Maya first saw him on a Tuesday in March, in the produce section where the organic apples used to be. An old man in a cardigan, translucent as breath on glass, running his hand along empty bins. She blinked and he was gone. But the smell lingered—antiseptic, and something faintly sweet, like fruit just past ripeness.
By April, there were three. The cardigan man in produce. A nurse near the pharmacy, badge clipped to her faded scrubs. A teenager by the energy drinks, his face an unfinished question.
On break behind the loading dock, Maya asked Derek, “You seeing things in there?”
“Like what?”
“People who aren’t… all the way here.”
He laughed, coughed until his mask slipped. “We’re all not all the way here, Maya. You know how many doubles I’ve pulled this month?”
But she knew it wasn’t exhaustion. The figures moved with quiet intention, shopping for food they’d never eat, sanitizing hands at dispensers long since empty, queuing at registers that no longer existed.
The company newsletter called them heroes. Essential Workers: The Heart of Our Community. Maya’s face was there, half-smile crumpled under a mask, standing beside a pyramid of toilet paper that collapsed an hour later. The heroes got a pizza party—two mediums for forty-three employees—and six weeks of hazard pay.
The ghosts didn’t stop.
Mrs. Chen appeared in May, carrying the kitten-print bag Maya had seen at her register every Thursday for years. Bananas, tea, frozen dumplings, exact change counted twice. Now Mrs. Chen circled the aisles with her bag, lighter each lap, items vanishing as she walked.
“With what insurance?” Maya said when Derek told her to see a doctor. She meant it as a joke, but it scraped her throat on the way out.
⸻
Conference Room B
The meeting was held in Conference Room B, the windowless box that smelled of wet carpet. Stevens, the regional manager, called in from his home office, his pixelated face hovering on a laptop balanced between boxes of expired protein bars.
“Team,” he said, voice cutting in and out, “the worst is behind us. Time to get back to normal.”
Through the glass wall, Maya counted seventeen ghosts. Mrs. Chen weighing phantom bananas. The cardigan man rearranging apples. The teenager staring at a cooler that no longer stocked his brand.
“Customer satisfaction is down,” Stevens droned. “Remember—you’re not just employees. You’re the face of our brand. Smiles. Service. Metrics show improvement.”
Maya raised her hand. “What about the people who died?”
The connection froze. His face caught mid-smile. The only sound was soft-rock filtering through the vents, a song written to sell things people didn’t need.
“I’m sorry?” Stevens crackled back. “Could you repeat that?”
“The customers who died,” Maya said.
The room stiffened. Janet from Customer Service studied her nails. Derek coughed into his sleeve.
“I think what Stevens means,” said Assistant Manager Rodriguez, “is we need to focus on moving forward. On the customers we can serve.”
But the dead weren’t moving forward. They were stuck in their last routines, endlessly looping under fluorescent light.
Maya lowered her hand. “Right. Moving forward.”
⸻
Accumulation
After the meeting, she walked the aisles. Twenty-three now, maybe more. They gathered at the sanitizer station like parishioners, waiting their turn to pump nothing.
Mrs. Chen was in tea. Maya stood beside her, pretending to stock shelves. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Mrs. Chen looked up, her eyes startlingly clear. “Thank you,” she said, solid for the briefest instant. Then she dissolved into fog and went back to reading labels.
⸻
Closing
At midnight, Maya clocked out. The parking lot was empty except for Derek’s Honda and a security light that flickered though no one passed beneath it. She sat in her car, engine off, watching the store glow through rain-smeared glass.
Inside, the living kept working. The dead kept shopping.
Tomorrow she’d return—essential until she wasn’t, visible until she faded into the fluorescence.
The company called it the new normal.
But Maya understood: the hazard never ended. It only learned how to linger.
submitted by /u/pcepek
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