The Night Shift That Went Wrong
There is a specific kind of silence that only exists in a massive retail store at three in the morning. It is not peaceful. It is heavy, thick, and feels like the building itself is holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. I had worked the night shift at that store for nearly six months, and I had learned that the fluorescent lights hummed with a low, vibrating frequency that could get under your skin if you let it. My coworker, Lenny, was the only other person in the building that night. Lenny was a good guy, usually talkative and easygoing, but during the night shift, we both tended to drift into our own private worlds, focused on the endless boxes of merchandise we had to unpack before the morning crew arrived. We were working in the grocery section, stocking pasta and canned goods, when the atmosphere shifted. It was sudden, like a curtain dropping. We both stopped moving at the exact same moment. I had my box cutter in my hand, slicing through a cardboard box of spaghetti sauce, and Lenny was standing on a step ladder three feet away from me. We heard a thumping sound coming from the toy section, which was two aisles over. It was a heavy, dull sound, rhythmic and insistent, like someone was dropping a rubber ball onto the polished concrete floor over and over again. My heart did that quick, hard jump in my chest that you get when something is out of place. I looked over at Lenny. His face had gone pale, and he had stopped breathing for a second. He gripped the side of his ladder with both hands, his knuckles turning white. Did you hear that? Lenny whispered. His voice sounded thin in the cavernous space. I nodded, not wanting to speak too loudly. It sounded like it was coming from the toy aisle, I replied. We stood there for a minute, just listening. The thumping sound stopped, replaced by a strange, metallic clicking. It was the kind of noise that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. We were supposed to be the only two people in the store, and the front doors were locked tight. We looked at each other, knowing we had to check it out. If it was a customer or a prankster, we needed to know. We stepped off the ladder and walked toward the toy aisle, our footsteps echoing way too loudly against the linoleum. As we moved away from the hum of the grocery aisle, the darkness felt deeper. The motion-activated lights in the toy section were notoriously finicky, and they didn't kick on as we approached. We walked into a wall of shadows. The clicking noise started up again, faster now, accompanied by a high-pitched, distorted sound that reminded me of a record being played at the wrong speed. It was coming from a display shelf near the back. I reached into my pocket and flicked on my phone light, waving the beam across the shelves. The light caught something flickering in the gloom. It was a motorized toy monkey, one of those old-fashioned ones with cymbals. It was perched on a display box, its plastic fur matted and dusty. The toy was malfunctioning, its limbs moving in a jerky, frantic motion. It would clap its cymbals together, then its head would snap to the left, then to the right, twitching as if it were fighting against its own gears. Then, it let out a burst of synthesized laughter, a low, garbled sound that sounded more like a human mocking us than a machine. The most unsettling part was that the monkey kept turning its head toward the empty aisle behind us, laughing as if it were looking at someone standing there. Lenny and I were two grown men, both of us over six feet tall, but we were completely paralyzed by a piece of plastic junk. My pulse was thudding in my ears. I felt like an intruder in a place that didn't want us there. I took a deep breath, forced my legs to move, and walked forward. The monkey let out one more loud, screeching laugh, its eyes seeming to focus on something right behind my shoulder. I didn't turn around. I didn't want to know. I reached out, grabbed the monkey by its stiff plastic torso, and wrestled the battery compartment cover off. The batteries flew out onto the floor, and the toy went limp instantly. The silence that rushed back into the room was deafening. It felt heavier and more hostile than before. Neither of us said a word. We backed out of the aisle, keeping our eyes on the dark corners, and practically sprinted back to our carts. We didn't finish the work properly that night; we just shoved the remaining boxes into place and retreated to the breakroom area, which was closer to the exit. We spent the remaining three hours of our shift sitting in our cars in the parking lot, waiting for the sun to come up. When our manager pulled up at six in the morning, he found us sitting there, staring through our windshields at the empty storefront. He asked why we weren't inside finishing up, and we just told him we had hit a wall and finished the main tasks early. I didn't want to tell him the truth. I didn't want to sound like a crazy person who got scared by a toy monkey. I quit the night shift the next day and requested a daytime position, but I never told anyone exactly why. To this day, I believe that monkey is still sitting in the back room somewhere, tucked away in a box of clearance items. I truly hope nobody ever tries to put fresh batteries in it again. Sometimes retail isn't just about stocking shelves and dealing with customers; it is about those quiet moments where the world stops making sense, and you realize that some things are better left alone.