The Closing Shift

Easton Cluck

Flagship Theaters always had a reputation for being dingy. Not all of them were necessarily bad: I heard that our theaters in California were really nice. But at the very least, our town’s theater was always horrible. We never actually had any food we advertised, and if we did, you could almost always assume that it was a day away from expiring. 

And you’d expect the popcorn to be good, right? It was a movie theater—our fundamental food was popcorn. But, of course, our kettles always slightly messed up the popcorn: batches were always either a little overcooked and burnt, or horribly undercooked and seeped with popping oil. We usually just mixed the batches together and prayed the customers wouldn’t complain. They usually did.

Even beyond the subpar food, the building itself was falling apart. The auditoriums (of which we housed 10) were barely functioning, and every day there was a customer complaining about their shitty experience in our theater. Auditorium 5 had a blown out speaker, our projectors in Auditoriums 7 and 8 had more dead pixels than a broken TV, the house lights couldn’t even turn off in Auditorium 2, and we never spoke about Auditorium 9. People say that auditorium was a monument to how colossally fucked up our theater was. I had never gone inside—a manager told me it was best to keep it locked up—but I’ve heard rumors.

The first rumor I heard was from Martin; an employee who’s worked here for six years now, four more than me. He told me that Auditorium 9 is where the leadership team (our shift leaders, supervisors, and managers) would go for casual sex. He said during his dead shifts, he would just stare at the doors to the auditorium, and every once in a while, a manager would unlock the three massive padlocks on the doors and slip inside, and another manager, or supervisor, or leader would follow behind about two minutes later. It wasn’t exactly believable: Martin had a tendency to lie, and that was evident based on the fact that Auditorium 9 had been locked up for good two years before he even came here. Plus, he was pretty perverted anyways, so that’s probably just what he wanted to be behind the locked doors.

Alyssa had her own theories, of course: whenever I worked concessions with her she always had ideas she liked to pitch to me. Maybe that’s where they keep lost items from the theaters, or maybe they store tons and tons of drugs in that auditorium and the managers were drug mules, or maybe, just maybe, the theater was so horrendously not up to code that the managers thought it would be better to shut it down.

And of course the managers never said anything about it. They never talked about Auditorium 9, unless it was to tell new workers that that auditorium was “off limits.” They had to go through that spiel a lot, because we had a strangely high turnover rate and seemed to be getting new workers every week. The only time they seemed to care about what was being said was when they pulled together an emergency team meeting to force us to stop talking about it. Customers would overhear and get freaked out, they said.

Still, that didn’t stop anyone. Everyone still walked around with their theories, whispering claims that this is true or I know I’m right, and backed up their reasoning with false evidence they could never truly verify.

I pulled the tray of half-cooked pretzel bites out of the oven. The pretzel bites always sucked to make—something about the oven was broken and it wouldn’t heat anything properly, so if you stuck them in once, they would be undercooked, but if you put them in twice, then they’d be burnt and inedible. So we usually just cooked them once, unless we were really pissed off at the customer.

As I drizzled some butter on top of them, my earpiece crackled to life as a manager spoke into it. “Curtis, we need you on clean-up duty. Go help the ushers in Auditorium 5.”

I groaned, pulling the plastic gloves off my hands and chucking them in the trash. 

“And don’t grunt about it either.”

I stopped for a second, staring at the shut manager’s office across the hall. I unclipped the small mic from my shirt, inspecting it. I didn’t think I pressed the button.

I ducked behind concessions into the back storage room, making my way past the rows and rows of small, rusting walk-in freezers that smelled like rotten meat, shouldering through the cluttered boxes of popcorn bags, until finally I made it to The Cage.

The Cage was a massive maze of tunnels and rooms that seemed to constantly change if you didn’t pay close enough attention. New employees have gotten lost in The Cage so many times that it was a bad omen for a newbie to walk in alone, since it was rumored that some new hires never came out again. And we called it The Cage because it was all contained behind one single chain link fence with a door that needed ten locks to be considered properly shut. 

I wrapped both hands around the pole of the door and pushed all of my weight into my front foot as I tried to open the rusted gate. I let myself relax for a second and kept pushing the door in short bursts, to which it slowly crept open, each inch giving in with a devastating squeal.

Thankfully I didn’t have to navigate the maze today. I was just looking for an extra broom and dustpan, which we had an abundance of in one of the first hallways of The Cage. So I grabbed what I needed and quickly ran out of there, not wanting to stay any longer than I needed to. I just wanted to clean the auditorium and go back to what I was doing.

I stepped into the auditorium, and immediately the thick smell of sweat, alcohol, and Doritos filled my nose. Just from the nauseating scent I could tell who was ushering, and my assumption was confirmed when Cody’s greasy face popped up from one of the rows of seats in the front of the room. His jet black hair was covered in sweat and was plastered to his forehead.

“Curtis!” He exclaimed, his words slurring a little. “How are you doing, buddy?”

Cody always showed up to work either drunk or high—usually both. He was never fired somehow, even though he would throw up every time he got a whiff of alcohol as he passed our bar. But then again, I don’t know if the managers even know who Cody was. He was just some nameless loser who did his job haphazardly. Still, he was doing his job, so that’s why they kept him.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked, deciding to ignore his initial question.

He looked around, realizing he was alone for the first time. He only shrugged in response.

I sighed and started to climb the stairs to the back of the auditorium. As I walked I glanced at each of the rows; all relatively clean, save for the occasional spilled drink or tipped over popcorn bucket. In row N, I saw a used diaper laying on the ground. I rolled the dustpan up to the diaper and hesitated. Up closer now, I saw that it was much too big to fit a baby. I tried not to think about it as I quickly swept it up.

It wasn’t even the first time I saw something like that in an auditorium. Diapers, used condoms, underwear, Whippets, which I didn’t even know what that was before Andy had to explain it to me. 

That wasn’t even a third of the weird stuff we’d see when cleaning. Jo claimed she saw a syringe with some liquid remnant in it. Remnant of what? She didn’t know, and said she didn’t think she wanted to know. 

That was just one of the millions of cons of working at a movie theater. It was gross all the time; people spilling everything everywhere, crushed popcorn always being stuck on the soles of your shoes, food rotting in the garbages that were always slick with grease and drinks that spilled over the edge, and the sticky floors. God, the floors. The stairs weren’t bad, because they were carpeted. But stepping into a row? It was practically like walking on glue. It didn’t matter how much someone swept and mopped the floor—it was always sticky, and it seemed to get worse each and every day.

Cody loudly belched, causing me to jump and stare at him.

He had finished pulling the dripping wet garbage bag out of the can, and was in the middle of placing it inside another bag so it didn’t drip everywhere. There were two similar bags sitting on the floor. “I’m gonna throw the trash in the cart; you cool with finishing this one?” Cody asked.

I just stared at him. Of course I wasn’t okay with finishing the theater—I wasn’t even scheduled on ushering today. It was Cody’s responsibility, and if he wasn’t so drunk and incompetent, he would have finished the theater earlier. And where the hell were the other ushers? Surely he wasn’t scheduled alone, because there was no way anything would get clean if it was just him. So knowing all that, I said:

“Sure.”

“Great man, thanks!”

I clenched my jaw and turned my attention back to the floor. I didn’t even realize how far I had gotten—all that was left was three more rows, and sweeping the stairs. It wasn’t that bad, then. And it wasn’t for the most part. My skin felt raw and itchy every time I peeled my feet off the floor to walk, but that was normal at this point. I just couldn’t think about it or else I’d feel like I was suffocating. So, I didn’t.

Until I reached the final row. A small litter of something on the opposite end of the row glinted in the yellow glow of artificial light, and, curious, I walked to it. As I got closer and closer, and the shapes defined themselves more, I knew what they were. It was a gut instinct that I hoped was wrong but, based on that gut, it said I was right.

So I bent down next to the clutter of teeth, staring. I didn’t know what to do. My head said leave, but my gut said to pick it up. And my gut’s been pretty right so far, so I went for it.

As soon as I grabbed a molar between my thumb and forefinger, I realized what I was doing. I freaked out for a second and almost let go of it, but my gut said to continue. So I lifted the tooth from the floor (with some difficulty, as it stuck pretty well), but soon it was free and in my fingers. Slowly I rotated it around, inspecting the enamel carefully. I didn’t know why I was doing it, I think my brain understood that it was a pile of teeth, but something inside of me was telling me that maybe I was wrong.

But I wasn’t. So I grabbed the mic and lifted it to my mouth.

“Hey, guys? There’s a, uh … a lotta teeth on the ground.”

No response.

Finally I heard a small click and some crackling. Someone finally acknowledged me. “Are they human?”

I thought for a second before responding. “Probably.”

A pause. “Oh. Are they yours?”

I felt my tongue absently run across the ridges of my teeth, almost doubting myself for a second. “Can you just get a manager? Or someone?”

“I don’t know where any of them are.”

“... Can you look for one?” No response.

I sighed and turned off the mic. That was usually how it went—someone had an issue, needed the leadership team, called a leader, no answer. I think the only time a leader actually spoke over the radio was to scold someone.

So I just did what I thought was best. I tossed the tooth back on the floor, stood up, and pried the teeth off of the sticky floor with the lip of my dustpan and pushed them in. 

With that, the theater was done. The teeth were in the dustpan, rapidly making their way to the garbage behind concessions, and I was done thinking about them.

I wasn’t.

As I scrubbed my hands in the utility sink, I kept thinking about them. Whose were they? Were they pulled out or did they just kind of … fall out? Was it the same person’s teeth? If it was one person’s teeth, that would kind of suck. There were about 15 teeth in the pile.

I grabbed a paper towel to dry my hands off before stepping up to my register and calling for the next customer.

The next day of work was just as bad. I was scheduled as a closing usher, which was better than a midday usher, as that was when the theater was busiest; but even a midday usher was much better than an opening one, who would usually have to open with Cody.

But the closing usher was nice. All you had to do was clock on, clean, then leave after a few hours. No sudden trash compactor visits when the cart is inevitably overflowing, and no Cody. It was pretty easy, especially considering that the managers would schedule the most ushers to close, so it was much easier to split the work and finish auditoriums quickly.

But today’s closing shift sucked. The managers scheduled three other people to work with me—Maddy, Jason, and Chloe, who are arguably some of the most annoying, yet most efficient workers we have—but none of them showed up, and none of them bothered to call the theater. But one person offered to fill in for one of the ushers.

It was Cody.

So not only did I have to usher for a second day in a row, but it was with Cody.

He decided to get high before work today, so the rank stench of weed filled every room he walked in. It was so potent, I couldn’t even smell the trash cans as we walked by them. I would be thankful for that, but the smell of Cody plus the smell of his weed was enough to make someone lose their sense of smell.

He tried talking to me today, but I didn’t want to deal with it. I pulled my earbud case out of my pocket and pulled one of them out, putting it in one ear. I’d take out the other one, but:

“Curtis.” I had the radio on me again. “No music.”

I flinched a little and looked up to the ceiling. There were no cameras in any of the auditoriums, so how did they know? I was looking all around the ceiling for some kind of camera, or even if anyone was in the projector booth, and turned around to make sure a leader wasn’t lurking around, but there was no one.

Regardless, I didn’t want to push my luck, so I took the earbud out and put it away again before heading for the first row. Cody, instead of heading for the very front seats of the theater, as was custom for any ushers working together, he decided to tail behind me with his dustpan and broom, absently sweeping the floor even though I already swept it.

Finally, after 10 minutes I couldn’t stand it. Cody was senselessly blabbering about whatever stupid thing I didn’t care enough to pay attention to, and I was just about done with his musty smell emitting from him like an aura. I whipped myself around suddenly and jumped at how close he was to me. He was less than a foot away, which explained why I felt so nauseous.

“Can you please just do your job?” I begged, taking a step away from him and immediately stepping on something crunchy.

He stared at me stupidly. “I am,” he answered, lifting his dustpan and broom to show me.

I grabbed the bottom of the dustpan (which was somehow wet) and tipped it over. Nothing came out of it.

“No, you’re not. Go clean.” I pointed to the front of the auditorium, and Cody finally realized that I was getting pissed off at him. So, he sullenly stumbled his way to the front of the room to finally start cleaning.

Somehow, as we were close to finishing the auditorium, the same thing happened.

“Hey … hey Curtis.”

I didn’t look up at him.

“I’m taking the trash out to the cart. Don’t wait for me.”

Goddamnit.

Once again I was left with the last few rows of seats. Thankfully, this theater hadn’t been so bad—the movie that let out was Podex, which was some pompous indie film that only interested snobby, self-proclaimed film critics who don’t actually criticize film but instead criticize the films you like. The film exuded that kind of tone. But we didn’t have many assholes like that in this town, so there was minimal mess. However, you could still see where each person was sitting because the chairs would have a halo of litter and crumbs around it.

But as I was approaching the final row, I was getting nervous. I didn’t know why (which was a lie; my gut knows everything), but I started to feel shaky. The plastic broom in my hand felt heavy as my grip on it tightened. My skin was raw and itchy even though I was on the carpeted step. It felt like the enamel was rotting off of all my teeth.

I could hear a crackle of static in my left ear. “Proceed,” the voice commanded.

I started, and went to grab the mic, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see the radio. The indicator light wasn’t flashing. My radio was off.

I paused. Was this finally it? Was I going insane? Off my goddamn rocker? Did this theater finally make me fucking bonkers?

I didn’t think I wanted to know the answer. But there was a question I did want the answer to. What the hell was waiting for me in the last row?

The radio buzzed to life again, but this time I looked down to it. Still, the light was not flashing. “Proceed,” the voice said, louder this time.

I walked up a step. Nothing happened.

So I stepped up one more. I was on the final row, and I didn’t want to look at the floor. But I did. I took a deep breath, and looked down at the floor and found—

Nothing, actually. For the back row, it was actually pretty clean. That didn’t stop the floors from sticking to my feet like tar as I walked across the aisle.

There were a few stray crumbs here and there, and I swept them up happily. I didn’t care anymore that Cody left me to clean the theater.

Cody.

His offensive aura came flooding back into my nose suddenly and I gagged. It was so overwhelming, it was as if my nose was planted directly into a pile of his dirty laundry. I coughed and covered my nose and mouth in my arm, but that didn’t stop from the tangy, putrid odor from attacking me.

As I was approaching the end of the row, the smell was growing more and more potent.

Under one of the seats, I saw something. Peeking out from under seat 22 was the corner of a Ziploc bag. I almost didn’t think anything of it—people snuck in snacks all the time—but I knew something wasn’t right.

I slowly reached the broom out to push it out from under the seat, and I could see just how bad my hands were shaking. After about a minute of hyping myself up, I placed the broom behind the bag and pulled it forward.

I didn’t know what it was at first. It looked like raw meat, but I doubt anyone would bring an uncooked slab of steak to snack on during a show.

I crouched down to look at it, but I kept a bit more of a distance this time. And as I crouched down, the rancid smell of Cody hit me like a train. The smell assaulted my nose so badly that I thought I lost my vision for a second. I gagged again, but I could feel bile simmering in the back of my throat.

I looked back at the mystery meat bag. It was kind of hard to see—blood was smeared all around the inside of the bag, and it looked like some kind of fungus was starting to grow on it.

I went to turn on my radio, but when I went to turn the dial on, my earpiece warned me that I was turning the volume too high. I looked back down to my waist where my radio lay, and the light was flashing again. I hadn’t turned it on after the voice spoke to me.

“Guys …?” I said quietly, almost afraid that something would happen to me if I spoke too loud. “I really need some help in here.”

As expected, I was met with silence. My throat tightened a little, and my heart skipped a beat.

“Please,” I said, more urgent this time. “I need help. Can someone get a manager? O-Or a leader? Anyone who can help me right now.”

Still, nothing. I felt my breathing quicken, but I no longer felt in control of my body. Before I realized it, I started reaching my hand out to the bag and I touched it.

It was tender. When I tried to pick it up, the meat tore apart with barely any pressure applied to it.

Something trickled onto me and I jolted, immediately throwing the bag back down. The impact caused the bag to tear and some of the meat was jostled out of the bag. Suddenly the blood started to ooze onto the floor.

I looked down to my hand and saw the same blood staining my palm.

My stomach lurched and my entire body was telling me to move. My throat was stuck and the only thing I knew I could do was vomit.

Within a second I was halfway down the stairs. I could feel my body convulse as my stomach tried to expel any food left in me, and I had to clamp my non-stained hand over my mouth as I dashed through the lobby and towards the bathroom.

The glaring white lights nearly blinded me as I stumbled into the nearest stall, slamming the door open and immediately falling to my knees.

I don’t remember if I threw up or not. I only remember how my heart felt like it was being squeezed, and that every breath I took was shorter than the last. My body shook as I tried to keep steady, grasping the sides of the porcelain toilet with whatever strength I had left in me. 

I was there for either five minutes or half an hour. I was sitting there, panting and heaving, but I didn’t have a single thought running through my head. I could only hear the low hum of the fluorescent lights and feel the calming feeling of cool tile against my knees. 

When I thought I was better, I finally pushed my head away from the toilet bowl. I hadn’t vomited, but I had gagged to the point where my spit was frothy as it drifted around in the water. I peeled my hands away from the toilet and slowly stood up, still shaking. The shape of my palm was marked in blood on the side of the bowl.

I slowly limped out of the bathroom and looked around the lobby. It was dark now, with only the box office overhead light on. All the other lights were dimmed, and I couldn’t even see the street lamps outside our glass doors. It felt like someone was watching me, but I was utterly alone in the lobby.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at the time. 12:13. By now the only people left were the managers, and maybe Cody, wherever he ran off to. I guess that’s why no one answered.

I didn’t know if I could go back to that auditorium. I still had another 17 minutes until I could leave, and that was my last theater. It would be left for the opening ushers to deal with.

But there wasn’t anything else I could do with my remaining time. I was afraid of staying in one place for too long. I didn’t know what could have possibly happened to me, but it was better to not risk anything.

The only thing I could think about doing was taking out the trash cart, if the workers closing concessions hadn’t done it already. But, knowing them, they didn’t. I figured that if I walked really slow, I could use up my 17 minutes and get the fuck out of here.

So I punched in the code to the back door of concessions where we kept the cart. I propped open the door with a discarded box of melted butter and went to find it. As I expected, it was overflowing with trash that concession workers didn’t bother to take care of. It was a pretty massive plastic cart, and there were a bunch of bags precariously stacked at the top, as well as five bags littered on the floor around it.

I bundled up the remaining garbage and carefully added it to the pile, trying desperately to not knock it all over. I picked up the cart keys, which was a bundle of mostly old, broken keys attached to a large thick chain. I decided to wrap the chain around my palm and tightly gripped onto it before slowly rolling the cart out from behind concessions.

I was slow with the cart, glancing back every few seconds to make sure none of the bags would fall over and topple the stack. It was a good 100 feet from concessions to the side door, and as I was about halfway down the hall, I heard a loud slam that echoed throughout the lobby.

I jumped and whipped my head around, and to my horror the concessions door was closed. The box had a five-gallon bag of butter in it, and there was no way that the door was strong enough to push the box out of the way. But what—or who—closed the door?

And suddenly I was panicking again. The lobby was dark and it was kind of hard to see, and I felt vulnerable in the middle of the hallway. I picked up the pace a little, but couldn’t stop looking behind me and craning my neck every which way to keep an eye on everything.

Eventually I couldn’t take it and started to sprint with the cart. A lot of the bags were flung out immediately, but I didn’t care about picking them up anymore. I just needed to get away from this godforsaken building.

I barreled out of the side door and the cart hit the doorframe, causing even more bags to fall out. I didn’t bother looking back as I raced the cart around the back to where the compactor was.

I fumbled with the keys until I found the one that turned on the compactor. The machine whirred to life and I flung open the trap door to chuck in the trash, only to find that it was completely filled to the brim.

Fuck.

I didn’t have time to sit and wait to crush up the trash in there, but what other choice did I have? I slammed the door shut and pressed the button, staring intensely at the rusted door as the horrible crunching started. It was crushing the trash for a few seconds, and then it stopped suddenly.

The keypad started flashing at me, and I felt sick. Something was stuck. I’d have to waste even more time taking out the half-pulverized trash bags to clear out the body of the compactor, then put them back in, put in my load of trash, and compress it all again.

I turned off the machine and yanked the door open again, inhaling deeply before holding my breath and sticking my head into the compactor. I frantically started pulling trash out, dropping it on the ground around me. I pulled out bag after bag, the fragile plastic ripping as I yanked them out with force. My arms were covered in old soda and nacho cheese and ketchup, and while that would normally freak me out, that was the least of my worries now.

As more bags were coming out, the inside of the body of the machine was being revealed. It didn’t look like something was stuck, until I pulled out a large piece of cardboard, where I unveiled something bloody. It was an arm sticking straight up amidst the pile of trash. The wrist was bent at an awkward angle, and all of the fingers were broken, blood still dripping out of the wounds. That’s when the smell hit me. The rancid, moldy smell that had been looming in the auditorium.

My throat closed again and my limbs were tingling. My vision started going in and out, but in between the flashes of haziness, I thought I could see something poking out from underneath one of the bags. A head of greasy black hair.

I needed to do something. What could I do, besides vomit? I did.

After I didn’t have anything else in me to puke out, I looked back into the compactor. The flies that always swarm the machine started to fly inside of it, flocking to the arm.

Now shaking more than ever, I pulled the mic to my mouth.

“I need—”

Suddenly I heard audio feedback behind me and my own voice, and I whipped my head around. Standing behind me, with a radio clipped to his belt, a man stood in front of me. I didn’t know who he was—I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.

“A manager?” The man asked, his voice low.

I couldn’t do anything but stare. Was this man a manager? How come I had never seen him before? How did he even get here?

The compactor was right around the corner of the building, so I would have seen him if he came around the side like I did. So, for a second, I scanned my eyes all around until I finally spotted it. The fire escape to Auditorium 9, which was just beyond the compactor, was propped open. There were two more figures standing within the doorway, watching us.

“Well, I’m here,” the man continued. I needed to scream, or cry, or beg for mercy, but I couldn’t even move a single bone in my body.

And before I could do anything else, the man pushed me back into the compactor, slammed the metal door shut, and locked it. I heard the keys jingle once more before the machine started buzzing again, and the button was pressed.

Statement

“The Closing Shift” is a story that stems from my own experience at my job at AMC. I love my job. It’s great, I love the people that I work with, but it’s also the worst job in the world. It’s stressful and at times disorienting. To show that, I wanted to write awkward and clunky sentences that take a second to fully digest. I also wanted the constant movement of the job to be shown, so I never let the narration dwindle on any one given point at a time to heighten anxiety.