The Last Open Aisle

The double doors of the grocery store doors slid open at 9:41 p.m. As Lisa walked inside, a whiff of cold air borne with a faint smell of citrus and dampness spilled. At once, Lisa immediately felt that she had arrived too late for something.

She couldn’t have known what. Only that the air seemed heavy, like the store had been waiting for her.

Fluorescent lights hummed from the ceiling. There was once that flickered near the main entrance, stuttering like a bad memory. Tiles were the same off white they had always been. Years of cleaning carts and heavy-footed exhibitions had left them scuffed. This place had been here her whole life. Probably Longer.

She took a cart even though she didn’t need one.

Milk. Bread. She needed a reason to be here.

The automatic doors closed behind her with a sound more final than glass could ever make.

Inside, the store was all but empty, but not in the way that usually constitutes an empty store. There were people in it, just not very many. It was as if they were all waiting for instructions.

At register three, a teenage cashier leaned against the counter, arms folded. He looked up when he saw her, and something in his face shifted—recognition blooming too quickly.

“Lisa?” he said.

She felt her stomach flip.

“No,” she said automatically. Then she looked closer.

It was Evan. Evan who sat behind her in tenth-grade math class and drew in his notebook instead of listening to the teacher. The Evan who lent her a pencil during finals week. Evan, who asked her, once, if she wanted to get coffee after graduation.

She never replied.

“You cut your hair,” he said, smiling uncertainly.

Lisa stepped back, heart hammering. “I— I’m just shopping.”

Evan nodded quickly. “Yeah, of course.”

She pushed the cart forward, the wheels squealing faintly. Her hands were trembling now. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t nostalgic. It was just— though she couldn’t quite articulate this—terribly, flagrantly wrong.

She turned down into aisle four and nearly collided into another girl standing in front of the cereal boxes.

“Oh— sorry,” the girl said.

Lisa stood motionless..

“Amanda?”

Amanda turned around, a smile already starting on her lips,a smile she had worn since she was twelve years old, missing one corner tooth. She wore a somewhat disheveled ponytail, just as she would have in sleepovers.

“You still buy the honey kind,” Amanda said, gesturing to the cereal box in Lisa’s cart.

“I—” Lisa swallowed. “You don’t live here anymore.”

Amanda merely shrugged. “Neither do you.”

They just stood there, the space between them was humming.

“You stopped answering,” Amanda gently said. She wasn’t accusing but being factual. “After eighth grade, I thought, maybe, your phone got lost or something.”

“I was busy,” Lisa replied. The word felt dry and unconvincing.

“Yeah,” Amanda said. “You always were.”

She stepped aside, letting Lisa pass, but as soon as Lisa stepped back, she heard Amanda add, softly, “I waited a long time.”

Lisa abandoned the cereal and hasted further on. The store felt bigger now. Or perhaps she was smaller.

The aisles stretched, bending just enough to confuse her perspectives. She passed the school-supply section and came to an abrupt stop.

A boy sat cross-legged on the floor, stacking notebooks into a careful pile.

“Tommy?” she whispered.

Her cousin looked up. He was eight again— gap toothed, earnest, wearing the backpack she helped him pick out before fourth grade.

“You said you’d help me practice,” he said, holding up a spelling list. “I kept the door open.”

Lisa’s throat tightened. “I forgot.”

Tommy nodded, as if he expected that answer. “It’s okay. I just tried by myself.” He went back to stacking notebooks, neat and patient.

Lisa fled.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out to see who it was.

Mom: Call me when you get there.

Her chest tightened painfully. She hadn’t seen her mother yet. The thought landed heavily, like a warning she’d been ignoring for years..

A store announcement crackled overhead.

“Attention shoppers,” the voice said. It sounded familiar— too familiar. “We’re closing in ten minutes.”

The words echoed unnaturally, stretching into the aisles and into her bones.

Something changed.

People moved all at once. Their heads turned. Conversations—if they could be called that—came to a halt mid-breath.

Lisa felt suddenly, horribly visible.

She pushed her cart faster, past canned vegetables and cleaning supplies, past the aisle where she used to hide during hide-and-seek as a kid while her father pretended not to see her shoes sticking out.

Her phone buzzed again.

Mom: Please.

Lisa turned into the dairy aisle and reached blindly for a carton of milk. Her hand brushed another.

“Oh—sorry,” said a voice beside her.

She knew the voice before she looked.

Rachel.

Rachel from college. The same Rachel who cried on her dorm bed senior year, mascara streaking down her cheeks, saying she didn’t know how to do life alone. Rachel who asked Lisa to stay just a little longer that night.

Lisa hadn’t. She had an early class. An interview. An excuse she repeated often enough that it stopped sounding like one.

Rachel smiled now, the same wide, brittle smile.

“You look like you’re running,” Rachel said.

“I’m not?” Lisa said.

Rachel tilted her head. “You always left before things got tough.”

“I didn’t know what to say,” Lisa whispered.

“You never tried,” Rachel continued, still smiling.

Rachel walked away, leaving her cart behind and disappeared as she turned the corner..

Lisa’s breathing came fast and shallow. This wasn’t a coincidence and most definitely not a memory. This was a reckoning she’d postponed for too long.

A loud band echoed from the back of the store. Metal slammed against metal. Somewhere, glass shattered.

The lights flickered.

Lisa ran.

The aisles didn’t make sense anymore. Childhood had begun to stretch adolescence into adulthood. She walked past the greeting cards where she bought one every year, but always managed to forget to mail it out. Then she was suddenly in the pet aisle where she remembered how once she promised to help take care of a dog she never visited. Then the goods section where she picked out plates for a house she never invited anyone to.

At the end of aisle twelve, she heard humming.

It was a familiar sound that stopped her cold.

“Lisa,” her mother called softly.

Her mother stood there, carrying a basket with nothing in it. She looked as she had ten years ago— her hair pulled back neatly, cardigan worn thin at the elbows, her eyes weary yet full of hope.

“You left early again,” her mother said.

“No,” Lisa said, shaking her head violently. “You’re not real.”

Her mother smiled sadly. “You always say that when you don’t want to stay.”

“I was scared,” Lisa said.

“So was I,” her mother replied. “I waited.”

The lights went dark and when they came back on, the aisle was empty. Lisa screamed and stumbled backwards, crashing into a solid form.

She turned.

It was her father.

He didn’t appear to be angry. That somehow made it worse.

“You said you’d come back for Thanksgiving,” he said quietly.

“I didn’t think it mattered,” Lisa trembled.

“It did,” he replied.

Hands closed gently around her arms. Amanda. Tommy. Rachel. Evan. Her father. Others—faces she knew but hadn’t thought about in years. Cousins. Neighbors. Friends who faded into oblivion simply because it had been easier than saying goodbye.

They guided her towards the front of the store. The registers were dark. The exit door stood closed, the glass reflecting her own terror-stricken face back at her.

“I didn’t harm anyone,” Lisa sobbed.

“No,” her mother said, stepping beside her. “You just weren’t there.”

The PA crackled one last time.

“Last call,” the voice said.

The doors unlocked with a soft click. Beyond them wasn’t the parking lot. It was something vast and bright and final.

Lisa stepped back.

“I don’t want to go.”

Her mother leaned and kissed her forehead. “You already did.”

They guided her forward and the doors slid shut behind her.

Inside, the store reset.

Carts aligned themselves. Shelves restocked. The smell of citrus cleaner returned.

At 9:41 p.m., the doors opened again.

A new shopper stepped inside, their phone in one hand, looking worn out.

The cashier looked up.

“Hey,” he said casually. “Let me know if you need help.”

The lights hummed.

And the store waited.