Sometimes we have to do mundane tasks at work before heading home for the night. Sometimes those mundane tasks turn terrible.
Philip Roberts lives in Nashua, New Hampshire and has been published in a variety of publications, such as the Epitaphs anthology, Midnight Echo, and The Horrorzine. A full anthology of Philip’s short stories entitled Passing Through can be found on the Amazon kindle store. More information on his works can be found at www.philipmroberts.com.
Last Cart of the Night
By: Philip Roberts
Eleven hours. Eleven God damn hours he’d been stuck in the back end of the store unloading three separate shipments none of the night people had bothered with, and since the night people weren’t in over the weekend, Fred had been screwed into working eleven hours straight of the same tedious job.
He could’ve left three hours ago when his shift actually ended, but Omar, the sales floor lead, knew how Fred thought, how much he hated leaving a job undone.
The job itself wasn’t even the worst of it. The back end of the store had never been air conditioned, made so much worse by the open bay door for the trailers, plus, just to top it all off, a storm had rolled in. The water dripping down the side of the trailer and soaking through half the boxes overshadowed whatever coolness the rain brought. Didn’t help either that the roof to the back end of the building was so horribly made the rain sounded like machine gun fire.
Last but not least, as Fred finally pulled out the last box and closed the trailer door, he stepped out onto the sales floor to find it hadn’t been straightened yet. Store had already been closed for ten minutes and the people were barely getting done with the first few rows, the whole back end of the store left untouched.
Fred tilted back, letting his muscles stretch and crack, his hair sticking wetly to his forehead. If he went up front and made a fuss there was no way they’d make him stay to finish cleaning up the store, but he knew he wouldn’t raise a fuss, just like he hadn’t left a trailer undone. The pay wasn’t bad, he had to admit, the overtime just the kind of thing he needed, but eleven hours had a way of making money seem less important to him.
Omar stood along with some seasonal teenager with acne so thick Fred felt sorry for the poor boy. They were looking out into the dreary night, rain pouring everywhere, drenching the parking lot.
“What are you two doing?” Fred asked as he stopped behind them.
“Waiting on them,” Omar said and pointed towards the far back end of the lot.
Squinting through the pouring rain Fred could see a car parked back there along with someone standing next to it by the trunk, probably loading the thing up. Beside the car Fred could see the bright red shopping cart and the real thing Omar was pointing at.
“Just leave it,” Fred said. “Not like one cart really matters.”
“Lot of closing managers have a bad habit of saying that, and with the way Jack’s been lately, I don’t want him coming down on my ass for being sloppy, especially since he’s opening tomorrow.”
“Well, what are you waiting for?”
“Was hoping they’d finish up and leave but I think they’ve been back there for fifteen minutes now by that trunk. Besides, maybe we’ll get lucky and the rain will break.”
“Hell, I’ll go get the damn thing, but I’m leaving when I’m done. You guys can clean up the store yourselves.”
“Your call,” Omar said with a shrug and motioned for the seasonal boy to follow him back into the store to get to work. Fred watched them go, trying to remember the boy’s name, but thinking it probably didn’t matter since Jack wasn’t likely to keep him on once the season was over. The uglier looking teens had a habit of being the first to go, fair or not, and that boy wasn’t exactly a looker.
Fred unlocked the front door and ducked his head down as he ran out into the pouring rain towards the car in the back. Within seconds his shirt was plastered to him, socks sopping wet, his hand up to stop the rain from spraying in his eyes as he pounded across the empty parking lot towards that one, lone jackass who just had to take their sweet time.
As he drew closer he saw the person move away from the back of the car and duck down behind it. Fred slowed, frowning, confused as he approached the faded blue, two-door car with the trunk still open. He put a hand on the empty cart, but rather than just run back with it, he inched around the end of the car towards the other side and the person knelt down on the ground, their shoulder leaning up against the car.
“You lose something?” Fred shouted through the pounding rain, thinking what a bitch it would be to drop your keys on a night like this, but the person didn’t respond, staying hunched low, even their head partially out of his sight as he walked fully around the car and up to them, the only thing he could say for certain was that they wore a thick, black coat.
He began to reach out his hand to touch their shoulder but before he could the person dove forward, actually crawling across the wet asphalt, moving underneath the car. They moved so fast, skittering along the ground, out of sight beneath the vehicle within seconds and leaving Fred standing in the pouring rain with his mouth gaping open in surprise.
“The key, maybe?” Fred whispered to himself, thinking they might’ve seen it under the car, but he had no idea what they’d crawl completely under the car.
He backed up a few steps, eyes looking over the roof of the car towards the bright storefront, and then back down to the car itself and the water splattering on the ground. Fred knelt down to see beneath the car, but from what he could tell there wasn’t anyone under there anymore. The person was gone.
Fred jerked back and rubbed the rain from his eyes. “The cart,” he told himself, keeping things simple, to the point, the whole thing some weird trick of the light given the rain, or something like it. Maybe some jackass was playing a joke on him. Fred didn’t really care. All he wanted was the cart.
He started inching his way back around the car towards the cart, careful to keep his eyes on it even though he felt ridiculous for even taking this seriously. The damn rain got on his nerves, made it hard to hear over the low roar of it, see with the water splashing in his eyes, cutting him off a little too much from the world around him for his liking.
He only slowed when he got around the back end and saw the open trunk. Fred had to pause, stare into it and the darkness inside, a darkness that just kept going deeper. The sight surprised him enough to take a single step closer, one voice saying to let it go and just get back inside while another told him he’d be up all night thinking about it if he didn’t at least look a little closer. He thought he’d probably be up quite a few nights wondering what the hell this was, and he had a bad feeling years from now he’d be telling others, swearing it was true, but they’d laugh it off and say it was the rain and his nerves playing tricks on him.
Those future voices laughing at him forced him to kneel down to peer inside, eyes roaming over the darkness for something to define what it was.
Then the shape came, almost like a bright light in the middle of it until the figure burst forward and Fred realized it was a person, their skin so pale it practically glowed in the darkness. They had no hair, face covered in thick grooves that might’ve been scars, the image rushing at him too fast to say for certain. The person had their eyes and mouth wide, what looked like bloody saliva pouring over their bottom lip and down their chin, arms stretching out to grab hold of Fred’s arms before he understood what was happening. The person reached halfway out of the trunk, their lower half unseen, actually combined with the trunk itself, face pressed right up against his own, bloodshot eyes wet and fixed on him, mouth contorted as if in a scream but no sound heard from it over the pounding rain.
The fingers dug deep enough into his arms to send sharp pain through his body right before the person pulled back inside, taking Fred with them, lifting him off his feet and yanking him face first into the car, but as the darkness reached forward to consume him he felt a sickening warmth from within the car and the warped face in front of him dissolving into the darkness right before the car consumed him whole.
***
Omar didn’t even think about Fred until he stepped into the loading bay and saw all the boxes stacked around the walls. Having Fred working a shift that day had been a little blessing, the guy so easy to push around and manipulate Omar tried to get him in on every shift he could.
He left the back area and walked up to the front end of the store, surprised when the automatic front doors opened up for him. He didn’t think Fred was likely to forget about locking them when he came back in. He stopped with the doors open and looked out into the lot and the car still parked near the back along with that same prick taking all the time in the world. Even the cart remained. Person had probably still been loading and Fred decided to bail rather than bother with them.
Susan was counting out the money from the registers when Omar called her over. “Want to do me a favor?” he asked her.
“Not really,” she said.
He had known she’d say that, the girl just as bitchy in tone as she was in appearance, which gave him plenty of amusement when he said, “Got one last cart out there. Go get it from the person.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s pouring out there.”
“Guess you’d better make it quick then.”
She scowled at him before running out into the rain towards the back of the lot. Omar turned towards the registers to finish up counting out the cash.
