This was the fourth time that Michelle had to come in to cover for Benjamin on her day off. Each time he asked, she swore that she would tell him no the next time, and yet every time Ben wanted off, she would be in the store, covering for him.
At least it was a closing shift- the store where she worked was located in an underground shopping row that was all but forgotten about as soon as the modern five-story mall was built two streets over. The shop sold and repaired old cellphones, but there had been no customers for the past two hours. In fact, the only people she had seen were people who were looking to avoid the sweltering heat and cross the street underground.
She picked up a phone that had been dropped off before her shift and sat on the stool behind the front register. After flipping through stations on the store’s small radio, she landed on a station playing classical music, as it was the only signal that made it underground. The piano was being played so gently that the higher notes would get lost in the static of the radio. Even though she had never heard the song before, she tried humming along with how she thought it would go. She got to work and began to replace the device’s battery.
When her shift was over, she began to lock the backroom, where the phones that required more extensive repairs were held. The room was almost as big as the store itself, but that wasn’t saying much. The walls were lined with shelves, and in the far right corner sat a small wooden desk with an old box monitor on top that was used to diagnose software problems. As she pulled the shutters down over the storefront, she noticed a man standing right around where the long corridor of shops bent. She squinted her eyes, double-checking- it was definitely a person.
“Ma’am, excuse me- are you closing now?” The man asked from the end of the hall almost as soon as she noticed him. The man spoke timidly, but his voice carried through the empty walkway.
“I’m sorry, but we closed at eight. I’m locking up right now.” The man was still motionless at the end of the hall. Michelle leaned her head forward, but she was still unable to make out any characteristics of his face. All she could tell was that he was wearing baggy clothing and stood with poor posture.
“Ah, I’m really sorry to trouble you, but I had a phone I was supposed to pick up today, and I only just got off work. Would I be able to get it?”
“I’m sorry, I just locked up. We open at ten tomorrow if you can come back.”
“Please, I got here as fast as I could. I really need it tonight.”
Michelle sighed and looked at her watch. It was 8:06. Getting the phone, turning the register back on, and going through the release forms would take another ten or fifteen minutes, and she wanted nothing more but to be home. She wasn’t supposed to be here anyway- it was Ben’s shift, and he had probably called in sick so he could go out with his friends again. She felt a flash of annoyance thinking of this, and the insistence of the man only agitated her more.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I already told you, we’re closed. You need to come-” Michelle swung her head sharply, no longer trying to hide her frustration, but he wasn’t at the end of the hallway. He was standing at the corner of the shop, only a few feet away from her. She stood up, startled. His face could be made out now, but it was extremely odd. It almost looked ordinary- almost. It was like his facial features weren’t anything greater than the sum of its parts- smooth flesh dotted with vacant eyes, a thin crooked nose, and a small mouth. His dark eyes bore into her, and her frustration melted into a mix of exasperation.
She dropped her eyes to the floor.
“I’ll… just give me a second to unlock this.”
As she was removing the padlock, she realized that the palms of her hands were sweating. She brushed them against her jeans, pulled the shutters up halfway, and ducked under. The man remained outside the shop.
“What’s your name? So I know which phone is yours?” She unlocked the backroom door and pushed it open. The room was bathed in the red light of the exit sign above it.
“My sister dropped it off for me. It has a yellow case.”
The repaired phones were on a shelf directly next to the door, and she took a half step in, her foot propping the door open, and rummaged through the bags, picking them up to inspect them under the sparse light to find a yellow case.
“I don’t see any phone like that. What’s your sister's name?”
As Michelle turned to face him, the man was striding towards the counter, staring directly into her eyes. She screamed and fell to the ground in fear. As the man rounded the counter, she began to crawl backwards, on the ground, shaking. The door that she had propped open swung closed, and right before it slammed, she could see his pale white face looking down at her. The door closed with a loud thud, and she pushed herself with her hands back to the repair desk. Her legs gave out as she tried to stand up, and she began to sob silently, her back pressed against the leg of the desk. She could hear the store shutters rattle closed outside.
The door of the backroom was suddenly illuminated, and as she turned to look up, she could see that the monitor of the computer that was used for diagnostics had turned on. The screen was blank white, but the room fell dark again briefly, and then began to strobe. White lines of code were flying across the screen at an enormous pace, and she pulled herself onto the stool to look at the screen.
The temperature of the room plunged rapidly, and she could see her breath through the darkness. A pattering sound began to move around the room behind her, and she put her head onto the desk and shut her eyes tight, too scared to see the cause of the noise. Wind began to whip around the room, tousling her hair. She could hear a slathering noise spread across the floor and up the walls. Something cold and soft brushed against her foot, and she pulled it off the floor, with a short, ragged gasp escaping from her mouth.
Her head was still glued to the desk, paralyzed in fear. The only thing she could move were her eyelids, and she forced them open. Her vision was blurred from tears, and she blinked quickly to clear them. The room was almost completely black now, with only a small amount of the exit sign’s light shining through. Staring below her, she could see some kind of pale pulpy tissue that stretched across the floor, and it was rising and falling haphazardly. She realized it was matching the pace of her breaths, and she began to hyperventilate. The tissue began to shudder beneath her, like a horse twitching off a fly, rolling back and forth.
Michelle raised her head up halfway, staring at the edge of the desk. From her periphery, she could see that the walls were moving as well. She raised her head up all the way, and the dark screen of the monitor in front of her flicked off. She was motionless, mouth agape, facing the monitor. Intense dread began to fill her, and the flesh began to expand even more. In the remaining light, Michelle could see that smeared across the walls were the features of the man’s face —the small, round eyes, the thin nose, and a slit for a mouth —hundreds of them, all pooling together to form hundreds of faces, all resembling the man. The remainder of the sign was covered in the flesh, and the room plunged into darkness.