The Grocery Store After Hours
I work the night shift at the grocery store, stocking shelves from midnight until eight in the morning. People think it sounds easy, just boxes and cans, but the truth is it's lonely work. The store is huge, way bigger than it needs to be at night, and the lights are turned down low to save on the electric bill. That means half the aisles sit in this dim orange glow, and the other half just fade into shadows. During the day the place feels normal, even boring. At night it feels like a different building completely. The only other person working with me is an older guy named Jenkins. He's been cleaning floors at that store longer than I've been alive, or at least that's what he told me once. He's quiet, doesn't talk much, just pushes his big floor machine up and down the aisles while I stack cans and face the shelves. Most nights it's just the hum of the freezers, the squeak of my cart wheels, and Jenkins's machine buzzing somewhere far off. I usually keep my headphones in the whole shift. Music helps. It makes the place feel less creepy, less empty. It gives me something to focus on besides the dark corners and the way the ceiling lights flicker sometimes. recently my headphones died around two in the morning. I didn't think much of it at first. I just kept working, pushing my cart down the cereal aisle, pulling boxes out of the back room crates and lining them up on the shelf. Then I heard it. A dragging sound. Heavy and wet, like someone pulling a big bag of raw meat across the tile floor. It was slow, like something heavy sliding, catching, sliding again. My first thought was that it was Jenkins moving some kind of equipment. I walked to the end of the aisle and looked down toward dairy, where I could see the shine of his floor machine. He was way over there, nowhere near me, just slowly pushing the machine back and forth like always. The dragging sound stopped right when I looked. I stood there for a second, feeling a little stupid, telling myself it was probably just a loose shelf or a cart wheel somewhere. I went back to stocking. A few minutes later I heard it again, and this time it was close. Right behind me. I spun around so fast I nearly knocked over a stack of cereal boxes. There was nothing there. Just the boxes, the dim light above flickering like it always does, and empty aisle stretching out in both directions. My heart was pounding, but I told myself it was nothing. Old stores make noises. Pipes creak. Shelves settle. I'd heard people say that a hundred times. Then I felt it. A breeze, cold and damp, right on the back of my neck. It smelled awful, like stagnant water that had been sitting in a bucket for weeks, swampy and rotten. I turned around again, slower this time, and that's when I saw the hand. It was reaching out from behind the shelf, right at the edge where the metal frame meets the wall. It wasn't right. The fingers had too many knuckles, bending in places fingers shouldn't bend. The skin was thin, almost see-through, and underneath I could see dark veins, black instead of blue, crawling under the surface like worms. It was reaching toward me, slow, stretching further than any arm should stretch. I didn't think. I just ran. I dropped the box I was holding and bolted down the aisle, past the registers, straight for the break room at the front of the store. My legs felt like jelly but I kept moving until I got inside, slammed the door, and locked it. I stood there with my back against the door, breathing hard, trying to make sense of what I'd just seen. I thought about calling for Jenkins. I actually said his name out loud, more than once, hoping he'd come help, hoping he'd heard something too. No answer. The break room has a little window that looks out onto part of the store, toward the produce section. I pressed myself against the glass and looked out, and that's when I saw him. Jenkins was standing completely still in the produce section. His floor machine was sitting next to him, tipped slightly, oil leaking out onto the tile in a slow dark puddle. He wasn't moving at all. His head was tilted back, mouth open wider than any mouth should open, like his jaw had come unhinged. And something thin and dark was coming out of his throat, moving slowly, like it was crawling its way out of him. I stepped back from the window so fast I hit the wall. My whole body was shaking. Jenkins wasn't Jenkins. Whatever that thing was standing in produce, it wasn't human, and I don't think it had been human for a while, maybe not ever. I've been in this break room for four hours now. I locked the door, I turned off the lights, and I've been sitting on the floor in the corner, as far from the door as I can get. At first it was quiet. Just my own breathing, way too loud in the silence. Then I started hearing them outside. Footsteps, if you can call them that. More like something shuffling and dragging across the tile, more than one of them now, moving around the building, circling. They make this sound, this horrible clicking and whistling, like nothing I've ever heard an animal or a person make. Sometimes it sounds close to the door, sometimes further away, like they're pacing, waiting. I don't know what they want, but I know they're not leaving. A little while ago one of them came right up to the door. I heard it scratching, slow at first, then harder, digging into the wood. I could hear the wood splintering, cracking under whatever it was using to scratch. I watched in the dark as a small hole opened up near the bottom of the door, and through that hole I saw a claw, long and thin, curling through the gap, feeling around like it was searching for something to grab. I pulled my knees up to my chest and backed further into the corner, as far from that door as this little room allows. My phone is almost dead. I don't know if anyone will see this before morning. I don't know if I'll make it until the sun comes up. All I can do is sit here, stay quiet, and hope that whatever is out there gets tired of waiting before it finds a way in.