Night Shift

I haven’t had a customer in nearly three hours.

When it gets this slow, I often resort to restocking the shelves or the coolers; assorted eel chips, sweet ectoplasm cakes, mystery drinks, ramen. You’d think I’d be sick of it by now, but when you’re constantly surrounded by them it becomes a real challenge not to eat the same radioactive foods every day.

The monotony remains tolerable.

Even the store’s radio station plays the same unintelligible songs every day of the week—hushed incoherent melodies accompanied by the harsh whir of fluorescent white lights. I’m almost certain these songs are emitting all sorts of subliminal messages. . . I’m just not sure what.

I work the night shift at a 24-hour rest stop. The customers I meet are typically road-trippers, night drivers, or intergalactic entertainers. I like to describe the rest stop as “a place of pause for beings of every kind.” Not only that, we’re accoladed with having the best translucent coffee within a five galaxy radius (a favorite among the nighttime entertainment crowd).

I know, I know. . . As an employee here my opinion is inherently biased, but it’s actually pretty good. And I don’t even like the translucent flavor!

It’s quite difficult to maintain constant awareness of when customers have entered the store, as there are no windows or doors. There is only an ominous glowing portal that drifts along the store’s perimeter. More often than not, it can be found right by the hot snacks.

A few months ago, I tried one of our signature glowing taquitos and it left me in a coma for a week. As it turns out, they can only be digested by conscious hover clouds. This—I was quite hostilely informed—is actually common knowledge.

Luckily, I wasn’t fired for the misunderstanding, but now my boss owns a video file of all the memories I would have accumulated if I hadn’t been in a coma that week.

I don’t understand how doctors are authorized to release alternate timeline renderings to non-relatives—especially without a patient’s consent—but maybe all I did that week was go to work.

Hopefully.



Some bizarre things have started happening around the store. I came in tonight and found all the flavorless juice boxes hovering in the cooler, which is something only the hot snacks ever do. . .

I also haven’t seen my favorite customer in over a week now. I believe his name is ubfgysuibfyau7rbq-7oqnx89eq8—it’s a family name, according to ubfgysuibfyau7rbq-7oqnx89eq8.

He always comes in on the half days between Tuesday and Wednesday and buys a single lighter—always neon orange. He swiftly slides his only thumb along the spark wheel and ignites the flame, standing in absolute stillness beside the checkout counter until the gas tank has emptied and the flame has died.

I haven’t needed to restock the lighters since I saw him last. This makes me sad. It was my favorite mindless task, just as he was my favorite customer.

I’ve tried to burn out a few lighters myself, but it’s just not the same.

Another bizarre occurrence is how the light panels have begun to emit a low, thunderous rumble. I watched one fall about a yard from the ceiling a while ago. It briefly paused midair before slowly levitating back into its place.

I know how this will sound and I really can’t explain it. . . it almost felt as if the panel knew I was watching it. Like it wanted me to.

Afterward I found a note by the cash register that read, in scratchy handwriting and pulsing ink:

thE LighTs Are sAFe. Do NOT be aFraiD

Huh. . . My manager must have left that there for me before my shift started.

I admire a person who’s always one step ahead!

I only wish he had warned me about the habitual screeching that’s been piercing through the portal. Each time I hear it, I assume a customer has come in and I look up expectantly—as if the screech is a sort of entryway sensor.

Not once has this been the case. Instead, at the sound of every screech, my vision goes dark—only for a few seconds—and I’m left so completely disoriented that I must look in the mirror as quickly as possible just to remember who I am.

I fear what might happen if I don’t meet my reflection fast enough.



I’ve started thinking. A lot.

The more I jog my memory, I begin to realize. . . I don’t actually remember how or when I started working here. I find more and more notes in a heaping pile by the cash register, but I can’t actually recall the name of my manager. I cannot conjure from memory what he even looks like.

When did I get hired? And by who?

I have no recollection of the time I spend outside of this rest stop. I can’t remember when I got here. I can’t remember switching off with whoever worked the shift before mine. Who are my coworkers? Who cooks the hot snacks?

I can’t remember ever clocking out.

A pair of renowned intergalactic singers came by tonight, but they weren’t interested in any translucent coffee. For whatever reason, they stood by the communal restroom while opening and closing its heavy steel door over and over again. This filled the store with a ceaseless high-pitched creeeeeek.

The sound made me so dizzy I almost asked them to stop, but everyone knows you do not tell intergalactic entertainers what to do. That is what the Unseen Universal Patrol is for.

After they were done with the door, the pair aimlessly lingered beside the checkout counter and began to pick out every lighter, one by one, from the counter’s display case. While facing one another, they announced the colors of each individual lighter out loud.

This went on for nearly an hour. Once they were finished, they turned to me with blank expressions and went on their way.



The portal closed tonight.

I don’t know how I got here, or when. I don’t know where I got this uniform shirt and I don’t remember putting it on.

Has it always been this way? Was I born an employee at the 24-hour rest stop? Have I perpetually existed within the confines of these four windowless walls since. . . since when? Is this real?

What is my name?

Desperately rummaging through my pockets, hoping to find any sort of ID, I remembered that all personal identifications were turned invisible by mandate of the Unseen Universal Patrol.

What I retrieved instead was only a pocket-sized notebook filled with pages of nearly incomprehensible writing. The last written note reads:

dO NoT LiStEn tO them, tHey aRe noT Who thEy sAy tHey ArE

. . .I don’t know what this means.

I don’t know who “they” could be referring to.

The whir of the ceiling lights has become a severe vibrational buzz that I can feel beneath my skin, pulsing in my bones. They’ve begun to flash a multiplicity of colors—some of which I’ve never seen before now—filling the store with a violent, disorienting strobe.

When I gaze into the bathroom’s infinite-way mirror, I don’t recognize the person I see. In my reflection stands only a faceless body of consciousness, with no knowable beginning or end.

I’ve come to believe there is no life without the 24-hour rest stop.

Synchronously, there is no freedom.

I have no choice but to carry on, and to do so the only way I know how: I will restock these shelves and these coolers—for all of eternity if I have to. I will mop the carpeted floor and I will paint the pulsating walls.

I will serve just as I am meant to. If not for any customer—not for any conceivable reason at all—then for someone of whom I am meant to know nothing.

Perhaps for myself.