When she sits up, it’s not completely dark. Emergency spotlights send rays of light into the cavernous gloom. Narrow chambers are formed from rows upon rows of looming shelves that stretch up to the high warehouse ceiling. They’re packed with everything from paper towels, bottled water, and packaged foods to furniture, appliances, and equipment.
“Hello?” Her voice trembles. It travels down the aisles and fades to a soft echo, unanswered. “Anyone here?” Silence, except for the refrigeration units.
She takes that first step with no intended direction or purpose. It’s just natural to wander towards the checkout—the front of the store. Still, no one. Then a glimpse of her partially lit reflection in the big glass entrance doors is jolting. She wants to look outside but the heavy corrugated security doors are shut on the other side.
Concrete floors. Cinderblock walls. Spotlights. It’s like being in prison. But she’s been captive before. This one feels strangely safer. Still, it’s cold. She rubs her arms to chase away the chill that settled into her skin.
Off to the left is an office! The door is unlocked, and she immediately picks up the phone. Dead, despite her repeatedly tapping the switch hook bar. On another table is a bank of handheld radios in a charging station. They work but only static.
Wait. “My purse—my phone,” she says to herself. Scurrying back to where she woke up is her bag, half dumped out. Her phone is there. No cell signal. No Wi-Fi. Not even SOS.
More roaming. Emergency exits and overhead loading doors on the perimeter walls are locked. Nothing to do but go back to the main space. At least there is food—enough to feed her for years.
And then she finds Christmas.
The seasonal aisle shimmers in its own private glow: strings of holiday lights, artificial trees with snow-dusted branches, red ribbons tied in perfect bows. But what stops her is the soldier.
He is taller than her, his painted face frozen in a stern grin, jaw squared and eyes wide as if he’d been waiting centuries for her to notice him. A life-size nutcracker, dressed in scarlet and gold, a polished wooden hand resting on the hilt of a sword that is only half a toy.
She laughs, quick and breathless. “Well, at least you’re here.”
Something in his gaze—the way it’s fixated straight ahead—feels oddly comforting. Not judgmental, not cruel. Just steady. Reliable.
“Guess it’s just you and me, handsome,” she whispers, and for the first time since waking, the store doesn’t feel so empty.
She sits cross-legged on a patio set still tagged on sale, balancing a paper plate of rotisserie chicken and grapes from the cooler. The nutcracker stood opposite her, posture unyielding.
“I’m Claire, by the way. What’s your name?” No answer is expected, but Claire leaves a pause anyway. “I can’t keep calling you handsome.”
Maybe Major Whitlock? Colonel Ashe? “Yuck—too stuffy.” Nicholas? “Nah. Too obvious.” His face is chiseled like Glen Powell’s. Hmm. No. That could get uncomfortable—splinters. Fritz, maybe. “Yes, that seems right. How do you like ‘Fritz’?”
In absence of a reaction, Claire says, “Well, you’re not saying no. So, Fritz it is.” She poured him a plastic cup of water, sliding it across the table. “Here’s to us Fritz. And to survival,” she said, lifting her own. His painted smile never changed.
But as the silence pressed in, she found herself imagining his answer—deep, formal, the voice of a soldier sworn to guard her. To survival.
Sometime around the third day, maybe the fourth, Claire can’t take the barrenness anymore. She hangs tinsel around the nutcracker’s shoulders, loops lights around his feet, and sets a small fake tree between them. “Whaddya think, Fritz—better?”
Claire rearranges the display furniture, creating different spaces. The first is a more comfortable sitting area for her and Fritz, but mostly for her. Next is a dining area. She sets the table for two with holiday plates, flatware, and formal napkins. She even found Christmas wine goblets.
Finally, there is a makeshift bedroom Claire created with an oversized sectional sofa for a bed she could have all to herself. And she adorns it with almost every pillow she can find. Side tables made for pleasant nightstands. Of course, she jerry-rigs a modesty panel. Not that Fritz has curious eyes. Would Glenn Powell?
LED lamps set here and there create a warmer setting, a glow that softens the warehouse feel. A gilded cage, maybe, but at least it’s comfortable and safe from any monsters that may be outside. She hopes. “Good night, Fritz.”
Sleep comes easy.
Claire sits up, momentarily disoriented. But the sight of Fritz makes her smile. Wait. Is that banging at the front? She moves toward the checkout lanes and stops. There’s a voice on the other side of the security doors—a familiar voice. She clutches her chest. Her throat tightens, and her stomach drops.
It sounds like him.
She hurries back to her camp, holding tight the nutcracker’s arm. “Don’t let him in, Fritz,” Claire whispers, half to herself, half to her painted soldier. And for a moment, she thinks his wooden fingers curl just slightly around the hilt of his sword. Claire wished.
Just weeks ago, she decorated the apartment, stringing up lights while humming along to carols. The table was for friends coming by for holiday dinner. She had been putting her finishing touches on the tree—fragile glass ornaments that used to hang on her grandmother’s tree.
He walked in, scowling. “You wasted money on this junk.”
Claire tried to laugh, to brush it off. But when one ornament slipped from her hand, he crushed it under his boot—deliberately. She’d swept up the shards while he stood over her.
Silence returns to her refuge. But it is surrounded by wide open space. And there are other doors. Claire finds a small four-wheel furniture dolly and wheels Fritz near her bed. She takes down the partition and then stacks pillows around her to form a small wall.
“Keep watch, okay, Fritz?” Claire says, touching the soldier’s arm before she hides under a comforter.
He stands steadfast—on post. A sentinel. Even if it is all in her head.
“You know, it was never just the ornament.” Claire looks at her arm. He had a grip so tight she bruised for days. There were other things, like the way he checked her phone, her friends, her spending. She pushes her sleeve down over her arm as if the marks were still there. Then she glances at Fritz, tall and unyielding in the half-light.
“You wouldn’t let that happen,” she whispers.
Days go by but Claire doesn’t count them. She allows herself to simply exist. This is her world, filled with clothes she tries on and books she reads. And the food counter! Claire tries recipes she finds in cookbooks, although the produce won’t last much longer. Where to put the mounting trash is something she hasn’t figured out. It’s going to start smelling soon. Thank God the toilets still work.
Her first shower in the employee locker room isn’t easy. Only the men’s side has a shower. She hesitates to disrobe, though she laughs. Of course she’d end up in the men’s shower. Still, she checks the corners twice before undressing. And she makes sure Fritz guards the door, confident he won’t peek. Damnit.
Sometimes she goes back to the office to try the phone and radio. Once she even tried the computer but there is no internet access.
One night, Claire finds herself back in the Christmas aisle, staring at a box of ornaments. They are safe. Sealed in their plastic case. She decides to unbox one of the large Christmas trees and rig up the lighting. Gently, she opens boxes of decorations and ornaments, gingerly hanging them just so on the tree.
Finally, Claire places an angel on the treetop. She steps down off the ladder and backs up to view her work—bumping into Fritz. It startles her. Wasn’t he over by the sitting area? The lights on the tree make his face glow. Feel a little softer, less carved.
“Merry Christmas,” she says, touching his arm. It didn’t feel as cold as every other surface in the store. Claire knew it was her imagination—but she half wishes it wasn’t. She realizes an emerging craving for human contact. Not yet though. Not ready.
Claire wakes to a noise. Not the hum of the freezers. This is sharper, metallic.
Fritz—where’s Fritz? The Nutcracker is where she’d left him, sword angled slightly forward, not quite the same position as before.
Her pulse races. She gets up and touches Fritz, and then the hilt. Warm.
“Go back to sleep, girl. You’re imagining things.”
She lays back on the bed and pulls up the covers around her neck, not taking her eyes off Fritz. At least until they grow heavy and she drifts back off into an easy sleep.
There’s enough wine and Prosecco for a thousand book club meetings and parties. Claire has her pick and all to herself. Christmas and New Years can’t be more than a few days away. She browses the cases and cases … and cases of bottles. He would never let her buy the really good ones. But he’d spend a hundred dollars on whiskey or some ridiculous craft beer. It was the whiskey that made him nastier. Dick.
Rattling comes from the front of the store. Claire holds her breath. More noise from the security doors. Then banging. She creeps to the front, cautiously and rolling Fritz beside her with a low, gritty rumble as the hard casters turn on concrete.
Shouts from the other side of the door. The tone and language are easily recognizable. “No. No!” Even after everything, even after the world outside had gone silent, he had found her.
Furious banging continues. More shouting. Claire is frozen, clutching Fritz’s arm until her knuckles whiten. She looks away from the doors, to her camp. The glow of the tree lights shimmer faintly, fragile as hope. She rests her head on Fritz, pressing her forehead to his painted arm.
“Don’t let him in,” she begs.
And when she lifted her head, she saw it—the soldier’s wooden hand, holding the sword at his side. Firm. Ready.
She touched his hand. It was warm.
___
Author's note: This tale is the result of a writing exercise among colleagues. The prompt was simply: Write a short story about two people trapped for two weeks in a Costco. I decided to do something I've never done before--something Twilight Zone(ish).
