TIMING: Current LOCATION: The Apple Store PARTIES: Meredith and Regan SUMMARY: When Meredith comes in to get her iPad fixed, she meets an employee, Regan, going by "Apple" and who definitely can't fix anything. Suspicions of betrayal are proven right.
“What are you talking about- hold on, your manager’s name is Pubic?”
Regan expected there would be a promotion in her future. The blue shirt matched her eyes (complaint to file: collar could be higher) and she frequently impressed management with her independence. It was good practice to test their employees in such a way, she thought – seeing if they bowed to orders like lowly humans. Except, right. Regan was a human. But she did not have to be lowly. She had been asked and was willing to just wander around the store looking for people who walked in so she could accost them with eager assistance. Jade would have been much better at this, but wasn’t growth the whole point?
She had been standing pin straight for ten minutes, fussing with her necklace, when the next human walked in. Regan decided she liked the serious cut of her expression; a far superior human than John Pubik had been (he had requested a store transfer, actually, but it was denied). Summoning an eighth of Jade’s easy extraversion. she approached cautiously, like the customer was liable to sprint away into the woods, a frightened deer. She did look like she was relatively durable, but Regan was not going to risk losing her.
Her eyes brightened at the opportunity to get a new signature on her liver emoji petition. “Hello. I’m Apple. I mean, not usually, but while I’m in this store, I am Apple. Do you need phones? Computers? One of those flat–” Actually, she seemed to be holding one of the flat computers. “Oh, did it break? Is it the screen? I am an expert in this field.” Regan gestured for the girl to follow her, leading her to one of the long tables housing different models. Many of them had cracked screens. Regan couldn’t feel too badly about it when someone came in and replaced them each morning. There was a staff meeting yesterday about vandalism but nothing had been captured on camera. Also, the camera broke. Maybe the girl would think all of these cracked screens were examples of how many people trusted her to fix them, left behind by other customers.
“Let’s see what you have,” Regan gestured to the broken machine. How hard could fixing it be? She pieced things back together all the time, then sutured them to perfection, and sent them to the funeral home. She had this.
—
Going to the Apple store was not exactly an ideal place for Meredith to spend her day off. However, when her iPad screen had abruptly started glitching the night before, she had suddenly never been more eager to hop on her bike and ride the few miles to the Genius bar. There was a rational explanation for it, right? The screen had never flickered before, but surely it was just wear and tear. She'd been spending too much time on it lately, the battery was fried. There was an explanation that made sense. She felt ridiculous, acting like she was in some cheesy horror flick where ghosts mess with electronics to taunt you before going in for the kill. And yet, here she was, waiting in line outside the glass doors of the Apple store, glitchy iPad in hand desperate for someone to tell her it just needed a hard reset.
Eventually, someone approached her. Her eyes were wide and she spoke faster than Meredith could follow but she tried to keep up with it all nonetheless. “Apple? Do they really make people call you that?” She asked, a bit confused as to whether this was some weird new corporate gimmick or she’d ended up with someone a little too obsessed with their job. Either way, it didn’t matter. As long as “Apple” could fix her iPad or exorcize it or whatever needed to be done, she didn’t care what she went by. She followed the girl to a desk, her eyes not leaving the tablet as it rested in the stranger’s hands. “I don’t know…maybe? It’s not like, cracked. It just started freaking out last night. It would turn on and off by itself, and sometimes apps would open and close at random,” she tried to explain. “Is that…normal? I mean, does that happen a lot? Is that like, a glitch with the new update?” Do I sound crazy?, she almost added, but kept herself from saying anything further. Meredith finally gave herself a moment to look around at the mess on the table. Was this store always like this, or did they get robbed last night? “Busy day?”
—
Well, they didn’t make people call her Apple, but the scant training Regan received made it clear she represented Apple. And it wasn’t like she felt particularly like Dr. Kavanagh right now, or even Regan (who was she, even?). So why not Apple? “Yes.” Regan unclipped her nametag with her actual name on it and tossed it in the trash as they walked by. She listened to the woman’s explanation, nodding every once in a while, because that meant she was paying attention (mostly, she was thinking about that ever-so-slight tug she felt toward the rafters, where there might have been a dead raccoon). “Normal, mhm. Everything is normal here. You, me. Especially me. What did you say the– oh, your applications? Have you attempted to get rid of them all? They won’t open if they’re gone. When did this start? Did you get water on it? That’s bad.” The woman seemed fairly distressed, and Regan could at least feel good about being able to help her find a solution, even if it wasn’t the same kind of or quality of help she offered next of kin in her old profession.
Regan pressed a button on the tablet which she had learned – right now, this very second – made it turn on. The screen flickered several colors and then changed, opening and closing several windows. “Busy? Oh, yes. Many live people.” She held the machine up to her ear and then shook it, mostly to make it look like she knew what she was doing. “I can completely solve your problem,” Regan said confidently, as cheerful as could be within the constraints of her flat monotone. She had no idea how to fix this computer but she knew where they kept hundreds of others in the back. She would just send this woman home with a new one.
There didn’t seem to be anyone else entering the store, so Regan waved the woman toward the back so she could follow her over toward a slightly ominous door – the kind that literally said ‘employees only’ on it. She was told not to bring anyone back there, but Regan picked and chose what she was going to listen to. A few months ago, she would have scoffed at the idea of a human giving her orders in the first place, but she had since turned over a new leg. If she was going to fit in (which she was so far excelling at) there would have to be compromise. “I’ll show you where we keep the other ones, and you can choose the color you’d like. Humans enjoy a selection of those, yes? The illusion of choice, like it matters. I have come to find it endearing.” Though Regan was pleased she’d gone with the silver phone herself, even if it broke after a day and she traded it in for a green one. Her most recent was silver again. Oh, have I mentioned I’m giving you a new tablet? That will fix this.” The cement ground of the dark storage room made Regan’s footsteps echo as she led the woman in. The door closing behind them was a loud slap. “Did you close that?” She looked back over her shoulder, squinting at the girl, a slow chill rolling up along her vertebrae, jumping between them one at a time.
—
“Oh uh- no I hadn’t thought of- no I don’t think I have. I try to be careful,” Meredith’s answers came quickly, trying to keep up with the employee’s questions. She watched as she turned it on and the screen repeated the same strange pattern it had at home. That was good, at least, that she hadn’t imagined it, that the glitch wasn’t exclusive to the confines of her apartment. There would’ve been nothing more embarrassing than coming all the way here only for it to work fine as soon as someone else took a look. “As opposed to dead ones?” She said with a small chuckle, as if to try and break the ice. Though it was becoming more and more clear that the other woman may not be joking. Her cadence and comments were odd, but Meredith found her somewhat amusing, if not a bit confusing. Nevertheless, none of it mattered if she could walk out of here with a non-cursed iPad and go back to business as usual. Mere watched again with curiosity as she held the tablet up to her face and shook it like a rattle. She started to lose hope, she’d always been a bit more analog than some of her peers but this didn’t seem right. However, soon she was on the move and, albeit a bit nervous, Meredith followed on her heels. Her head whipped from left to right before slipping past the employee door, sure she wasn’t supposed to be back here but not wanting to protest. She never minded much about breaking the rules, but she’d been on edge more than normal lately.
“You say that like you’re not one,” Mere said, her voice back to its usual sarcastic tone. She was trying to be herself again, she wasn’t sure how. “Wait, really? Brand new? I mean, thank you,” she stuttered, her eyes tracking the pale blonde hair that moved in front of her. She was pretty certain she hadn’t gotten the warranty, but now she was hoping she could slink out of here with a brand new tablet without anyone being the wiser. “I have a lot of drawings on there though, do you think I can transfer those over or will the uh- glitch come with it?” It was a stupid question, she knew that was a stupid question. She was almost positive all her works-in-progress were saved to the cloud anyway. But she was terrified, terrified of this actually being a curse, and she felt completely ridiculous admitting that to herself.
Meredith couldn’t help but jump at the sound of the door slamming behind them. She turned around, rapidly scanning the door for any sign of why it closed. “No- does that not happen every time?” This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening, right? She was not about to die at the fucking Apple store. She looked back at the employee. “You have a key to get out of here, right? It’s not locked?” Sparks of anxiety radiated through her fingertips as they tapped against her leg. She took a step towards the door and attempted to twist the handle but it didn’t budge, she shook the door harder to no avail. “You’re fucking kidding me,” she muttered under her breath. “Okay, so you can like, call your boss like? Or, there is some high tech code that opens this door? And there’s definitely a totally rational reason it closed behind us, right?”
—
“Brand new, yes.” The thank you made Regan freeze, for just a moment. She had to remind herself where she was not. Still, humans in Wicked’s Rest should know better, too. “You’re welcome. How long have you lived here?” It was seemingly a non-sequitur but one Regan was curious about now. It was also better than admitting that no, the door did not typically do this, and no, Regan did not have a key on her, because she was – for the first time in her life – bad at her job. What she could do was be a calm presence as the customer proceeded to panic. She was excellent at being calm (and especially since returning from Ireland). This was nothing compared to working in the ED or navigating a grisly homicide scene.
“There is no need. I am not going to ask Pubik to let us out.” If he even would. Regan could practically see him standing tall on the other side of the door, gloating. He would let both of them die in here if he could. He would stand there and do nothing as they were sentenced to live in the storage room for one hundred years. Some of her neurons made a complete circuit for the first time. Pubik. Pubic. Pubis. Oh. She might have had some preconceived notions about the man… but she was right, wasn’t she? The woman did not know or care about Regan’s realization, though – she rushed to the door, frantically pushing and pulling it. That was not going to work. Did she see the slot for a key?
“That is a waste of your energy. I will fix this. In the meantime, how about…you, um, can pick your new tablet.” Regan pointed to a cluster of several huge boxes. “They’re all yours. I don’t know how you can move your things over, and I do not know if the pathology your computer has will be transmitted to the new one. I… don’t know anything about Apple products. Or any phones.” Her eyes fell in shame. “That is probably surprising. Anyway, you select your product, and I will see if there is another way out of here, because that door will not open without a key. Which I do not have.” Regan gave the woman a reassuring nod that was not at all reassuring. This was all fine. She still would not call Pubik.
Regan paced a lap around the storage room; she was fairly sure she’d spotted another door in here at some point, an evacuation exit that emptied into the parking lot. Pubik would have known. But she reminded herself, again, that she would not call Pubik. She could never rely on him. Never place her trust there. She could never… Regan eyed each hard wall, and they seemed to shift, caving inward like air being squeezed out of a pair of lungs. The cold floor darkened and shined. The echo of her footsteps became cries of let me die. Her legs wobbled then seemed to sink; she couldn’t move. “Are you still–” Here? She wanted to say. Except Regan’s lungs emptied with enough force to shatter the lights above, casting the entire storage room into true darkness.
—
“My whole life,” Meredith answered, her eyes darting around the back room and taking in the shelves packed with white boxes. She felt the panic start to rise up her spine.
“What? You’re not?” Mere’s voice raised a little. She looked at the other with confusion and a bit of anger. “What are you talking about- hold on, your manager’s name is Pubic?” Her hands ran through her hair and she tried to take in her surroundings more carefully. “God, what the fuck is going on?” She asked quietly to herself. She felt like she was losing her mind lately but this took the cake. She was locked in a storeroom at a store apparently run by two people named Pubic and Apple. Her palms began to sweat. “Of course not,” Meredith began to laugh. “Of course you don’t know anything about it. Do you even work here?” She couldn’t help herself, the laughter began to bubble up beyond a soft chuckle. She couldn’t believe what she’d gotten herself into- trapped in the backroom of an Apple store with a stranger who was quite possibly masquerading as an employee, all because she thought her iPad was haunted. It was absolutely ridiculous. “Yeah, I’ll uh- I’ll pick one out.” Her fit calmed as she tried to straighten herself out and began moving through the shelves instead. Her fingers tapped incessantly against her thigh, an unsteady rhythm. She tried to focus on the stacks and stacks of boxes in front of her but as usual her head was elsewhere. She was locked in, trapped. Meredith couldn’t push away the thought. Someone would come, right? Surely, someone would come. Someone would need a new device eventually, or just need to escape the floor. It was fine, it would all be fine.
But it wasn’t fine, that was evident by the eruption of sound that flooded the space around her causing Meredith to double over, her hands braced over her ears. Glass shattered and rained down over her. There was a moment of silence. Meredith opened her eyes but there was nothing to be seen- it was completely dark; she could barely see a few inches in front of her. She tried to take stock of her surroundings, her head whipped all around her- looking and listening for something familiar. Her breath was heavy and rapid. A hand reached forward to grab hold of the metal shelf in front of her, she lifted herself upright. “Are you okay?” She asked the darkness. She’d done it, she realized, the very thing she feared. She’d brought her danger or demon or curse- whatever plagued her, whatever hunted her that night- she’d brought it to someone else; she’d put someone else at risk. “Are you hurt?” Meredith used the shelf to guide herself back down the aisle and toward where she parted from the employee. “Be careful, there may be glass around you.” She could hear a few small pieces crunching under her sneakers and silently thanked herself for not wearing flip flops today. Her mother always detested when she wore them anyplace other than the beach, maybe she should text her.
She felt the shelf end and tried now to find the wall, if her hand could settle against the door she could anchor herself in the room. There seemed to be a faint red glow emanating from somewhere, she used that to guide herself. “What happened, did you see something?”
—
Regan was trying to learn from those around her, she really was, but sometimes humans were truly confusing. Banshees did not ask such foolish questions, and they had no need for comfort or reassurance. What was going on? What was going on was exactly what was going on; there was no great complexity. “You saw my shirt. You know that I work here. As for what is going on, I took you back here to select a new tablet because your current one is malfunctioning. The door closed behind us. We have since been stuck. Do you have short-term memory issues?” More likely, the girl was struggling with some kind of disbelief, as though this were even breaking the top 100 of unusual occurrences in this town. And Regan probably could have been a little kinder and more compassionate, but bad things tended to happen when she was stuck in an enclosed space with someone. That obviously continued to be the case.
She grimaced at the sound of glass crunching as she stepped closer to the direction of the woman’s voice. “I saw… something, yes.” Regan’s voice sounded small to her own ears, and that pushed disgust up her mouth. What had happened to her? Rhetorical. She knew exactly what had happened. Maybe she really should be trying harder to be nice, considering they were not in dissimilar boats. The difference was that when Regan panicked, things broke. “Nothing that concerns – I mean, should concern you. The glass didn’t hurt me.” Or if it did, she couldn’t feel it. Sometimes it was hard to tell. There had been several times she’d found shards embedded in her hands hours later. “Yourself? Are you wearing close-toed footwear” Apple stores were not like wet labs and autopsy suites; there were no de facto safety requirements.
The woman’s shaky breaths made Regan spike with concern. She could recognize panic by sound alone. Her decedents were above such a pathetic display of emotion, but live humans were not. No– not pathetic. Not for humans. Humans could panic. Regan would be supportive. Jade would have been. “If your panic becomes unsustainable, tell me, and I will…” What was it humans did again, when someone they cared for was panicking? “...uh, describe something comforting. Like flies on a body.” That seemed right. “What are you concerned about? We are in the Apple store. In the time I have lived here, no one has died in this place. Well, no human. There is presently a raccoon somewhere above us.”
When Regan squinted, she could see a faint glow from the direction of the emergency exit – one Regan had never used, and she could see the woman inching closer to it, palm bracing against the wall. It was a door that spilled out into a parking lot. Would it work? Would it need a key? That wouldn’t be great for an emergency exit. “I think there’s… there should be a door over here. I believe.”
Except, Pubik’s scratchy voice shouted from behind the heavy door on the other end of the storage room, the one that had locked behind them. He was here?
“What is it, Kavanagh? Stuck in the storage room? I could let you out.”
Regan saw red (figuratively; it remained pitch black). Had he locked them in here? That thought from earlier had been right. She did not need to ask herself why Pubik wasn’t letting them out. Betrayal was in his blood. Regan should never have turned her back to Pubik. He would have taken her wings had they still been there. Did he not care that she had a customer with her? No, why would he? Pubik was never satisfied until Regan was going to lose everything; someone else standing nearby was only collateral damage.
—
“What? What did you see?” Meredith’s voice was a bit frantic. She was sure she sounded crazy. Somehow, despite the chaos that had occurred since Meredith had entered the store, Apple had managed to stay calm, cool, and collected. It made Mere feel even more out of her mind. She was almost scared of the answer- of what possibly lurked in the shadows here. Her eyes moved all around in the dark but she couldn’t see a thing. She listened intently, but the only sounds she heard were shards of glass shuffling around the tile floor as she walked and the fabric of her top sliding against the rough wall behind her. There were no mysterious sounds, nothing that reminded her of the woods. Maybe that was a good sign, maybe this was all just a coincidence. But Meredith knew that wishful thinking would get her nowhere. In fact, it would get her killed.
“Good. Yes, yes I’m fine.” She kept her back pressed against the wall and continued to move towards the only light she could see. “Oh, uh, thank you. I think I will hold off on the fly conversation for now if that’s okay.” Images of the cabin, of her friends’ bodies flashed through her mind. She tried to shake it all away and focus on what was in front of her, which was darkness. “Well, that’s good to know. Good track record you guys have here. Sorry I don’t mean to be…jumpy. I just- I’ve had a weird few months. Let’s just get out of here.” She had accepted at this point that Apple was…odd, to say the least. She had expected to enter the store, be greeted by some bored underpaid employee who assured her that her iPad was just fine but maybe did a quick reset or something to fix the problem and be on her way. Instead, she’d met one of the strangest people she’d ever encountered and no problems were fixed at all. Now she had new ones. But even though Apple was a somewhat strange stranger, she didn’t want anything to happen to her. She would feel incredibly guilty if anyone else got hurt because of her presence. She was determined to get both of them out in one piece.
“Good, okay, okay. Can you follow my voice? I think I can see the exit sign. I think, maybe, if we follow this wall we can get there without running into anything. Hopefully.” Her plan was interrupted by the sound of a man yelling from the other side of the door. For a moment, relief washed over her. Surely, he would realize they were in here and open the door to free them. She was quickly corrected. “God, is that your manager? I’m starting to understand why you call him Pubic.” Unless of course, that was his given name. “Screw that guy. Now I kind a want to take two iPads just to fuck with him. I won’t.” She looked back at Apple, at least where she thought Apple was, with a small joking smile as if to assure her she wasn’t actually going to steal from the store. She didn’t want to get her in trouble. Of course, Apple couldn’t see any expression Mere was making. “Maybe I’ll leave him a bad review. I don’t think I’ve ever left a review for any place ever, that guy makes me want to start.”
Meredith kept shuffling along the wall, one arm outstretched to make sure she wouldn’t run into anything. The faint red glow slowly became brighter. Soon she could make out the word “EXIT” lit up in front of her. “Okay, I got it. God, some alarm isn’t going to start if I open this will it? Nevermind, I don’t care.” She pushed forcefully against the metal bar and swung the heavy door forward. Sunlight spilled into the storeroom and Mere had to raise her arm to shield her eyes from the harsh change in light. She could feel the heat mixing with the cool conditioned air behind her. “I have to say, I’ve never been so excited to see a parking lot.”
—
“His name is Pubik. Well, his last name. His first name is John. And he does not manage me,” Regan said, barely keeping the fact she was offended from her tone. “I am autonomous. I decide everything now. No Pubik is going to tell me what to do. I wear this uniform and listen to their rules because I want to. At least… I think I do. I am still a little unclear on what dictates wanting.” That bit of honesty made her stomach feel hollow. “I only tolerate him because I choose to. He believes himself important, but death will have him, the same as anyone else.” Regan thought she did an exceptional job explaining all of this in the most normal way possible. The mention of leaving a review did turn the dial on her mood a little bit, in a good way. “I leave reviews all the time, and can help you, if you would like.”
They converged by the red EXIT sign, and out of the two of them, the other woman seemed more antsy to escape this place. She had said she had a strange few months, so maybe it wasn’t even the first time something like this had happened to her. Regan stood aside and let her push out the door. Besides, she had grabbed a few tablets and a laptop on the way over, so her arms were full.
She squinted as the sun flooded her vision. After a few blinks, she straightened herself out like none of this had been a big deal, and looked over at the woman. “I believe I should ask you for your name now. The social convention is to exchange those after being stuck in a storage room together. I read that in the Apple handbook.” She seemed worse for the wear, and again, Regan had to wonder just what she’d been through recently. She pressed her lips into a thin line, then offered the woman a couple of the brand new, packaged tablets she brought out. “These are for you. I am sorry I can’t fix your old one.” She also wasn’t completely sure the ones in her arms didn’t crack from her voice, but that was a problem the woman could discover later.
“This lot is fine. It could be better. There is no roadkill.” Regan glanced around disapprovingly. She should have snatched that dead raccoon from in there when she had the chance. Now she wasn’t sure if she would even be going back, because Pubik had exhausted her good will (yes, that was good will she displayed in the past) and Regan couldn’t guarantee her lungs wouldn’t rattle with a scream next time she saw that man. And– oh, the woman had sounded frantic in there, hadn’t she? Not to mention, though Regan wouldn’t admit it, the fresh air massaged her remaining tension. As long as she didn’t look at the asphalt too long, it would not grow slick and bubble. “Hey, um, are you… you are alright, yes? Physically.” She tilted her head back and forth, debating for a moment. “And mentally, emotionally, whatever you would like to call it. Are you functional?”
—
Once in the fresh air, Meredith doubled over and attempted to regulate her breathing. You’re safe, it’s fine, you’re fine, she repeated to herself in her head, deep breaths pulled from the depths of her lungs. Her eyes scanned the lot in front of her. It was bright, sunny. There were no woods, no murky lake. There were no monsters lurking. All was well. “I’m Meredith,” she said, standing back up tall. “I suppose this is one way to break the ice,” she tried to smile, the breaths coming easier now. She tried to shake it off, feeling a bit feeble next to the confident employee across from her. “Oh- my goodness. Thank you,” Meredith accepted the boxes, looking up at Apple with wide eyes. She wanted to ask if she was sure, if she could really take them both, but at this point she felt it maybe better not to ask questions. It was better to cut her losses and run than spend any more time at this Apple store. “No, I appreciate it.” She hoped these ones weren’t also…glitchy. She feared the truth she would have to accept if they were. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that review help, if not just to get that guy off your back,” she offered. “I’ve had shitty bosses before, they’re the worst.” Mere slid her backpack off one shoulder and tried to stuff both tablet boxes inside and zip it back up.
“Oh yeah, I’m alright. Is there any glass in my hair?” Meredith leaned over to the side slightly and brought a hand up to shake out her curls, hoping any small shards would sprinkle on to the concrete below instead of lingering in her scalp. “Yes I uh- I’m functional,” she smiled, though she wasn’t sure if it would sell it. “Are you okay? That was quite a scream.” It was a misdirection, perhaps. But Meredith had been genuinely worried about the other girl, she still wasn’t sure what had caused such a reaction. “I thought maybe there was somethi- someone in there with us. I don’t know, it sounds silly now,” a meager laugh escaped her. She was scared of the entity from the cabin, but she was also scared of everyone thinking she was crazy. She felt alone enough now as it is. She was worried about isolating herself even more. “Just freaked me out. But I’m okay. Thank you for all your help.” She dusted herself off and adjusted her pack. “My bike is just out front. I guess I’ll head out unless there is anything else you need from me for the iPads,” she said, hoping the answer was a simple no and that she could get out of here. Even if the lights and the scream and the locked door had been nothing but flukes, she couldn’t shake the weird feeling that was stuck to her spine. She wanted to go home, she wanted a drink. She hoped home was safe. “It was uh- nice to meet you. Sorry about, well, all of that. I hope the rest of your day is less eventful,” Meredith smiled and gave a small wave before heading to the front of the store to retrieve her bike and head back to her apartment.
—
So the woman had a name, and now Regan had it (not like that). Meredith. Who still seemed quite frightened, fidgeting with her bag, glancing around like she itched to leave. She was a victim, wasn’t she? Another one. This was all Pubik’s fault. All of it. But something annoying fluttered against Regan’s ribcage anyway: guilt. Pubik wouldn’t have locked a customer in the storage room; it was Regan’s presence that elicited that behavior. And maybe, just maybe, it was also Regan’s fault that Meredith went back there… where she could have died away from her friends and family, in Irel– in a storage room.
If the tablets were not enough, Regan would make this up to Meredith in some other way later. The streak of paranoia in Meredith’s voice sealed the deal. An idea struck her, and when were those ever poor? “I don’t know about inside, but Pubik was out there.” Regan’s eyes narrowed as the name passed through her lips. “Wear a helmet on that bike, and if you decide you are interested in… justice, you may find me here. The next time, we will be the ones making it eventful.”