Overnight shift

The overhead lights flickered, their unstable fluorescence perfect for starting yet another headache. Mason had a lot of those recently. Doctors kept telling him he needed to change his work schedule to something better, less dark nights alone at his gas station job and more sunlight. Between them and his family he was beginning to question if he really should make some changes. 

“Work that late is only meant for two people. The dead and the soon to be.” At least, that's what his mom used to say. He didn't really understand what she had meant by that. Maybe that had been a sign of her impending decline, her nonsense sayings. Looking back on it now, he started to wonder if he was losing it too, since he wanted to agree with her. The clock on the register read that it was after midnight, the specific numbers blurring when he tried to read them. The whiff of bleach hit his nose, arresting him mid eye wipe. Blurry eyes would have to do for now, unless he wanted to scrub all the chemicals off his hands. 

He was pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of the door chiming. A customer had walked in. ‘Who comes to a gas station this late anyway?’ he thought as he leaned over the corner of the register and caught sight of a little girl scurrying down an aisle. Customers weren’t unheard of on his shifts. They were the reason he was here after all. Though the little girl was an odd one. Usually, he had to deal with drunks and other overnighters. Who sent their kid into a store alone this late?

Walking around the counter, his head swiveled to check the parking lot. Was she one of her parents outside? He wanted to see the jerk who had their kids up and running errands for them. The lights flickered again, reflecting in the glass door along with his own tired expression. His eyes swept back and forth through the pumps, and then to the parking spots. 

No one.

“What the-?” His words stopped, the reflection catching him off guard. Two little eyes staring back at him from just behind his back. Mason quickly spun around, ready to confront the small eyes.

Nothing. 

Just the sound of the buzzing lights and dripping from the machines. No little watchful eyes peering at him from behind. Despite what he had seen, he was standing in the open expanse of the check out line alone. 

“Hey, Little Miss. Where’s your parents at? You shouldn’t be out here alone.” He hoped that the ‘Little Miss’ sounded more like a concerned grown up than a creep to her. She clearly hadn’t been brought here by anyone, which meant he might be dealing with a runaway. He’d need to call the cops and get her home, or wherever a safe place for her was. 

His shoes made the squeaking noises they always did when he walked over his freshly cleaned floor. She was probably in the aisles, trying to find some kind of food. He checked through the first one, the one he’d seen her go down, and came up empty handed. No response either. The next aisle was also empty, boasting only its half stale and all over priced goods. The last aisle must be where she was. She probably wasn’t speaking because she realized she was caught. Another squeak sounded as he turned into the last row, hands raising up to show he wasn’t a threat. 

But it was just as empty as the first two. 

“Hey, you need to come out! You can’t hide in here!" Where would a kid hide in the store? There were only three aisles and a line of coolers on the back wall. His register faced everything from the front and she couldn’t have slipped past him and out the door. Yet somehow she was completely gone. If she had been there at all. 

Reluctantly he made his way back to the register, the screen glaring at him as he ignored it. The back office had cameras. Even if they were twenty years old and blurry, they could show him where the girl had gone. Then he could call the police and they would take the problem off his hands. The measly pay he received from his boss didn’t cover playing hide and seek with runaways. 

The lights in the back were broken, leaving him the only option he had for illuminating the space, his phone. At first, he misclicked the app, sending him immediately to his home screen again, before finally getting the flashlight turned on. He swept the pathetic beam over the room, having to cover it twice before he found where the desk was. What was the password for the cameras again? He knew his boss had mentioned it once before, yet it alluded him. A long yawn escaped him then, forcing his ears to pop and distract him. Usually on these overnight shifts he would watch shows on his phone or play some kind of game to stay awake. It seemed like he would have other things keeping him up tonight. The sound of him typing echoed in the deafening silence of the office, followed by the error message flashing red. There would only be two more attempts before he would be locked out. His boss would have to fix the system tomorrow if he locked it up. 

“Come on, I swear he told me this.” Talking out loud to himself, that was new. A sign of how stressed he was getting. If he couldn’t use the cameras to cheat at this stupid game of hide and seek then he would simply have to play. Or ignore it. 

No, no, not “it”. This was a little girl who was probably really scared, more than he was. He tried another guess.

Denied. Again. 

“Come on, think. It was something really obvious. He laughed when he told you the password.” thinking back to his employer, he tried to imagine what would make his cranky boss laugh. What was something so stupid, so trivial that he would choose it?

Mason groaned as he typed out his last chance, more certain now than he had been before. The screen flashed a quick green check before splitting off to several cameras. He wanted to rage at the old man, but he had to admit he should have tried that first. Even if it was most people’s first guess, ‘password’ might be just obvious enough no one would guess it. He hadn’t after all. 

His eyes searched through the controls and different shots of the store. The system was old. It required you to rewind to see anything, there was no way to select a time and go from there. He picked the camera that faced the door and started the slow rewind. It couldn’t move faster than a few minutes at a time, and he wasn’t sure how long he had wasted on trying to get in. Was it closer to one now? Two? Surely it wasn’t. Midnight felt like mere moments ago. 

Finally he noticed the clock attached to the camera was getting closer to midnight, meaning it was around the time the girl had walked in. Now all he had to do was watch and see which camera he would need to switch to after she walked in. He would find her soon, and then he would call the cops and turn her over. After that, all he had to do was wait for the morning to come and he could go home and rest. The thought of his cold bed and three blankets made another wave of exhaustion hit. How long had it been since he slept for a whole eight hours? Actually, when was the last time he slept at all?

The door chime interrupted his thoughts yet again, as well as his search for the little girl. He cursed under his breath, pulling himself together as he left the office. ‘Just quickly check them out and go back to finding the girl.’ His shoes didn’t squeak on the way back to the register. The lights up here were overly bright compared to the office. The camera was abandoned now, the screen glowing with the shot of him standing alone staring into the glass.

“Hello, welcome in.” Mason’s voice rang out to the store as he approached his usual spot behind the register. He was glad he had spoken before seeing the man. If he hadn;t he wasn;t sure he would have been able to finish his sentence. 

Standing before him was a creature of a man. The back was turned to him, shambeling away down the first aisle toward the line of coolers at the back. Too hunched, too rounded for the back of a normal man. The gait of the man’s legs seemed off as well. Was he drunk? How would alcohol make someone walk like that, like each step was painful and took all the effort the body had to give. The clothes were normal, though hanging limply from the contorted figure. Mason watched in abject horror as a spindly hand reached out and pulled open the cooler door, five crooked and long fingers wrapping around the glass and holding onto it as another hand pulled one single bottle away. The chill of the freezer didn’t seem to register with the man. He simply pulled the drink in close and let the door stand open.

‘It’s just a man,’ Mason reminded himself, ‘It's very late and this is probably someone who works a lot. Factory work could do that to a person.’

Even as that thought came to him, he felt his certainty fade. The man's face wiped all thoughts away. 

Long and wrinkled, with eyes so sunken in they looked like they were simply holes in his face. If he squinted he could find the lashes, and under them the milky whites. His face was wrong. It felt like he was watching the skin slip off bone and reveal the skull underneath. The head was set weird on the shoulders that held it, like there wasn’t a neck in the mix. The sound of shuffling grew louder as the distance separating them disappeared. 

Mason smiled, forced and barely counting as a smile and not a grimace. He knew it couldn’t reach his eyes. Not as those same eyes took in details that made his brain scream.

 ‘This is wrong.’ Over and over again his brain called out for him to move, to react, to hide away. His feet remained planted in their usual spot. The mat under his feet had a sunken spot that fit his shoes, and it seemed to act like a hole now. One he couldn’t pull free from as the shambling approached him. 

Mason felt like he was watching his hands move on their own as he took the drink and scanned it. Even as they shook and demanded he drop the bottle. The beeping noise that usually came from the register didn’t sound, though he could read the price off the screen anyway. He stared at the numbers and found his voice wouldn’t work. A nervous squeak came up instead. 

The man cleared his throat, waiting to be told his total. Oh God, his neck. It appeared he did have one after all. It was curved outwards, opposite of the way his spine curved in. How could that work? 

“It’s- uh, three dollars.” finally the words sprouted out. Now Mason would only need the money. After that he could run and hide in the back, his safe place away from this creature. 

The man leaned forward, his head nearly reaching to his waist as he pulled money out of his pocket. Crumbled bills came away with his hand, a mess of ones that usually Mason would roll his eyes before accepting. Tonight they seemed beautiful, as they meant he would soon be free to look away. The man's head reverted back to its resting place, stopping far shorter than where it should go. The bills tumbled onto the counter, three beaten up but perfect bills. 

Even as he took the money, his eyes couldn’t seem to look away. He knew he had clicked the button, knew that the drawer was opening and he was putting the money in. Yet he was still searching for the eyes in that sunken face. Up close they were somehow harder to find amongst every sagging line of flesh. 

Then, as he closed the drawer and the transaction came to a close, he saw the eyes once again. Bloodshot and yet so glazed over. The man gave a grunt and turned to the door. Usually mason would wait for them to open the door before bidding them a goodnight. 

This time he simply turned around and made his break back to the office. His heart was racing, primal fear coursing through his veins. He had never been scared of a customer, never been so upset about the things nature could do to a body. Not for himself or others, no matter how close they were to him. Nature would do what it wanted against human bones and flesh. This man, or creature, or whatever he had just seen had been the first. Hopefully it was also the last. 

The screen in the office flashed, showing the cameras and specifically the angle he had selected before. An empty aisle with sad half filled bags of chips stared at him from the screen. 

How had he forgotten the little girl? She was still inside the store with him. His night wasn’t yet over, even as he read the time and saw it was approaching dawn soon. He needed to find the girl on the cameras before he could leave. The cops may need him for a statement or to keep her here until they arrive. He placed himself once again in the chair, taking a moment to catch his breath and relax before he would begin combing through the footage again. 

What time was he checking again? Right, after midnight. Hours had passed now and he felt like he hadn’t noticed. The sound of his clicking as he made his selections once again and scrolled backwards through the feed filled the space. Outside he could hear the buzzing of the lights, their flickering haunting his thoughts. 

There. This was the moment he had walked around the register to check the parking lot. If he scrolled a little more he would find when the girl walked in and be able to follow her to her hiding spot. He had to admit, he was curious about where she was and how she had remained there for so long. 

He scrolled, waiting to see the moment where she walked in. Only one thing was off. The door never opened, the chime never rang. The until hour when he walked around the register was empty of any movement besides his own. 

A bug, or a fluke. The camera hadn’t caught it somehow. He changed to viewing the aisle when he saw her go down, and scrolled through the feed. Again he was greeted with nothing. The girl had never been inside the store. There was never anyone tonight besides him.

Except, of course, the man. Feeling the chill running up his back he clicked onto the main camera again and began a much easier search. This had been only minutes ago, and he was able to find the footage easily. The man was there in the video, standing before Mason as Mason rang him up. 

The only difference in the footage was the fact the man was staring right up at the camera, throughout the entire transaction.