Once upon a time, a space-time glory hole opened in the stockroom of a GAP store, in a suburban mall in a medium-sized city in Canada.
Look, I didn't know how else to start this, it sounds crazy, right? I mean, how often do space-time glory holes appear anywhere, but especially in the stockroom of the GAP? I thought I was losing my mind when it first happened; I mean, I was just making my way to the table in the backroom where I always sit to settle up the till and paperwork for the day after closing the store, and then, bam, space-time glory hole, right in front of me. I am not exaggerating when I say that I freaked the fuck out.
I'm sure you have questions: what did it look like? How did I know it was a space-time glory hole? Did something... come out of it? The answers are: weird; it told me; and YES (eventually). Ok, you probably have even more questions now. How about I start at the beginning?
I used to work at the GAP in a boring little mall, in a boring little suburb, in a boring little city. Like, nothing at all ever happened there. I was in my early twenties and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, so I worked at the GAP and lived at home with my parents and spent most of my time when I wasn't at work playing video games. I'm not proud of my misspent youth, but what can I do about it now?
I'd worked at the GAP for several years and was the assistant manager, which didn't mean anything really: I was paid only slightly more than the regular staff, so still made shit, and the only responsibility I had was closing the store five nights a week. At least we got cheap clothes, but the clothes were pretty boring too.
I didn't really have many friends; I mean, I had some online friends who liked to play the same games that I did. But not many real life friends. In the years after high school, all of my friends started building their lives and since I didn't build anything, they all drifted away. I saw some people sometimes for an after work drink or something, but it was always pretty awkward. Like, we didn't have much in common anymore so there wasn't much to talk about and those hang outs were happening less and less.
I'm sure it's become clear thus far that I had a certain apathy for the life I was living. I think I desperately wanted something, ANYTHING, to happen. Did I cause what came next, by just sheer desire for... something? I'm not sure, and I don't think I will ever know, but I do wonder about it often.
So the night I first saw the glory hole was a closing shift, my usual. The evening preceding its appearance was, you guessed it, boring. Only a few customers had come into the store at all so I'd sent the one other staff person home early. I usually closed the store on my own anyway, so nothing was out of the ordinary. That is to say, nothing was out of the ordinary until, after locking the gate in front of the entrance to the store, printing off all of the day's reports and grabbing the money tray - so my hands were full, I must include in this retelling - I walked to the backroom and there it was, right in front of me: a huge, swirling mass of colour and light and absence of light, if that makes sense at all, looking like it was both there and not there, of the world and very much not of the world. I didn't really read it as a hole at that point, but just a big, weird thing. Look, it is super hard to describe the glory hole in any way that makes sense. Just take my word for it, it was like nothing I had ever seen before, and certainly not in the stockroom.
It had no sound, in fact there seemed to be a very strange lack of sound altogether, like it had sucked all of the sound out of the room or something. It scared the living shit out of me, to say the very least. I dropped the cash tray and all of the reports and I ran the fuck out of there. There was no crash as the plastic tray and coins hit the floor, as there should have been, but I am assuming they did hit the floor. I heard a (very normal sounding, though quite loud, given the context and lack of other sound) voice say, "hey, wait!" as I turned to run, but I did not stick around to find out who it belonged to.
I did not stop running until I made it home and was safe in my own room, under my bed. Yes, I got under the bed. I'm not ashamed, I was fucking terrified! What would you have done?
It took ages for my breathing to slow down, and even longer for my mind to slow down. It must have been three in the morning before I pulled myself out from under my bed, covered in dust bunnies and old socks. Once the fear faded away a bit, a strange thing happened - I started to gaslight myself! I began to doubt what I had seen, completely. Was there really a mass of swirling colours, both there and not there, both of the world and not of the world, that sucked up all the sound around it, in the stockroom at the GAP? Nah, couldn't be. Brains are weird, man, but the self-gaslighting made it possible to finally get into the bed properly and go to sleep. I had really weird dreams though.
I was not surprised to get a call from my manager in the morning to tear a strip off of me, due to the fact that I had not properly closed and settled the till, not to mention the fact that the contents of said till were strewn all over the stockroom. Oopsy. He did not mention the glory hole, so I figured that clearly it had been a delusion. Had to have been, right?
I made up some lie about being overcome by sudden nauseousness and having to run for the bathroom and then take myself home, and actually I was too sick to go in that day either. Despite the insistence of my brain to reject the reality of the glory hole, remnants of the sheer terror clung to the very edges making me not take any chances, so there was NO WAY I was going back there the next day. My manager went from mad to PISSED, screamed at me a little more and then gave in because he didn't want someone vomiting all over the store.
I ended up playing video games all day and most of the night, and when I finally woke up late morning the day after, I knew I could not avoid it again, so got ready for my closing shift.
The closer I got to work, the more dread I felt. I had to force one foot in front of the other. I walked slowly through the brightly lit entrance to the mall, tracing the path down the correct wing to my workplace, and just stood in front of the store for a little while, the large white signage casting a ghostly G A P over my face.
I forced myself into the store and to the backroom to drop off my jacket, not acknowledging my colleagues despite my manager trying to waffle on about "closing up properly tonight", feeling like I was headed to my execution. I was too filled with dread to wonder how closing had gone the night before, when I wasn't there, or if anyone else had seen the thing that probably didn't exist at all.
You cannot imagine the extent of my relief when I reached the backroom, eyes squeezed shut in apprehension, and there was... nothing. Normal sounds, both the whir of the fan in the room itself and the usual sounds of the store and the mall beyond drifting back. I popped open my eyes and nearly collapsed. Thank fuck, everything was as it should be. It didn't occur to me to worry about how I could have had such a delusion as that thing I saw, I was too relieved it wasn't there to think any further.
My shift carried on as usual, quite boring, and I almost started to feel disappointed that the strange thing wasn't in the stockroom anymore. Almost. I mean, it was terrifying, but at least it was something different. Weird brain stuff, again.
The shift ended, I locked the gate, printed off all of the reports for the day, grabbed the money tray from the till and was just heading to the backroom when I heard a voice coming from the very place I was heading. No one was left in the store, I had made sure of that before I locked up, so I had no idea who it was. Then I realised that not only did the voice sound familiar, but also it was the only sound I could hear because that lack of sound thing was happening again. Fuuuuuuck.
"Hey, don't freak out! Don't freak out. I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. Just come back here, ok?" said the femme-sounding voice.
"Uh, I don't think so! But, uh, thanks anyway!" I choked out in reply, shaking pretty hard but not enough to spill the till, thankfully. I trembled in place, stuck in freeze mode this time, rather than flight.
"No, really though, just come back here, please," the voice said. "I just want to talk to you. And apologise, for freaking you out last time. Let's start over!"
The voice sounded so normal, like an actual person, so I don't know if I gaslit myself again without realising it but I felt myself start moving again towards the backroom.
