The staffing agency could send me anywhere. Packing wine glasses into styrofoam moulds one week, driving a forklift around a yard the next. Doesn’t bother me. I’ve got to say though, this new place was a little odd. It’s a warehouse full of parts for household appliances. Rubber pipes, sealing caps, cables wound up into tight coils, steel elbow joints. The long and short of it is they give you a trolley somewhat similar to the ones they sell refreshments from on a train, along with a scanner gun and some sheets of paper containing barcodes. Wheel the trolley to the location, scan the barcode, put the item on the trolley, repeat. Once your trolley is full, you go and see Doris, a weepy-eyed elderly lady, who has her helpers empty it. Then you do the same again. For twelve hours.
At the start of the shift, Doris hands us the papers, and off we go. A small army of trolley-pushers navigating labyrinthine aisles under sharp electric lights. Ventilation was poor and the ceiling was low, which made the dust inescapable. Items stored in the far reaches of the warehouse were the worst for it because they were so rarely selected. Disturbing layers of dust centimetres thick was no good for the respiratory tract, especially for a smoker like me. It was a bad habit I picked up after my wife died, and that was nigh on twenty years ago. Time that should’ve healed had only layered on more apathy. I mused tiredly about the person who’d designed the warehouse floor-plan. Stock was sequenced so that the more frequently chosen items were stored closer to Doris’s counter, and the aisles were labelled alphabetically.
“Z06? This correct?” I said when Doris handed me the sheet one morning.
“Yes.” She said without looking up. She licked her fingertip and dished out another sheet. Stock requests for items housed in the aisles beyond perhaps aisle T, were rare. You might see one come through every fortnight.
At Z06, I coughed through a cloud of dust to retrieve some kind of pipe sealed in bubble wrap. When I put it on the trolley, the lights cut out. I stood, assuming it was a prolonged flicker. Seconds went by. I felt subtle shifts in the air around me.
“Hello?”
The lights came back on. I reported the malfunction to the maintenance guy, who grunted. The next day, I was given Z10, Z11 and Z14.
“This can’t be right.” I said.
“It is.” Doris replied.
Puddles had appeared overnight at the entrance to aisle Z. A roof leak. These locations were deeper down the aisle. Once again, the lights went out. I waited. A faint crackling sound echoed from further down. Something brushed my leg. The lights came back on and I lurched out of the aisle, dropping a web of black cables as I went. The next day, I called in sick.
On my return, I snatched the paper from Doris’s hand. Z08, Z31, Z35, Z41 and Z42.
“This has got to be wrong. I mean, who’s ordering this stuff? The lights don’t even work down there! And the ceiling! It has a giant leak!”
“It’s a puddle.” Doris said.
“Can’t someone else take this sheet?”
“You refusin’ to do the work allocated to you, sir?”
I ground my teeth.
“No.”
I started down aisle Z, sweating despite the cold. The trolley wheels rotated slowly. I grabbed the filter from Z08 and the refrigerator shelves from Z31 and Z35. Z41 and Z42 were the last two locations on the aisle. I craned my head as I approached because they didn’t seem to hold any stock. It was a dark recess. I could see the black cabling I had dropped a couple of days prior. It had been woven between the edges of the recess and wrapped around the exoskeleton of the storage rack. Coiled into the cable were several creatures. Rats, mice, some larger insects. They dangled lifeless in the taut, intricate design. At this point, the lights abandoned me again. I turned and ran, bouncing off the trolley and a shelf as I went. Behind me I heard frantic movement. The scuttling of many legs. I left immediately and won’t be returning.