We Were Us

I watch as they all inch toward the door, barely breathing, barely moving as they try not to get his attention. Now, he is preoccupied, but there’s an unspoken understanding between everyone here that that could change at any moment.

“Go! Please, go!” I’m urging them, trying to make eye contact with them all, trying to get through. They know this supermarket inside and out, all the great hiding spaces, all the entrances and exits. They could escape easily. But it’s no use. They’re not seeing me frantically waving, trying to get them out. They’re not looking around for any form of exit or escape. Their eyes are fixed on my dead body, lying there on the floor. I can see my blood pooling as it leaves my corpse, the stark contrast of the scarlet against the intense white.

“Please run!” I beg, but they don’t hear me. They’ll never hear me again.

***

None of us could have expected this when we accepted our jobs. This was just supposed to be a few easy months working at the supermarket over summer before uni. We’d all save some money up and have an epic fresher’s week. At least that was the idea.

The shop job got boring quick; a constant stream of unpacking boxes off the lorry and repacking them onto the shelves, over and over, but it didn’t matter. Yes, we were bored, but how bored could you be messing about with your mates while getting paid, and paid well, for it? And yeah, the customers were annoying, but that hardly mattered at the end of the day.

Sooner rather than later, we all made the decision that we all kinda liked working together, with our stupid little uniforms and hats, and those stupid old dears that came in, and those stupid, useless managers that would sit in the office, staring at the cameras, their mouths opening and closing aimlessly like fish. The deference emails made their way to the university inbox, and without the looming deadline hanging over our heads, we almost went feral, coming in when we wanted, leaving when we wanted, breaks as long as we wanted, and all those company cowards in the office too scared to actually say anything to us. Even now, I still think about those glorious nights we’d all close together. We’d push each other in shopping trolleys down the aisles and compete to sneakily steal as much beer as we could without it being obvious. For us, this wasn’t a job. It was our barely-adult playground, and we were kings and queens.

After a while, management began to separate us. We’d expected it, really. There’s only so long you’re able to goof around at a job like that before they’d lose their patience. They ended up putting the girls on the tills—Kelsey, Shelby, and Leah. They split us guys up into two groups—me and Sean doing the early-morning deliveries and Jesse and Shane on the closing shift. Shane had complained about not seeing Leah, but we brushed it off. We all missed our friends, and after all, he wasn’t special.

We’d laugh over beers in the park about how sexist it seemed to be, how the managers didn’t seem to realise all the girls were in the customer service roles, and us boys had been relegated to the back. It was stupid. We were so stupid.

***

Work got a lot more boring after that. I think we knew the Golden Age was always going to end, but we imagined it would in a blaze of glory before we sauntered away, victorious, to fresher’s week. Instead, it was sad and pathetic. We hardly saw each other, and without the only people who made that place fun, the reality of retail work began to weigh down on us. The customers got more shrill and irritating, constantly nagging and pulling you away from your actual job to get you to fetch things they could have found themselves. We got sadder and smaller, and our trips to the park to drink beer (we could now legally buy) seemed to get fewer and further between.

I suppose that’s where the idea started, in the park. Actually, I doubt it was the park itself, more like the car park where we met Jesse and Shane in the early hours before Sean and I left for the opening shift. We were looking for one more thrill to end the work week on.

“What if we just pretend to leave one night?” Shane started. His eyes were wide with over-tiredness and excitement, his eyes flicking over to Leah as they always did, desperate for her approval. He was always prone to over-excitement, especially when he was showing off.

“What do you mean?” asked Jesse, obviously irritated, hating the fact we had to wake up even earlier than he would usually have to for this.

“We’ll pretend to leave, wait until everyone’s actually gone, and let you lot all in. It’ll be like old times! We’ll have the run of the place, and we can actually let loose, steal some good shit. It’ll be fun!” Shane exclaimed, beer in hand. I wonder now if he was already buzzed. Would he have come out with that if he were sober? Maybe he had been drinking beforehand. That wouldn’t have surprised me with Shane.

Of course, now we realise how much of a terrible idea it was. Even if what happened hadn’t happened, we never would have gotten away with it. We hadn’t been caught before, so why would we now? .We couldn’t begin to imagine anyone or anything stopping us. We only thought of how ridiculously fun it would be.

Once we decided to enact Shane’s plan a week later on Thursday night, our spirits seemed to lift immediately, and electricity filled the air. It felt like we were us again.

We never should have done it.

***

I watch as he greedily leans in, ripping apart my skin and into my flesh. His mouth dips into my open abdomen, biting off chunks of meat, blood running down his maw. There is wildness in his behaviour, but his eyes are cold and calculating. He is completely in control. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

I try to move forward and push him away, to try to salvage what is left of my still warm body, to package it up and tie it back together, but I can’t. I have no physical form, and my arms flail as I try to hit him. I am not . . . here anymore, not physically, but I remain here in spirit, and I refuse to allow him to hurt my friends.

Our friends.

***

Thursday came up quickly. We were all looking forward to it. That night, we waited outside in the back by the loading dock, making sure to hide from the managers locking up, excited to be let in, to run rampant through the supermarket. Shane told us he’d somehow managed to disable the camera system. He was really vague about it, and in hindsight, it’s one of those things we should have questioned, but he was our friend. He wouldn’t do anything to put us in danger.

The night kicked off as expected. We ran around, shouting and whooping as we pushed each other around, drunk off the damaged items we stole. We were giddy and oblivious. I wonder if that’s why what happened next, happened.

At some point, Jesse produced a little packet of something out of his pocket, a powder of some kind that seemed to sparkle and reflect in the dim overhead light. We didn’t know what it was, just something he had swiped from his brother. This wasn’t unusual for us. We had taken so many different drugs that way over the years, sniffing, snorting, smoking whatever was around or offered. I still don’t understand why we thought this was a good idea, why we ever did, but we took what Jesse had, then the world started to spin.

I don’t remember the entire night. We ended up splitting up at one point, Kelsey and I wandering off by ourselves. I’d always fancied her a little bit and was hoping we’d finally get together, but as I went to make a move, we heard Shelby screeching from somewhere in the store.

“Has anyone seen Leah?”

No one had, so we called out to her. At first, we thought it was a joke, but the longer it went without her replying, the more we realised she might be in danger.

“She’s not in any of the bathrooms in the building,” Kelsey confirmed after checking for the twentieth time.

“She’s not on the shop floor,” Shane said, looking more put together and worried than the rest of us.

“Don’t you guys remember last time? She got the munchies. She’ll be in the storeroom,” Jesse murmured, half-asleep and slumped against the wall. Rolling our eyes at his complete lack of panic, the rest of us wandered into the storeroom.

You would think we would be used to the storeroom by now, but after-hours, it seemed like a completely different place. Or, maybe it was the drugs. Shadows loomed over you, the walls seemed taller, and beneath them, you became so, so small. I hated the storeroom at the best of times, but at night, and especially this night I was trying to avoid it at all costs. But it was the only place we hadn’t looked.

We made our way through the storeroom, looking in the aisles we thought she’d be in. She’d miss dried goods. She’d likely be near the chocolates and crisps, but when we reached that section, she wasn’t there.

“Well, if she’s not here, she’s probably at the ice cream,” Shane enthused, heading off toward the frozen section.

Kelsey and I held hands and were making our way in the same direction as Shane when we heard a horrific scream. It felt like our hearts stopped, and suddenly, we were running toward him.

“Shane!” I screamed, hearing his terrified cries. And then we saw what he was crying at.

Leah was there, eyes glassy and open wide, frost formed on her skin, mouth open in a voiceless scream. Shane’s grip on the walk-in freezer door was shaking, and he just stared at her.

“How long was she in here?” he whispered, shaking. “How long since the last person saw her?” No one answered. It was like we couldn’t recall. Kelsey moved forward, hand outstretched.

“Shane—” she started, but he cut her off, spinning around, almost foaming at the mouth.

“Why was no one looking after her? Why did no one know she was here?” he screamed, getting louder and louder. I grabbed Kelsey’s hand, and we ran far, far away.

Leah’s body was “discovered” by the managers a few hours later.

***

He’s completely engrossed in dissecting my body, pulling out my organs, putting them back. I look around at my friends, their eyes wide, their faces pale. Kelsey turns, retching, while Sean turns to run.

“Run, please, run,” I plead with him, even though I know he can’t hear me. But for a second, I think Sean does, because he bolts toward the door. My heart lifts as I see him begin his sprint, and then it drops as the thrown knife finds its way into his back.

This is why Shane invited us here. This is his revenge for what happened to Leah. He’s going to kill us all.

***

Nothing was the same after that. Shane took Leah’s loss really badly, and he threw himself into work, sometimes staying for the entire 18-hour day. He retreated into himself, getting really quiet and not speaking to anyone, even us. Management didn’t see a problem with this, because why would they? To them, he seemed to turn into a model employee overnight, even if he was functionally mute at this point.

They said it was a head injury, in the end. High as a kite, she’d meandered into the walk-in, slipped on the frosty floor, and died instantly, cold, alone. Management knew it was us who had broken in, but the cameras had been disabled. There was no proof. We were questioned, of course, but our local police department famously were never great at their jobs. One of them slipped in the walk-in while they were taking Leah out, which contaminated all the evidence, meaning, remarkably, that we were in the clear. Everything they had managed to collect had to be thrown out. It helped that Jesse had stayed behind, planted the bag on her, being careful not to touch her.

With no evidence, and a straightforward cause of death, the case sort of fell apart. We were reprimanded, but they couldn’t convict us, and once the supermarket reopened a couple of weeks later, people just seemed to forget. Maybe they just wanted to forget. Without any proof, management couldn’t really let us go, but they knew. We knew they knew. It was only a matter of time.

And the rest of us just seemed to drift apart. It’s funny, really. You’d think that something horrific like that would bond us all together for life, but that’s not what happened. We only made it a couple of weeks before all we realized none of us could look the others in the eye. Every time we tried to meet up—hell, every time we even tried to have a conversation between any of us—Leah was there, hanging over us, judging us for leaving her alone to die the way she did, for letting Shane sit at her grave alone for hours on end. It was unbearable.

I thought I’d be the first to leave town, but I ended up staying there almost longer than everyone else. Shelby left first, taking up her uni offer but starting it in January instead of the next September like she’d planned. She told us it was because it made more sense for her to do calendar years instead of academic ones, but we all really knew why.

Sean and Jesse went to work at a warehouse outside of town. It paid much better than the supermarket, and they were able to carpool there together for their shifts. With that distance from us and the supermarket, they seemed to be able to rebuild their friendship. I should have applied at the warehouse too.

Kelsey went to uni as well, one that was a few hours away.

Shane stayed at the supermarket, reborn as the perfect employee. He was quickly promoted to team leader and then manager within a few months. He was different now, changed by Leah’s frozen form in the freezer, changed the minute he made manager, twisting into a new personality. Always smiling, always loud and ready to help. His smile became a joker’s smile, and his eyes were wide. Wide and wild. When I was around him, I got an unshakeable feeling that there was a sort of rippling madness under that veneer, like something in him had broken that night.

Even newer employees were wary of him, one girl telling me she’d watched him devour an entire pack of raw mince with his hands for lunch one day. I’d laughed it off, of course. People asked me why he was so weird, and I tried to explain it by saying his girlfriend had died, but that wasn’t right. None of us knew if Leah had liked him like that. We hadn’t cared enough to ask. It wasn’t right.

And I just . . . stayed. Nothing seemed worth it anymore. I still didn’t feel ready for uni. I didn’t think I ever would, but I couldn’t stay there with the pod-person Shane had become, so I handed in my resignation and decided a couple of months playing video games until I got another job would be a nice change of pace. But the job never came, the interviews never moved me on, and months later my mum was screaming at me to find something or move out. So, when the text from Shane came, offering to hire me back in the same position for manager rates, you can see why I jumped at it, right? I was desperate. That’s how I justified it. The others, though, I wonder how he got them back. I never worked that out.

***

Everything goes fuzzy. I know this is the end. I’m fading. Sean is dead too—I can see him, standing white faced and petrified over his body— and the rest of our friends are trapped. This is the end.

Then I see Shelby slinking over to Sean’s body. Wincing, she pulls the knife out of his back. Her tearful eyes are trained on unsuspecting Shane. She inches toward him. Proud, I feel myself slip away.