She took deep breaths, trying to calm down. What was happening to her? She looked up at the reflection of her blotchy face. Her eyes drifted to the right-hand side of the mirror and her breath stopped. There was new graffiti.

Next to the mirror, she saw a fresh patch of writing that hadn’t been there earlier. Or maybe it had?

What in the world was the Beehive? A football team? A gang of Cleveland drug dealers? Some twenty entries were scratched into the paint, and all of them followed the same format: a name, the word “Beehive,” and a time span. Closer to the door, she saw more graffiti with a few variations:

And the longest of the bunch:

Amy dried her hands on her jeans and left the restroom. In the hall, she could feel the empty spaces of Orsk all around her, 220,000 square feet isolating her in the middle of a maze. The service hallways, the back of house, the Warehouse, the Market Floor, the Showroom, the immense parking lot that separated them from the highway. Orsk was so big it needed a certain number of people on the premises to keep it under control. Three of them weren’t enough. The store was stirring, restless, growing slowly. Emptied of people, Orsk felt dangerous.

SLAM!

Amy froze. What was that noise?

SLAM-CLICK-SLAM!

The corridor stretched out ahead of her, with doors to the management offices on either side. On the walls were posters about sustainability, green living for a green planet, Orsk’s commitment to future generations, and there was a stairwell nearby leading down to the first floor. That’s where the noise was coming from. Seconds passed and the loudest sound was Amy’s breathing.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to be practical. She was at her job. She couldn’t possibly be in any danger. No one had ever been murdered in a Best Buy or kidnapped in a Target. If there was a safer location than a big box retail outlet owned by a global corporation, she couldn’t imagine it.

And yet she couldn’t shake her unease. She descended the stairs to the first floor and stopped at the bottom.

Now the noise was much softer: click, slam … click, slam … click, slam …

Just past the time clock, Amy saw the door to the partners’ entrance banging in the wind. Relieved, she smacked the exit bar and pushed it open, revealing the parking lot stained a chemical orange by sodium lights. She blinked, surprised to see that it was the middle of the night. Inside the store there were no windows, no skylights, no wall clocks, no way of telling the time or the temperature. Like a casino, Orsk existed in an eternal now. A warm, humid breeze flowed through the doorway. Apart from an unseen army of frogs croaking in the marsh, the night was completely silent.