The Store Keeps the Ones It Can Still Count

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I think I'll wait inside.

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Compare today at the zebra.com.

Who's ready for the truss fall?

Hello, I'm Wilkins, stories all the time.

Glad you are here.

Let's get into it.

I faint mechanical click marks at the beginning.

The audio recorder was crescent red light blinks at my thumb

and that tiny pulse feels louder than anything else in J.

That occurred as hard we're in supply tonight.

I flick off a harsh fluorescent worklamps at the front,

swapping them for the gasping battery lantern over cash wrap

and the jitter of the ancient emergency lights

steep in the aisles.

It's after two in the morning.

The eye out when the city outside is gone quiet.

Save the distant flat line of trucks over rain polished

asphalt and the push of wind against the windows

wavy old glass.

I keep this little recorder tucked behind the till next

to duct tape and cold coffee cans.

Mostly is a way to trick my brain into staying alert

to avoid nodding off and slamming my head

into crate invoices.

My footprints echo differently on the walk planks tonight.

There's a chill like the place can settle on a temperature

so I keep my jacket zipped to the chin even in the backroom.

On slow nights the store's bones creak.

The wooden beams of a groan in the wind.

Creak, lurch, rattle, that's as ordinary as it gets.

Only tonight every echo feels calibrated,

rehearsed, making the airtight around my heart.

I finish unloading a late truck the third in a week

even though we only get two shipments most months.

Something off about that.

The driver's signature on the bill is almost legible,

just as world.

Still, I wheel three battered crates marked

a lot in 1928, the stenciling and even to the story.

The crates scrape over gouge four boards warm bare

by decays of stocking.

When I check the manifests, it doesn't mention these.

I scrolled a lot number under other

in my notebook and hunting first shot pen.

I noticed the book is flipped open well back,

almost halfway through.

At first I think my own entrance

are bleeding through the thin yellowing paper

from recent weeks my old caps initials,

the numbers lining up hard and tidy.

But this page is titled Night Shift Lock, April 23, 1992,

Need and Clear.

Under staff on hand is as sound alcohol.

That's my name.

Not a common one and the signature at the bottom

in dark blue ball pointing is unmistakably mine.

My handwriting on Mysticable with the hook Dale

and the stun to den at the end.

The details listed, Jail,

code as hard, worse applied drop, three crates,

watt 1928, all exactly as I just loved it.

Something crawls between my shoulder blades.

The pen trembles in my hand,

biting into the page when I try to sign under today's

date, same odd drag as I felt an iron

or go signing a break room lock.

I look at my hands,

the ink stained cuticle, the slanted index finger.

I run them along the signature, not just similar.

Mine.

Cold drifts in then, more than in draft.

A breath from the storage racks behind me

as if the empty space past the paint cans just exhaled.

Nothing visible moves,

but for a moment the hanging shadow behind the rouse of old

snow shovels and crat window screens looks too solid,

too familiar.

I squeezed the old look but can tell the spine crackles.

Something about the way it sits open like I left it for myself

as if I was waiting to return.

It feels like being watched,

not by someone living,

but by time itself double checking my work.

I pressed the recorder closer at whispering,

first to entry for the night,

April 23rd,

everything's normal, I guess.

My own voice undercuts the word.

I glance up at the clock,

with the iron hand limps toward free.

The store's nerve is heart ticks out the clack

as the door rebelled tied with green twine,

shutters against the door frame,

though no one comes or goes.

Far back,

another crate slips with a thump.

The wind outside claws are grimy pains.

For a second, I think I see,

reflected in scratch glass,

someone my own outline,

but hunched or twisted.

Then it's gone.

I closed the log book,

but my signature is left pressed into the soft paper.

Whether the date reads 1992 or to present,

I can't quite tell in the weeklight.

All the same, the air closes in,

and my name feels less like something I own

and more like a record waiting to be checked off.

I tuck the recorder away,

it's mostly to convince myself

probably just tired, back to work now.

The store's quiet remains,

but so does the sense that something else is awake with me,

just out of sight.

Folks romanticize small businesses

and hardware stores in particular.

I used to believe them.

When I took the night job at Curtis Hardware three years ago,

the thought was earn enough to cover my rent,

maybe take in some wandering piece among the shelves

and finish my little city engineering degree on the side.

It was a smart idea or look like one.

Days here are all clatter,

deliverers and regulars,

fussy old contractors and our gangpays,

phone calls about lost warranters.

Most of the staff stick to datameir's banny

who does repairs in back

and knows more about Circulus,

all of a sudden anyone has a right to Kelly,

a clerk with a memory like a roller dex

and patients for the ancient register when cards jam.

Mess, disorder, the manager

is almost part of the store's furniture by now.

She's the color of coffee and always wear pressed fists.

She walks through the aisles

as if checking in on her own kids

and you can tell from her stance

she loves the place more stubbornly than anyone.

Nights are mine.

A punch in,

drop my backpack in the battered cream stool

and mine the ancient cloth apron from the backpack.

There's comfort in the road mechanical gestures

checking the log entrance,

turning keys and swollen locks

for stalking the end caps with fresh batteries

and the triple mark tip measures

that'll collect dust until Father's Day.

Outside, the neon sign humming machine

outcurders hardware and supply flickers

every 20 seconds a single bulb always failing in the air.

If the wind hit right,

the signs blue glow shivers along the tile roof

and makes every shoving row look like

it's sitting way steep and thin moonlight.

Inside, the floor is creak without much encouragement.

50 years of oil and mud sanded the beetroot

until the grain forms why,

friendly hills and valleys.

The aisles curve in places

like the wood shank around some invisible anchor beneath.

Floss front display cases at the hardware counter

look like they once belonged in a pharmacy,

cloudy with age and patch with scotch tape

that's become part of the frame.

There's a glass cabinet of keys and tiny padlocks

as well as a castor or so reluctant to open

that the tiniest nudge from a passing elbow

will slam it shut.

Each shift opens and closes to the same rhythms,

the knock of the fridge and back room where sodas

cling together at the breathy side of the furnace

for an event older than I am.

The harm is ticking of the 60 year old clock

that weasers every time it passes the half-hour.

Routine enough that I record little audio notes

to myself a habit from when I mess,

the soda taught me inventory journals keep you sharp,

keep you honest.

Most nights, nothing is out of place.

Mark the fresh shipment, check the display lights,

lock up the toolbox indoors,

tally the sales, go home.

Mess, the soda of herself used to do surprise check-ins

near midnight when she'd appear

from the pitch black lot car keys juggling

her stride echoing through deserted aisles.

She'd offer to finish your task for you

when if she caught you sneaking coffee

or tell a half-jerk and ghost story

about the third shoved curse.

Lately, her steps are less frequent,

she trusts us, or maybe trusts the store

to keep going and monitored.

The bell at the front never rings after midnight

though it's in perfect working order.

I tested it for last prop the door open

let the breeze play it like Mario Netwire.

It stays stubbornly silent, a missing shirt shine

at the heart of the building's after dark ceremonies.

In the north aisle is a stack of unsolved lawnmowers,

bought a speckled with dust and last summer's pollen,

their plastic seat cushions go in chalky.

I dust them every Tuesday per orders

in the maintenance journal,

but they never move from the pyramid shape

like a stone formation granted and slightly sad.

A soundtrack forms in this base.

Ambient noises that fold over on themselves,

dull memories from the street,

static from an AM radio hidden under the counter,

first dips muffled by thick socks.

Some people crave chaos and the jade,

an old audio note of mine confesses,

but I'll take dust and stillness,

it makes you certain you exist,

even if it's a boring kind of certainty.

I collect petty grievances in my notes missing pens,

customers who don't return hand carts,

inventory that aligns and stubbornly ugly patterns.

But mostly I record moments I find comforting,

the way the old cabinets shine after a wipe down,

a feeling of accomplishment after a slow,

but steady restock,

or the thrill of notice in a single bulb,

finally replaced by the morning crew.

There's camaraderie here, even in silence.

Benny's scoff boots leave prints

in the sawdust on mornings I come in early,

and I can always tell whether Kelly or Benny closed

by whose handwriting is in the receipt

pile Benny's exaggerated curves,

Kelly's tight capitals.

Casionally, you get a customer who's a regular at midnight,

the local painter with the white dog,

the woman who buys the same Weisbull every three weeks,

each with their own rituals.

I know, mostly, that none of this matters

in the big picture,

but between aisles or scrues

and the weird comfort of the Humansode fridge,

the store at night was for years,

the only proof I needed that monotony

can have a so-and-kind of dignity.

That is until the crack started with the law book.

Tonight at Small Things,

first discrepancies that barely cross my mind.

I marked on a restock of drywall scrues,

six boxes, regular finish, been at wealth.

By my count after shelving, two should be left.

But the binholes just won,

sitting awkwardly on its side.

Probably me, I'm utter,

nose close to the clipboard,

didn't check the shelf count.

I make a mental note,

then fetch my ring of keys

for the supply closet at the end of aisle seven.

It's one of two doors,

we padlock after closing

because it's where the more valuable power tools

are kept plus extra cleaning stuff

back at extension codes for Benny's repairs.

I spin the ring,

select the square tooth brass key

and push it into the lock.

It doesn't fit.

Not just to key a whole different shea.

The label on the key see I'll supply two

is the same I always use,

but I can't get it started.

I flip it over, check the teeth,

try to remember if I swapped it last week.

I distinctly recall this was the one to the closet,

but it's like the door change while I wasn't looking.

Annoyed, I decide I'll ask in the morning,

probably something Benny did.

The following afternoon after asleep,

so shallow at barely counts,

I'm swapping inventory notes

with Kelly before she clocks out.

You ever have trouble with the supply closet lock?

I ask off end.

She sizes me up with an awkward half smile.

You must have grabbed the wrong key again,

story of your life, hut.

Is no malice, she always makes fun

of my not so great memory.

But when she crosses to the closet,

she slides in her key

and it looks nothing like mind-round instead of square.

Swear we had this one since forever, Kelly adds.

Since Bill, at least before your time, I guess.

She shrugs, already loading her back.

Who's Bill?

I ask, but she's thinking of her commute

and just shakes her head all time or he met him.

Remember, he's the reason we never leave

the red mob in the closet.

She grins in and adds in mind a way

at leaving before I can respond.

Order restored by daylight.

But the next night,

as I double check the back window for leaks,

I see motion reflected in the glass of black,

shake gliding past the edge of the hardware racks.

My nerves jolt, but when I check the window,

there's nothing but the faint afterimage

of passing headlights in the parking lot

and my own blowed out line looking ill and hunched.

On my way back up the aisle, I almost trip on a wrench.

Not the new magic sets we order for contractors,

but stubby steel number marked a 16B,

paint-flact intact for a section called a mill supply.

I've found there hasn't been a mill supply section

in 20 years, not since a mess,

to so-toe boxed up the broken blaze

and repurpose the shelves.

I pick up the wrench and place it in the loss and found,

but my finger tips tingle with a cold metal touch to them.

Trying not to spiral,

I decide to review this security footage.

Part boredom, part curiosity.

The old DVO system chugs through the night

on a screen no bigger than my hand.

I've flipped through last night's tapes.

Between midnight and three,

boxes in the paint aisle shell slide were focused,

as if someone nudged them off camera.

At one point, a mop bucket sits half out of frame

by the closet door then.

Two minutes later, is across the aisle,

wheels moving in slow increments,

though no one passes.

I play the frames back and forth,

wondering if it's a glitch, a mechanical drift.

But there's a trailing shadow just out of time

with a footage of blowed arc

like a person ducking out of the way invisible everywhere else.

It's more disconcerting than frightening,

but enough to keep my pulse elevated the rest of the night.

When I try to note these things in my recorder,

I keep deleting the inches before this afe.

It all seems faintly ridiculous,

like a sleep deprived performance,

only the building doesn't laugh along.

I start making lists.

Double check every drywall box,

every hex key set, every entry in the batter blue notebook.

Something wants to shake routine loose,

and I can't let it.

I keep an eye-only record of screw count,

I'll outworld 42.

I check again an eye or a later 43.

A few nights on, another weird entry appears deep

in the lock book, a couple dozen pages

after the last anomaly,

different year in 1988 again.

Same that shift code.

The handwriting is absolutely mine.

Even my old childhood nickname is written

in the right hand margin,

so me run the count for ice, never wants.

She'll race up my arm.

I go to MS,

the photo for reassurance she stands

by the lighting display,

frowning over a shipment bill.

MS, did we, did I ever have a mentor here?

Someone named Bill?

She looks up sharply pity in her eyes,

maybe a whisper of confusion.

He don't remember Bill,

he told you half of what you know,

you were always together like peas in a pot.

My mouth goes dry.

I am sure I'd remember.

She laughs then, but with too much empathy.

Give it a few more years,

these routine scatter your mind,

now double check the inventory sheets.

We've had missing boxes since before you arrived,

but every new house he used it for a while.

She taps the clipboard.

I wandered to the employee wall photos,

a faded stripe of sunlight by sifting it.

Smiling faces from decade back.

Among the mustache heavy lineup,

a worn polaroid labeled Sam, 1982.

The photo's subject is a round face person

and stained overalls giving a strained half smile.

My mouth goes dry again.

Something about those eyes unsettlingly familiar,

but they aren't me.

We're not totally.

By now, I'm so nervous he kelly out after her shift.

Does Bill still work here?

I ask.

She frowns glancing at the door.

Sure, well, I mean, I saw him last Tuesday,

I think, sometimes he sticks to the back.

He hands our keys if he lose yours,

tried the ones in the drawer under the break room coffee.

She says this like it obvious.

In the break room, I rifle through the drawer

and find an ancient leather strap

weighed down by four tatters keys all different.

I test each at the stubborn supply closet,

even the ones gleaming with fresh polish.

Non-fet.

The third key, a coppery one,

makes my palm prickle with a jolt stinging then cool.

I let it drop to the floor,

watching a skip over a linoleum as if repelled.

I pick up my own key again and the closet remains sealed.

I return to the log book,

now feeling like a criminal.

There are cryptic notes for return,

Curtis supply, 1972,

items were labeled with dates decades old,

new pen strokes over laying older ones.

The heavy green toolbox normally locked

in the repair cage sits tonight at the end of aisle six

as if someone dragged it out and just left it there.

My skin crawls with the feeling of being watched

not by hidden cameras,

but by something within the shelves themselves,

something that knows every error before I spot it.

I click on my recorder.

My voice cracks, checking inventory again.

The numbers don't line up, never do.

Sometimes it feels like the store wants it that way

or wants me to notice.

When I pause for breath,

the background noise seems to shift

as it fires in the walls of whispering.

Lists like words,

Sam Bill Kelly returned,

accounted, and accounted.

I rub my eyes,

grit the old bench near cash wrap

and try to steady my thoughts.

What had started as quirks, dust on boxes,

a missing signature now feels like deliberate sabotage

or jerk that became too real.

Still, there is a flicker of hope.

Maybe I'll solve this,

prove it's all a product of late irs.

If not, maybe Benny will finally see the weirdness too.

Later in the break room,

I watch the camera feeds loop entlessly.

The green toolbox,

caught by the oldest cameras yellowed feed,

seems to inch across the linoleum every half-hour,

a one-inch crawl like a dog settling into sleep.

Whenever it moves,

the time's time presets itself flicker in years

instead of irs.

There are things here that refuse inspection,

but I can't let go now.

Not when my own writing a stitch three years,

I haven't lived.

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I choose day and night,

my nerves jangle with every miss based item.

I decide it's time to take action

to treat the lookbook as evidence

to get official eyes on it.

There's attention in my chest

like a thunderstorm gathering over the eaves

and my handshake would I reach

for the ancient beige phone

and the wall behind the counter.

When I dial the golfiers' report line

a formality for suspicious interest

per handbook at barely rings before returning a jarring

along a detome,

then the phone rings back.

Before I can brace myself,

I pick up.

Hello?

No one on the other end for a beat

then a tired cough and a voice, Sam.

My temple's pound.

The voice is exactly mine,

but older ground down dry.

Fatigue there is bottomless,

but I'm mistakenly me.

Who is this?

I whisper.

The laugh that answers is half resentment.

I'm the real Sam.

The one left over at E-Mess with the record,

didn't you, found the box?

My grip tightens.

I scan the floor of the green toolbox

is just behind the counter now,

perfectly square,

though I know I put it far down

aisle six and an hour ago.

Its surface is crowded with fading stickers

and a battered manufacturer's logo.

Don't move the old green toolbox,

the voice commands,

rising over muffled static.

That's the anchor,

or everything starts slipping again.

Don't try to fix a counter knife,

not unless you want to lose more than a box of screws.

I can't seem to swallow.

The tools filling that box upright,

some rusty each have a name tip to their handle.

Benny, Kelly,

it's so true of my own in smaller print,

and your chip rolling hex driver.

The static on the other end thickens.

The voice pleads, just above a whisper.

Don't open it, don't move it,

we're rooted by what stays.

Leave it where you find it for all our sakes.

The line goes dead.

My hand still clamped nervous

on the receiver, feels bruise and wrong.

For a minute,

I hear only a day ancient hum of the case lights

in the shivering side of perpetual wind.

The toolbox is right beside my shoe now.

A crouch,

feeling each knot of grain

in the wooden floor vibrate under my weight.

The box is cool to the touch

and the sense of being watched snow

measured it turns in my chest.

Is it possible I heard my own voice?

I fumbled a record of back in hand,

but the words catch in my throat.

Silence presses in like a hand over my mouth.

For a long moment,

I kneel,

I tie with the bat at green box,

not sure if I'm about to push everything back into line

or I'm or it forever.

I stay crouch,

knees popping under the pressure,

breathing thickly and quiet that follows a call.

The phone's receiver dangles on its twisted gray cord.

I stare at it for what feels like a full minute

until the background sounds of my world

and should away back in.

The whispered rush of air through summer and scene,

the grind of a delivery truck,

down shifting three blocks over,

the tick-weas of the walk-locks

brittle hands clawing forward.

The green toolbox squat

beside my right foot, squat, battled,

occupying more mental space

than its small mass ought to allow.

I don't touch it not immediately.

I try to stand on my legs ache as if I'd been kneeling

for hours.

It is as if gravity is thicker,

more difficult exactly here

beside this particular object.

I reach up close my hand over the recorder

and listen to my breath hitch in to play back for just a beat.

I want to say something into a tinerate,

analyze, I'm rattle,

but all that spills out is there,

ragged and too loud in space.

I force myself upright, muscles resisting.

The toolbox looks much as it always does.

Army green, stickers curling at the edges,

two latches in the front.

One latch hangs loose

as if someone recently swept a hand over it

though I haven't laid a finger on it yet tonight.

It's way to knee air is pressive,

distressingly personal

and magnetical at the center of my attention.

Don't open it.

Don't move it.

That's what the voice my voice said.

But the temptation to check inside rises,

sharp and impulsive,

part of the same impulse that makes you press on a bruise

just to confirm the outline of pain.

I want to throw it stuff it back in a cage,

run out to the curb,

dump it in the next trash pickup.

Or equally open it and tick full inventory

just to a circuitrol.

Instead, I scan the store hunting for signs of normalcy.

Benny shops jewel stands a skew in the repair cubby,

a rag drooping over his seat pad.

The ancient clock over the cut key display

is inch forward another five minutes.

Through the warp glass of the front door,

I can just make out the blue,

or in shimmer of the neon jay,

out cut a sign, one letter out as usual.

Every detail teeter is at the edge of saunas and difference.

I check the bin's screws, bolts,

and just finding that the numbers no match perfectly

like someone went through and set everything exactly right.

Not just right,

but overright each bin with an extra item

except for the paint stirers,

which have one viewer.

My handshake, the order is uncanny

to possess to feel random.

The bins look back at me,

mute little witnesses of a process

I don't remember undertaking.

I glance over at the end kept by the aisle,

the heavy wrench marked 16 beef from earlier

is no longer in the loss and found

where I deposited it an hour ago.

The paint flak tool is gone,

space left open as if nothing was ever out of order.

Out of habit half reassurance,

half compulsion I whistle as I walk,

pinning echoes off woodshiles and echoing cabinets.

The tune falters after a few notes.

I clear my throat, check the logbook.

The pages look the same until I turn to the page

beneath my signature.

Here the ink looks freshly blotted

but the words are not legible at first.

Underneath the spidery line in my left hand margin,

someone's drawn a rough grade to kind of barcode,

unreadable beneath checked toolbox location

to 47 a.m. never move forward alone.

The phrase twine to self around my mind

as I close the book.

I retreat to the break room,

seeking any evidence outside my own head,

a smell of bone coffee,

left of adornance from Kelly,

anything that would uncanny.

But the space is there, let's hollow.

The fridge hums on as always,

though I can't remember the last time

I had to tick over into a new cooling cycle.

In a brown plastic trash bin is a bowl of receipt,

I know I threw out two nights ago

on either purchase date is different to 1978

for a box of fence staples that I logged again last week.

A thread of panic tries to wind its way up my spine

but I force myself to stay focused,

pin willing through what I know,

the logbook has pages I didn't write, but clearly did.

The supply closet is locked with a key

that never fit, despite memory.

The toolbox seems to move on its own,

holds tools marked with the name of everyone who works here.

Their inconsistencies, co-workers,

referencing events and people I don't remember

and vice versa.

This isn't just bad bookkeeping or exhaustion.

What if the store is holding on to me,

not just my attention,

but my presence through writing the day around itself

with every incremental correction or mistake?

The logbook is a witness for green toolbox its hub.

I hover on this dot too long,

then force myself to cross the sales floor again.

My intention is to return the toolbox to the repair cage,

lock it up until morning

and keep my hands off everything else until sun up.

But the moment I touch the box to pick it up,

a shiver runs up my arm,

not the cold of steel,

but an electrical numbness,

as if I've grazed an exposed wire.

I let it go, shuddering,

the skin on my pump rickling and pale.

I check my palm under the lantern light.

No burn, not even as much of dust,

but the skin feels thinner,

like a barely clings to warmth.

They urge to open the box nearly over a power's knee.

Instead, I back away until my shoulder blades hit the paint aisle.

The phone rings again, wrenching the silence.

Not the store line this time,

but the old beige wall into calm,

which almost never works.

The staccato pulses alien,

too loud against the enveloping hush.

I answer with a trembling hello.

The only response is static,

punctuated by my own voice repeating dollar

and more tired with each echo, leave it, leave it.

I hang up fast,

hot pounding wickedly in my chest.

For a while, I just stand there,

forcing myself to count every object in view.

12 cans of paint,

six brooms,

four packs of glue on the shelf above.

I fix each object in my mind,

thrilling it and don't let the details float away,

don't let the numbers slip.

I fight for a routine,

it's dullness now to only shield

I have against whatever is happening.

Eventually, the predominant light creeps,

and I drug myself out past the store windows

to the edge of the parking lot,

letting the wind slap my face.

The air smells of old snow and car exhaust.

The city, wicking up,

feels distant,

unmoored from the Marionette Theatre

and Side J out Curtis Hardware.

The green toolbox remains where I dropped it, unmoved.

For the rest of the shift,

every trip passes bikes my pulse,

but the box remains shut.

It's faded label returned to counter.

Do not remove almost glowing in the half darkness.

When Kelly arrives for the day shift,

she squints at me.

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Beating exhaustion in my eyes.

She doesn't remark on it,

just nods another long one.

Yeah, I reply.

Lost some sleep, camp got weird again.

She shrugs checking her register.

Nothing ever lines up in this store, just let a mess.

Do you know if something's actually missing?

Numbers are never exact after a late night

that's what Bill always says.

I want to ask about Bill,

about which key she uses now,

about the photo wall, but words fail.

I get the sense that if I keep pressing,

things will tip further off, Kilda.

Instead, I clock out, leave by the back entrance,

and walk home with my hand in my jacket pockets,

expecting that part of me is being left behind to keep count.

Sleep will not come easily for days.

Every time I lie down,

the hum of the storm fades my dreams,

the click of old locks,

the rasp of crate edges,

the fluorescent flick of looping endlessly.

I return from my next shift to different person,

or maybe the same person was at hard to tell.

The store persists, age pressed into its shelves,

and the green box wades in a fresh location near the plummy aisle.

This time, I don't go near it.

Instead, I try to keep the routine inventory,

when a customer stops by in the dead-irolled man,

and a tank coat hands rough a sandpaper he acts for a sound,

the one from overnight.

I nod out of habit, but he eyes me as if I'm only half familiar.

Didn't you use to wear a red cap?

He asks,

still got that limb after the latter thing?

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know,

Still got that limb after the latter thing?

No cap?

I say,

confused.

And it never been hurt.

He shakes his head,

confused or dissatisfied,

and buys his box of nails

without further comment.

By midnight,

and cross-referencing every record,

I can find the inventory,

the tallies,

the printed employee registers,

so in a mess,

the searchers brittle cursor,

the poll roads,

and crumple post it,

notes stuck to the employee wall.

Some interest for it,

some,

go back farther than possible decades,

popping up every several years,

nearly identical handwriting.

Sometimes, different middle initials, ML Cohen, Sanjay, Cohen, sometimes just Sammy.

Yet the signatures in bold or cramped scripts, pencil fades or fresh blue incur all eerily close to mine.

Benny comes in the next morning with extra bleach for the mop bucket and finds me hunched over the register, eyes red.

Rough night, he grins.

Or did Bill put you on the rookie shifts again?

He saw it's receipts while humming in old Motantune.

How long have I worked here? I blurt out.

Sorry, weird question.

He gives me the lopsided grin, I know them pauses, breath erode.

You, since before I started, what, five years now, sex may be, though sometimes seems like you've been here forever.

He shakes his head, distracted, before wandering off with a list of pipe fittings to restock.

I mean to stop him to clarify, but the moment slips by.

Suddenly, I'm not sure what I expect to hear.

Is it possible, even Benny isn't sure how long I've been on staff?

Desperation calls at me as exhaustion sets in.

The routine that used to anchor me now feels like a loop attract that rewrites itself with every pass.

The more I fight to stay present, the more the world ed is in compensates.

Like a misaligned film splice that prepares its gaps by dubbing frames.

The next night, I plan my moves more carefully.

I note the location at every major object, especially the toolbox.

Instead of walking the aisles the same way, I alternate the order, start and stop mid routine.

But something compensates.

Every time I look back, the green box is closer to the register, just barely on the edge of vision, as if it's waiting for me to approach.

I test the keys again, even those that never fit before, holding each lawn enough that a faint num-tingle radiates through my fingers, as if some energy jumps the gap.

I press them all into my palm, none work on the supply closet, but the tingling increases almost familiar, like a lingering echo.

On a whim, I prop a small camera above the counter, set it to time-lapse.

I want to know if the box moves when I'm not looking, or if I'm truly losing time.

Throughout the shift I recess checking the footage, saving the review for later, dreading the certainty either way.

Instead, I move between tasks stocking, wiping, locking, watching for irregular shadows or unusual cold.

I run my fingers over the logbook, daring another signature or mistake.

Near dawn, when at last the camera memory fills, I watch as the playback flickers, the toolbox recedes a few inches, then jumps forward, sometimes spinning on its base.

My figure on screen looks sleep-deprived face-go-on, movements jerky, always working, always resetting an army of inventory items that return almost magically to a preferred order.

A mop bucket appears and disappears from frame, a blur of color always just out of time.

A dread rationality overtakes me.

The store is patching itself, and I am both tool and watcher sometimes agent, sometimes victim.

The logbook is validation for the next reset, a way to fold one day and bleed it into another.

Before dawn, I pen one final note into the recorder.

If I'm not the first sound to do this, let me be the last, the box don't touch, the log I never trust, if you hear your own name, run.

I take the recorder under the register, breach shallow and raw, and stack my name badge on top of it for proof-ref-only for some future me.

But as the sky lightens outside, I look up to see the bell at the door moving in a gentle arc, though the door is shuttied.

The old sign across the street spotter then stabilizes into a familiar colors until I blink, and it returns to usual.

I sweep the aisles, eyes gritty, passing the resupply closet.

For a moment, something taps from inside, urgent and mechanical, but when I swing the door open and lock now with the regular key, there's nothing but a scent of oil and an empty shelf.

I close the store early, flipping the sign over, and warp the aisles for a last check.

Besides the register now, so subtle I almost miss it, the green box sits half inside the patch of morning sunlight, its old label catching rays.

I stare at it, willing it to stay still, to remain where the world left at this time.

My fingers dart toward the handle. I freeze a timeless tension in my chest then step back, letting the light move, waiting for another reset, or release, or resignation.

The store rests for a beat as it suspended between breaths.

I sit back at the old desk near the breakroom, forcing my heartbeat to slow.

There's a comfort here, still, hidden behind the dread of hope that my not-any-reacerts itself if I respect its boundaries, if I let the patterns ride out without interference.

A jot-a-posted stick it on the battered cash drawer, don't move the box, ever at SC.

It looks ridiculous, an over-reaction, but the message gives a thin veneer of safety to the coming day.

I clock out, nod at Benny as he clocks in, and step outside into the clear, call it a stale.

The city is starting to stir traffic resumes on second avenue, birds cold-distantly from wire to wire.

I square my shoulders, let the rhythm of footsteps in the walk echo back.

For a time, there is a piece of kind of stunned equilibrium.

But somewhere, behind the glass, I know the box is waiting.

I need checker of my name on a tag, in a lock, held on a phone line or a crack set tape feels a little less like belonging, and a little more like a borrowed part waiting to be counted and replaced.

At the start of my next shift everything feels off-balance, even before I set foot inside.

The city outside blows in the early summarise, and I get the sense I've been awake too long or not awake at all.

It's like slipping on a pair of shoes that should fit but pinch in all the wrong places.

I force a few breaths before unlocking the heavy back door keys rattling more than I remember.

The notch on my usual key is a hairline split running through the brass, a detail I'd swear wasn't there yesterday.

Inside, the door looks almost entouched.

The air is heavy with a mild metallic scent of heating pipe to an old oil, less welcoming than before.

There's no sign anyone's been through since I left, except for the way the rug is twisted to the foot of the counter, and the stack of weekend sail flight is knocked and evenly across the floor.

The green toolbox is backed by the paint aisle again, exactly in the dividing line where night shadows and days' week of slight meet.

I stall by the old employee board.

The faces stare forward, some glassy and some blurred.

Now, under the cork frame, a new photograph has been tacked in, me, with someone like me, but older, cheeks a bit fuller, eyes shaded.

The handwriting beneath says simply, Sam LC, slash after shift crew.

The date is an impossible when 2011, well before I got hired.

A reach out and brush the print, fingertips stuttering over the ink.

There's another line beneath, printed smaller, remember your count.

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Benny's already in the back hunched by the pipe fittings with an inventory sheet.

His usual greeting long night.

It comes automatic, but tonight there's hesitation behind it.

And if he can't be sure, it's me standing here.

Play scene quiet to you, or is it just the storms got you jumpy?

Quiet, I say, voice thin.

Black everything's waiting for something.

He laughs at that, shakes his head, and gets detalling without another word.

But a catch in shooting almost nervous glances at the far aisle where that battered green box sits tidy.

Tools wait in an even rose above it, some labels warped,

since scrolled and looping black pen that echoes my own style.

Kelly arrives a few minutes later, coats one over it or on.

She moves differently to more tired or just wrong in her timing, a half beat out of rhythm.

She waves, sets her bag down, and asks, Inventory all good today,

I got four different sheets with your name on them in the mail stack.

I manage a nod, though my head is thick with static.

Just covering old ground, I guess.

She grins, flustered, and makes jerks about legacy systems and deeper roofs than the local library.

Part of me wants to laugh along to let the pattern resume as normal,

but mom was not on offer anymore.

Every sound feels double, the shuffling of her shoes, the drone of the soda fridge,

the buildings own breathing settling into the bones.

Over my first mug of coffee, I flip open the logbook again.

My section is crowded now, for new interest since last night,

each one in my script, but with distinctions slanted NS some nights, blocky LS on others.

Each list is slightly different employee co, but everyone is signed some alcohol.

None of these shifts feel like mine, though they mention details that are painfully exact,

checked binat with missing one box of screws, or of solid mop bucket rope past aisle six.

More unsettling is the way the names are layered, each entry ends with a note that echoes

the last line of my own recordings as if looping me back on myself.

I never trust the numbers, one says.

You belong to the rucker, says another.

I almost laugh almost until the pen in my hand trembles,

and the lines of words blur and multiply on the page.

I walk the store by habit I scanning the familiar chaos.

But the patterns are wrong.

I'll numbers miss a line over the racks.

I look for comfort in mine in details, broken light near the back freezer,

the streak of blue paint behind the old sink, but I don't find what I need.

There's something lurking underneath the familiar.

I glance at the toolbox, then look away fast.

It hasn't moved, but the air near it is heavier, colder,

like the heat refuses to cross that invisible line.

I step closer, enough to feel the temperature drop against my face a tangible,

a natural chill, like a window's been left wide open.

My tongue catches the taste of a machine oil and gun metal far too sharp for comfort.

For a second, I think her hearing spoken, lost in the low frequency hum,

Sam Kelly Benny, Bill DeSoto, returned, unreturned.

In mess, DeSoto arrives new noon.

She looks different and unfamiliar scarf,

let's make up, and her glasses misplaced,

but her presence is no less commanding.

She hums softly as she steps down the cleaning products aisle,

then frowns at the battered box at my feet.

Still haven't shifted that, she asks.

Her face isn't smiling, eyes half-lated.

Bill would have a fit if he saw a tool's outer place.

My mouth goes dry.

When's the last time you saw Bill?

I frown softens her brow as she tries to remember.

Though years ago, she says finally,

but sometimes it feels like just yesterday,

you know these places, they hold onto people,

even when you think they're gone.

She checks her watch and floats toward the back office.

My body feels stuck in place,

my mind's stitched half a beat out of step.

The store's old clock peels once,

mocking the aisle with a sound that reverberates longer

than it should.

The day drags white open.

Customers flicker in and out,

their face is less familiar than I expect.

Some not politely are the sidestep

of the look of distracted recognition,

as if they've encountered me somewhere else another role,

another place, another week.

As the light fades toward evening,

a catch-cali restocking batter is near the register.

I approach her attempting casual conversation,

haunting for any anchor and shared memory.

Hey, remember that holiday party last year,

with the cupcakes.

She smiles, confiding.

Of course, that's when Benny's wife brought the apple cake,

and you wore that silly Christmas tie,

didn't you get stuck cleaning up the punch?

I shake my head.

Confusion mounting.

That wasn't me, I never wear ties,

and I don't remember any apple cake.

Tellyblinks, like she's just working.

Oh, maybe maybe I mixed it up some years' blur.

She slips away,

busing herself with shelf labels, gays averted.

I'm left clutching a memory that's half mine,

half someone else's.

As night wraps him once again,

routine becomes nerve.

I circle the toolbox,

willing it to stay inert.

My skin tingles in its presence.

I almost expect to see my own face reflected in the battered metal,

but the only thing staring back

is a distortion multiple faces overlaid,

old and young,

shifting at the sticky edge of vision.

The stores inside lights falter and pulse.

I write a new entry in the lookbook,

determined to pin down one real fact,

April 24th, Sam Hill, Coen, Inventory,

and complete toolbox and moves since last night,

record maintained.

The ink looks wrong,

darker than before,

but I close the book and refuse to check it again.

Time passes and skips and jumps.

On-camera review,

the toolbox shifts and wiggles,

each frame a new contradiction,

at once farther,

then closer to the counter,

then back again.

I stop the recording, hand shaking.

I prop myself on a stool as the night thickens,

pulse my route to the glunk and groan

of the skeleton store around me.

I wonder if this is how Bill fell for the Sam before,

or the Sam after.

The names, the forms,

the process,

all twist together,

and I'm left with the groan

sense that the record has needs of its own.

Sleep offers no escape.

When I finally drift,

face to folded arms,

behind my eyelids,

different scenes from the store flicker sometimes and seeker,

sometimes in black and white,

sometimes resolve and sometimes painfully blurry.

The dreams overlap,

a half-remembered song playing over the aisles,

and somewhere,

always, the green box at the center.

My shift drags open,

framed by frame,

logic slipping,

and restitching itself with every pass.

I jot in the log,

remember you can't.

Don't touch the box.

But even as I press a pen to paper,

I don't trust the line

that forms beneath my fingers.

The world waits for a misstep,

ready to rewrite at the drop of a wrench.

I spend a day cross-checking physical inventory

with venable ledgers,

some so old the columns have faded nearly white.

Each dusty stash reveals

more interest dozens of Sam,

a kelly,

a penny,

and even Bill repeated at intervals.

Sometimes for his amests

in a single year,

sometimes a gap half a decade long

when no new handwriting appears at all.

The employment log treats us

as a list of parts,

cycling,

archive,

never wholly replaced.

I flip the pages,

tracing one sound after another,

identical loops

of subtle shifts left-handed,

right-handed,

exuberant,

exhausted.

When I close my eyes,

I see a chorus of myself

that faces stuck in the liminal light

by the repair cage,

all signing off at a night.

Kelly checks on me in late afternoon,

holding a mug,

concerned-ished into her cheek.

Sam,

look are you okay?

You've been at that ledger for hours.

Inventory never made anyone this worked up.

I swallow voice-rusting.

How long have we worked together, Kelly?

She flinches,

then forces a smile.

Feels like years,

forever, maybe.

We came in on the same summer, didn't we?

Or was that with Benny?

She tilts her mug,

confusion crawling across her face.

Or did we?

The air between us is thick,

every word waiting through invisible syrup.

Do you remember the night the power would out?

Or that time I broke the display window?

Her eyes searched mind-struggling.

Yes, I mean, I do.

But maybe that was someone else.

Sorry, Sam.

Sometimes I get my ears mixed up,

never mind.

She leaves,

and her hesitation lingers in the space.

By dusk, I set up a small camera,

aiming at the green box,

determined not to blink away whatever happens in the night.

I tape over the time coat,

numbers don't mean much here anymore.

After the aisle's empty,

and the distant traffic has wane,

I sit for jail.

Each hour,

the box shifts a degree or two,

and its label puts forth a blow sometimes a Curtis,

sometimes returned to counter,

sometimes just a scroll.

Whenever the box moves,

the logbook picks up new entries.

Frashing appears in the line papers,

if written by an invisible hand,

not matching my own,

not matching anything.

Sidenotes emerge,

inventory correction return place,

and memories recalled,

can't restored.

I drag a hand down my face.

My arm is numbered,

hovered near the box too long.

I yanked my sleeve down,

but the numbness stays,

as persistent as the aching my chest.

I tried to push memory into order.

I close my eyes and focus on the store,

the hum of the fridge,

the tin sand by the supply closet,

the half-din bulbs at the entrance.

I yanked myself in those details,

fighting to keep my own iris,

my own body in this moment.

But it doesn't hold.

All at once,

and they're in a flash,

awake at the over-package,

sweat wicking down my back.

The box is gummed from its place by the paint aisle.

Instead,

an unsettling cold spot flickers

at the center of the sales floor,

and the store's layout feels wrong,

hiles narrowed,

light-stuttering faster.

I staggered to my feet every motion heavy.

Somewhere,

had the very edge of the overhead PA,

a voice loop senderously,

Sam,

Sam,

returned,

returned,

accounted,

accounted.

The store dips and shifts around me,

like a boat rocking slow and stormwater.

My own senses feel mismatched,

I move an arm

and watch its after-image lag behind.

I press my palms to my face,

clash of numb and oversensitive.

At the limit of my patient,

I sit up straight

and drum my knuckles in the sales counter.

The green box is now beside me,

as if it anticipated my fatigue.

The latch shutters,

clicks open a millimeter,

and something like steam escapes

though the air is dry.

I unlock my phone,

dial the store's old landline

just to see,

just a test.

The ringtone rings out,

but before it connects,

there's a click,

and a heavy,

exhausted version of my voice

comes through on the other side.

Sam,

the echo is tired,

almost grateful.

Let it be tonight,

don't push the count,

you're almost out.

Desperation rises in my chest

I want to interrogate

to demand answers,

but the voice repeats,

do not move the box,

the patch will slip,

you'll be here again,

or not at all,

do you understand,

Sam?

Static swells,

overpowering the words.

I shut my eyes,

squeeze them tight.

When I reopen them,

the store wobbles

at the threshold

of something irreversible.

I resolve to act.

I will not repeat.

I will not be called

in a wrong count

one more time.

That night,

I staged a test.

Before the cameras,

before the aisles,

I sit in the supply

room door locked

every light on,

my notebook and hand,

ben uncapped.

The clock slow-minutes

drag and spastic leaps.

I precisely three-thirteen-a-m,

it happens.

A figure splits

from the darkness,

half-solid beside

the toolbox,

someone old,

familiar at the sound

from the photo wall

of the one labelled

1982.

He saw it's tools

by name,

muttering the count

beneath his breath.

My knees shake.

I know, as if

told that he's me,

but although ghosted

by repetition.

His motions are

careful, haunted,

as though regret is

calcified into every

joint.

His gaze falls on me.

For a second,

I'm certain

will scream that

madness will

tear the room apart.

Instead,

he smiles a

voice-level.

This is not what

you think.

Not a ghost just a

patch.

I must stay

killed in place.

Do you understand

now? Right.

I swallow.

Why my name?

Why am I

everywhere?

What are we

holding back?

He looks down at the

box, taps it with two

fingers.

Every time a count

goes wrong, accidents,

thefts, folks that

disappear, sales that

never finish, someone

makes it right.

Not in the books,

not in the numbers.

But here in the

store, records get

patched sometimes

keep a place running.

You make it

run by force.

He glances at

the logbook, now

split with a hundred

versions of my

signature.

He won't meant to

bear all of it, but

sometimes there isn't

anyone else.

The patch is

loop, and the

toolbox holds

with the

ledger count.

A gentle sign

is washes his face.

Sometimes, he

merge.

Sometimes, he split.

Sometimes, he leaves

someone else to take

the towel if

Bill did.

Kelly, my

Benny's next

depends on the count.

Here is real as

anyone here.

It's not your

fault, but if you move

the toolbox, if you

try to remake the

pattern, something gets

left behind, names,

faces, memories

changed until the

log reads right.

The old Sam pushes the

box forward, apologising,

fading as if

swept by the

draft from a closing

door.

Sorry, Sam.

It's the only way to

keep the place full, even

if it means trading one

piece for another.

Don't move it.

Don't break the

cycle unless you're

sure you want

out.

As he fades, the light

and the stuff all flick

is over the sales for

Benny with a paint

rag, Kelly looking

an envelope, MS,

DeSoto with her

vest and macula,

Bill crouched by an

open-bending version

drawn by different

pulse, a different

day's memory.

The overlap,

merge, wink out,

reappear.

I stand there, shaking

witness to a festival

of coppers and halves,

or clutching some

essential part of the

store.

I understand, on a

level beneath language,

that what happens next

is sensitive, uncertain,

final.

The green toolbox

hums shivering with the

force of attention.

Almost daring to

pry it open or shove

it aside.

Somewhere overlapping

reality, someone or

something plead again,

leave it, leave it, leave

it.

My own voice, multiplied

in uncertain, barely audible

under the rattles

fluorescent tubes.

The air thickens

until I can't breathe.

The register is

click on and often

rapid, nervous spurts

the bell at the door

swings and bangs

in time at my heart.

The box jumps in my

vision near, then

impossible far, then

right at my feet.

In the middle of the

store, the world

splinters.

The aisle shrink

bends empty in

refill.

The list scrolls

scrolling names

counts times.

Some vanished,

some incomplete.

Nothing remains

stable for long.

In the chaos, I

fear my own features

flux-old, young,

tired, hopeful.

I recall memories I

never had, fixing a

display with bill on the

summer night, eating

kick-it party with

Kelly, patching a

broken pipe with a

mess to Soto, being

cheered for after

helping with

inventory, sobbing in the

stockroom after someone's

sudden absence.

The cells weave and

and weave fruits

tangled through the

bones of the store.

To a dot, everything

stops just for

breath, a pain,

raw second with the

only realities the

cold ghost of the

toolbox, and my

hand above his

luch.

A snap.

The air settles.

The world

contrasts to a pinpoint

me in the box, the

only things that matter.

The registers click

off, plunging the

store into dark

in silence, safe for

that single, luminous

green rectangle.

All versions of

myself are not

myself vanish.

The staff wall above

the counter is

blank except for

single photomine.

The logbooks

are a breath, handshaking

hard.

My existence narrows

to the cold pressure

of the toolbox handle

and the knowledge of

what it holds more than

tools, more than histories,

the weight of entire

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Access to affordable

credit helps me pay my

employees.

But I don't really

need it.

Infliction is

killing me.

Who cares?

Big retailers

are making record profits.

That's why we support the

Durban Marshall

credit card bill.

See?

Banks and credit unions

businesses make pay

role.

This bill would cut

the vital resources they

need.

While increasing

megastore profits.

They deserve it.

Don't they?

Tell Congress, stop the

Durban Marshall

Money Grab for corporate

megastores.

Paid for it by the

electronic payments

coalition.

I understand the offer,

the trip, I leave it, and

the pattern remains.

I move it, open it,

recount uncertainty,

chaos, release, perhaps

oblivion.

The register is

digital display flickers

once, igniting a

sickly green.

For a split second,

it reads accounted.

The word pulses

then dies.

I stand in the

empty store, enveloped

by the hush of the

aftermath.

Breath returns slow.

The terrain of my

life re-arranges itself

a patchal aid for

someone else, now waiting

for the next error,

the next missing piece.

I pull my hand away

from the box.

The cold sensation

lingers, carved into my

finger-print ridges,

permanent as

any baloning.

The place around me

feels both alien and

faintly welcoming, the

air filling with a

comfort of small,

unremarkable detail.

The light

stabilise.

At the register, my

name badge sits alone

its coroner's

dogguard.

I stay at it, half expecting

the plastic to warp

with the letters to

shuffle.

They don't at least

not yet.

My heart slows.

This stores routine

reasserts itself, humming

with the protected

monotony of a tradition

kept, a reality

locked down by

routine.

Outside, some light

resumes as crawl along

second avenue.

Shadows drift

behind the old

neon sign.

I walk the aisles

one last time, hand

trailing along shelves

as seemosi right

or right enough.

At the Brickham door,

a pause listening

for a lust echo

nun comes.

The only sound is my

own breathing, and the

settled hush of a

sequence completed.

I face the green

box, refasting the

loose latch.

I walk away

without another look.

The next day, the

world operates as if

nothing shifted.

Customers

filing, and nod

their vehicles.

Fanny jokes about

faulty inventory.

Kelly leaves me a

coffee and a note,

rough night, and

looping cursive.

Mess, DeSoto

oversees the

red-fledged, her

practice smile

back in place.

The clock

up of the counter

ticks at her regular

pace.

My own

reflection, pale

and drawn, greets

me from a

gloss display.

But small changes

clen't through.

The toolbox

sits and disturbed,

does gathering

over its battered

surface.

Sometimes, walk

in the aisles, a

catching new faces

to have a

customer's

who's

the weight of

recognition or

loss.

The order of

I avoid the logbook, keeping my head down, signing nothing unless required.

My own handwriting, on receipt and checklist, feels unreliable each letter in my name

a thread spun a little tighter.

I find the following note in the lost and found Ben, sharp block ladders pressed into

yellow drool paper.

Leave a beat, Sam, someone else needs to work.

Chill rides down my spine.

For days, I catch myself listening for the bell, or the scratch of a long lost voice,

but the store holds its peace.

Routine shields, most questions.

The pattern for this, worry but unbroken.

On the 7th night, with rain soaking, the parking lot and city lights stubborn against

the dock, I hear the answering machine click to life in the anti-brickroom.

I don't remember recording a new message, but the tape rewinds with a mechanical snarl.

My voice altered, tired, older, or simply walked by distance plays out, urgent and low.

Don't forget the name they gave you, the store is not done with this yet, don't

trust the toolbox, don't trust the list.

The line hisses, then cuts to static.

I step out of the brickroom, already feeling the way behind me the store room with its

precise geometry and the green box at its heart.

For a long moment, I listen to the hum of the store.

It's peaceful, ordinary.

The final shiver comes not from dread, but from the quiet certainty that routine is the

store's deepest mask.

That night, as I walk the darkened aisles to check locks and lights, I let my hand rest

briefly on the battered box, feeling the cold surety of choices made.

In a dim quiet, just before I turn out the last slide, I hear a quiet and canny whisper,

spoken in a voice painfully close to my own.

It says, we close at midnight.

And then it's over.

And then it's over.

The crates wall is me, thick as velvet.

In the half-let's store, I stand motionless, hands still resting on the battered green box,

pumped for uping deli when metal has pressed skin.

The drone of distant traffic satters through double-pain glass, overlaying the silence with

a thin membrane of outside life oblivious, eternal.

In this moment, everything feels paused, as if the store has taken a deep breath and is

waiting to see what I will do.

The weight of ordinary things, the smell of plywood, the faint town of oil from a freshly

shop in saw, the stick you'll knowly am under my feet is newly oppressive, bristling

with invisible anticipation.

For a while, ten seconds, perhaps an iron, I don't move, barely daring even to blink.

I become hyper-aware of every ordinary detail, a strand of copper been the lunch-shadowed,

uneven hum of the badge printer under the counter, a stain on my shirt sleeve from spilled

marker ink.

All these things feel loaded, as though each has been indexed, filed, and falsely returned

to its place for the sake of my sanity.

At last, breath shutters out.

The spell seems to break.

Routine calls the checklist of close-up tasks and no-by-heart, ritual steps to sweep away

the day's chaos and restore order.

I walk the aisles once more, noting how the inventory is stilled.

Bolt and plastic bins lie flush with the edge, shelves, though scuff, sure no signs of

last night's disturbance.

Every peg huggled exactly what the list prescribes.

When my gaze drifts across the logbook at the register, its most recent entry is to

date, commonplace, and unremarkable, April 25, San El, Cohen, closing shift complete,

all items accounted.

I sound out my name as I read it to quietly, just to be certain if it's.

The syllables come smoothly but echo with faint and familiar undertones.

It's my signature, but I feel the chill of having written it as someone else's command.

Still, if there's a difference, only I only eyes I am not can tell.

The change, where it's strongest, sits deeper than habit.

Thesis two have shifted at the store.

In the dusty breakroom that morning, I find two new applications slipped beneath the

coffin machine one name faintly familiar, another seemingly conjured from nowhere.

Benny, coming off a lawn-shift, claps me in the shoulder and jerks about the new blood.

Kelly, who always fusses with the prize guns, now nervously chees an ale and forgets why

she started inventory counts up in seven instead of one, she swears she's always done

it that way.

No one mentions the toolbox.

But when a mess, De Soto makes her rounds her usual briskness is blunted.

She glances over the aisles twice, frowns at the lopperc, then looks at me as though I

am attrusted, steady fixture someone who's ten years obvious and unremarked.

Is a pause as she seems to measure my shape against remembered silhouettes.

Counting down for closing, she asks, forced higher but warm.

Yes, everything's in place, I answer, and though it's true, the word plays feels too

large as if it contains a dozen subtle futures pressed into a single syllable.

The days tick onward and the shape of routine settles again.

On my next night shift, the city's neon glow throbs against the wind up, but it doesn't

reach past the worn security gate.

The dull at the front dormos only with breezes or passing customers, the logbrook, if anything,

is even duller than before.

My handwriting thickens in the register, each resulting line a record of normalcy restored,

restocks, returns, one broken pipe fitting, I'm a splice scroover over.

Yetha fence each time I sign my name, half expecting something about the leap of the

ester of the slant of the A to betray me.

It never does, but I'm worried of trickery now, alert for the moment something might slip,

still, that would be a lie to claim the past week has vanished cleanly.

I catch myself has stating each time I pass the green box, now stationed beneath a supply

shelf in the back room, gathering a quiet dust.

It no longer calls to me by force, but I remain aware of its presence, the way one is always

aware of a loaded trap even when it's hidden beneath leaves.

Each time I record a note from myself reminders about delivery, schedules, or damage stock

I pause, as if waiting for a second voice to join in.

Occasionally late at night, the radio and the break room fizzes with white noise, clicking

over to a station I don't recall programming.

Sometimes I hear a half-loss echo, maybe a snippet of a previous life of voice almost

like mine, lamenting lost time, urgent caution.

Then this static resumes and I shake myself loose, trusting the fabric of the day to cover

what can't be explained.

There are telltale signs for those who know to look.

Inventory manifest spare, notice changes employ code suggested by a digit, product signatures

that nearly match but not quite.

New hires slip into the ranks as if they'd always belonged, the jokes and banter stitched

effortlessly into lunchroom gossip.

On the court board by the time clock, a new photo appears every few days, a stuffed pizza

party, a birthday celebration, all with my face in the group but always a little different

around the ages, a haircut I've never worn, a coat I don't own, a smile too confident

for how I feel.

Once, while clearing out the old storage closet, I find a scrap of paper folded deep in a box

marked receipt sarcove.

On it, in block capitals, it says, we've IEB, Sam, the count is never perfect.

The handwriting is a mistakenly mine, both ink is faded to the colour of vook bark.

I tuck it into my back pocket and let my fingers linger for a moment over the green box

before tending off the light.

The world aside moves on with the oblivious rush of spring.

Students cheer outside the bakery on second avenue.

Rain turns gutters into rivers, umbrellas bloom and vanish.

The city's clocks drag every shift into repetition.

In the store, the small rituals refilling the penny cup, organising the display of new

garden gloves, straightening the uneven pegboard to become a prayer for stability.

But at night, when the last custom has left in the bell sits still, I stand at the counter

and trap the dust, daring the world to shift again.

I find myself murmuring under my breath, always count, never recount, anchor and release.

It's a string of words, bored from somewhere far back, carrying no comfort but fitting

the space exactly.

On one such night, a man I've never met steps in five minutes before closing, asking

for the sound with the red cap from last fall.

I tell him no one by the description works here, though his eyes linger on my badge,

confusion pinching his breath.

You sure?

He asks.

I am.

It's a fifties and peace on the counter, though he buys nothing, and his exit feels like

a scene closing, letting no evidence escape.

The green box sits in touch, its label scuff but intact.

I just around it, never moving it, never daring to break whatever boundary I've been

granted.

Weeks pass.

Each iteration of routine dolls, the edges of what happened if it did happen.

The memory of consequences blows at the edge of sleep, surfaces in odd, out of place

details, a flicker in the overhead lights, a sudden cold spot at the end of aisle six,

a sip of paper on my desk written in an ink I don't remember buying.

Kelly asks late one Thursday if I'm planning to take time off soon.

Her tone is lighter and burdened.

You've been here years now, right?

She says, and the uncertainty hangs in the air between us.

I guess so, I answer.

Feels like longer lately.

She laughs, collects her bag, and the clock above the exit takes two minutes into the future.

I let her go, then circle the aisles again before locking up.

I pause at the green box, feeling something akin to gratitude, or maybe just resignation

settle on my shoulders.

The world is stable for now.

My name fits it slot.

My reflection doesn't waver in the glass.

Still and careful with every signature.

When I see my handwriting on a new staff memo or a delivery note I don't remember signing,

I look for the edge, an odd color of a letter, a data of sequence, a feeling that the paper

has been folded too many times.

If I find something off, I leave it and touch, letting the patterns heal themselves.

Let the store is vigilant.

Sometimes, in the dull air before sunrise, a hear a faint thump from the supply-close of

our whispered rhythm filtering from the vents returned, counted, missed, replaced.

It might be imagination or a lost warning, but either way, I heed it.

One night, a new employee brings me a slip of paper she found under the rug by the back

exit.

It's torn, yellowed, crammed with tiny script and black pen.

Don't count yourself out, sometimes, that's when the cycle begins.

She grins, suggests it's some long lost company slogan, and pins it to the brick

room wall.

I let her heart twisting with a vague, amused dread.

Still, there are moments the routine tries to crack.

The toolbox vibrates once, barely perceptible, when I pass too close.

The answering machine records a handful of seconds in the dead of night static, then

the faintest possible echo, my name, stuttered out as if from the end of a long marathon,

urgent and newly pleading.

I erase it before anyone else arrives.

There's nothing to gain from spreading a knees.

The city keeps time.

I stay in my lane.

Most nights, the box is on the inventory checklist match, and so long as the records even

unfold tally with a kind of internal forgiveness, the store remains.

There's comfort in that tempered piece, earned with vigilance.

Every so often, when the wind is up and delights liquor in the strange stomach-dropping

pattern, I press my knuckle against the green box just hard enough to feel its chilt

then step away, reciting my new mantra.

I leave it where I find it, for all our sakes.

On the corner of my eye, the world tries on new faces now and then.

Sometimes, as I lock the doors for night, I see the faint double image of myself reflected

in the glass-older and younger, hopeful and tired of it, but with a nod that says yes,

for now the count holds.

The clock above the counter ticks toward midnight, and with a final steady breath, I turn off

the overheads, pocket my keys, and face the darkness, knowing that, this time, for tonight,

I'm neither missing nor replaced.

The list is closed, the counting jures.

And that is the end.

Thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next one.

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