Customers

Clocking in, it’s work time.

The work is simple. Maybe it’s even easy if you know what you’re doing– which is as you’re told and nothing more.

You nod, smile, look interested, and don’t react. God help you if you react. We call them ‘customers’, but that’s only half true. Maybe they were once, but now they aren’t. We only really call them that on account of how they act.

They stumble rather than walk, and they growl rather than talk. They swing clumsy, stubby limbs without fingers or toes, staring blankly with their fleshy, eyeless faces. All they do is walk blind up and down empty aisles, maybe mimicking what people do. It certainly seems like they copy the way we speak–not that they speak, of course, they ‘Gluk’ and ‘Raak’ and make a racket worse than a newborn, but after a while, you pick up a vague pattern that might sound like a sentence from time to time.

Remember, just nod and smile, and try to look interested.

We don’t know much about them, but we know that if you don’t pretend like everything is normal, they get angry. How can they tell if we don’t pretend? We don’t quite know, since they don’t seem to have eyes or ears that we can tell. And how angry? You don’t wanna know, and believe me when I say I wish I didn’t.

But that’s the job. Do as you’re told, nod, smile, look interested and, for god’s sake, don’t react.