Lost in the Supermarket

Lost in the Supermarket

“How long has it been since Emily disappeared?” Michelle whispered, her voice carrying through the darkness of the empty snack aisle.

              “Who’s to say?” Ethan replied. “Who even knows what day it is.” Jim was in charge of keeping track of the calendar. Jim disappeared long enough ago that no one knew what day it was. “Why?”

              “I just can’t help but think about something Carolyn said earlier today…”

              “Carolyn is full of conspiracy theories. She probably thinks lizard people from Mars run the world.”

              “But what if she was right about the music? That’s when the disappearances started.”

              “That had to be a coincidence.” Ethan sighed. But at the same time, he couldn’t argue more than the fact that Carolyn’s theories were usually pretty farfetched. It took three days of having to listen to H-Mart grocery store music before someone finally had the sense to turn it off. By the time there was silence, Ethan had found himself pacing and snapping at anyone who tried to talk to him.

              “But she said that we were due for another one.”

              Carolyn had said the same thing to Ethan earlier as he was sweeping the store. He swept every day, less to keep the store clean, but more as something to do. It was something to keep his mind off of the fact that he was essentially trapped in an H-Mart with a group of strangers. Besides, Michael, a kid from the nearby high school used to do the sweeping. He always thought about how the kid would laugh at his own dumb jokes. When he swept the store, Ethan found himself thinking of Michael’s odd habit and laughing just a bit. 

              “It’s been a while since that happened, but what does she know any more than the rest of us?” Ethan’s eyes had adjusted to the dimmer lights. Lights off at ten, back on at six. The glow from the refrigeration cases at the end of each aisle was the only light available. Other muffled conversations crept through the dark, but nothing Ethan could discern. Maybe the inhabitants of other aisles were talking about the same thing. He could see Michelle’s furrowed brow. They sat close together on top of two sleeping bags piled on top of each other. They had agreed a few nights ago that it would be more comfortable if they slept closer like this.

              “Yeah,” she sighed, “I just wish someone would tell her to shut up. She makes everyone so anxious.”

              “Hey, at least we finally convinced her to stop leaving posters around the store.”

              Michelle stifled a laugh. He could feel her eyes on him in the dimness.

              After talking a bit longer, they laid down on the improvised mattress. Ethan let his arm rest behind his back, even though it had been making his shoulder sore in the morning. But when Michelle pressed her back up against him, he reflexively wrapped his arm around her waist. Before he could pull it back, she ran her delicate fingers along his forearm and squeezed it tight.

___

              Roughly a week had passed when the second escape attempt happened.

              “Well,” Hank bellowed, “less food to share now!”

              “What a terrible thing to say!” Michelle shot back. “We don’t even know what happened to them!”

              “The same thing that happened to the last two that ran off, sweetheart,” he sneered. Ethan’s eyes narrowed. The voices of the small crowd murmured guesses of what happens when you leave the store, even just to explore the mall attached to it.  

              “Hank, why do you keep saying that?” Michelle threw her arms up and stormed off away from the front doors, back towards the snack aisle.

              “Listen, sweetheart, do you—"

              “Don’t,” was all Ethan had to say. As he left, Carolyn’s voice began to gain volume over the small crowd, like a Sunday preacher, reminding everyone that this was all coming. This is what they all should have expected.

              Michelle was in the snack aisle, surrounded by brightly colored bags of salty, umami goodness. Shrimp crackers. Pocky sticks. Spicy noodle crunchy things. She had taken a packet of seaweed crisps down from the shelf and was absentmindedly chewing on them.

              "Can you remember the last two that left? You know, the ones that didn’t disappear?" Michelle asked when Ethan approached. “I’ve been trying this whole time to remember their names, but I can’t. I can’t even remember what they looked like.”

"Was it two? I thought it was three." Ethan could only remember that one of them always wore a baseball hat. But which team?

Michelle was silent for a moment. "Was it three?” She shook her head. “Either way, do you remember them at all?"

“I think one of them used to try to make food out of boredom.” The kitchen area of the store had been much less chaotic since then.

“And why does Hank have to do that every time someone disappears?”

“You mean the whole, ‘less food to share’ bullshit?” Michelle growled and shoved another sheet of seaweed into her mouth. Hank’s comments had always angered Ethan too. Every seven days, the store’s shelves were replenished. No one knew why, or how. People tried staying up all night, like waiting for Santa Claus, but no one ever saw who, or what, was restocking the store to its original glory. There was no food shortage; there never was one.

“Maybe he’s just an asshole,” Ethan laughed.

“Maybe?”

___

              The next week, Carolyn disappeared.

              “I don’t see any of her posters up any more,” Michelle commented. “Do you think she walked out?”

              “I still remember her name,” Ethan replied. “That has to mean she didn’t walk out on her own, right?”

              “Yeah…” Michelle hesitated. “So do I. Maybe Hank has them in the office. He loves to hang out there all day.”

              “If you’re saying that I go talk to him…”

              “Oh God no! Let that awful bastard rot in there. He acts like he’s the owner of the H-Mart.”

              “Technically, he was the manager of the H-Mart.” Ethan always rolled his eyes when Hank would compliment his sweeping of the store like he was an employee. In fact, Ethan couldn’t think of anything at that moment that Hank did that was valuable.

              “It doesn’t matter anymore. We’re all here. There’s no store to manage.”

              Ethan nodded and stole a piece of seaweed from the container. He popped the whole thing in his mouth, scrunching up his nose at the briny taste, moving his tongue around to keep it from sticking to the roof of his mouth.  

              “You always make that face! You know there are a ton of other snack options here,” she said with a wide, sweeping gesture. The array of snacks in sealed packages was dizzying.

              “Yeah,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of dried kelp, “but this one’s your favorite.”

___

              Ethan was sweeping when he ran into Michelle in the aisle that held the store’s dried noodles. She stood in front of the massive selection of noodles pondering them like a scholar might ponder a library.

              “Should we have mushrooms and chicken with soba tonight?” she asked absently, examining a three-pack of tightly wrapped brown noodles. “Maybe you could make that coconut curry you make.”

              “I don’t see why not. Let’s throw some bok choy in there too.”

              “How can you eat that but hate seaweed?” She looked him up and down and shook her head.

              “There’s a world of difference between fresh bok choy and dried ocean leavings.” Ethan leaned on his broom and shrugged. Michelle laughed and shook her head.

              “Well, I do love the way you make bok choy, sir.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close. He could smell her hair, the new conditioner from aisle two that he said he liked. It pulled him closer to her, made him feel wrapped up and content. Moments like this made exhaling feel like a waste of air.

              “I was thinking…” he started.

              She held him back at arm’s length. “That’s dangerous,” she said with mocked severity.

              A breathy laugh escaped his lips. “Seriously.”

              Michelle cocked her head. “What’s going on?”

              “I want to take over Subin’s game nights. She’s only been gone a week or so, but I can see that people are bored.”

              “Ethan, they’re scared. There’s only thirteen of us left.”

              “And game night might help. At least it’s better than drinking soju by ourselves in the snack aisle, pretending there’s no one else here.”

              “Okay, but only if you let me win.”

___

              As the months dragged on, more people disappeared. At first it was Kathy, who used to cry in the pet food aisle and tell stories about her two cats. She always wondered how they were doing without her.

              Then it was Roberto, who always read the same magazines over and over again. A few days after that, it was Eugene, who liked to stick his hand into open sacks of rice.

              Eventually, it was just Ethan, Michelle, and Hank.

              At night, Ethan and Michelle sat at the cafeteria tables that used to house Subin’s game nights, playing card games and drinking soju. Hank would retire to his office and leave them in peace. Their laughter echoed off the walls of the nearly empty store.

              Ethan splashed more soju into Michelle’s plastic cup, and then his own. They were well into their second bottle, and their faces were flushed and warm. They laughed at each other’s jokes, focusing more on each other than the game in front of them.

              “Don’t think because you’re flirting with me that I don’t know you’re cheating,” Ethan said, taking a rather healthy sip. The large, red cups looked ridiculous for how much soju was poured each time, but it was better than the small, paper cups next to the toothpaste. Those fell apart far too easily.

              “Would it be too much to ask the people that restock the store to give us some proper glasses?” Michelle asked. She pounded her fist on the table and looked him dead in the eyes. “Who do I talk to about that?”

              “Don’t change the subject, cheater.”

              “It’s only cheating if you prove it,” she whispered, biting her bottom lip. “Maybe I have a card hidden on me somewhere.”

              “Do you?”

              “You’ll have to search me to find out.”

___

              Ethan pounded on the door to the women’s restroom. “Michelle? Are you in there? I’m coming in. Please don’t be dead, or throwing up.” The door wasn’t locked. She wasn’t there.

              She wasn’t looking for hangover cures in the medicine aisle.

              She wasn’t in any of the aisles trying to pick out food for breakfast.

              She wasn’t drawing rude things into the fog of the refrigerator case.

              She wasn’t at the front of the store, where oftentimes she would stare through the security curtain, trying to catch a glimpse of the sun at golden hour as it reflected off the floor of the attached shopping mall. But that’s where Hank found Ethan as he stared out through the drop-down bars well after the sun crept past the eastern doors.

              “She’s gone,” Ethan whispered.

              “Well—” Hank began.

              “Say it and I’ll be sweeping up your teeth.”

Before Hank could reply, Ethan turned and walked away, his footsteps leading him the long way around the store, a circuit that avoided aisle four, the snack aisle. He sat down in aisle three, opened the biggest bag of rice he could find, and slowly slid his hand all the way to the bottom, up to the elbow.  

___

              Weeks passed.

              Ethan did his best to stick to his routines: sweeping, reading magazines, and watching for the sun in the mornings as it crept through the shopping mall entrance. Whenever he heard Hank’s keys jingling, he did his best to avoid the other man entirely.

              “Aisle four’s lookin’ a bit dusty lately, champ!” he proclaimed one afternoon, catching Ethan unaware.

              “Fuck you,” was all Ethan had to say. He pushed the broom in a long arc around the other man, steeling his gaze toward the produce section until he heard the sound of keys fading away across the store.

              Most nights, Ethan found himself playing solitaire near the table where he and Michelle played their last card game. The cards still lay on the table, next to empty Solo cups, the chairs still not pushed in.

He always sat with his back to that table.

              When he was done, and drunk enough for the night, he would make his way back to aisle three, stopping just once to draw something rude on the condensation of the glass refrigerator case, only to wipe it away to nothingness before moving on.

___

              When he knocked on the door to the office, Ethan realized he couldn’t remember the last time he had heard the sound of Hank’s keys.

              “Hey! I need the key to the good liquor case. I’m tired of drinking the cheap stuff.”

              He knocked again, sighed in frustration, and turned the knob to the office door. Ethan had only been in Hank’s office a handful of times before. He never saw the CCTV monitors on, but he often wondered if Hank watched the aisles and checkout lanes during the day like he probably used to. The room was cramped, an afterthought when building the store.

              On the desk sat a keyring on a carabiner, home to over a dozen keys of various sizes. Hank’s keys. Hank’s keys that he never went anywhere without, except at night, and only then because people complained about the noise early on. Ethan scooped them up and unceremoniously clipped them to a belt loop on his jeans.

              “I guess that’s less food to share now.” He left the door to the office open as he left. “Asshole.”

 ___

              It had been a week since Ethan found himself alone. Or was it two? Hard to tell in a place like this. Every morning he woke up and sat by the front of the store to watch the sun sparkle off the linoleum flooring of the mall courtyard. The serene blend of oranges, bleeding into yellows and harsh whites felt like a symphony playing only for him.

By day, he’d re-read old magazines and sweep the store to the sound of keys jangling on his hip. He’d pause near the cat food to remember stories and bat at one of the cat toys he had tied to the shelf. It might be nice to have a cat around to look after and play with. Who would he talk to about that?

              At night, after dinner, he’d sit in the cafeteria and drink, and play solitaire.

              One morning, after the sun had crawled its way past the sliding doors across the courtyard and into the sky, Ethan found himself in the office, turning on the speakers. The inoffensive music droned on in the background, accenting the jingling of his keys, and the shushing sound of his sweeping.

              He paused in front of aisle four, scrutinizing the dust that had accumulated along the stretch of flooring under the prepackaged foodstuffs. With a sigh he began to sweep. He stepped tentatively at first, but before he could regret his decision, he was almost a third of the way down the aisle.  

              He paused at the two sleeping bags, still piled in the middle of the aisle, indents from two bodies preserved in their crumpled form. He had opened and smelled the conditioner Michelle had used on so many nights after drinking expensive whiskey, but it never overtook him the same way. It never truly lived inside of him like it did when it lived in her hair.

              He snatched a pack of seaweed off the shelf, opened it up, and stuffed a sheet into his mouth. His nose crinkled at the taste and the feel of it sticking to the roof of his mouth. He dropped the rest of the package in front of his broom and kept sweeping.

              As he rounded the corner to aisle five, he thought about getting some printer paper from the office to make posters with. Maybe if he made enough of them, the ones that restocked the store would bring him real glasses. Or a cat. Or someone to talk to.

              Or maybe they would finally let him just disappear.