All-Night Mini-Mart (2025)
The trouble began the summer I started working at the All-Night Mini-Mart. During the longest part of the night I would take to watching myself on the video surveillance cameras located at the end of the store. Often, I would find the camera-me doing things the human-me wouldn’t approve of. Some mornings after I worked late, money or lottery tickets would be missing and I would have to replace them myself before anyone noticed. Never more than a few bucks a week but still… It added up. I knew it was the camera-me because when I went home at the end of my shift I never had any extra money around, and I really could have used it. The summer I started working at the All-Night Mini-Mart was the same summer I started collecting crystals. The first of my collection, a rose quartz, was given to me by a customer one night after seeing I had a cut on my hand (but only the camera-me.) After that I began spending a lot of money on crystals, and storage for my crystals. Sometimes when I was especially low on money I would end up finding them anyways, on my way to work at the All-Night Mini-Mart, or the woods behind the High School where I walk my dog. Once in my garage next to the freezer, but that was only once. I didn’t see the customer again, except sometimes on the surveillance cameras. I would see him wandering through the aisles or looking through celebrity gossip magazines and eating hot dogs. When he spoke to the camera-me he leaned in close and hid his eyes. I had never seen the customer outside of the All-Night-Mini-Mart, and I recognized him on the surveillance camera only by his stingray-skin cowboy boots. I don’t think I had ever seen his face, even on the night he gave me the rose quartz.
