The summer holiday’s are in full swing and myself and the children are having lots of adventures. Today, I thought I would share a short story I wrote for a competition. I hope you enjoy it.
Counting Connections
The fluorescent bulb above aisle seven had that low-grade hum that made you slowly question your own sanity. It was almost as if Jess could feel the vibration going through the soles of her safety boots. She wondered for the fifth time if she should turn it off, but then the darkness of the warehouse would engulf her on a night shift.
Outside, the rhythmic drumming of the rain lashed the corrugated roof, and a distant low rumble of thunder sounded as the June thunderstorm engulfed the small town. It bounced between the hills and the sea, getting louder and quieter as it moved across the sky, trying to escape. Jess smirked. She knew what it was like to be trapped somewhere you didn’t want to be.
Still standing here in the stark white glare of the overhead lights, everything was reduced to the sharp beep of the inventory scanner and the cold, metallic smell of the galvanised steel shelves.
“Zero-four-four-nine-two,” Clara read from the clipboard. Her voice was slightly hoarse, rounded by the exhaustion of a twelve-hour shift. “Brass hex nipples. Three-quarter inch.”
Jess leaned over the bottom shelf, her knees groaning against the cold linoleum floor. She plunged her hand into the dusty plastic bin. The brass fittings clinked together like heavy, dull coins. Clack. Clink. She counted them into her palm in sets of five.
“Twelve,” Jess said, her voice dropping into the cavernous quiet of the aisle. “No, wait. Thirteen.”
“Thirteen,” Clara repeated, the scratch of her ballpoint pen against the paper loud against the backdrop of the rain.
They had been at it since seven in the evening, moving methodically through plumbing, trade accounts, and outdoor fixtures. It was tedious, mind-numbing work that left a fine layer of grey metallic dust on their fingertips and the taste of stale, lukewarm coffee on their tongues.
A shared thermos sat between them on a flat pack of timber, a single plume of steam rising from the plastic cup that served as their communal mug.
Jess shifted her weight, sitting back on her heels. Her shoulder brushed against Clara’s arm. It was a contact they had made a thousand times over the last two years; stacking pallets, squeezing past each other in the staff room, sharing the tight space behind the trade counter. But tonight, with the store locked and the dark windows pressing against the glass greenhouse section next door, the contact felt different. It felt heavy. Static.
Clara didn’t move away. She adjusted the clipboard on her knees, her thigh resting just a millimetre from Jess’s trouser leg. The fabric of their heavy work trousers rasped together with a dry, quiet shhhk.
“Next one,” Clara murmured, her eyes fixed on the sheet, though she hadn’t turned the page. “Zero-four-four-nine-five. Washers. Small.”
Jess reached into the next bin. Her fingers were cold from the metal, the skin rough around the cuticles from a winter of lifting timber. She scooped a handful of the tiny brass rings. They were small enough to slip through her fingers if she wasn’t careful, tiny golden circles catching the harsh fluorescent light.
“Hold out your hand,” Jess said.
Clara dropped the clipboard onto her lap. She didn’t just hold out her palm; she moved her hand slowly, sliding it across the cold floor until it was directly beneath Jess’s.
The inventory scanner in Jess’s left hand gave a faint, electronic chirp as it went into sleep mode, but neither of them looked at it.
Jess leaned forward to drop the washers. But instead of letting them fall from a distance, she lowered her hand until her palm was nearly touching Clara’s. She uncurled her fingers. The tiny brass pieces cascaded into Clara’s hand with a soft, metallic whisper—chhh-clink.
But Jess didn’t pull her hand back.
Her index finger lingered, trailing down the side of Clara’s thumb. It was a slow, deliberate movement, the friction of skin against skin entirely different from the cold finality of the metal they had been handling all night. Jess’s fingertips caught on the slight roughness of Clara’s palm, tracing the line where the metallic dust had settled into the creases of her skin.
Clara froze. Her breath caught, a tiny, sharp intake of air that Jess heard perfectly over the roar of the rain on the roof. Clara’s fingers closed, not around the brass washers, but tilting upward just enough so that her fingertips brushed the inside of Jess’s wrist, right over the steady, jumping pulse.
The silence between them became absolute, a tiny pocket of warmth carved out of the massive, draughty warehouse.
Jess looked up from their hands. Clara was already looking at her. Her hair was tied back in a messy, loose bun, a few dark strands falling around her face, her eyes wide and dark under the shadow of the metal shelving. There was no grand speech. There was no cinematic shift in the weather. It was just the two of them, sitting on a dirty floor in Aisle Seven, surrounded by industrial plumbing supplies.
The air in the aisle had changed. It felt thick, charged with a sudden, dizzying clarity, as if the storm had somehow found its way into the warehouse. Under the touch of a dusty finger, everything they had lived behind for months simply dissolved.
Clara’s thumb moved, a tiny, tentative stroke against Jess’s skin, testing the reality of it.
“How many?” Clara whispered. Her voice was barely a breath, completely swallowed by the storm outside, yet it felt like the loudest thing Jess had ever heard.
Jess didn’t look down at the washers in Clara’s hand. She couldn’t. “I don’t know,” she replied, her voice just as soft. “Count them again.”
Clara didn’t move her hand away. Instead, she let the brass washers slide out of her palm. They scattered loosely onto the linoleum with a bright, clattering ring, rolling under the bottom shelf, lost in the shadows.
Neither of them cared.
Clara shifted her hand completely, her fingers sliding between Jess’s, locking them together, cold skin turning warm in the space between them.
The rain continued to lash against the tin roof, a thousand miles away. Under the humming light of Aisle Seven, the stocktake was entirely forgotten.