@Linda G.

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Night Shift

The Medicine of Memories

Working the graveyard shift at a 24-hour pharmacy is a strange, quiet kind of life. When the rest of the world goes to sleep, my world begins, bathed in the harsh, flickering glow of fluorescent lights that seem to hum with a low-frequency buzz that vibrates right behind my eyeballs. It is a lonely existence. I miss my family constantly, especially during dinner time when I am driving into work while they are clearing the table. The people who come into the pharmacy between midnight and eight in the morning are rarely the cheery, healthy types. They are usually folks in pain, people who are dealing with a sudden crisis, or just the deeply, profoundly sad. My head aches by 3 AM every single night, not just from the buzzing lights, but from the weight of carrying everyone else's problems while I am stuck in that sterile, white-tiled box. Last month, on a day, the air felt thick and heavy, like a storm was brewing somewhere far away. A man wandered in around 2 AM. He looked older than time itself, with skin like parchment paper and eyes that seemed to look right through the shelves and deep into the history of the building. He didn't ask for aspirin or sleep aids. He asked for a medicine I had never heard of, something that hadn't been manufactured in twenty years. When I checked the computer, the system returned nothing but blank screens and empty fields. I told him we couldn't help him, and I expected him to get angry or leave. Instead, he just nodded slowly, his expression sad and knowing. He told me that this pharmacy hadn't always been a pharmacy. He said it used to be a town library, a place for stories, and he insisted that the original, handwritten records and old books were still buried right beneath the linoleum floor. I thought he was just confused, an old man drifting in the fog of dementia, but I was polite because that is what you do when you are stuck behind a counter at 3 AM. He left, but his words lingered in the air long after the bell on the door stopped chiming. That night, after he had gone, the store went deathly quiet. That is when I heard it. A faint, rhythmic tapping coming from under my feet. It was a persistent, hollow sound, like someone using a knuckle to tap on floorboards from the crawlspace below. It sounded like someone was trying to break through the surface, trying to escape. I walked around the pharmacy aisle by aisle, my heart hammering against my ribs, until I stopped near the back of the store. I saw a thin crack in a white tile that I had walked over a thousand times without noticing. My hands were shaking, but I knelt down, pried at the edge with a metal letter opener, and pulled the tile up. There were no books. There were no dusty encyclopedias. Instead, I found a deep, dark recess filled with hundreds of small, antique glass bottles. They were arranged with obsessive precision, each one labeled with a tiny scrap of yellowed paper. I reached in and pulled one out. My pulse skipped a beat. It had my name, Linda, written on it in fading ink. And below my name was a date—tomorrow’s date. A cold chill washed over me, turning my blood to ice. I felt a surge of pure terror, shoved the bottle back into the hole, and frantically taped the cracked tile back down, even though I knew the tape wouldn't hold forever. The man came back the next night. He didn't even say hello. He just walked up to the counter and looked at me with those strange, glassy eyes that seemed to contain a thousand different lives. He leaned in, his voice a low, raspy whisper that sounded like dry leaves skittering on pavement. He told me that it was almost time for my dose. I tried to back away, to scream, to reach for the phone to call for help, but my body wouldn't listen. My legs were heavy, like they were filled with concrete. I was frozen in place, a spectator in my own body. The humming of the lights grew louder and louder, escalating into a high-pitched whine that made my teeth ache. Everything started to blur and warp, the shelves stretching into impossible shapes. Then, just like that, the world went dark. I don't remember the hours that followed. I don't remember closing the store or what I did while I was unconscious. I just woke up suddenly, jolting awake as the sun began to bleed through the window blinds at 7:00 AM. I was slumped over the counter, completely disoriented. I stood up, trying to shake off the grogginess, and that is when I saw them. My hands were stained with bright blue ink, smeared across my palms and fingertips as if I had been writing or sorting records for hours. I rushed over to the spot where I had pulled up the tile, but the floor was perfectly smooth, solid, and seamless. There were no cracks, no bottles, and no evidence of the nightmare from the night before. But whenever I have to walk over that specific spot to reach the back office, I feel a strange, tight pull in my chest, a phantom sensation that catches my breath. It is a constant reminder that this store keeps secrets. It isn't just a place for pills; it is a repository, a place that traps us in the night shift to sort memories for people who are long, long gone. I still work there. I still show up at midnight. But every time I open the safe or reach for a prescription bottle, I have this lingering dread. I am just waiting, counting down the days, until the moment my own name shows up on a prescription I am expected to fill. I know it is coming. The night shift never lets go of what it has claimed.

@Linda G.

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Wildest

The Great Deli Disaster of 2023

It was just another day at the office, the kind of day where the hum of server fans and the rhythmic clacking of mechanical keyboards usually set the pace. I was sitting at my desk, trying to focus on a spreadsheet, when the tension between the Sales team and the Engineering department finally reached its breaking point. It all started over something as mundane as the condiment choices on the communal turkey sandwiches provided for lunch. Sales insisted on extra mayo, and Engineering argued that it made the bread soggy. What started as a heated, petty debate about sandwich integrity in the breakroom quickly escalated. I was standing near the doorway, waiting for my turn at the microwave, when I saw it happen. A member of the Sales team, clearly frustrated, grabbed a stray slice of honey-baked ham from a discarded wrapper and whipped it at the window. It hit the glass with a wet, heavy slap that echoed through the room. The silence that followed lasted exactly one second. Before I could even process the absurdity of the moment, someone from the Engineering side grabbed a thick slab of sourdough bread and fired it back like a frisbee. That was the spark. In thirty seconds, the breakroom transformed into a total food war zone. I watched in shock as the chaos unfolded. It was like a slow-motion horror movie, but with lunch meat. There was potato salad flying through the air like creamy shrapnel. Pickles were sliding down the walls, and a tub of yogurt had been knocked over, creating a slippery, white mess that looked impossible to clean. I retreated toward the hallway, feeling like an observer to a disaster I couldn't stop. People I had worked with for years were suddenly acting like toddlers in a sandbox. I saw Mark, our lead developer, chucking cherry tomatoes with the precision of a major league pitcher. Then, I saw the manager I usually respected, Dave, ducking behind a flattened pizza box he was holding up like a medieval shield. He was trying to protect himself from a barrage of stray grapes being launched by a group of account executives. The sound was the worst part. It was a squelchy, wet thudding sound as food made impact with the grey fabric of our cubicle walls and the industrial carpet. It sounded like a kitchen falling down a flight of stairs. Every time something hit a hard surface, there was a wet splat that made me cringe. I remember standing there, my mouth hanging open, watching a rogue noodle fly past my ear and land on the back of a swivel chair. It was surreal. The smell was beginning to change, too. The fresh, clean office scent was rapidly being replaced by the overwhelming, heavy odor of processed meat, vinegar, and fermented dairy. It was becoming nauseatingly pungent. After what felt like an eternity but was probably only about five minutes, HR finally burst into the room. The commotion stopped instantly, though the residual mess continued to drip from the ceiling and windows for a few seconds longer. The silence that filled the room then was far heavier and more uncomfortable than the noise of the fighting. The breakroom was a complete disaster. The carpet was matted down with mayonnaise and potato debris. There was a bright red splash of pasta sauce splattered across the white ceiling tiles, looking like a crime scene. The office was going to smell like a decaying sandwich shop for at least a month. We were all ordered to stay late. The cleanup process was brutal. We had to scrub the carpets with industrial-strength cleaner until well after midnight. I spent three hours on my hands and knees, picking bits of shredded lettuce and potato chunks out of the deep grooves of the carpet. The worst part was dealing with our desks. Even though the fight was confined to the breakroom, the ventilation system had carried the debris everywhere, and people had tracked food back to their workspaces. I spent a significant amount of time trying to pry dried potato salad out of the individual keys of my computer keyboard. Every time I pressed the 'E' key, it felt sticky, a constant reminder of the day's absurdity. The funniest part about the whole incident is that even by the end of the night, nobody knew who had actually started it. We were all too exhausted, frustrated, and covered in food residue to point fingers. We just wanted to go home and shower. Around 11:00 PM, the CEO walked through the office, likely checking to see if we were still working. He stopped in the middle of the room, surveyed the wreckage, looked at the pasta sauce on the ceiling, and then looked at us, covered in stains and sweat. He didn't say a word. He just slowly shook his head, let out a long, tired sigh, and walked back to his office. That was the end of it. We never talked about it again. The topic became a ghost in the office. We all silently agreed that it was too embarrassing to ever bring up in a meeting or during small talk. We just scrubbed the walls and kept our heads down. The only permanent legacy of the Great Deli Disaster of 2023 is a small, laminated sign now hanging prominently on the front of the vending machine. It features a cartoon icon of a sandwich with a red circle and a slash through it, and below that, in bold black letters, it reads: 'No Food Fights.' Sometimes I walk by it, glance at the faint stain still visible on the ceiling tile we couldn't quite reach, and I remember that day. It’s a reminder that even in a professional corporate environment, sanity is a fragile thing that can be shattered by a single, poorly aimed slice of ham.

@Linda G.

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