GloMart_0307.AVI: Playback Error

The GloMart always smelled like dust and incense and the faintest whiff of something sticky under the slurpee machine no mop could reach. It was aggressively overlit, the kind of fluorescent buzz that felt like it was actively trying to bleach your soul. Quinn had stopped noticing it around week three.

They worked the graveyard shift, which was ironic, maybe. GloMart didn’t stock anything worth dying for—just tallboys, off-brand chips, discount tampons, and every energy drink known to man. But the graveyard still came. People with nowhere else to be. Drifters, stoners, insomniacs, kids pretending they were braver than they were. Night people.

Quinn liked the night people. They didn’t ask questions. Neither did Quinn. They’d started the job right after… well, after. There were days they didn’t remember applying. Didn’t remember the interview. Just woke up one night under the stockroom fluorescents, name tag already on.

QUINN

All caps.

No title.

Julie, the night cashier, had been working there for seventeen years and had never once asked Quinn why their hands shook when they counted change. She mostly read Danielle Steel and smoked menthols on break. Nolan, the stock guy, wore the same hoodie every shift and spoke entirely in sentences that began with “Bro, what if…”

The GloMart didn’t play music after 2AM. Corporate policy. Something about licensing fees. Which meant that most nights, it was just the low hum of soda fridges, the clink of glass, and the occasional door chime when someone wandered in looking for kombucha or condoms or absolution.

Quinn’s favorite part of the night—if they were allowed to have favorite parts anymore—was the monitor. The security system was old, probably installed during the Bush administration. Nine grayscale squares stacked in a 3x3 grid, each a slightly delayed feed from somewhere in the store. Sometimes they’d catch customers shoplifting and say nothing. Sometimes they’d watch Nolan pretending to sword fight with a broom in aisle 6. Sometimes they just stared, watching the moments flicker out one by one like dying stars.

At 3:07 AM, the light above aisle 5 flickered. Not unusual. That fixture had been weird for weeks. Quinn reached under the counter, fished out the remote, and zoomed the monitor camera in.

A girl was walking through the aisle. Not unusual either, except—She was wearing a glittering silver jacket, the kind you only see in music videos or teenage hallucinations. Her hair was wild. Big curls. Her walk was deliberate. Confident. Like she wasn’t browsing. Like she’d been there before.

And no one else had come through the front door. Quinn checked the feed. No door chime. No motion from Julie or Nolan. No one else on any of the other eight screens.

They glanced up. Aisle 5 was empty. But the monitor still showed her—tracing her fingers across the Lucky Charms boxes, trailing sparkles behind her like residue. She stopped. Turned toward the camera. And waved.

Quinn blinked. Looked back up. Nothing. Just the humming neon and the shelf of candy.

They tapped the keyboard. Rewound the tape 30 seconds. Pressed play. There she was again. Slower this time. Her movements syrupy, like she was submerged. She moved in frames. Three steps—pause. One hand up—pause. Wave. Her face was fuzzy, pixelated by age or interference. But something about the eyes made Quinn’s stomach twist. She wasn’t looking at the camera, not exactly. She was looking through it. Like she knew someone was there. Like she was hoping.

“You good?” Nolan asked, passing with a box of paper towels.

Quinn flinched. “Yeah. Just… weird glitch.”

Nolan didn’t look at the screen. “That one’s been busted forever,” he shrugged. “Ghost cam.”

“What?”

“Julie calls it that. Says it plays dead footage sometimes. Like from years ago. Old recordings that loop. It’s all digital now, but whatever. Probably a bug. You see the cinnamon gum? It keeps moving aisles.”

He walked off before Quinn could ask if he was messing with them.

The girl was still frozen mid-wave on the paused feed. Quinn zoomed in again. Closer. Her mouth was open slightly. She was saying something. No audio, but—

They pressed play.

Paused.

Rewound.

Slowed it down.

Frame by frame, her lips moved:

“You can see me?”

Something cold skittered down Quinn’s spine. They looked around the store. Julie was flipping through her romance novel at the register. Nolan was arguing with a pallet of Red Bull. Everything looked normal. But it didn’t feel normal. The air had that weird buzz it got before earthquakes or nosebleeds.

Quinn pressed the rewind button again. The girl’s face flickered. A glitch. For a split second, it looked like she was in a different aisle entirely. Aisle 2. Then the soda cooler. Then gone.

They tried to pause again, but the footage froze completely. The entire system stuttered. Then reset. All nine feeds blinked black—then returned to live. Aisle 5 was empty.

Quinn exhaled shakily. Under the counter, they found a pad of receipt paper and jotted a note in shaking ink:

3:07 AM. Girl in glitter jacket. Aisle 5. Said: “You can see me?”

They tore it off. Folded it. Tucked it in their shirt pocket like a spell.

Quinn didn’t go home after their shift. They sat on the curb outside the GloMart, staring at the smudged sunrise bruising its way over Silver Lake, the receipt note clutched in one hand like a warning. Or a love letter. Hard to tell.

At 3:07 AM, a girl in a glitter jacket had waved at them through a busted camera and asked, silently, if they could see her. Now Quinn couldn’t stop seeing her.

Back inside the next night, they waited for Julie to light her menthol and Nolan to vanish into the stockroom, then rewound the footage again. Same moment. Same aisle. Same impossible jacket, refracting grayscale like oil on concrete. But this time, Quinn slowed it down. Frame by frame. The girl moved like a cutscene. Smooth but artificial. Too fluid, like time was syrup and she was built to slip through it. Each step looked choreographed. Designed.

At frame 217, she turned toward the camera. Paused. At frame 218, her mouth opened.

“You can see me?”

At frame 219, her eyes—Too clear. Not pixels. Not grain.

Quinn paused the tape and leaned close. The screen pulsed slightly, almost like breath. Her pupils looked like they could see back. They stayed like that for twenty minutes, forehead nearly touching the glass.

Later, while mopping aisle 5, Quinn found glitter in the bucket. Not flecks. Full-blown shimmer. Fine and silver-pink, like craft glitter or prom fallout. It clung to the mop head, caught in the wheels. They touched it. It clung to their palm.

By morning, it was gone.

The next day, a customer bought a Butterfinger B.B.’s and a Surge soda.

Quinn froze.

“Where did you find this?”

“Aisle 2. Next to the Big

League Chew.”

Those hadn’t been manufactured since—Quinn checked the barcode.

It scanned.

Price: $1.09

Date printed on the receipt:

03/11/1999

They tore the receipt and kept it. That night they dreamed. They were standing in aisle 5, barefoot. Fluorescent lights buzzed like hornets. The shelves were warped—candy melting, bags breathing. The girl stood at the end of the aisle, glitter jacket pulsing like static. She didn’t speak, but Quinn could smell her: cherry slushie and ozone. A summer thunderstorm inside a 7-Eleven.

She raised one hand.

Quinn whispered, “I can see

you.”

She smiled.

Quinn woke up with glitter

on their fingers.

The obsession wasn’t slow. It was immediate and feral and complete. They printed a still from the camera feed, blurry and beautiful, the girl caught mid-turn, mid-smirk, mid-flicker. Taped it to the inside of the GloMart walk-in cooler door.

Started restocking aisle 5 with things she glanced at: Sour Tape, Crystal Light packets, Pop Rocks, Slim Jims. She’d brushed her hand across the shelf, and now Quinn lined the products like offerings.

On their break, they played the footage again. Memorized the timing. Watched the exact second her face broke into a smile. Each night she got closer. Each night, just a frame or two. Like she was walking toward something.

Julie didn’t notice.

Nolan said, “Bro, that

camera’s been busted for

years. It doesn’t even

record.”

“It’s recording,” Quinn said.

“Yeah? To where?”

Quinn didn’t answer.

Because they didn’t know.

On Thursday, the GloMart freezer blew a fuse. While Nolan cursed and stacked melting popsicles into crates, Quinn swept the back corner of the candy aisle and found a cassette tape. Unlabeled, scratched, left perfectly aligned under the gum rack.

They took it home. Had to borrow a player from a neighbor who collected vintage stuff “for the vibes. Pressed play. A woman’s voice hummed through static. Then music.

I want to hold the hand

inside you…

Mazzy Star. “Fade Into You.”

The song from Quinn’s

dream.

The same song Delilah Rosas’s band once covered—

Wait.

Quinn froze.

Delilah.

That was the name on the

police flyer.

The photo matched.

The girl in the jacket.

They spent that night in a Reddit rabbit hole. Threads about LA’s missing girls. Rumors about the Glitter Ghost. Urban legends about a girl who vanished inside a bodega after buying cherry lip gloss and a lighter shaped like a cat.

Last seen on camera.

Same store.

Same aisle.

GloMart.

They printed the police flyer. Pinned it next to the still frame. Compared the two. Identical cheekbone. Same curls. Same glint in the eye like a dare.

Delilah Rosas, age 19.

Lead singer of Static Candy.

Vanished 3/11/1999.

Case unsolved.

Now walking the aisles of a

Silver Lake GloMart in 2025

like she never left.

On their next shift, Quinn left a note on the shelf:

“I saw you. You waved.

Come back.”

Tucked it behind the Pop Rocks. They checked the camera feed three times that night. She didn’t show. But aisle 5 smelled faintly like cherry slushie and ozone.

Quinn started keeping a journal under the counter. Lined notebook, red cover, 99-cent price tag. First entry:

“I’m not scared. Just

rearranged.”

By the seventh shift since Delilah’s wave, they were writing in all caps and crossing out half the words.

“SHE ISN’T STUCK. I AM. /

DO WE SWITCH PLACES? /

HOW DO I GLITCH

THROUGH?”

They stopped clocking out. They stopped clocking anything. Not that the clock worked anymore.

The GloMart clock above the register — the cheap plastic one with the green hands and the neon pink numbers — froze permanently at 3:07 AM. Quinn changed the batteries. Nothing. Replaced the whole clock. Still 3:07 AM. That was the time Delilah had entered aisle 5. Quinn knew it because the footage timestamp never changed. It was always 3:07 AM when she looked directly at the camera. When she waved.

Always.

No matter when they

played it.

Always.

3:07 AM.

The store itself began to feel wrong. The gum aisle was different every night. Once, Quinn turned the corner and found it stocked entirely with candy cigarettes and Hubba Bubba Tape. Aisle 5 had six bottles of Salon Selectives hairspray lined in a row — a brand discontinued in 2007. Nolan swore he didn’t stock them. The air smelled like hairspray and mildew and something that reminded Quinn of the inside of their old high school locker room — like sweat and wet paper and rot.

Aisle 5 breathed.

Not metaphorically.

The shelf expanded once —

Quinn saw it.

The metal bowed outward

like a chest inhaling.

They touched the shelf and

felt it pulse.

They pulled their hand

away.

Glitter stuck to their palm.

Customers stopped making sense.

A woman in a wedding dress came in, barefoot, bought nothing, and whispered to the instant noodle display:

“She’s still in there, you

know.”

Then she left.

A man bought 19 lighters and asked if the girl in the jacket still danced.

Julie didn’t react.

Nolan said, “People are just

weird, bro.”

But Quinn stopped being able to tell if the customers were even real.

Some blinked too slowly.

Some never blinked at all.

A child asked, “Are you the one who left her behind?”

Quinn didn’t answer.

The kid just smiled.

Walked out holding a

Choco Taco that hadn’t

been sold since 2013.

The cassette player melted. Literally. Dripped down into the counter like it couldn’t take another replay of Fade Into You.

Quinn started dreaming every night. But they weren’t dreams anymore. They were instructions.

One dream said: “Make

aisle 5 symmetrical.”

Another said: “Don’t let her

glitch too far or you won’t

be able to follow.”

A third dream was just

Quinn walking through

GloMart, but everything

was reversed. All the signs

were in mirror text. Nolan

had no face. Julie was on

the floor, drawing a glittery

pentagram with expired

strawberry syrup.

The fridge hummed a tune.

Quinn hummed it back.

They brought offerings. They brought a cherry slushie in a paper cup from the 7-Eleven across the street and set it in aisle 5. It was gone by the next morning. They brought a mixtape labeled “FOR D” and tucked it behind the Pop Rocks. Gone.

They left a zine.

A Polaroid.

A napkin with her name on

it in glitter pen.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

Julie finally noticed something.

“You look like hell,” she said.

“You sleeping?”

“Not here,” Quinn replied,

which was the truth.

Julie lit a menthol. “You

ever hear the static song?”

“What?”

She blew out a perfect ring of smoke.

“That girl. The one who

disappeared. The Glitter

Ghost. People used to say if

you played her band’s track

backward, it’d give you the

time she’d show up again.”

Quinn swallowed. “What time?”

Julie flicked her ash. “Wouldn’t you know?”

3:07 AM.

Nolan found the red notebook once. Flipped through it and laughed.

“Bro. What the hell is this?

A spell book?”

Quinn didn’t answer.

Nolan read aloud:

“I LEFT MY BODY IN AISLE

FIVE / IF YOU SEE HER,

DON’T LOOK AWAY / THE

FOOTAGE IS A DOORWAY.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You on something?”

Quinn stared straight

ahead. Their hands were

shaking.

“No,” they said.

“I think I’m off something.”

That night, the feed glitched permanently. The security screen went black. Then flashed back on.vNow, it only played footage of aisle 5.

Looped endlessly.

No time stamp.

No menu.

Just aisle 5.

And it was different.

Not live. Not recorded.

Other.

The shelves had lipstick scrawled notes. Scrunchies. A glitter-covered Walkman. A pair of high-tops Quinn remembered from their own teenage years. Delilah was in the loop. Closer now. Not walking. Just standing. Looking at the camera. Mouth closed. Every so often, she blinked. Sometimes, her expression changed when Quinn blinked.

One night, Quinn leaned into the monitor.

“Can you hear me?” they

whispered.

The lights flickered.

Delilah lifted one hand. Held it to the glass. Quinn did the same. The static bloomed.

A customer walked in. Said, “Excuse me—” Quinn turned, startled. When they turned back, Delilah was gone. So was the slushie. So was the camera feed. The monitor was dead. Julie walked past, didn’t even look. Nolan said, “Bro, are you okay?” Quinn couldn’t speak. They opened their mouth. Glitter spilled out.

It was storming. Which was already wrong—L.A. doesn’t storm. It sulks. It spits. It weeps gently against sun-bleached stucco. But this? This was weather weather. Lightning like camera flashes. Thunder like a busted speaker thudding in God’s chest. The kind of sky that doesn’t blink.

Inside GloMart, the fluorescents flickered like strobes. The soda fridge howled. Julie wasn’t behind the counter. Nolan wasn’t stacking cat litter. The customers—if they were even real—had vanished mid-motion. Time hiccupped. Quinn blinked and found the world had shifted half a breath to the left.

The security monitor came on by itself. Nine feeds. All dark. Then static. Then one feed. Aisle 5. And Delilah was there. Not in loops. Not in glitchy fragments. Not in frames stitched from memory. She was there. Alive or something close to it. Her glitter jacket sparkled in shades Quinn didn’t have names for. Her hair was haloed with frizz from the storm. Her cheeks looked flushed, fevered, lovely. And she was staring directly into the lens. Not just looking. Seeing.

The monitor buzzed louder.

The lights surged, dimmed.

Quinn turned—

And she was there.

Standing right in front of

them.

No screen.

No aisle.

No barrier.

Just Delilah, inches away.

Smiling.

“You can see me?”

The question landed somewhere behind Quinn’s eyes, soft and shattering. Her voice wasn’t how Quinn imagined it. It wasn’t angelic. It wasn’t spooky. It was real. Like punk shows in tiny backyards. Like riding in the back of someone’s stolen truck. Like love notes passed in yearbooks and gum wrappers.

She reached for their hand. Her fingers were cold. Quinn didn’t flinch. The instant they touched, the world made a sound like a tape deck snapping backward. Everything rewound.

The flickering lights reversed their strobe. Raindrops flew upward toward the ceiling tiles. The slushie machine un-melted. The gum aisle re-ordered itself into 1999.

The power surged—

Then silence.

The next morning, Julie opened the store and found the security system fried. The screen wouldn’t turn on. Quinn wasn’t there. No one remembered them ever working there. Julie found glitter in aisle 5. A lot of it. It shimmered faintly, even in the dark. Nolan cleaned it up without asking.

Outside, the storm had never happened.

Inside the monitor—if anyone could’ve turned it on—Delilah stood alone, one hand pressed to the glass.

Waiting.