Have you been to a Camelot’s department store? No? Well they are a regional chain, though very popular in that part of the country. The part you might sneer at and would prefer not to think about except to make jokes about those people who voted for him and don’t think. Like most department stores, Camelot has the essentials: video games, clothes, toys, baby supplies, crockery, food and the non-fun pills. They stopped expanding in the early aughts when it became clear they couldn’t compete with your Targets and your Walmarts. And now with your Amazons (Well, with your Amazon singular), thus they’ve begun a slow decline. In a strange way though, the fact that they never made it national meant that they benefited from the sort of strange pride people have about their local chains which has managed to sustain them.
It is only a matter of time however, and most of the staff are people who really don’t want to think about the future. Either because the past has given them enough pain to think about or because they don’t really think there is one.
Baylor fell into the latter category. As a child he loved to imagine all the things he’d be and places he’d go. Immediately after high school he’d gone to college, because that is what he’d been told to do, and got a degree in literature because the advice had stopped at “go to college”. Throughout his time at the old Uni he began to hear about a “stagnant job market” and an “aged workforce refusing to retire because they frankly couldn’t” and “No hope” but he’d assumed this was meant for other people and so he was quite surprised when he graduated and found that there really weren’t a lot of interesting, lucrative careers for literature majors with no internships or connections. He immediately took a part-time job at the rec center, reffing children’s basketball games and cleaning up vomit while looking for a career of adventure but at the end of his grace period his student loans kicked in so here he was, at Camelots. Food department to be specific. The night shift in charge of cleaning and stocking by 12:00 AM to be pedantically so.
Baylor fought against this stagnation in his destiny in a number of ways. For one, he had adopted the gloomy attitude of an unpaid artist. He had no real artistic plans or vision but every now and then said something about “starting a podcast”which made him feel a bit better about it all. He’d also taken up intermittent fasting to try and manifest some control over his own body. The rigors of his two job schedule however meant that he was not always able to eat as much as he should before the 8:00 pm food curfew he’d set for himself kicked in. Which meant he could be incredibly shitty to be around.
On this particular night, his fourth shift working at Camelot’s, Baylor had nothing in his system but black coffee. He was very unprepared, therefore, to be yelled at by a woman in a lime green cardigan for a sale sign being up one day past its expiration. Especially since he’d already told her that they would still honor the sale price.
After she stormed off to the poor cashier, Baylor meandered to the dairy cooler where there were no cameras. He paced back and forth in the narrow corridor of the fridge made narrower by pallets and shelves, trying very hard not to punch a carton of milk or throw a block of cheese. Eventually he found himself in the very back next to a box which, against Food and Health standards had been permanently left on the floor by some unknown employee. Presumably, based on the shabbiness of the box, back when customers still complained about the chip being added to their debit cards. The box was sagging and decaying and Baylor hated it. It had been left to rot here in the icy cooler when all its box friends went out and were soon in a bail being shipped to a recycling plant to be turned into something new and beautiful. Baylor might have been projecting a little.
“Hey Baylor, are you on walkie?” asked the nasally voice of the manager.
“Where the fuck else would I be?” said Baylor to the box, as he reached for the little walkie talkie on his hip.
“Baylor, are you on walkie?” it asked again, before he could even bring the walkie to his mask.
“Oh my fucking god.” Baylor swore and he violently kicked the box. Pain shot through his foot.
“Bay-”
“What’s up?” he asked, straining not to grit his teeth.
“…..Ere?”
As he waited for a response he slit the tape of the box with his keys. He’d left his boxcutter at home. Inside was a small metal lockbox, the kind people keep money in at garage sales. He picked it up and began to examine it.
“I guess Baylor isn’t on walkie tonight, can someone get him for me?”
“Cheryl, he responded you just talked over him.” said Erin, the closing supervisor.
“Oops, teehee, Baylor, are you still there?”
“M’hm” said Baylor who was not really there because he was trying to read a small scrap of paper he’d found taped to the bottom of the lockbox. It read; “If thou wisheth to find the key of mine, thou should look where Lady Tina gave joy.”
“Just wanted to know what you’re working on bud.”
“Oh, I’m putting away my go-backs and then I’m facing for the rest of the night.” He was so intrigued by the message he didn’t spare a thought to hate Cheryl for calling him bud. One of his pet peeves which he took for many walks.
“Ok, can you meet me on G30?”
“Sure, which aisle is that?”
The static of the walkie mercifully prevented the tinkling quality of Cheryl’s little laugh but Baylor still got the gist “It’s soda, silly! You need to learn your department aisles.”
Baylor set the lockbox on the shelf next to the bays containing milk and left the cooler. No longer clenching his fist from the cold but clenching them still.
Cheryl stood next to the soda aisle as if she was worried he still might not find it.
“Can you work this flatbed for me?”
She indicated with one ringed and stubby finger to a flatbed cart covered in soda boxes that was not on his original list of tasks. He was sure this would make him late in finishing the rest of his tasks and therefore late in getting off. He wanted to say no and if he was smarter he would’ve pulled out his list the Grocery manager had left him and said “which of these would you like me to cross off, then?” but instead he just said
“Sure.”
“Thanks, and you can kind of face as you go so the soda aisle will be done by the end and you can finish everything pretty fast. Remember we want the shelf to look like a wall of glass when finished.”
She turned to leave but Baylor, who usually wanted to be out of Cheryl’s company as soon as possible suddenly found himself blurting out.
“Who’s Tina?”
Cheryl turned sharply and looked at him with a confused expression. Baylor couldn’t tell if it was the question that confused her or the idea that someone would talk to her more than was necessary.
“Excuse me?”
“Who is Tina? I found an old name tag of hers under one of the shelves.” Baylor wasn’t sure why he was lying but he knew he didn’t want to explain the box to Cheryl. She was sure to take it and it represented a mystery, something out of the ordinary, something not beige and sad.
“Well, you know it’s actually against company policy to discuss former employees and especially her. And besides, won’t really help you unload this flatbed will it?”
Baylor flipped her off behind her back as she waddled off. And then bowed deeply to the camera pointed at the aisle.
The flatbed took an hour to unload and Baylor helped three customers while doing it. It was 10:00 PM when he finished and during the entire time he thought about the box and the mystery of Tina. He was supposed to take his evening break at 9:30pm but liked to take it as late as possible so that he would have less time once he came back. Besides, 10:00pm was when Erin took her break and he liked talking to the closing supervisor. She generally wanted to vent about a customer or talk about video games, and tonight he had a purpose.
“So, who’s Tina?” He leaned against the folding table which sat in the corner of the breakroom holding the microwave that Erin was currently heating up a Lean Cuisine in.
No reason was needed for Erin; she immediately turned to him with her tardis shaped earrings swinging and her eyes shining with the anticipation of some very juicy gossip.
“Oh my god dude, Tina was this cashier who used to work here maybe 2 years ago. She and the old receiver, Dan, started having an affair. She sucked him off at his desk in the backroom! It was crazy, they actually thought no one would see because it’s a standing desk so she was like covered but I mean come on! Zach totally saw her duck under there on camera and they both got fired! Then Dan knocked her up, but they aren’t together anymore. She still comes in from time to time. Really nice girl.” Erin was very easily distracted and her stories always ended up going on past the natural end.
“Damn, wish I’d been here back then.” Half-joked the single Baylor.
“Don’t put your dick in crazy. Alright, I’ve got to go write an email telling Greg to fuck his mother. See ya!”
Baylor finished his snickers and for once left break early. When he got to the truck
receiver’s desk he resisted the urge to drop onto his knees and see the world how Tina must have but instead chose to lay on his back looking up at the underside of the desk like a mechanic might. There it was, at the very back, a small circle shaped key perfect for a lock box, taped to the ceiling of the desk.
He ripped it off hungrily and rushed back to the cooler. On the way an old man stopped him and asked where the soda was.
“Over there.” he indicated vaguely towards G30 and ignored completely the protocol to
walk the customer to the location. He threw open the door of the cooler and strode through it allowing the heaving plastic strips which hung down behind the door to hit his head like ivy hiding a cave in a fantasy world. Soon the lockbox was back in his hands, the hard metal solidness promising treasure inside. A lockbox like this was actually a useful thing to own and he just couldn’t see someone leaving it behind unless they wanted to store something good in it. Perhaps there was a gun in there used for illicit drug trades, or drugs themselves, or drug money? The key fit perfectly and Baylor took a moment to relish the feeling of possibilities in his life once more. The feeling that his life could change in an instant. He opened the box greedily and immediately came back to Earth, to Camelot more specifically, to his sad little soul pedantically so. Inside was a green box cutter, exactly the kind he’d been given on his first day. This one had several unfamiliar symbols and runes drawn across it in sharpie.
Baylor’s eyes returned frantically to the box hoping to find some drug money he’d missed under the box cutter, but there was only a small folded piece of yellow legal paper. With some anger Baylor unfolded the note and read:
“Congratulations, oh noble knight for thou hath solved the first puzzle and now for thine just reward. A cutter of boxes and occasionally twine. Named for a hero of old. Rise (I assume you are kneeling in awe) and receive Connor’s Box Cutter. +20% cutting strength, +5% chance of Cheryl avoidance. Find the next item in the set where the great chest bleeds forever. Remember, heroic traveler to survive at Camelot’s you must go a little mad. ”
Baylor contemplated throwing the note away, returning to the sales floor and just finishing his shift then going home and smoking until he fell asleep. But he might as well see what was next. Who knows, maybe it was something good. He raised his walkie to his mouth “Hey Erin. I’ve got a question for you.”
Electric Absalom 