Third Shift - Jess Simms

Annabelle kept strange hours. It was a trait she’d inherited from her Grandma June, who’d also been a life-long night owl. Every summer vacation as a child, Annabelle would flip her schedule upside down within a week. She had fond memories of passing the time between late and early watching home shopping networks while Grandma June chain-smoked Pall Malls and told Annabelle stories from the old country, usually ones about magic or things that lived in the shadows. Annabelle believed Grandma June’s stories until she was nearly in high school. She was just past forty, now, and though she no longer believed in magic, watching the home shopping network still filled her with nostalgia—and she never did figure out how to keep a normal schedule. She’d long since accepted a life of graveyard shifts separated by rare bursts of sunlight. It wasn’t quite the adventurous adulthood she’d pictured as a little girl, but she figured nobody made it to her age without a few dead dreams. 

Annabelle lived two towns south of where she’d grown up, in an apartment by the interstate, where the white noise of the passing traffic lulled her to sleep as the sun rose. But it wasn’t heavy enough to obscure the angry pounding that woke her just after noon one summer morning. She answered the front door groggily. The woman on the porch had the pretty but disheveled look Annabelle associated with mothers of small children, hair pulled into a hasty blonde ponytail, brown roots just starting to show along the scalp.

The woman said her name, and when Annabelle just blinked, added, “I’m your neighbor to the left.” Annabelle recognized her now, though she was more familiar with her excitable dog and the perpetual litter of toys spilling from her yard to the sidewalk, booby traps for unwary feet traveling the unlit streets at night.

The neighbor said, “Somebody’s been stealing my packages.”

It took Annabelle a second, in her just-awakened state, to register the implied accusation. “Well it wasn’t me.”

“That’s not what Martin says.”

“Martin?”

“In 4C. He says he’s seen you skulking about at all hours of the night.”

It wasn’t the first time Annabelle’s inverted schedule had aroused suspicions. She gave her usual explanation of her odd hours. The neighbor didn’t look satisfied, but she at least let Annabelle close the door.

***

Annabelle’s current third-shift position was at the chain gas station beside the highway on-ramp. She’d learned time passed faster if she stayed active so she usually spent her first few hours roaming the store, straightening and re-stocking and scrubbing. If she was feeling particularly restless, she’d give the Icee machine the full sanitation treatment, cleaning out every line and spout, a tedious process that could easily kill an hour.

Her shift the night after her neighbor’s visit was especially slow. Annabelle hadn’t seen another human for hours. She was re-sorting the cigarettes when she heard the door chime. The man who entered was drunk as a skunk, as Grandma June would’ve said; she smelled the stale whiskey long before he passed the counter. His jeans were ripped and muddy, his shirt streaked with yellow stains. He wove his way past her to the donut display, opening the glass door on the third try to bare-hand a bear claw.

Annabelle checked the clock on the register. It was nearly five AM, dawn just lightening the sky outside. Past the time of the night for drunks. Her customers now should be pre-work runners, suited commuters, retirees killing time until the diner across town opened its early bird buffet. 

The drunk man stumbled to the counter and put down his unwrapped donut.

“Packa smokes,” he said, pulling a handful of loose dollars from his pocket. 

Annabelle asked, “You got ID?”

He patted himself down but came up empty. He said, “Musta left it at the bar.”

She considered telling him not to worry about it—this time—but she’d nearly lost her job last month for selling a lighter to a high schooler. There weren’t many third-shift jobs in town, even fewer that weren’t terrible; she wasn’t about to risk this one for the sake of somebody who most likely wouldn’t even remember it. She told him, “Without ID I can’t sell them.”

“Fuckin’ kidding me?”

“That’s the law.” Annabelle eased her Taser from her purse beneath the counter in case the drunk made a grab for the smokes anyway, but he just cursed unintelligibly and lurched toward the exit. On the way he stumbled into an end cap of 5-hour energy shots. The precarious pyramid—for weeks perched one over-sugared toddler away from disaster—collapsed in an avalanche of tiny bottles as the man shambled out, in search of a gas station with less rigorous standards. The last of the bottles topped from the display just as the door shut behind him. It bounced over its fallen comrades and rolled to a stop against the novelty ice cream cooler. 

Annabelle decided a cigarette was in order. She snagged her coat and stormed out to her usual spot beside the ice cooler, where she could watch the front door a safe distance from the kerosene tanks. The regular rumble of the interstate calmed her nerves. By the time she finished her smoke, she’d decided to view the debacle as a blessing in disguise; restacking the disply would probably keep her busy for most of the time left in her shift. She was almost looking forward to it by the time she re-entered the store.

The floor was clear, the display re-assembled, as far as she could tell exactly as it had been before. When she got back to the cashier cubby, a near-perfect ring of sticky translucence marked where the donut had been, the only thing confirming it hadn’t all been a dream. Annabelle considered the counter for a long moment then, when no answers revealed themselves, reached for the all-purpose cleaner. 

***

Annabelle was off the next night, so she hit up her usual haunt: the Black Water Pub, an old-man blue-collar bar a few blocks from her apartment. It was the type of place things hardly seemed to change from one visit to the next. Jenna was behind the bar, like always on a weeknight, the same barflies in the same stools watching the sport-du-jour on the TV mounted over the good whiskey. One of those barflies, Old Burt, was in the middle of telling Jenna one of his tall tales when Annabelle entered. His worn overalls made him look like a farmer, though it was hard to think of him in any context but this. He finished his anecdote, gray moustache twitching with amusement, then turned to Annabelle as she slid onto the stool beside him. 

“And what’s new with you, my dear?” Old Burt asked. 

Annabelle signaled Jenna for her usual while she launched into an abridged version of the 5-hour energy mystery. By the time she finished, Jenna had the beer poured and was leaning on the bar in front of her in rapt attention.

“But who fixed the display?” Jenna asked.

“Fuck if I know,” answered Annabelle. “I checked the whole store top to bottom. Weren’t a soul there but me.” 

“Sounds like you’ve got yourself a brownie,” said Old Burt. 

“A what?” asked Jenna.

“A brownie. They’re helpful spirits. Give ‘em some treats and they’ll clean your home ‘til it shines.”

Jenna said, “You’ve got some talent for bullshit, old man.”

“It’s true. Scout’s honor.”

“Now I know you’re lying. Ain’t no way you were a boy scout.”

“Lots you don’t know about me, my dear.”

Annabelle knew about brownies; they’d been frequent players in Grandma June’s stories, a favorite because they, too, liked to work at night. Grandma June would leave food on the back stoop for them every night and it was always gone by morning—proof enough of the brownies’ existence for young Annabelle, though as she got older she’d realized Grandma June was probably only feeding the neighborhood’s raccoons and stray cats.

Annabelle sipped her beer and turned back to Old Burt, who was saying, “My brother Walt used to have a brownie. They had a real good arrangement until his kid started taking the treats for himself. Then the brownie turned trickster—salt in the sugar jar, car keys under the sofa cushions, stuff like that. Then a bunch of his wife’s jewelry went missing and, after that, the brownie was gone for good. I tried to draw a couple to my place—who wants to clean if they can help it?—but Walt’s kid done fucked it up for the whole family. Brownies can tell who you’re related to, and they’ve got a long memory.”

He signaled the end of his story by finishing his beer. Jenna rolled her eyes and poured him another. Old Burt had more to say about brownies, of course—Old Burt had quite a lot to say about most things—but Annabelle could only hear Grandma June’s voice telling her be like a brownie, girl; be helpful, be generous, but never work for free.

Annabelle tuned out of the conversation and pulled out her phone. Soon she was clicking her way down a brownie rabbit hole. According to the internet, brownies were everywhere but didn’t like to be seen—or couldn’t be seen unless they wanted to be—or couldn’t be seen unless you really believed. Some of the drawings looked like tiny old men, others more like elves, though always, across variants, dressed in brown.

By last call, Annabelle felt like she was ten again: credulous and hopeful, looking for magic in the shadows as she stumbled home. Her neighbor’s porchlight—perpetually lit since the missing package incident—guided her across the black sea of the parking lot. The air was warm and thick, like it would rain tomorrow. Or today, she supposed; she was never quite sure where normal people drew that line. She settled on her steps, just outside the halo of her neighbor’s light, and lit a cigarette.

A flash of movement snagged the corner of her vision. A little man, maybe two feet tall, was standing on the far side of her neighbor’s porch. He was slender with a slight potbelly, his trousers the color of good soil, his long-sleeved shirt a few shades lighter. A pointed tan hat rested at a slight angle on his head, a wizened, bearded face staring out beneath its brim. She hadn’t seen him come from anywhere; it was as if he’d always been standing there and she’d only just noticed. He met her gaze, gave a start, and darted through the wooden lattice around the neighbor’s porch.

Annabelle sprang to her feet. Her brain cycled through the normal things it could have been. One of the neighbor’s kids sneaking out after bedtime. The product of an over-active, alcohol-fueled imagination. But she knew in her soul what she’d really seen: an honest-to-God, in the flesh, real life brownie.

Annabelle crept forward, cigarette dangling forgotten from her fingers, staring intently at the space beneath the porch where the brownie had to still be hiding—until the dog started barking in the neighbor’s bedroom window, jolting her back to reality. Annabelle hurried back to her own turf, tossing her cigarette at the sidewalk as she took her stairs two at a time. She glanced back when she reached her front door. The neighbor’s bedroom light was on. The brownie was nowhere to be seen.

***

The cops came faster than Annabelle would have expected. She was still eating a post-bar sandwich, watching Nannette’s Southern Kitchen on the Shop-At-Home Network, when she heard the distinctive triple rap. She set her plate aside and tried to think sober thoughts as she crossed to the front door.

“Sorry to bother you, Ma’am,” the cop said, sounding not sorry at all, as he flashed his badge below the lock chain. “I was hoping you could fill me in on your whereabouts for the last few hours.”

Annabelle answered, “I was at the Black Water until last call. Been home since then.”

The cop said, “Your neighbor tells me you were skulking around her property about an hour ago.”

“I’d just gotten back. Thought I saw something moving by her porch.”

The cop asked, “What did you see?”

Annabelle said, “I’m not sure. I didn’t get a clear look.”

The cop didn’t look ready to leave, his foot just a quick slide from blocking Annabelle’s doorway. Annabelle asked, “Did someone steal another package or something?”

The cop said, “Your neighbor’s home has been burglarized. Several family heirlooms were taken from her bedroom and the furniture in her living room has been disturbed.”

Annabelle asked, “Disturbed? Like flipped over?”

“More like…rearranged.” The cop segued into his next question before she could ask what exactly that meant, squinting past her like she’d have the neighbor’s missing belongings sitting on her coffee table. After a few more minutes of scrutiny he thanked her for her time and let her shut the door, but it was clear Annabelle hadn’t slid completely off his suspect list. When she peered through the curtains a few minutes later, her neighbor was on her front porch in her robe and slippers talking to the cop, pointing in Annabelle’s direction. 

***

Her next two shifts, Annabelle spent her downtime trying to summon a brownie. She left wasted donuts beside the condiment-globbed hot dog warmer, put open packages of Ho-Hos next to the syrup-splattered soda machine, overturned and scattered an end cap display of firecrackers alongside a pile of cookies. Each time she hopefully stepped out front for a cigarette; each time, the mess was still there when she returned.

Annabelle went to the Black Water earlier than usual on her next night off. She snagged the stool beside Old Burt and said, “Your brother with the brownie. Did he ever try to catch one?”

“Sure he tried,” Old Burt answered. “Never did manage it. They’re sneaky little buggers.”

“But it’s possible?”

“S’posed to be. And when you catch one, it takes you back to its lair and let you have your pick from its treasure.”

Jenna brought Annabelle her usual and said, “That’s leprechauns.”

“Them too,” answered Old Burt. “They’re the same family.”

Jenna rolled her eyes. Old Burt sipped his beer.

Annabelle asked, “How’d he try catching them?”

Old Burt said. “Same thing you’d do with any critter. Set a trap and bait it with things they like—sweets, mostly, I think Walt tried. Though he never caught one, either.”

So Annabelle bought a coyote trap off of Amazon and set it up in the corner of the cashier cubby her next night at work, baiting it with an assortment of pastries. She refrained from cleaning her entire shift, passing time by reading magazines from the rack by the door and stepping out for increasingly frequent smoke breaks. Each time she came in she rushed to the cubby and peered at the trap. Each time, there was nothing inside but food. Close to five AM, starting to lose hope, Annabelle went out for one last cigarette, already clicking through her now-favorite brownie lore sites, sleuthing out where she’d gone wrong. 

When she got back to the cashier cubby, the trap had been sprung. A brownie was sitting cross-legged in the cage beside the pile of pastries, nibbling on a mini chocolate muffin. He looked younger than the one at her neighbor’s house, with a trim goatee instead of a full beard and a face more pinched than wrinkled. 

“I’m guessing you’re the one looking for my treasure,” the brownie said when he saw Annabelle.

Annabelle replied, “Actually, I—”

“I have to tell you,” the brownie interrupted, licking chocolate from his fingertips, “You’re going to be disappointed. The reports of our vast treasure are a bit—well, not exaggerated, or at least they weren’t once. Outdated, maybe.”

Annabelle said, “I don’t care about your treasure.”

“You don’t?” The brownie pulled his fingers from his mouth to grab a sprinkle-coated donut. He took a bite and with his mouth full said, “Well in that case…”

He snapped his fingers above his head and dropped the donut. Annabelle blinked at him. 

“In that case what?” asked Annabelle.

The brownie frowned. “You can still see me?” Annabelle nodded. The brownie squinted at her, a look eerily similar to the one on the cop’s face a few days before. “A true believer. That’s as rare these days as…wait a tick. There’s something familiar about you.”

“One of you was here about a week ago,” Annabelle offered. 

“Older than that,” said the brownie, shaking his head. He stuck out his tongue, like tasting the air, then with another snap of his fingers declared, “June Crawford! Was she your mother?”

“Grandmother.”

The brownie shook his head. “Time moves so quickly for you humans.”

“You knew my grandmother?”

“June was a great friend to our kind. Always paid in full. And her seven-layer bars? Delectable. I’ll bet she’d be proud to know you’re keeping the old traditions.” The brownie picked up his abandoned donut and took another bite then asked, “Now are you going to let me out or not?” 

Annabelle opened the top of the cage, allowing the brownie to stand up and stick out his hand. “I’m Mim.”

“Annabelle,” she said, taking his hand to shake it. It was small, and kind of cold, and soft like cured leather. When she released it, he turned and started stacking the remaining treats on one open palm. When he’d finished he turned to Annabelle and said, “Shall we?”

“Where?”

“To the treasure room, of course.”

“Now?” asked Annabelle.

“When else?”

Annabelle glanced around the empty store. She supposed she could get fired for leaving it unattended, but she also didn’t suppose she’d get many other invitations to visit a brownie treasure room.

“Let me just lock up,” Annabelle said, rushing to the doors. When she turned around, Mim was standing beside the novelty ice cream cooler. He scrambled up on top, yanked the door open, and disappeared inside. Annabelle rushed to the cooler and looked down into a blue-ringed portal where the push-pops and ice cream sandwiches should have been. It was brownie-sized, a bit of a tight fit for an adult human, but Annabelle stepped up and in, skin tingling as she fell through into a rough stone tunnel. Gas lamps strung up on either side provided dim, flickering illumination.

Mim beckoned Annabelle to follow him down the tunnel, which gradually widened until it dumped them into a large cavern. The ceiling had to be sixty feet above them. Wooden walkways connected doorways carved into the rock, row upon row from the bottom to the top, a space built for far more brownies than she saw milling about. 

“Well here it is,” Mim said, “the treasure room.”

Annabelle frowned. “Where’s the treasure?”

Mim pointed toward the center of the cavern, but all Annabelle saw there was an assortment of junk: appliances and kitchen gadgets, toys and knick-knacks, clothes and jewelry and electronics all thrown together, some of it on shelves, most of it piled on the cavern floor. Annabelle asked, “That’s your treasure?”

“Afraid so,” Mim said with an apologetic shrug. “It was better when people believed. We had gold, and jewels, and all kinds of fancy things.”

“So what happened?”

Mim passed his pastry stack to a companion wearing a chef’s hat the same color as the top donut’s chocolate glaze. After he’d darted away, Mim continued, “People forgot. They didn’t notice our work, or they ignored it, and either way they stopped leaving food out. We weren’t sure what to do, at first. We had to eat. So we started trading our treasure for food. We should’ve known humans would try to follow us once they knew we had it. And we had to give them some any time one found us.”

“Why?”

“Well, that’s the rules,” replied Mim, as though that was the most absurd question he’d ever heard. He led her toward the center of the cavern as they talked, where a pair of brownies were sorting items from the mound of junk into a wheelbarrow. “Anyway soon enough all the treasure was gone, and we had no choice but to start taking. We’d clean, like we always did, but if the humans hadn’t left out any food we’d take some anyway. Or something else, if food wasn’t an option. It’s only fair, we figured. Payment for services rendered.”

She asked, “What do you do with all of it?”

“Some stuff we keep. But most we sell. We’ve got expenses too, you know. Clothes, shoes, oil for the lamps—we used to get those things from the families we worked for but now we’re fending for ourselves. Luckily it’s a much less risky venture than it used to be, ever since Pip and Tot—a couple of the young lads—built us invisible shops where nobody knows that we’re brownies. I know one’s in the Amazon and there’s another on a bay, and the humans shop through machines—it all sounds like magic if you ask me, but it works. Mostly.” Mim shook his head wearily, said, “Figuring out what you humans value is a tricky business. At the start we tried to reason out the right prices, but it was hard work and we barely sold a thing. Then Gog had the idea that if we set everything to the same price it would have to be right for some of it. Since we took that approach we make enough to get by.”

Annabelle’s brain buzzed with questions: how the brownies managed online stores when they still used oil lamps for light, or whether they got wi-fi in the treasure room, or if she’d ever bought something from them on eBay, but what came out of her mouth was, “How much do you sell it for?”

“Twenty-nine ninety-nine.”

By now they’d walked the whole way around the so-called treasure. She stopped beside the piles. The two brownies working hardly glanced up. One of them excavated an Xbox and placed it on a shelf between a purple plastic bong and a souvenir snowglobe. The other picked up a gaudy brooch shaped like a ladybug that Annabelle was pretty sure she’d seen for sale on QVC last week, and for a lot more than $29.99.

“Well there it is,” Mim said. “Take your pick, as much as you can carry. Them’s the rules.”

Annabelle wasn’t sure she wanted anything from the pile, even aside from the guilt she’d feel after hearing their plight. Treasure wasn’t why she’d come, anyway. She crouched down to Mim’s eye level and said, “I have a proposition for you. Instead of taking treasure.”

That got the attention of the brownies sorting; they both stopped, looking at each other then at her, as though not sure they believed what they’d heard. Mim squinted at her warily.

“What kind of proposition?” he asked.

Annabelle said, “I can tell you how much the things are worth, at least close enough. You’ll make a lot more money.”

“In exchange for what?”

“Two things,” said Annabelle. “First, you clean my house every now and then.”

“And the second?”

“You’ve been taking some things from my neighbor and she thinks it’s me. I was hoping that you could maybe give her stuff back. And could you stop messing with her, too? For my sake.”

Mim looked at the closest brownie and asked, “What do you think, Nan?”

“I like the sound of it,” he answered, asking his companion, “How about you Dod?”

“Who’s your neighbor?” Dod asked Annabelle. When she told him he thought a second, then nodded. “Her stuff wasn’t that good anyway. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Each of the three brownies spit in their hands and shook Annabelle’s in turn. Nan and Dod dug through the pile, coming up with a Magic Bullet, a stack of video games, and a pile of mis-matched jewelry. The ladybug brooch went on top like a cherry on a sundae. Dod waved his hand and a blue-ringed portal opened up into what looked to be a darkened living room. Mim opened a portal of his own, straight to the cashier’s cubby. He motioned Annabelle to crawl through then closed it behind her, without even saying goodbye.

***

Early the next morning, there was another knock at Annabelle’s door. It was the neighbor again, though less angry than she’d been before. She apologized for accusing Annbelle of theft, said she’d found the missing items underneath the couch, figured one of her kids must have hidden them. The woman still eyed her suspiciously whenever their paths crossed but there were no further confrontations. 

Annabelle never saw the brownies again, but every few weeks she’d come home from work to a spotless house and a pile of Polaroids on the kitchen table. She’d write a price on each and leave the finished stack on the table with a plate of seven-layer bars, made from Grandma June’s old recipe—keeping one or two back for herself, of course, just as quality control.

Old Burt’s stories took on a different flavor when Annabelle heard them down at the Black Water. They all seemed more plausible now that he’d been confirmed right on the brownie question. And she had her own stories to tell. Anytime someone complained about a chore they had to do, she’d tell them leave some baked goods out and wait. That they just might be surprised to find there’s still a bit of magic in this world. 

Originally published in the Geek Out! II anthology, by Qommunicate Publishing, 2019

Jess Simms is a freelance writer and editor from Pittsburgh, PA, where they're a co-founder of Scribble House and the managing editor of After Happy Hour Review. They are the author of the flash fiction chapbook Cryptid Bits (Last-Picked Books, 2024) and have published stories and essays in Mythaxis, Eleventh Hour, SLAB, Atlas Obscura, Tales from the Crosstimbers, and elsewhere. Find them online at https://jesssimms.com