I’m not a huge fan of my current job. A little over a year into the pandemic I found myself laid off like many others. I didn’t love my job at the time, but it paid relatively well, and that pay had allowed me to move out on my own. My degree and experience are all in IT, and while I never had trouble finding work before, finding a comparable position to my last one has proven much harder than I initially hoped. After 6 months of fruitless job hunting and watching my savings account dwindle away, I decided to take a job at the local grocery store just to have enough income to keep myself afloat.

And when I say the local grocery store, I really mean it. It’s the only one in town, and it’s the largest building in the area by a fair margin. Retail work isn’t new to me; I worked in a grocery store all throughout college. That said, I certainly wasn’t looking forward to returning to it. I don’t like dealing with rude customers all day, and retail middle managers aren’t much better in my experience. Luckily, I was hired on for overnight help in the produce department, which meant I normally don’t have to deal with customers and I really only see my boss a couple times a week.

To be honest, I barely manage to pay all my bills and I don’t have anything left to put into savings, but I’m making it work. It’s far from ideal, but I guess things could be worse. Well… at least that’s what I thought up until a few weeks ago.

It was a Wednesday night, and I remember it being unusually cold. My shift starts at 9:30pm after the store closes, and I get off at 6am just before we open. I was expecting a pretty uneventful night since we don’t get a fresh food delivery on Wednesdays. I clocked in, put in my earbuds, picked out a podcast, and went to work restocking the sales floor. Some people think that being in a dimly lit grocery story after hours is creepy, like one of those “liminal spaces,” but honestly, I just find it relaxing. There are only a handful of other people working in the store and none of them in my area, so I pretty much get to do my own thing 99% of the time.

A couple hours into my shift, just as I was about to take my 15-minute break, a call came through on the walkie-talkie clipped to my belt.

“Hey produce department, food truck just got here.”

Food truck? That was odd; there shouldn’t be one tonight. I glanced over the printed order guide on the nearby counter to confirm that nothing was scheduled to be delivered. After a few moments, Jim, the warehouse attendant, called for me on the radio again. I decided to head over and see for myself.

As I came into the backroom, I could hear Jim arguing with another unknown voice back near the truck docks. I rounded the corner and saw him sitting at his desk frowning at a clipboard while a delivery truck driver stood next to him shaking his head. Jim was a stout, middle-aged man, with dark grey hair and a near constant look of jaded apathy on his face. Tonight, that familiar expression seemed to be tinged with a bit of annoyed frustration as well. It didn’t take long to realize that he was just as confused as I was as to why we were getting a delivery.

“I’m sorry man, but I don’t think this is our truck,” Jim looked up at the trucker sympathetically and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t have any record for a delivery tonight, and this shipping manifest doesn’t even match up with our location.”

“It’s gotta be you guys,” the elderly trucker protested. “I been making deliveries for over 30 years, and I know what-“ the trucker trailed off into a long-winded argument based more on his supposed experience than any actual proof or reasoning as to why the shipment was ours.

While that was playing out, I went over to the rear of the trailer which was already backed up to our dock. I immediately noticed something strange. Our usual delivery trailers were covered in peeling decals advertising our stores alongside all the required safety verbiage. This trailer looked pristine, like it had just rolled off the assembly line. You could almost see yourself in the shiny, white painted metal. Beyond that, the outside was almost entirely free of any decals, signs, or lettering. The only feature at all was in the middle of the roll-up door, just above eye-level: the word CAUTION displayed in large black letters.

I heard the argument start to wind down behind me. It sounded like we were going to have to unload the product anyways and store it in our coolers, at least until they could talk to our supplier in the morning. Hearing this, I went ahead and reached for the handle to open it up. After lifting it just a few inches, suddenly the door flew open with incredible force as if a huge motor had just kicked into gear. The shrill squeal of metal deafened me, and I actually felt myself get lifted a few inches off of the ground before I let go and fell abruptly onto my stomach. A harsh blast of refrigerated air hit me as it pushed its way out of the trailer and onto the loading dock. I heard Jim and the trucker abruptly stop bickering and begin rushing towards me.

I sheltered my bare face from the icy wind as they both helped me to my feet. As I dusted the front of my apron off and repeatedly assured them that I was okay, I naturally turned my attention back towards the open trailer. All three of us standing on the dock seemed to stop and stare almost in unison at the puzzling sight now revealed to us.

It was empty. Not a single box, crate, or pallet. Nothing but cold, dark metal and wisps of chilled fog wafting along the barren floor.

“…what the hell?” the trucker softly mused. Jim glanced back down at his clipboard and started flipping the top page back and forth in his fingers, clearly looking for an answer that none of us had. As I stared into the dark void of the trailer, I felt oddly uncomfortable, like something was just… wrong. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I started to feel faint. My fight or flight instincts kicked in. I moved briskly back to the trailer door, grabbed the looped strap handle hanging down, and pulled the door closed in one decisive motion. As soon as I heard the metal slats hit the deck, I flipped the latch and made sure it was secure with a firm stomp of my boot.

Jim and the trucker went back to arguing, though this time they seemed more intent on figuring out how an empty, unmarked, and unscheduled truck had made it all the way out to us. I stayed for a bit to listen, but decided to excuse myself after a few minutes when it was clear there was nothing to be gained from the discussion. I still felt odd, and all I wanted was to get back to work. I went back to the produce section and started filling the apple table.

As I piled bags of honeycrisp and fuji apples onto the table, I kept reflexively looking around every few minutes at the empty department. I know it sounds cliché, but it felt like I was being watched, like every move I made was being silently judged and evaluated. I tried to shake it off and just focus on my podcast, but it was hopeless. After emptying everything off of my work cart, the table was about ¾ of the way full. I remembered I still hadn’t taken my break, so I decided to go sit down for a bit and clear my thoughts.

My 15-minute break lasted closer to 30 (another perk of working mostly by myself.) As I walked back from the breakroom, the uneasy feeling returned. I silently cursed at myself for getting so worked up over something so little. Sure, the trailer incident was odd, but there was nothing overtly sinister about a warehouse logistical error. I had almost talked myself back into an uneasy sense of calmness when I reached the apple table, and my stomach dropped once more.

It was completely full. Almost overflowing. The spots I hadn’t touched yet had been filled out, and the spots I had already hit were stacked even higher. I stared dumbfounded at the table for at least a few minutes. I tried to convince myself that there wasn’t anything off. That I had actually finished filling the table before my break and just forgotten. It was enough to lower my heartrate just a bit, but I don’t think I ever really believed it.

The next few shifts were filled with similar occurrences. Tables being filled when I was sure I still had more to do. Going to empty the trash at the end of my shift only to find that the bin was already empty. Grabbing a mop to clean up a spill only to find the area spotless once again by the time I returned. Every time I had a new excuse to tell myself. I was just being forgetful. I wasn’t getting enough sleep. Someone else must have come over to help out.

After almost a week of these strange happenings, I stopped making excuses. I stopped trying to explain it. I found myself in a weird mental space that you might call “acceptance.” I started consciously working less each shift. And the work still got done. My boss even commended me on how good the department had been looking when he got in in the morning. One night I didn’t even leave the breakroom. I just sat there watching reruns of The Andy Griffith Show on the ancient flickering TV until my shift was almost over. I walked out to the department just before I left, and sure enough, everything was done. The tables were full, the floors were clean, even the work log was filled out.

As I’m writing this, I haven’t actually been to work in over a week. I’ve just been laying around my house. Suddenly I find it hard to do anything beyond the bare minimum to keep myself functioning. An intense blanket of lethargy weighs on me every moment I’m awake. Even while I’m eating or walking to the bathroom I feel like I could fall back asleep at any moment. And through all of this, no one at work has called me. I check my hours online, and I’m clocking in and out on time every day. Or someone is at least.

The only communication I’ve gotten in days was from one of my friends that lives in town. He texted me a few hours ago asking if everything was okay. He had gone to get some groceries early this morning and had seen me as I was walking out. He waved and called out to me, but got no response. Apparently, I just stared at him blankly and then went back to walking. He saw me. The other me.

And now he’s here. Or I’m here, I guess. I can see myself through my bedroom window, standing in my front yard, looking back at me. I feel much weaker now than I did this morning. Even weaker than I felt just a few minutes ago when I started writing this. It takes all of my energy and focus just to keep typing. I don’t know what he wants, but every time I look away from my computer screen he seems to be just a bit closer. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I feel like I’m the one in the yard, and I see myself at my desk, hunched over and shivering. It feels like my own thoughts are slipping away from me. I don’t know why, but I think the next time I close my eyes I won’t open them again.

​

[UPDATE] I feel better now. No need to worry. I need to get some rest before work.