During high school and throughout my college years, retail work and I were no strangers. In fact, you might’ve even been able to call us “roommates” judging by how often the jobs came home with me. No, I didn’t have to stock shelves in my living room (which was essentially the entirety of my apartment at the time) nor would you’ve caught me bagging items beside the sink (which was also in the living room somehow). Work accompanied me home—for the most part—mentally. Sometimes there’d be physical evidence, sure, especially if the day’s customer had shouted spit onto my uniform but, for the most part, my homework was merely trying to forget about work at home.
Despite my best efforts, however, there’s one day of retail work from my youth I’ll likely never forget so long as I live. Sometimes, if truth be told, I’m glad I remember it. Other times, however, I’m not so sure. It's just left me with too many questions, some of which I know will never be answered.
To those who ask—which isn’t many—most of my jobs were what I like to call “odds and ends” because the majority were but means to an end (namely money) and most were most certainly odd. I recall rather fondly my summer days at the local putt-putt golf course watching kids and their parents fail to get a neon pink ball through an alligator’s mouth, as I also retain warm memories of “lifeguarding” at the local rec center’s pool where I was similarly nothing more than a passive observer, this time with a whistle around my neck that I seldom ever blew. The jobs less desirable but never the less well-paying were the seasonal retail ones, where most of my headaches came from. The general public can be a rather loathsome bunch, especially at times of year when you’d expect otherwise. Christmas comes to mind, first and foremost. Nothing says “peace on earth and goodwill toward men” like two middle-aged women brawling over a plush Care Bear. The thing ripped in two if memory serves, and both women were detained by the mall security. This was all before my lunch break.
Why I ever agreed to work the register of the pop-up Halloween store (I believe called "Monster Mart") at the same mall the following fall is beyond me. Actually, it isn’t. The answer’s quite simple, really. If there was a steady paycheck involved, so was I, even if that meant filling up a fog machine every morning and hearing the same, deep voice bellow the ever-so generic “Beware! Turn Back Now!” followed by a fit of evil laughter every time someone stepped through the doorway. I must’ve heard it six thousand times by the time November rolled around, and I used to joke that inhaling that damp-smelling fog for about a month straight would probably give me cancer.
I don’t joke about that kind of thing anymore.
A few days before Halloween (in fact, it might’ve been the day before though I can’t fully remember), I recall working the front register as I so often did. It was a time we all called “the final stretch” not only because we’d all need a good one following a long day of standing on our feet, but also because those last few days before Halloween were some of the busiest. Everyone waits until the last minute to pick out their costume and then loves to complain that we didn’t “have it in their size” or “carry the right accessories”. Despite my manager’s insistence not to, for those kinds of people, I’d happily direct them to the nearest department store under my breath. Out of sight, out of mind. At least, until I got back home, where all of the day’s interactions would come flooding back to me, such as the time the woman with the little girl wrapped around her leg insisted that the ring I was wearing must’ve been sold in the store.
“Ma’am, this is my personal ring,” I explained to her as I lifted my hand to showcase it. “I got it somewhere else.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be flashing it around if you can’t even buy it here!” I remember her exclaiming. Her hands were just about over her head and the little girl between her legs looked to be on the brink of tears. “It’s teasin’ the kids. ‘Specially in a costume store.”
I was about to reply something like well, it isn’t a jewelry store now, is it? but the reddened face of the young girl peering up at me choked out my voice from speaking. The line behind the woman and her presumed daughter nearly reached the front door spread with spider webs and the aforementioned “Beware! Turn Back Now!” shouting strobe light and I could tell the other customers were getting impatient. I sighed and extended my hand down, which had cupped something from a finger on the other.
“Here,” I said to the little girl, opening my hand to reveal the ring on my palm.
“I can have it?” the girl asked. All these years later, I can still hear her sweet little voice.
I nodded. “Mmhmm,” I said. “What’re you gonna be for Halloween?”
She looked up at the woman and then back to me. “A princess.”
I smiled and the woman, still clearly and visibly heated, twitched a slight grin onto her face. “Well, Halloween must’ve come early,” I said, “because you already are a princess.”
The girl smiled and took the ring, sliding it onto her little finger. As I suspected, it was far too big, but she didn’t seem to mind. All the while, I had successfully done the impossible in a retail job: I shut the whining customer up. All the woman could do, in fact, was nod a half-baked “thank you” and walk off. A few seconds later, as the next customer approached the counter, I heard the strobe light (which must’ve been on a motion sensor) bid them a merry “Beware! Turn Back Now!” as they left.
“That was rather nice of you,” the man before me said, dropping three masks onto the countertop.
I shrugged and began scanning, starting with the witch one. “The customer’s always right, right?” I chuckled. The man did too. He then started to say something, but I was no longer paying attention, despite my hands going through the motions and moving toward the jack-o-lantern. At the opposite end of the store, past the rows and rows of orange and purple lights, the hanging spiders, and the floating ghouls, stood a woman. She had been staring directly at me until I lifted my head to notice. Then, as if trying to advert my gaze, she blinked and started glancing about, everywhere but in my direction.
The initial sight of her chilled me, more than it should’ve. At first glance, her face blended in with the dozens of masks along the back walls which I had stocked just a day prior. Like the Dracula or the Mummy or the three or so zombies, her face was a palish white with somewhat sunken cheeks. Her eyes were dark but full of that alluring mystery that compelled me to keep watch, despite the fact that she was just some lady, nothing more than another customer. While I was in it, that moment of locking eyes with her felt eternal. In reality, it was probably just a couple of seconds.
"Y-yeah,” I said, responding to the man’s question that I didn’t hear. Luckily, that was the right answer because the man nodded, thanked me, and took the bag from my hand. I didn’t even notice I had been holding it. I also didn’t realize I had slipped his receipt inside. Then again, when you do that kind of work for as long as I had, it eventually becomes muscle memory. The exchanges all blurred together just as the customers’ faces did and I can no more distinctly recall their voices (aside from that of the little girl) than I could the lyrics to the Monster Mash, despite having listened to it twelve times a day for over a month.
I say all of this with one exception: the staring woman. Her face and her voice will never escape me.
As the line continued to move, I noticed over the shoulders of the next five or so customers that the woman had remained in her placement at the back of the store, at the back of the line. She had something in her hand—maybe something she was trying to buy—but kept letting each of the approaching customers cut her in line. This continued for about half an hour until the store was near closing and the crowds had all gone home. Everyone, but the woman. Finally, she had taken her place in line and as the last of the customers swiped their cards or unwrinkled their cash, I watched as she slowly approached my counter. I could also now see what she had been carrying: a blonde wig. She had waited some forty-five minutes for a cheap, blonde wig.
“Find everything alright?” I finally asked her as she placed the wig gently atop the counter. Normally, the whole back-and-forth—the niceties—the “How’re you? Good, how’re you?” thing came off my tongue as smooth as butter. Now, I had to work for it. As if each syllable needed to be articulated.
To my question, the woman simply nodded. My hand trembling, despite not knowing why, I took the scanner, and a beep rang up her single item. In the few seconds that my action took, the woman’s eyes shifted hurriedly, frantically between my face and the wig in the see-through plastic. Yet, despite looking right at me, she didn’t make eye contact. She was looking just beyond.
“This might sound like a funny question,” she asked, now looking up at me with a solemn stare despite the alleged humor in her next words, “but where did you get your shoes? I—I like them.”
I looked down at my tired feet and then back up at her. My shoes were nothing but ordinary, black sneakers with white laces and since she had come in, I had been behind the register the entire time. How did she see my shoes?
“I, uh—” I started, “got them at that little place on the other side of the mall.” With my finger, I pointed in the direction of the store, but the moment was such a whirlwind that I could’ve been completely backward for all I knew.
“Okay,” the woman said softly.
I nodded and shoved her wig into a bag. “Getting your costume all ready to go?” I asked. My voice was slightly choked but I hoped her burning eyes would avoid me if the question distracted her enough.
“Yes,” she said. Her eyes still stared. Worse, they scanned me. Every inch of me.
“What’re you gonna be?” I asked.
The woman smiled, not to me but to herself. It wasn’t a happy one. More ironic than anything else, as if I had said something funny.
Then her smile faded, and her face became as blank as unmarked paper. “Do you think the farmer really knows what crop he’s reaping?” She glanced up fearfully at the small skeleton draped in black gauze dangling above my head and swallowed.
“Come again?” I asked. By then, her bagged-up wig was dangling from my extended hand, but the woman didn’t even seem to notice.
“The farmer,” she repeated as if I knew what she was talking about. “He’s not evil or… angry when he does it,” she said. “He just does it. Maybe he’s even apathetic when he does,” she continued, seeming to be talking to herself. Then she locked her burning eyes onto mine. “Do you think he’d even notice or mind if some wheat got thrown into the fire with the chaff? The harvest is plentiful, after all.”
I stammered, looking for words to say to her. All that came out was, “I, uh—I don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am. Sorry.”
The woman nodded and took the bag from me. “What time do you get off?”
My eyes surely must’ve widened at this, but the woman wasn’t looking at me anymore. “I, uh… not for a while,” I lied.
She nodded again. “You’ve got a lot of time yet,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if it was a question or statement. I answered the former.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Spend it well, Michelle” the woman replied, and with that, she turned and left the store. I let out a deep sigh of relief just as the deep voice, for the last time that night, echoed “Beware! Turn Back Now!”
Suffice it to say, I had my manager escort me to my bike that night. Neither of us saw the woman as I had described her to my boss: tired-looking, about my height, and wearing an orange, collared shirt.
“Sort of like what we’ve got on?” he asked me, pulling at the fabric covering his chest.
“Yeah, actually,” I said, realizing it hadn’t even dawned on me that she wore a similar shade. For all anyone knew, she was an employee of the pop-up just like me. I then clarified, “Except for the—”
I choked as my hand grasped at the orange cloth just above my breast.
“What’s wrong?” my manager asked, both of us stopping in our tracks halfway across the parking lot, drowned in an orange light from the lamps above.
“My, uh—” I fumbled, “my nametag.”
“Oh,” he said with a voice now resolved and extended a hand from his pocket in an instant. "You left this in the breakroom after your lunch.” He handed me the tiny white piece of plastic sporting both a tiny pumpkin and my name along the front and a baby pin on the back. I took it and swallowed. It wasn’t the loss of the nametag that had upset me, but rather a question that entered my mind that I just couldn’t explain to him.
How did that woman know my name?
“T-thanks,” I answered him.
My boss nodded and continued walking. “What’d the crazy old hag get anyway?” he asked with a smile on his lips, perhaps trying to lighten the mood.
“A, uh—” I said, following him at the heel and searching for the word, “a wig.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “Yeah. A blonde one.”
He chuckled. “Like puttin’ lipstick on a pig, probably,” he said with a little grin.
I nodded. “Something like that.”
My manager agreed. “Maybe she was inspired,” he said, pointing to my head, my blonde hair. “It looks good on you.”
I ignored his clunky attempt at a compliment—maybe even a flirtation (though he was significantly older)—as yet another mystery formed inside my head.
What was her costume gonna be anyway?
Despite the thoughts racing through my mind like a stream engine, I thanked my boss and hopped onto my bike. He bid me a goodnight and told me to get some rest for the “final, final stretch,” he joked.
The entire ride home the thought wouldn’t shake me. Maybe the woman had overheard one of my coworkers use my name and thought it’d be polite to use it herself. Then again, however, I was the only one on the register that night. Even stranger was the wig and the orange shirt and the question about my shoes. Was this mystery woman stalking me? Had she followed me to work?
Would she follow me home?
There was no one over my shoulder, so much as I could see, and with that question cleared, I stomped down onto the pedal under my right foot and lifted my butt from the seat as the wind raked through my blonde hair. Every few seconds or so I’d glance over my shoulder to make sure no one was trailing me. They weren’t.
She wasn’t.
The next day, which was Halloween itself (if memory serves), my boss didn’t even acknowledge the events of the night prior. The store was packed, of course, and I don’t fully blame him. I, too, got caught up in it all and frankly, it was a good thing. The endless flow of customers distracted me from the intruding thoughts of the staring-eyed woman, who I’d glance around the store every few minutes or so to make sure wasn’t there.
She wasn’t. And by the end of the day, I had forgotten all about her.
Until that night, that is.
“Michelle?”
“Yeah?” I remember asking as I flicked my sneakers off one by one and plopped onto my couch with both a sigh and a whimper. The time was nearly nine, I think, and I was too tired to entertain the kids roaming the street so I left a bowl of candy on a stool outside.
My friend Janet on the other line let go of her breath and then caught it again on the other line. “Oh, thank God,” she said, relieved. “I thought I saw you on my drive home.”
“Saw me?” I asked. “Where?”
An exhale of her breath filled my ear, seemingly warming it. “In an accident. God, it was horrible,” she said with a voice still shaky. “I’m just glad it wasn’t you.”
“No, I’m fine,” I said, grasping the phone tighter. Some sweat had accumulated on my palm as I muttered my next, dreadful question. “Why? Did... it look like I was hurt?"
“Mmhmm,” Janet said. “The lady was wearing the same work shirt and everything.”
I couldn’t breathe, nor could I move. “Blonde hair?”
“Yeah,” Janet said. “Just like yours. I pulled over as soon as I saw it. I know you take that way to and from the mall, and it looked like the woman was crossing the street and got hit or something.”
“Is she—” I began to say, “dead?”
“I don’t know how she could be alive,” Janet replied. “There was a lot of blood. Oh God, I’m just so glad it wasn’t you, Shell.”
“M-me too,” I said, and thanked her for checking in on me. I asked her where the accident had taken place—which wasn’t far from my apartment—and after I hung up, I got onto my bike and fled there.
Of course, by the time I arrived, the victim had been taken off to the hospital. However, the blood was still on the road. There was a streak from the crosswalk to the mangled bike some hundred yards down the road, blocked off by a red-and-blue flashing police cruiser and yellow caution tape. The sight made my stomach heavy like I had swallowed a dumbbell. I had just taken that road—that crosswalk—but half an hour ago. It was quiet and tranquil then to the point where you could hear costumed kids giggling. Now it was a crime scene, gory and chaotic.
The bike certainly looked like mine, too. It was red with silver spokes and a black seat. Every now and again the back wheel, stuck high in the air, would spin on account of the chilly breeze that filled the darkened streets. The sight was a grizzly reminder that all the work I was doing—all the long hours—was worth it. I was saving up for a car, after all, despite my father (who had always been a real red-blooded enthusiast about hot rods and a subscription holder to Popular Mechanics) and his insistence that he’d just outright buy me one. Poor as I was, I was in equal measure stubborn. I needed to do it—do something—on my own.
A few days later, I got my hands on a copy of the local paper and flipped it to the obituary section in morbid curiosity. Sure enough, the woman (named Carrie Morgan) who was struck and killed that night was the same staring-eyed one I had met at the costume store. I figured as much. And though I never saw her, I knew she had been wearing the orange collared shirt and the blonde wig that I had sold her. Janet told me as much. She probably had also been wearing my same shoes if she followed my vague directions. Hell, maybe even my underwear too.
Yet, despite some of the answers I had—and still do—there’re more questions that I fear will never be accounted for, such as the woman’s strange words the night before she died or the way she had stared at me. Even more troubling were the coincidences that surrounded the whole thing, like how she had gone to the same doctor I had, and that two months prior to her death she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Stranger, after probing my doctor—a general practitioner—for any information he could afford me on the woman (which wasn’t much given doctor-patient confidentiality), I was directed to a donation fund in her honor that would garner support for her surviving family members and daughter, her only child who was only twenty-six.
The strange part about the fundraiser was an anonymous donation of about twenty-thousand dollars I found "on the books". Coincidently, the next time I visited my father (who lived in the same county at the time), his vintage sports car which he had kept in the garage since I was six years old was eerily nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s the Corvette, Dad?” I had asked him. This must’ve been a few weeks after Halloween, after the accident, and after I had discovered the mysterious, anonymous donation.
“Oh, that old thing?” he hoarsely chuckled. “Fella down the road a ways was practically beggin’ me for it. Made a good offer I just couldn’t refuse. And if I could’ve, your mother certainly wouldn’t’ve.”
I nodded. “What do those old cars go for anyway?”
Quite unlike my father and his perpetual gleam, his lips stiffened straight. “Well,” he drawled, “I’d say they could go anywhere from a couple grand to upwards of fifty-thousand.”
I nodded again, somewhat coldly. “And how much did you get for yours?”
His smile was long gone now. He patted the table between us with his palm, wrinkled and tan. “Let’s not talk money at the table, Shell. Okay?”
I didn’t nod. “What’d you do with it?”
“With what?”
“The money,” I said. “You said it was a good offer. What’d you do with it?”
My father did his best to force a smile and then clapped his hand on top of mine. “Don’t worry your head with all that, Michelle,” he said. His face grew long and hollow. “Let’s just be grateful for what we have, alright? That we’re all together.”
Again, my breath stopped as he began to eat. He knew something that I didn’t and until his final day, he never did tell me what it was.
I suppose there’re some questions we all take to the grave, never knowing why on earth things happened the way they did. However, of all the things I did know—and still do—about what happened all those years ago, one thing’s for certain.
That Halloween, Carrie Morgan's costume had been of me.
Written by MakRalston
Content is available under CC BY-SA