment, nothing moves a
store in perfect order, waiting for our next rotation. For
a long moment, nothing moves a store in perfect order,
waiting for our next rotation. But I'm seconds away from
the back doors and still watching for movement. After shifts
like this, it's routine for staff to gather by the entry,
clustered their bodies for warm keys and bags mashed tight.
I scanning every mirrored asal behind. Only now, as we
file past the carts left scattered at the exit, something's
changed in the huddle. Not relief, not safety. We all
look too long at the blank spots, the patches in
the skin. Joel that no amount of crossouts can disguise
Sandra's posture. Once droll serge and sharp slumps, she hesitates
that the security keeper sets her thumb to the scanner,
then flinches as static buzzes off the pane. Even in silence,
the tension crackles the static charge before a second storm.
She doesn't try for her usual brust send off, just
martyrs doors now and keeps her head angled, as though
afraid to see the rest of us outlined ron and
knee early sun. Missus Fasko has lingers by the mop rack,
watching each of us in turn. She traces a circle
on the batter tiels with her toe, then rubs her
palms against her skirt. May be shaking of salt or
maybe something else. Her eyes settle on mine, Sola nunker eh,
as she says, barely above a breath, never alone. Everyone
files out in calculated order, Jarred and Mitch, shoulder to shoulder,
steps too quick, the breath misting despite the summer air outside.
I'm thus forced to sweep my arms through the cold
patch that nests stubborn, as a curse by the still
battered doctor. When the click comes from the dead bull,
it's too loud, a gunshot, not a mechanism, and a
jewel fist tied round the locker key I never asked
to inherit. The brick room is deserted. The coffee burned,
t tar schedules are hacked into shreds, initials blurring in
the weak dawn light. There's no satisfaction in it, just exhaustion.
I rest my forehead against the staff board that the
coal pressweep the sweat off my skin. Outside, a garbage
truck rumbles up, oblivious. Inside the building vibrates with the tiny,
subtle shafts of receding forre it. Sleep comes quick. That
morning dreams shuller and frantic maps that spiral out in labyrinths.
My own footstepsickoing, multiply, twisting in patterns. I no longer understand.
I wake before the alarm from an impulsephere memory hung
a hard wid nare. My phone's clock ticks tacatto, then resets,
no miscalls one blank texas ender are known. Shift again.
Now the pressure is tighter, not lessened. We rotate staff
like playing card, fewer of us to fill more zones,
the protection of ritual thinning at the edges. The coal
patches wander. One night, the danger hovers over housewares, and
another it dogs the baker's cooling racks. The blue ribbon's
multiply At first Sandra bristles complains the store's miss, but
she ties the ribbon tightis to herself, catches my wrist
and not's one for me. Consequences now alarms triggered, nightly falls,
positives bleeding into real ones. The staff board, bristles with
taped salt lines are pressed onto mop handles, and Jered's
laughter is something cracked half missing? Once during an equipment sweep,
I find a new mark gouged into the edge of
the dry goods and a scratch desperate bee just below
a blue knot. Brian was quiet, careful, and now he's
out of the schedule, with the same decisive strike as
the others. None of us admit what vanished. We talk
around the absences. Did you see Brian at clock out?
And no, must have gone early, But every question comes
with a second, silent question. Did you check the cameras?
So did you go back to look? One night, Misssvasko
has lays a new line of salt, not just at
the mobile mop bucket, but across the employee entrance. It
won't keep everything, she mutters, but it might remind them.
We look back. Someone has hung a tiny set of
belts from the inside latch. They chime only during the
last round of rotations, never at shift begin. Everyone pretends
not to hear it. Sandra schedules a split, breaks into
three clusters instead of two suns, more overlapping. There's a
wariness now in the way she quits the back office.
Her steps leash, ear clipboard press so hard it cuts
the skin at her thumb. When I ask her when
will this end? She skips a beat, blinks hard, and
nearly says something before swallowing it. Just keep the schedule moving,
is all she offers. On my latest walk, the towels
creak under new traffic. I track each blue safe mark,
updating with nervous half legible script skipping stretches the others avoid.
Sometimes I look up and catch my own face stretched
out in the dumb mirror, mouth open, eyes panicked atop
again and making loops behind me. My steps refuse to
echo alone, as if someone somewhere is pacing perfect to
my rhythm. Hoppin' alfha out of line. Tension is a
ceiling now. Jerror's friendliness is gone, replaced by tens AND's
shoulders hunched fingers, always working at the nail in his vest.
He doesn't trade shifts any more. Instead, he lingers at
the boundary, waiting for my knod before charging through. How
do we win? He manages one night, voice rasped by
lost sleep. I don't answer because I can't. Sandra's eye,
eyes catching mine at the next hand over, are wet
and furious. Stop asking, She hisses, We don't We just
last staff Rosplitz, no quitting out write. Nobody dares, but
Absente calls Spike and the back to thinner than ever.
Now we keep for break from coffee, even in pairs.
No one risks the bathrooms alone. The supervisors descalex resignation,
knows no one will admit to writing, always unsigned initial
scrolled in a script they start to recognize. One night,
I find three notes ball behind the radiator. Sorry, I
couldn't stick the eyres it waits. They couldn't keep the cycle.
They don't let it name you. Still we do the
work as the cycle's frey. The consequence of a shop
in a red cat appears on Sandra's palm after a
minna tally. She wipes it on her jeans, says nothing.
The freezer shelf shudders every third iro not from power surges,
but from a four, stabbing outward as if something is
jostling for exit. I can't howels on ile twelve and
come up one short Missess fascus Mutter's prayer and refuses
to cross it without me at her side. Together we
were cross and the tally corrects, a breath of relief
for both of us. One lock on the dock shatters
spontaneously during sweep. The new night guy a'l too new
for terror, almost steps into the breach before Sandra shoves
him back shoulder sharp in ever alone. She barks and
never a call. He looks ready to quit on the spot,
but by shift end he's copying the ribbon circle onto
a scrap of receipt paper, tipping at his vest. Through
it all, the scentse grows at the store, watches us
as carefully as we watch one another. Bob Bin settle
at hot angles. When we enter the ceiling, speakers berbostatic
for a few beats before launching into sound. During deep cleaning,
I find a trail of white footprints running from the
back room to the bakery, narrowing as they go. No
one dry enough or wet enough, or tall enough to
have made them inside the recidue stinks of frost. At
this point I accept if the schedule isn't just logistics,
is a barrier. Each hand off another warp, every pair
shift to patch on an ancient wound. Every time someone
drops a misshift to panequit, the wound opens. It's not
just gelled or routine or fear. Now, it's need. None
of us are sure whose need, but it's growing. Then,
inevitably the confrontation. It happens on a night when the
boundary is obvious. Every safe line fray, salt streaks, trampled,
blue ribbon, nodded, and nervous bunches on every third shelf.
I come in at eleven to find the staff huddled,
not just in pairs, but threes. Mitch is pale, shaking,
missus Vasco's's lip bleeds where she bit it, and sandras
Ann's flutter uselessly unable to close the clipboard. The night
we stretch, Sandra croakes, her voice a wire about to snap.
We're out of bodies. Don't stop the rotation. If you
hear anything whistling and name and just keep going. We
nod because arguings point us and no one wants to
acknowledge the risk. Too few of us two mini gaps.
There's a terror in the joint silence. Adrodia can taste
aluminum sweat and knows on the dock is the epicenter Again.
Lights there, twitchy flicking in shut bursts. The temperature drops
bleeds out each time someone crosses the line. Chef cycles
now in triple times, scrambling to fill each shadow. At
one point, the PA pops stat a crowing for twelve seconds,
then spits out a garbled eck of the tune only
ever whistled in the dark hall. Then Sandra disappears. One
minute she's at the freezer tally air pulled back, jaw set.
The next, the radios stutter, her initials flash, and the roster.
When es printed the tally point, there is only her
clipboard hanging loose. Who have been flapping from the hook,
a blue tended ham prince mirroring the whiteboard by her
abandoned post. Mitch, wild eyed, rushes to the dark, ignoring missus.
Vasque's a scream in no vais solo, but don't go alone.
He's halfway there. When the lights to be flicker, the
old sequins down the line each fixture of domino. For
a second, there's that same shimmer at the dogs hot,
the shape flickering somehow both less and more than human, hunched,
as if in grief, Mitch Holtz sees it stumbles backward.
Something cold wrenches through the air. All of us, even
those in the pie, fail at a burrowing numbness that
never belonged to solid ground. We scatter to the edges,
clustering in defensive knots Jarard clutches my arm. For once,
neither of us pretends we can explain it away. Sandra's
radio pings from somewhere deep in the racks of voice
too clip and sibiling to be hers, answers to her name,
then cackles a thread of the old tune before the
battery dies. Immediate fall, lot, spread, quickener, one day as
just the voice, but no no one's willing to flee aither.
Mitch crouches by the frozen goods, breathing, shallow face, glazed
miss as Fascus hears us into circle, chanting old words
I half believe for the first time. The circle holds
barrely until her own radio blurts the single syllable her name,
stretched and echoed is of coal from a very deep well.
We clutch hands, rest marked with salt, blue ribbons, wrapped
hard enough to sting. I is locked on every shadow,
waiting for the shape or soundra to show. Doors rattle
in the dark, then still no sign, only the ache
of cold not fading, and her initial scold on the
zone log. In someone else's writing. I don't let myself
process it. I just memorize every movement, file, every change,
the way Mitch gowns corners with as gun hollow, how
mesays Fascus tightens her salt cord between cycles, how Jarard
refuses to let go of my arm for even a second.
I reach for the zone log and shaking, and with
black marker, pare every remaining initial doubling up, even if
it means breaking protocol. Our voices are thin, but we
make the next cycle anyway, hands joined, bundles of nerves
forced into motion as the stors hushnitz itself tighter and
around us, refusing to break. Nobody goes alone, not again.
On the boards, the bells, the salid and blue ribbon.
None of it feels enough, but it's all we have
is to doc await and the eyres tell, hungry, hollow,
patient is the dark beneath our feet, and that is
the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see
you in the next one.