Turnabout

Millennium City (previously Stone Creek) is a concept city in the foothills of the Rockies. The conversion was funded by a government grant in the late 90’s and meant to be a beacon of what the future might hold for the prosperous country. Technology that was, then, cutting edge, was hauled into the mountains to be integrated with the aging infrastructure of old Stone Creek and the spectacle (as well as the booming job market) attracted a population with a diverse set of skills. Stone Creek never held more than 50,000 people but, by the dawn of the 21st century, Millennium City had expanded to over 100,000 scientists, engineers, philosophers, artists, and poets. Chrome trains traveled along streets and through underground tunnels on their way downtown. Murals depicted humanity curing diseases, feeding the hungry, and reaching further into our solar system, into our galaxy, than ever seemed possible. Tourists flocked from all over the world to see the silver city: a glimpse into the future.

And then, the towers fell and America went to war. The country turned its eyes from Millennium City and the government diverted funds. The artificial job market collapsed and the people that could find work elsewhere were quick to move on. Housing prices plummeted, schools and government buildings on the outskirts began to close, and the remaining population moved inward.

In 2019 the head count is closer to 45,000. The murals are peeling and the chrome is dented and tarnished. The trains run, but they often run late. Harsh winters have quickened the decay of buildings that have been vacant for decades. Millennium City remains a tourist destination in the warmer months but now as a symbol of America’s millennial naivety- a wish that never came true.

The informal gateway to Millennium City is Hank’s Gas which stands sentinel some 20 miles outside its suburbs and far enough from any previous filling station that most travelers top-up there rather than risk stranding on the highway. Hovering near the pump, a new arrival in the area could be forgiven for doubting its nearness. It’s impossible to spot Millennium City in the daytime and, past dark, perceptible only as a vague glow oozing from behind the foothill that conceals it. That weary aurora reveals it’s only a few turns away.

Iris Lessing did not initially perceive the distant city, absorbed, as she was, in a commercial that flashed on the small screen of the gas pump. The commercial played out as follows:

The scene opens in black and white- a woman stands between kitchen counters, frowning at the stained tiles. She tries, in vain, to scrub them away with liquid from an unmarked bottle and when she sighs a low tone plays to emphasize her frustration. Suddenly, a bottle pops into existence nearby. The woman looks in awe at the bottle. It is the only colored object in frame, though, as the woman begins to spray the counter, the color spreads. The stains wipe away easily now. Though the woman’s excitement grows, the low tone plays again and her hand, clenching the dishrag, begins to spin cartoonishly at the wrist. She easily cleans the entire counter in this way and it shines brightly. The commercial cuts to other rooms of the house while an upbeat instrumental jingle plays. Each scene appears, at first, to be a static, black and white image until the woman enters the room and falls upon the stains there like a rabid animal. Both hands are spinning now. She polishes an antique mirror in the bedroom, a tub in the master bath. Each time the woman enters the scene the same low tone plays. In subsequent scenes her head is rotating at the neck- a blur of motion. The jingle ends abruptly and the tone plays one last time. The woman is on her hands and knees, polishing the hardwood floors of an indistinct hallway with her spinning hands. The tip of the woman’s ponytail slaps the ground with each quick rotation of her head. The camera studies the scene for five seconds. Ten. The slapping of hair on wood is the only sound and the woman’s head spins and spins. Finally, a blue card fills the frame, advertising a two-for-one deal on Turnabout, assuming a viewer calls quickly.

The screen goes dark, as does the rest of Iris’ world. In the sudden darkness she finally sees Millennium City on the horizon: a silver aura in the hills, hardly distinguishable from the Milky Way.

Power returns to Hank’s before Iris has time to be frightened. The outage has reset the pump and gas has stopped flowing into her car. She wonders what would happen if she drove away now, under the pretense that her card has already been charged. If it has, well, that’s fine. If it hasn’t, the extra thirty dollars would go a long way, would help out quite a bit. And if they chased her down?

No.

Iris has never been a good liar. She looks guilty even in her own imagination. Nothing to do but sort it out with the manager, then. Previously too liminal a place to really consider, Iris peers from behind the pump and really looks at the station for the first time.

‘Hank’s Gas’ is an artifact from Stone Creek, untouched by the gaudy sheen of the city as it now stands. With the obtaining of an Oilsafe franchisement, ‘Hank’s’ midwestern grit has largely been wiped away and replaced with comfortable corporate sterility. The only pure hold-out is the station’s sign, which depicts a caricature of Hank himself on backlit red. A white letter board underneath advertises weekly deals and the two signs turn slowly in opposite directions.

Strange that the letter board’s message ends mid-sentence, this evening. Strange too, that the highway’s lights have not yet returned. For the moment, Hank’s Gas exists as an island of light in the dark, expanding and contracting with the movement of the sign.

Iris shivers to look out at the empty highway. She turns back to Hank’s and watches a man, the only other customer, bang the top of the pump with his fist. She locks her car, realizing too late that the sound will draw his attention. The presence of the young woman seems to embolden the man rather than embarrass him. He kicks dust at the truck and turns to see if she’s smiling.

Iris does smile, politely, and in the pocket of her jacket she maneuvers the car key so that it juts out from her concealed fist.

“Never once happened when Hank owned this place,” the man calls over, “Never had to watch commercials just to pump your gas neither.”

Iris widens her smile so that the light from the canopy shines off her teeth. She says nothing and shrugs.

“I’ll see if someone inside knows how to fix this thing,” the man says, mirroring her shrug, “Name’s Benjie.”

“Nice to meet you, Benjie,” she finally calls back, “I’ll be just behind you.”

As he disappears into the station, Iris relaxes her fist, opens the car again, and checks her phone. No service out here, of course. Low battery. She plugs it into the dash and tosses it onto the passenger seat. In another fifteen minutes it’ll be midnight. Iris allows herself a single deep breath before she follows Benjie inside. As she turns, it seems as though something hovers in her peripheries at the very edge of the rotating sign’s red light. If there had been something there, a deer, maybe, it’s gone by the time the illumination reaches it again. Still, Iris re-situates the key in her hand and walks slowly past Benjie’s pick-up looking for, what? A gun case? A body? It’s surprisingly clean inside, though the ashtray is full and a pillow is wedged behind the passenger seat. The man must spend a lot of time on the road.

Through the station’s wide display windows she can see Benjie inside. He’s pulled up the folding section of the cashier’s counter and he steps behind the register. He brings his hands to his mouth and she hears him call out to the back of the store. Receiving no reply, Benjie eyes the counter curiously. Maneuvering around the truck bed, making sure to keep out of sight, Iris watches as he stares down at the open register. After a moment, he pushes it closed.

“Welcome to Hank’s!” he jokes as Iris steps inside, “I don’t suppose you saw anyone out there before you came in?”

Iris considers what she might have seen in the darkness before answering: “No.”

It’s cool and bright in the store. A ‘wet floor’ sign is propped open near the entrance and a box rests in the center of an aisle. Iris can just make out energy bar cases inside. A small notebook sits on the counter, held open by a cellphone which charges from the computer there.

“Does that say where everyone is?” Iris asks.

“Some kid’s homework,” Benjie replies, turning it around so that Iris can see the numbers there. He absently taps the cellphone and it opens to a password screen. “Funny fuckin’ thing: full register, wide-open when I came in. Good way to get yourself fired.”

“How much money was there?” Iris asks, without thinking.

“Is this a stick-up?” he grins and raises both of his hands.

“No,” she returns his smile again, but it quickly slumps back into a frown. “What’s with this?”

A monitor is mounted over the register and Benjie leans over the counter to see it. The lottery numbers it had been displaying have been relegated to a banner at the bottom. The screen now plays a silent version of the Turnabout commercial, the woman’s head spinning in high definition, strands of her hair floating away in the draft. Benjie reaches up and yanks a cord from its back and the screen flicks immediately to blue. 

“Creeps me the hell out,” he says.

 “I’m Iris,” Iris says, and Benjie takes her hand. The imprint from the key is still fading from her fingers.

“I’m going to toss a twenty on the counter, here, and get the hell out, Iris,” Benjie tells her, “Care to join me?”

Iris leaves ten and only that much because Benjie is so intent on paying. They shake hands again before returning to their vehicles, Iris still cold with vague, unresolved fear. Her dread is confirmed when the car fails to respond to the electronic key. She opens it manually, presses the brake, and turns the ignition.

“Nothing for you neither?”

She screams, though it’s only Benjie again. He’s materialized just outside, his voice muffled by the glass. On the other side of the pump Iris can see the pick-up’s door hanging open. Iris tries the ignition again and takes a deep breath before responding through the window:

“Nothing.”

“There’s a phone inside.”

Benjie waits for Iris to decide whether she would rather stay in the locked car, alone, or accompany him.

“I thought I saw something near the sign, earlier,” she admits, still through the window.

They both look back at the sign, Benjie over the top of the car and Iris from inside.

Nothing there.

Iris unlocks the door and Benjie’s body slams into the car, crumpling beneath the window. The impact shakes the vehicle and Iris screams again, lurches away, realizes the door is unlocked and shifts back to lock it. Nothing stops her. Benjie reappears from the ground, shaking and swearing. He’s pulled a small revolver from somewhere and he holds it out in front of him. His face is bleeding.

There’s nothing there.

“What the hell was that?” he shouts, stepping back toward the car, “What the fuck hit me? Did you see what the hell that was?”

Benjie moves around the pump, leading with the revolver. He reaches around and rubs his back with his left hand. He swears again, quieter now, and tucks the revolver back into his jacket.

“Did you see what did that?” he asks, stepping back to the car.

Iris shakes her head. It was a blur.

“Feels like I got hit with a baseball bat,” Benjie says, reaching behind him again, “I think we ought to get inside, Iris.”

Hands on the steering wheel, Iris begins to weep. She hears Benjie’s voice soften outside.

“All right, now. All right. I don’t know what the hell that was but I think we’re going to be just fine. We’ve just got to-”

Benjie abruptly quiets. Iris sees he’s looking out at the sign again and his hand has moved back into his jacket. Iris looks out the back window and sees nothing.

“All right, Iris,” Benjie says, his voice low and calm, “Let’s head inside real quick.”

“What is it?” she asks, “What did you see?”

“I don’t know,” he says, “But if you saw something and I saw something, chances are there’s something there.”

With another look around, Iris unlocks the car and, together, they hurry back inside. She spins around as soon as the doors close, sure something will have followed them, but the lot is empty. She reaches instinctively for her key and realizes she left it in the ignition.

Benjie is behind the counter again. He picks up the phone there and listens.

“Yep,” he says, “Fuck,” and he slams the receiver down, “Nothing- just as one might fuckin’ expect. You know how to lock that door?”

Iris doesn’t know how to lock automatic sliding doors. She wouldn’t go near them even if she did.

“Why do you have a gun?” she asks, “Are you a cop?”

“Do I look like a cop?” he asks in return, pressing his face up against the window, “You didn’t see anything?”

“I was looking the other way.”

Benjie wipes blood from a gash above his left eyebrow. He’s pulled off his jacket and he hikes up his shirt, trying to see the reflection of his back in the glass cigarette case. The revolver rests in a holster at his side.

“What’s this look like to you?” he asks, and Iris gasps as he turns.

The mark on his back is purple and blue already, a long, raised welt. It’s the perfect silhouette of an arm. Iris takes a picture on her phone and shows him.

“No way someone could do that,” he says, rubbing his back, “Not without breaking their own goddamned hand in the process.”

The handle of the revolver hangs very close to Iris as he leans in. She considers grabbing it, sees herself brandishing the thing and screaming orders. Iris has never held a gun before. She dismisses the thought and lowers the phone. Something moves outside and she scrambles backward, tripping over the box of energy bars. It takes her a moment to realize the screens outside have reactivated. On them, in black and white, a woman is frustrated by her stained tiles.

Benjie offers his hand and pulls her out of the crumpled box.

“Is that yours?” he asks, indicating a small pool of blood underneath the shelf. A boxcutter rests nearby.

“No,” she says, checking her hands, “What’s going on?”

Iris recognizes the low tone of the commercial outside. The woman’s hands have begun to spin.

“Let’s see if we can find out.”

The handle to the backroom sports a keypad but a motorcycle magazine has been wedged between the door and the frame. Benjie motions for Iris to stay back as he approaches, revolver drawn once again. She jumps as he slams it open with his foot.

“Looks clear to me,” he says after a pause.

Inside is a small break room. Employee lockers take up one wall and a desk is pressed against another. A monitor on top of the desk displays a grid, each square the black and white stream from a camera on the property. The only movement is the pulsing light of the sign on the pavement out front. A fire exit with a push bar stands open in front of them. It’s dark and still outside. Another door, near the desk, is closed.

“Don’t!” Iris shouts, but Benjie is already stepping across the room.

He quickly reaches out and pulls the exit closed.

“There’s a car out there,” he says, “Old SUV with its back open. Chances it runs?”

Iris shakes her head.

“I wasn’t about to volunteer to check.”

Benjie holsters the revolver again and tries the second door. Locked.

“Stockroom,” he guesses out loud.

Iris looks nervously over her shoulder, back into the bright store. She can make out the sound of the woman’s hair slapping the floor outside. She sees the screens turn blue.

“Benjie-”

The lights go off again. Iris reaches blindly for the door. She finds the handle and swings it closed until something catches it in the dark, straining against her to keep it open.

“Benjie!” she screams.

Iris jerks backward, slamming the door against the thing over and over. Her fear becomes indignant anger. She won’t be killed in a gas station.

When the lights flicker back on she sees she’s shredded the magazine on the floor. Benjie is standing near the desk. He lowers the revolver, but not before they both understand that she had stood between it and the door. Iris’ hands are trembling. They ache from their grip on the handle.

They stand in silence for several moments, Iris listening through the door (not daring to press her ear to it) and Benjie fiddling with the pistol (slowly turning the chamber with his thumb). There is no sound except for the rattle of the gun and a thin breeze that whistles under the press-bar exit. Benjie’s weight lowering onto the rolling desk-chair is ear-splitting in comparison. They stiffen, again, straining to hear outside. Iris eases the door open. She peers back out into the store and hears the clicking of the coolers as they regain power. Nothing has changed.

The change has already occurred.

The Earth exists in a void. It and the stars hang like dust in an attic, thrown into motion by something incomprehensible- a shudder in the invisible boundary, perhaps, or the meddling of things from the outside. In the tumultuous aftermath, humanity might be forgiven for mistaking the dust around it as representative of the attic dust in total and for mistaking the draft that carries it as representative of all patterns of motion. It might be forgiven for mistaking the attic for infinity or for mistaking the distorted return of its voice in the darkness for an echo and not what it sometimes is: an answer.

An answer breaks upon Millennium City like waves on the beach. The city, like the shore, is familiar but changed.

“It’s going to take a minute for this to boot up,” Benjie says, gesturing to the console, “If we can, uh, rewind, we might be able to see what happened.”

“That’s a good idea,” Iris murmurs, her eyes still on the store. She envies the clarity of mind that allows him to make plans. Must come with the gun.

“Anything out there?” he asks.

“No,” she says, “I’m going to get the knife.”

“I don’t think…”

“Wait here,” she says.

Iris watches the entrance as she steps quietly into the center aisle. She tiptoes to the box and crouches down. She waits for something to happen and, when nothing does, she reaches for the boxcutter. It’s heavy and cold- the kind made of metal, not plastic. Iris extends the blade until it’s a full two inches long.

Through the shelves, she sees a face in the cooler. A woman is there, in the darkness behind the milk, and then she’s gone. Iris topples backward and she hears the chair in the break room overturn. Benjie has reappeared with the revolver.

“What is it?” he growls, “What is it, Iris?”

“There someone in the cooler,” she whispers, “There’s a room back there.”

Benjie crouches and tries to see inside. He taps the glass door with the nose of the gun. The woman inside screams something, her voice too muffled for Iris to make out.

“She says she wants us to go away,” Benjie translates from the crouch, “It’s a walk-in. Probably opens on the stockroom.”

Iris stands and steps over to join him, holding the boxcutter. She can just make out the form of the woman between the bottles. She’s pressed herself into the far corner, shaking from cold or fear. Benjie lifts the gun when Iris cracks the cooler door and, seeing her glare, lowers it only slightly.

“We don’t know what-”

Iris presses her finger to her lips as cold, cloudy air seeps from the door. They both hear the woman whimpering inside.

“Hey,” Iris whispers inside, “We’re not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”

The crying continues and the woman’s body spasms. She makes a noise- something between a hiccup and a groan.

“Hey,” Iris tries again, “I asked you your name.”

The woman jolts again, hiccups, groans, and she whispers back.

“Becca.”

“What’s going on here, Becca?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and she mutters something into the wall that Iris can’t make out.

“I can’t hear you, Becca.”

Becca turns painfully. She’s young, much younger than Iris, and she’s wearing an Oilsafe branded polo. Her face is swollen from crying, her skin pale from cold. She begins to drag herself nearer.

“Can’t you walk?” Iris asks.

Becca shakes her head, shudders, briefly curling in on herself. Something about her is broken, Iris realizes. From this angle, looking from the bright store into the dark cooler, she can’t make out what. Iris reaches between gallons of milk to hold out her hand.

“Come on,” she says.

Becca straightens and continues to pull herself over the floor.

Iris hears the air curtain activate as the automatic door at the front of the station slides open. Benjie’s attention had been focused on the cooler. He looks up quickly, straightens the gun.

“What is it?” Iris whispers, “What do you see?”

“There’s nothing there,” Benjie whispers back, “There’s nothing.”

Becca’s hand reaches Iris. She feels their fingertips touch, feels Becca grip her finger as she seizes. The sudden motion breaks something in Iris’ hand. Pain shoots up her arm and she jerks backward. Becca’s groan becomes a wail. She begins screaming.

“Leave me alone!” she shouts, crawling back into the dark.

The cooler door closes and muffles everything that follows.

“Are you all right?” Benjie asks, seeing Iris pull away. The gun swings wildly between the cooler and the front door, “What happened?”

Iris is holding her hand against her chest, trying to stifle the pain. When she summons the courage to look down at it, she sees her index finger is twisted so far around she seems to be pointing back at herself. She clenches her fist and the broken finger bends away from her palm, digging into the back of her hand. Iris relaxes and her fingers straighten.

“That’s dislocated,” Benjie says, glancing down, “Get into the break room and we’ll set it.”

In his hurry to watch the door he doesn’t see that the finger is still turning. It completes a slow circle and settles back into place. When Iris closes her hand again she feels no pain. She swallows and stands, remembering at the last moment to retrieve the boxcutter. They retreat into the break room together and close the door behind them.

“Let me see your hand,” Benjie says, setting the revolver on the desk.

“It’s fine,” she says, “It’s not as bad as it looked.”

“Squeeze my thumb,” he says, holding out his own hand, “Quite the grip you still have there. Any pain?”

Iris shakes her head. She fights back an urge to wrench his thumb out of place, the thought flaring suddenly and dissipating just as quickly.

“What’s that?” she asks, pointing at the computer, “Where’s that camera aimed?”

The security system has rebooted and the monitor reveals a figure outside the station. It seems to hover in place, turning slowly just above the ground, as though suspended by fishline. Its features are blurred.

Benjie puts his finger to his lips and points at a vehicle in the frame: an SUV. A small telescope stands on a tripod near its open back, dangling a cord. The figure is floating in the parking space, just outside the push-bar exit.

The two of them stand still and watch the monitor as several minutes pass. Iris examines her finger. Though it looks fine, now, she knows it can’t be- not after having turned around as it did. She looks up, to make sure Benjie’s eyes remain on the screen, and she tries to twist it back the way it came. It turns easily and without pain but she balks at the disfigurement and Benjie looks over at the sound of Iris gagging. He misattributes her fear to the thing on the monitor and is emboldened again. He gestures to the door with the revolver and, once more, gives the sign for quiet. Iris renews her grip on the box-cutter.

Positioned at the door, Benjie slowly lowers into a stoop and cocks his head, listening. He holds his fingers near the gap, pauses thoughtfully, and straightens again. There’s nothing new on his face when he looks back at Iris, only warning.

Be ready.

Iris locks the blade in place.

Benjie huffs, shudders, and stretches his neck side-to-side. He leans lightly on the bar, huffs again, and throws himself against it. It swings open and then slams shut in the blink of an eye, sending Benjie staggering back into the break room. Iris screams. She turns back to the monitor to confirm what seems impossible without realizing Benjie isn’t finished. She watches it live, this time. Benjie slams the door into the floating figure and it stutters, its arm at a broken angle across the metal. It’s a man. He stumbles violently onto the hood of the SUV, rolls across, and is spinning again. The twisted elbow straightens with the speed of his rotation. Soon he’s a blur and, soon after, his form seems to stabilize. The man’s revolutions have aligned with the shutter speed of the camera watching him. It shouldn’t be possible.

Benjie enters the frame and shakes Iris from her paralysis. He’s holding the gun sideways like they sometimes do on TV. He fires once, misses, aims, and fires again. Benjie recoils as blood streaks across the pavement, black on the monitor. The spinning man’s form stutters again before spiraling off-screen. Iris hears Becca’s muffled screaming. She must recognize the gunshots.

Benjie stumbles back into the break room from outside, pulling the door closed with his left hand. He’s buried his face in the crook of his right elbow, wiping blood from his eyes. Iris sees he’s holding the revolver upside-down, now.

No.

Benjie’s hand is twisted like her finger was. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“Where’d it go?” he asks, “Tell her to stop it with the noise.”

Becca’s screaming is louder, now. In another section of the monitor, Iris sees that several shelves of soda have fallen from the cooler and roll across the floor outside. The spinning man is gone. As Benjie leans in to study the screen, Iris hears a sound like her father’s teeth grinding. She watches his hand rotate back into place, just inches from her own. He holsters the revolver when the hilt taps the surface of the desk and rubs his nose with the free hand.

Nothing moves on the screen.

“What’d all that look like to you?” Benjie asks, “The thing out there’s a blur.”

“It’s a man,” Iris says, “Spinning like the woman in the commercial.”

“Can’t be.”

“It is,” Iris insists, “What do you think you’ve got on you?”

Benjie looks down at his clothes, splattered angry crimson.

And on your face,” Iris says, and Benjie slams his fist on the table.

“Shut up!” he shouts at Becca, screaming in the store, but Iris knows he means her, too. He kicks the lockers, swipes a mug and a stack of paper off the table. There are keys underneath.

“Maybe there’s a bathroom in there,” Iris suggests, gesturing to the locked stockroom, “Maybe you can convince her to calm down.”

The screaming is getting to her, too. Benjie takes up the keys and shuffles through them as he stomps to the door. Iris looks over the camera streams: nothing new.

“What do you think, Iris?” Benjie asks, “You think you can rewind those things?”

“We’ll lose the cameras.”

“We need to know what’s doing this.”

“I told you,” she says, “It’s like the commercial.”

“And I told you-”

Click.

The stockroom opens.

Benjie reaches into his jacket again, the revolver an afterthought, as though he hadn’t expected any of the keys to work. The open door is one less filter between them and Becca’s raw-throated screams. Benjie reaches into the room and a light pops on. He opens the door wide and Iris can see a very normal store room, though a stack of boxes have overturned and expelled candy across the floor. When he moves to step inside, Iris watches his foot turn smoothly, rotating at the ankle until it’s pointed back at the lockers behind them both. He falls forward.

“Are you okay?” Iris asks.

Hearing him grunt an affirmative, Iris wheels the desk chair nearer the door. He’s sitting, cradling the ankle. The foot is pointing the right way again but it’s clearly hurting him.

“What the hell did I trip on?” he asks, mostly to himself, “Feels like a sprain.”

Iris shakes her head, slowly, and begins to wheel back to the desk: “I’m going to see what started this,” she says, “Let it rest for a moment.”

“Already feeling better…” he admits, and she can hear him shuffling about the spilled candy around the corner.

Iris spends a moment familiarizing herself with the security UI before she finds the archival footage. The stream is laid out in tiny sample frames; she selects one and finds it’s a scene from the week before. Too far. She tries again, overshoots to an empty store with soda bottles spilling from the cooler. She uses the wheel on the mouse to roll it back- slow at first and then faster, faster.

Movement catches her eye. She sees herself and Benjie in the store, recalls their friendly banter. She watches Benjie consider the open register and recognizes her own form lurking behind his truck . Iris spins the wheel quickly again. She scrolls back past her arrival. It’s a weekday, late- the store had been empty for some time before all this started.

Another spin and a man is sitting on the stool behind the register, tapping on his phone. He gestures to the screen above him without looking up; his lips move excitedly though the screen appears black. A young woman, Becca, is crouched in the center of the store near the box of energy bars. She is frozen, there. Iris recognizes the boxcutter in her hands and instinctively reaches for it on the desk. Becca is staring at the man from between the shelves. After a moment, he cocks his head, as though confused by something on the screen. The Turnabout commercial replaces the darkness on the screen and his head continues to turn until he’s looking out the window, into the empty pumps. It doesn’t stop. The man’s head rotates, slowly, so that his gaze passes across the cigarette display behind him, back up, around, and down the other way. It stops short of a full rotation. He’s staring at Becca, now.

The man stands so suddenly the stool overturns.

Becca screams again from the cooler. In the footage she’s raised her hands up, is gesturing as though to calm the man down. He walks around the counter and positions himself so that he’s standing over her. They’re arguing, but if there’s a setting to play back audio, Iris doesn’t know where it is. The man throws his hands in the air, gesturing angrily. Becca falls backward into a sitting position, just like Iris had. The man offers his hand, which begins to turn at the wrist. He’s still shouting. Becca remembers the boxcutter, slashes his palm. The man rotates at the waist like a tangled marionette, his head stable, his eyes on Becca. As his body completes the turn, his hand comes down on the boxcutter, knocking it under the shelf. His body spasms, collapses in a twisted heap. Becca tries to crawl away but he grabs her ankle and twists it backward.

Iris doesn’t want to see any more. She presses down on the mouse but nothing happens. Her fingers miss it entirely- they’ve each rotated around now, her spiraled fingerprints turned to face her. When she tries to clutch the mouse they curl backward into the top of her hand. She hears the boxcutter drop onto the desk to her left as the fingers of that hand begin to turn as well.

On screen, Becca has pulled herself from the collapsed man, who now lies spasming on the tile. Becca’s twisted ankle turns round and round as she makes her way to the break room, looking to Iris like the near-idling propeller of a motorboat. The man continues to spin and break on the tile, the movements quick and violent.

“All well in there?” Benjie calls from the store room, “Anything on the tapes?”

He’s found a sink- water is running inside.

“Fine,” Iris says, made curt by a stifled sob, “Just a second.”

She begins to work on her fingers, pinning them one at a time between her elbow and the desk and turning her hand. Some re-position easily; others turn with pins-and-needles. By the time she’s straightened her second hand some of the fingers on the first have begun to rotate again. She sits on her left hand and works the right with her teeth instead. The man on the screen has risen, the rate of his revolution fooling the camera into thinking he hardly moves at all. His form shifts toward the front door.

Something bangs on the push-bar exit, suddenly, hard and constant like the slapping tentacles of an automatic car wash. Iris twists around to see and she realizes at once that her head has turned without her body. She reaches up into her hair and drags it back into place just as Benjie rounds the corner. He fires twice at the door, denting the metal and momentarily deafening the two. When their ears stop ringing, the pounding is gone. Even Becca is silent now.

Benjie turns to look at Iris and she waits for him to scream. There must be some part of her out of place, some limb twisted backward like an abused doll.

“What’d you find?” he asks.

They scroll backward through the video again. Iris gives him the short version and, though he tells her he wants to watch it himself, he changes his mind quickly the moment things go bad.

“Go back further,” he says.

Further back than that, the man behind the register is absent, again. They find him in another feed, kneeling at the telescope behind the SUV. He’s connected it to his phone and he leans over the screen, as though trying to see something barely visible. He looks up at the sky, suddenly, squinting with confusion. His eyes go wide, then, and his head spins gleefully. When it stops, he scribbles something in his notebook and returns to the register, already talking excitedly to Becca who stocks energy bars from the floor. She isn’t afraid, yet, Iris sees. She’s bored.

“Well this has been a whole fuckloada’ help,” Benjie growls, “Can you put the cameras back on?”

When she does, they see the spinning man hovering in the store.

Benjie turns, falls again, heaves himself up against the table and steps toward the door. Iris feels her heart thudding inside her chest. She watches her index finger begin to twist again, wills it to stop and finds, to her surprise, that it does.

“Benjie,” she says, “I think it gets worse when we’re afraid.”

“What gets worse?”

“The turning,” she says, “The spinning.”

“What are you talking about?” he says. The man can barely stand: “Not now!”

“Calm down,” she whispers, “Just sit.”

Benjie slumps to the floor, his legs sprawled out in front of him. They twist at the knees and the ankles and he groans, looks away.

“Just sit for a second,” Iris says again, “It’s happening to both of us.”

Benjie whimpers, staring up at the underside of the table. He tries to cover it with a cough.

“Becca must see him out there,” Iris says, “It’s why she stopped screaming.”

Benjie doesn’t immediately respond and she lets the man gather himself, keeping an eye on the screen. Iris looks around when she notices a rhythmic clicking- Benjie turning the chamber of the revolver with his thumb. He notes her attention and speaks again:

“Only two bullets left,” he says, “Didn’t imagine I’d need more than six when I left this morning.”

“That’s six more than me.”

“Fat load of good it’s done us.”

Iris sees the pumps have begun to play the Turnabout commercial again. She tenses and then reminds herself to relax.

“The lights are going to go out again soon,” she tells Benjie, and he sits up under the table, knocking his head against the underside, “We need to stay calm when it happens or this will get worse.”

“What the hell’s this, Iris?” Benjie checks his legs, confirms that they’ve straightened, “What the hell’s happening to us?”

“I don’t know,” she says, “I think we need to talk to Becca. We need to see if they’ve got some alarm we can press to get the police or if she knows of a way out of here or… or if she knows anything more than we do. About the spinning man or the commercial. We don’t know anything at all.”

The lights go out and without the ambient whirring of the station’s equipment they can hear the man spinning in the store, the sound of his limbs buzzing through the air and the constant raindrop patter of blood. Benjie has the revolver in hand again, she can hear him turning the chamber in the dark. Iris quietly determines that she won’t sit through another cycle of this. She’ll be gone by the time the lights go out again, even if it means running.

The lights come on again and Iris chokes. Benjie’s body is a twisted mess under the table, his limbs pointing every which way, his head turned impossibly to look in the direction of the door. He thumbs the chamber again, cranes the broken neck further.

“Seems like it can’t get in here,” he says.

He doesn’t know.

Iris quickly checks her feet and, seeing they are correctly pointed, she stands and turns the corner into the stockroom. She’s closed the door before Benjie has time to react. She locks it.

“Iris what…” he begins, but the rest of the thought is lost.

When Iris was 14 her father’s company was contracted to a site not far from her school. She would walk by afterward and wave and sometimes he would take a break so they could sit on the fence and share a bag of chips and talk. They were interrupted, one day, by men shouting. One man’s voice rose above the rest- a gruff cry of pain that quickly became raw and high and constant. She later understood that a machine had overturned and spilled hot tar on the man. He’d survived, recovered even, with stiff, mottled scarring along the right half of his body. But Iris could never bring herself to return to the site, even when her friends would get ice cream in the little strip mall that bloomed there. She remembered the anguish in the man’s voice each time she smelled the sun-softened asphalt of the new parking lot.

Benjie’s screams are like that.

Iris tries to talk to him through the door, she tries to remind him to stay calm, but he screams and crashes about in the break room. She’s sure he doesn’t hear a thing she’s saying. He calls out to her. The gun goes off again. More screaming, more thrashing and then an impact on the door that separates them. The handle shakes wildly and Iris wonders grimly what parts of him spin. Does his hand twist about the knob? Does it anchor him to the door while his body whirls? She doesn’t think he’ll have the wherewithal to remember the key and, if he does, she doubts his body will allow him the discipline to use it.

Iris steps backward and turns to face the cooler door. She doesn’t know if Benjie will calm or if he’ll become like the first man. She doesn’t know if he’ll be able to get through the door. In terms of what might help her in this moment, she knows next to nothing. Iris swallows the thought and steadies herself, hearing the enamel-grind of her joints. She closes her eyes and wills her body straight and when she opens them, she walks to the cooler.

Becca has crawled back into a far corner, behind several boxes of ice cream, and in the dimness there it’s difficult to see what shape her body takes. Light from the store shines in over the shelves, casting shadows like rows of pointed teeth. Through their wide grin she sees the spinning man for the first time. It’s just as Benjie described, a blur, but each time she blinks her eyes are able to catch some new part of the person inside- a hand, an eye, the design on the Oilsafe polo. The man’s skin is red and swollen, his blood forced to the extremities.

Iris moves to the back wall of the cooler, crouches instinctively near a crate of eggs. Seeing that the man outside pays her no mind, she steps quietly to Becca.

“Hey,” she whispers, “It’s me.”

No response.

 “Becca,” she tries again.

 The girl’s body clenches tightly and then releases. Iris can hear her panting, can see the fog of her breath rising from the corner. When she answers, finally, it’s in a normal speaking voice:

“I’m sorry I did that to you.”

Iris looks out at the store but the red blur remains stationary. It might not hear them over the cooler’s engine. It might not care.

“You didn’t mean to.”

“What happened to your dad?”

Anger flares in Iris suddenly. And grief. Becca speaks again before she has a chance to respond:

“Why did he have a gun?”

She means Benjie. Iris rests her face in her hands.

“That was just a man,” she says, through her fingers, “He was getting gas like me when all this happened. Who’s that outside?”

“Diego. He works here.”

“Do you know why he’s-”

Becca seizes hard. Her back arches and the upper half of her torso completes several rotations. Her hands are at her face, knuckles scraped raw from the floor. Iris expects her to scream again but she gasps for air, slows her breathing. She’s figured it out too.

“Diego’s the asshole kind of nerd,” she says, answering the question Iris had only begun to ask, “Thinks he’s better than the rest of us. Brings his telescope out here because there aren’t so many lights. Doesn’t do shit. He said he made a discovery tonight. Says he’s going to be famous, now.” Becca braces herself for another rotation, hiccups, and relaxes again. “I think he knows we’re in here.”

Iris leaps backward just before Diego’s hands make contact with the cooler door. It rattles in its frame for a few seconds before shattering entirely, spilling tiny shards of broken glass across the floor. Sodas topple over the back of the shelf; several split on impact and a spray catches Iris in the face. She gropes, blindly, finding the back wall where it shouldn’t be, finding that, as long as she stands still, her legs hardly support her weight.

Spinning, she thinks, I’m spinning.

Iris collapses on the floor, the world turning too fast to process. She closes her eyes to keep from feeling sick, worries distantly about the broken glass all around her. The sound of Diego’s limbs among the shelves is deafening- it’s impossible to know whether he’s getting closer.

A voice reaches her through the tumult:

“Calm down,” Becca whispers, “Calm down.”

Iris feels the girl squeeze her shoulder, the hand an anchor amid chaos. She narrows her focus to that touch and begins to steady herself. She feels the world slowing beneath her, the onset of scrapes and bruising across her body.

Then, a gunshot, and Becca’s touch goes limp. A voice rises above the clatter.

“Stand up, Iris. We needa’ get out of here.”

Iris opens her eyes in time to see Benjie throw the empty revolver into the maelstrom at the shelves, to see him duck and swear as it’s swatted harmlessly back at him. Diego’s body is in a wretched state, broken by his inability to knock down the shelves, torn on glass and twisted metal. What’s left of him still spins.

Becca’s body is finally still. One of her hands rests on Iris’ shoulder, the other is frozen in the process of reaching out. She bleeds, slightly, from the bullet wound.

Iris is wrenched off the floor. She stumbles out of Benjie’s grasp and catches herself near the door, turning back with a motion that she realizes isn’t at all natural.

“She was fine!” Iris screams, “She was calm!”

“Iris-”

“You killed her!” she shouts, her accusing finger aimed squarely at Benjie, even as she turns at the wrist.

“Stop!” Benjie shouts back. His hands are at his ears but his head rotates out from under them.

Iris tries to stop and finds she can’t. She remembers Becca’s touch but struggles to recall the calm it imparted. The girl is dead, the man that killed her screaming over the body. Benjie’s words are difficult to understand now, his head is spinning on his shoulders and he stumbles toward Diego, hands outstretched. Iris parses them only as she slips out the cooler door:

“I can see him, Iris! I can see him!”

Iris has lost the knife but it doesn’t matter. She’s determined to run. She bursts out of the push-bar door and into the clear night, her heart beating wildly in her chest. She makes a left and sees the glow of Millennium City over the hills. It’s a straight shot and Iris is a runner. Diego and Benjie will wrestle and she will run and be far away by the time either notices.

Her phone- she remembers her phone charging in the passenger seat of the car.

Iris finds herself turning another quick left to loop around the station. It’s miles to Millennium City but, past the turn in the foothills, she’ll be in signal range again. She’ll call for help. Iris spies the red glow of the sign, sees the open door of her car. She plots a wide arc around them both in case Diego’s made his way outside again- in case Benjie is like Diego now. Better to run wide and swoop in once the coast is clear. Better stay on the move.

Diego’s bloody spinning has slowed inside; he stands with his broken limbs held wide, hardly moving beneath her own blurred reflection in the display windows. Benjie’s nowhere to be seen, maybe still in the freezer with Becca. The thought of him standing over the dead girl is infuriating. Her heart beats angrily behind her eyes.

She’s forgotten the phone, entirely.

The thought is replaced, instead, with fear that passing this way will expose the direction of her retreat. She makes a hasty move, another left, back around, between the pump and her car. Make them think she’s running the opposite way. She slams her hand against the car door on the way through, doesn’t notice the glass shatter. Hardly feels it.

Iris worries, instead, whether or not they will see her through the pumps. Whether they will take the bait.

Better be sure.

Another left- a quick counter-clockwise circle in the parking lot will throw them off. Left and left again- she’s hardly tired at all. She could do this all night. A third and fourth left. A tight circle to throw them off.

A few more turns and then: the city.