Supermarket

Once again, Billy found himself wandering the aisles. This had been a recurring theme in his life, trudging through the endless rows of mass-produced food packed with chemicals that we all buy because there’s nothing better.

This is what his evenings had become. Office, shopping, home, sleep. Repeat.

His boss, Geoff, that fat fucking prick who did nothing but sit in his office all day watching golf, assigned him yet another project that would run long into the night.

“Billy,” the Slack message said, as it popped up on his screen right as he was about to pack his things and leave for the day, “a client needs a couple presentations whipped up for tomorrow. Don’t forget the notes.”

That right there, that little message with those fifteen simple words, had meant Billy would have to spend another four hours sitting at his desk, working on presentations that nobody would pay attention to. It meant he’d have to dig through report after report to find the relevant data that made the company look good. He knew the truth, though.

On some level, this was to be expected. Billy had made the mistake of being helpful in his first few years at Globadine. He’d go out of his way to work on additional projects outside his own to help his team stay ahead of the tight deadlines. Tight deadlines, he always knew, were arbitrary.

All that being helpful didn’t take long to backfire. Before long, job after job, project after project, would be put onto Billy’s plate. Everyone knew he was just oh-so-happy to help with anything that anyone needed, so they felt no guilt about loading him up with plenty of things to keep him busy.

“Sure thing!” Billy would reply to every Slack message that came through.

“Happy to help!”

“No worries at all!”

“Teamwork makes the dream work!”

So yeah, it was to be expected when Geoff dropped yet another last-minute project on him at 4:50pm. That was four and a half hours ago.

An hour ago, he’d finished up the last slide in the final presentation.

Thirty minutes ago, he’d left the office to drive to the supermarket.

And now, once again, he found himself wandering the aisles.

You see, the thing is, being here late at night was something he’d become used to. For some time now, he’d been pulling days at the office that just seemed to be getting longer. This meant that for Billy, when it was time to do his shopping, he had no choice but to do it at night. The weekends, of course, we reserved for catching up on all the sleep he missed during the week.

And when you walk the aisles of a supermarket at night, you have some time to think. With the horrible muzak shut off, and the general lack of customers clogging up the place, there were no distractions. In a way, it was meditative.

It was meditative, that is. Meditative, right up until a theory popped into Billy’s head. It was as he was reaching up to pull down a box of cereal when, over his shoulder, he saw one of the workers dart across the aisle. Quick as a flash, from left to right.

The germ of the idea was lodged in his mind right there. At first, it was nothing but a little seedling. Barely even worth mentioning. But regardless of its size, it had taken up home in Billy’s mind, and with every subsequent sighting, that idea grew.

That little seedling would soon become an idea that he couldn’t clear from his mind.

If you’ve never been to a supermarket at night, something to know is that it feels like a whole other world. As mentioned, there’s a lack of customers, with most sensible people choosing to do their shopping during the more civil hours of the daytime. But that doesn’t mean there’s nobody there at night. No, far from it.

Billy strolled from one aisle to the next, his mind loosely focused on the loaf of bread he needed to pick up. There, in this new aisle, was a worker. He was tall (gangly, one might describe him), and he was taking items from a cart and stacking them on the shelves.

The supermarket Billy frequented had these large signs above the shelves, at about head height. They were shiny metal and had phrases like Better for you! and Shop more for less! emblazoned on them. You know, all that marketing spiel that was designed to make you feel like you were doing the right thing by shopping at this particular chain of supermarket, instead of the other bog-standard, cookie-cutter options you had to pick from.

They all had the same slogans. They all had the same products, too. Copy and paste.

The thing about this supermarket, though, was that these signs were so reflective that you could see yourself looking right back at you when you read the text. Not quite a mirror-level reflection, but good enough.

As Billy walked into the aisle and stopped his trolley next to the worker’s cart, he surveyed the options of bread before him. Thick cut, thin, wholemeal, seeds or no seeds, Billy was spoilt for choice. The worker, with tinny music coming from his cheap headphones, stood next to Billy, placing various varieties of bread onto the shelves. Billy picked up what he wanted and moved on.

As he was about to leave the aisle, for whatever reason, he decided to take a look up at the sign, perhaps to check he wasn’t looking too sleep deprived. He was, he quickly found out, through the gaunt eyes looking back at him.

He also discovered that the worker, still standing next to him, had no reflection at all. Not even a faint haze where a reflection should be. In the mirror, where the worker should be reflected standing next to Billy, he could see the ice buns on the shelf behind them.

Weird, he thought, but nothing more. Not getting enough sleep can have all sorts of effects on our brains. Hallucinations were to be expected.

But the theory? The little seed of one we spoke about earlier? It grew just the tiniest bit in Billy’s head.

As you know, supermarkets at night are strange places. Otherworldly.

They become liminal spaces — locations without a sense of time or place — that attract all the assorted creatures that live on the fringes of society. It’s not uncommon to see Shorts Man, as Billy had nicknamed him, who loved to strut around in shorts several sizes too small, filling up his basket with as much mayonnaise as he could carry. And then the woman who pushed around a pram loaded with, not a baby, but a watermelon with a face drawn on it.

This attracting all manner of people – in the way that only a late-night supermarket can do – Billy was certain, was by design.

By inviting those living in their own worlds, the goings on of the supermarket late at night can go undisturbed.

As Billy continued to walk through the aisles of the huge building, picking up various bits and pieces from the shelves, he worked on his theory. When you take a look at those employed in supermarkets, especially on the night shift, their skin is as pale as can be. Could that just be down to the constant exposure to the fluorescent lights? Before now, Billy hadn’t even given it a second thought. But now? It couldn’t deny that it was a little bit weird, all of them being so pale.

There was the lack of sunlight to keep in mind. Once you walk into these huge supermarkets that sit on the fringes of every town in Britain, there’s not a window in sight. Pseudo-psychologists, the ones on YouTube who claim to know everything about how the human mind works, say this lack of windows is to encourage shoppers to focus on the product. If they don’t see the passage of time from the outside world, they don’t know how long they’re spending in the shop, and thus are likely to spend longer looking at what’s available for them to purchase.

The same principles, the experts say, are at play in Las Vegas. No daylight, more gambling.

But the more Billy thought about it, the more he became convinced this wasn’t the reason. Sure, it might sound plausible, but was it really true?

He continued walking around the supermarket, exploring the idea in his mind. What’s for certain? Aside from the front of the stores, most – if not all of them – have no windows at all. That’s true. What does a lack of windows mean? It means there can be zero natural light let into the stores, especially deep in the recesses of the aisles, away from the front façade and entrance.

No natural light. Hmmmmm.

Billy looked down to see that his trolley was full. He’d been so deep in thought that he’d not realised he’d picked up everything he needed. Well, almost everything. He wanted a steak for dinner, a little treat for all his hard work. He spun the shopping cart around and made his way to the butcher’s counter at the back of the store.

Up ahead, the glowing sign above the counter proclaimed that the supermarket offers its shoppers a wide range of FRESH MEAT, DAILY. As Billy got closer and closer to the counter, he noticed something. To his mild annoyance, it was completely empty. The usually stuffed shelves full of freshly cut beef, pork, chicken, various organs, entrails, and undisclosed organic matter were bare.

Stood at the counter, too, on the customer side, was a store worker. He had his hand pressed up against the glass, staring longingly into the empty shelf behind.

“Nothing left?” Billy asked the worker.

“Nothing. They’ve fed. We’ll need to gather more.” The worker said, turning to look at Billy. A harried expression came over the worker’s face when he looked Billy in the eyes. “Oh,” he said, “Sorry, sir.”

“What for?” Billy asked. Before he could assure the worker that he was one of the good guys, not about to berate him for a product being out of stock and thus totally out of his control, the worker scurried through a door leading to the back section of the supermarket, inaccessible to customers.

That was weird, Billy thought to himself. Shame about the meat, but it is what it is. With that being the last thing he needed, Billy headed to the front of the store to pay for his things.

Another thing struck him as he was loading his shopping onto the conveyor belt: In all the time that he’d been shopping in supermarkets late at night, he’d never seen another customer buy anything. For that matter, he’d never seen another customer leave. At least, not at the same time as him.

Beep!

The noise pulled him from his thoughts. The till assistant was scanning his things, and Billy had to hurry to catch up with the packing. He rushed and rushed, barely managing to keep up with the rapid pace she was pushing his items through.

After paying, he left through the big double doors at the front of the store and headed to his car. The car park that would have been heaving in the day was desolate now. Just Billy’s car sat alone, beneath the orange glow of a streetlight.

Behind the wheel, he took one last look at the shop. Standing there, underneath the fluorescent lights of the entrance, were a gaggle of pale-faced workers. All of them, without exception, were staring back at him.

Unsure what to do, he gave them a wave as he drove off.

The whole ride home, he couldn’t shake the strange feeling that had buried itself deep into his skull.

He thought about his theory the whole way home. They couldn’t be, could they?

It had to be the lack of sleep that was playing tricks on him.

How close Billy came to working out the big secret, he’d never know.