Invisible Ellen by Shari Shattuck

she would move, but she didn’t. After a few moments, Irena roused herself almost without seeming to engage any muscles and sort of seeped out of the locker room.
    It was then that Ellen noticed Irena had left her locker open a crack. Probably the latch hadn’t caught when she closed it, or maybe she had just been too weary to push it home.
    Sliding down the bench, Ellen slid one finger in behind the thin metal door and swung it outward.
    The contents of the locker were sparse. Ellen was not surprised to see that, since being molested, Irena had left the beat-up CD player behind. In addition there was a bottle of water, refilled so many times that the lettering had worn off the plastic, a hairbrush with half of the bristles missing, and a cheap vinyl handbag with a frayed strap. Sticking out of the top of the purse was a worn piece of paper, folded and refolded neatly into three sections. Before she realized she’d reached out for it, the paper was in Ellen’s hand.
    The letterhead identified it as correspondence from the desk of some small-time immigration attorney. It stated in a few curt sentences that unless she paid him in advance in full, he would not filethe final paperwork to complete her case. The amount she owed for the opportunity to remain in the country was four hundred dollars.
    Ellen refolded the single sheet and left it where she’d found it, careful not to close the locker all the way. Then she made her way out to begin her shift.
    Checking the assignment chart, Ellen saw that she had general cleaning in books and music first, followed by the staff restrooms. After collecting her cart, she headed out onto the vast floor, the enormity of which was offset for Ellen somewhat by the segmented aisles and the high-stacked racks that rose to the ceiling, creating the illusion of smaller spaces. Open areas of the floor were crowded with displays and stacks of product, making the monolithic warehouse bearable for Ellen. It was also mandatory to never, under any circumstances, look up.
    Hugging the shelving, she pushed her cart to the music section and began to dust across the tops of the stacked CD cases. One of them caught her eye. Holding the fluffy duster over it, she slid it out of the stack with her back to the aisle’s camera and pocketed the item, making a mental note of the price and computing it into the amount of unpaid overtime she would spend to pay for it, then continued working her way through the section.
    The memory of Temerity’s playing haunted Ellen, floating in and out of her conscious thoughts, and as the first two hours of her shift went by, she found she was tuned in to the sounds around her in a different way. They were no longer just background static to be ignored. In particular, the floor-buffing machine, driven by a tiny man who had to endure the nickname of “Squirt,” imposed on him by his insensitive coworkers, passed her four times as she worked. It made a high-pitched, discordant whine that made Ellen wish Temerity was there to tune it.
    Near the end of the CD section, she noticed a spill on the floor that spread up under the bottom shelf. Getting down on her hands and knees, she tested it with a dry cloth, but it had already solidified to a sticky, hard mass adhered to the floor.
Time to employ the industrial stuff,
she thought. Ellen pulled out a spray bottle of toxic green liquid and liberally saturated the mess, careful not to let any of the cleanser make contact with her skin. With a sense of power, she watched the oxidizer foam and bubble as it went to work on the mystery goo. She imagined that she was dispatching an enemy.
You will not escape your fate, vile spot. You have trespassed into my domain and I will destroy you,
she thought as she watched it froth and lather. Turning her head to escape the caustic fumes, she found herself looking through an open space between the boxes, all the way into the electronics section in the next