The Sunblind Shift

My name is Elena, and I work as a data analyst for a company that monitors grocery store inventories across the globe. Our office is a beige-walled cube farm in the industrial part of San Angelo, Texas, but we operate around the clock because our clients never sleep. For two months, I’ve been on the graveyard shift, coming home at 9 AM to a silent house, the curtains drawn against the brutal Texas sun. This was my last week; next Monday, I’d switch to a normal daytime schedule, something I craved more than sleep itself.

That morning, the same as any other, I trudged through the front door, the air conditioning a shock against my sweat-damp skin. My mother and younger sister, Rosa, were already out, leaving a note on the kitchen counter about going to the HEB for lunch supplies. My younger brother, Mateo, who has cerebral palsy and relies on a wheelchair, was asleep on the couch in the living room, his breathing a soft, rhythmic rasp. Our dog, a shih tzu named Chiquita, gave a gentle, almost apologetic bark from her bed in the corner, as if she didn’t want to disturb the peace. I smiled, patted her head, and shuffled to my bedroom, collapsing onto the mattress without even pulling back the sheets.

I don’t know what woke me. The room was dark, the blackout curtains doing their job. A sliver of sunlight bled through a gap, casting a sharp white line onto the wall. I felt a heavy pressure on my chest, like a cat had curled up there, but Chiquita was too small to feel that heavy. I turned my head, my neck stiff, and saw nothing. The silence in the house was wrong. The usual hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the grandfather clock in the hall, were absent. It was a dead, woolly quiet, the kind that presses against your eardrums.

I forced myself to sit up, my limbs heavy as lead. My phone on the nightstand said 2:35 PM. That meant Mama and Rosa should have been back hours ago, and Mateo would need his afternoon medication. I swung my legs over the bed and stood, my skull pounding with a headache that felt like a screw turning. I called out, ‘Mama? Rosa?’ No answer. I walked into the living room. Mateo was still on the couch, but he was not sleeping. His eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling, and his lips were moving, forming words I couldn’t hear, a frantic, silent monologue.

My heart lurched. I rushed to his side, shaking his shoulder. ‘Mateo! Mateo, are you okay?’ He didn’t respond, but his lips kept moving, faster, and then his eyes snapped to mine. But they were not his eyes. They were a milky, cataracted white, like the eyes of a blind man, and they were filled with a terror so pure that I stumbled back. He grabbed my wrist with a strength he never had, his grip like a vice, and he forced a single word from his throat, a croak that sounded like gravel scraping glass: ‘Sunblind.’

Before I could react, the front door burst open. It wasn’t Mama or Rosa. It was a man in a yellow hazmat suit, the kind you’d see in a decontamination drill, but the visor was flipped up, revealing a face that was not a face. It was a mass of shifting, gray flesh, like a swarm of tiny, writhing maggots, with no discernible features. He raised a device that looked like a Taser, and a blue arc of electricity shot out, hitting me square in the chest. The world went white, and I heard Mateo scream, a high-pitched, inhuman sound that cut off abruptly.

I woke up on my bed, my cheek against the damp pillow. My arms were tied to the bedframe with electrical cords. The room was dark again, but I could smell something acrid, like burnt plastic. I struggled, but the cords held. I heard a voice, not from the man, but from a speaker embedded in the ceiling, a cheerful, automated female voice: ‘Subject 7 is awake. Proceed with the Extraction Protocol.’ The door opened, and two more hazmat figures entered, carrying a gurney. On the gurney was a figure under a white sheet, and when they lifted it, I saw Mateo, his body limp, a silver implant gleaming at the base of his skull. One of them held a syringe filled with a black fluid.

I screamed, a raw, throat-shredding scream, but no one came. The end of the syringe pressed against my temple, and the black fluid entered my bloodstream. My vision fractured, and I saw not the room, but a vast, endless desert under a sun that was a perfect black circle. The sand was made of needles, and in the distance, there was a structure – a supermarket, but twisted, aisles stretching into infinity, shelves stocked with jars of writhing things. I heard a voice in my head, not human, but a hiss of static: ‘You are the night shift. You will never leave. Welcome to the Sunblind Aisle.’

I must have passed out. When I came to, I was in a small, windowless room, bare concrete walls, a single fluorescent light flickering. I was strapped to a metal chair. In front of me was a table with a landline phone. The cheerful voice came again: ‘You may call home. But you must not say anything about the sun. If you do, the boy will be terminated.’ The phone rang. I reached out, trembling, and picked it up. It was my mother’s voice, but it was warbled, distorted, as if she were speaking underwater. ‘Elena? Where are you? We’re at home, but the house is… wrong. There’s a stain on the ceiling that moves.’ I wanted to scream, to tell her to run, but the threat was clear. I said, ‘Mama, I’m fine. I’m just… working overtime. I’ll be home soon.’

The line went dead. The door opened, and the faceless man entered, carrying a tray of food. On the tray was a single, shriveled apple and a glass of water. He placed it in front of me and left, but as he turned, I saw the back of his suit: a label that read ‘Sunblind Solutions, Inc.’ I began to cry, silent tears streaming down my face. I had no idea why they had taken me, or what they wanted. But I knew, with a cold, absolute certainty, that I was never going to see the real sun again. My shift would never end.

Days passed, or maybe hours. The routine was the same: the phone would ring, and I would have to lie to my family, and the faceless man would bring food. Then, one day, he brought a different plate: a slice of chocolate cake, my favorite. On it, in frosting, was written: ‘Tonight, you will see the sun.’ I felt a spark of hope, but it was short-lived. That night, they came for me, unchained me, and led me through a maze of corridors. They opened a door, and I stepped into a vast, dark warehouse. At the center was a massive machine, a lattice of metal and glass, pulsing with a sickly yellow light. And floating above it, suspended in a beam of energy, was a woman. She was naked, her body covered in intricate tattoos that seemed to writhe, and her eyes were the same milky white as Mateo’s. She looked at me, and her lips moved, but the voice that came out was the same cheerful automaton: ‘You have been chosen to serve the Sunblind. Your sacrifice will keep the shelves stocked.’

I screamed and tried to run, but the hazmat figures grabbed me, holding me tight. The woman levitated down, standing in front of me, her face inches from mine. Her cold, white eyes bore into my soul, and I felt my memories being pulled out, flapping like pages of a book torn loose. I saw my life, my family, my friends, all being sucked into a void. And then, the last thing I saw was a flash of the black sun, and I heard the voice of the woman, now clear and feminine: ‘Now, you will understand. Eat the apple.’ I looked down, and in my hand was that shriveled apple from days before. It was warm, and it pulsed like a heart. I knew, with a terrible certainty, that if I ate it, I would become like her, a trapped soul in a translucent shell, serving an endless, hungry supermarket.

I raised it to my lips, and just as my teeth broke the skin, I woke up. I was in my bed, the sunlight streaming through the curtains. Mama was shaking me, saying, ‘Elena, you’re going to be late for your shift!’ I sat up, disoriented. My arms were free. My bedroom was normal. I could hear Mateo laughing in the living room, and Chiquita barking sweetly. I looked at my nightstand. There was the apple, perfectly whole, but its skin was covered in a fine, gray mold that formed the shape of a single word: ‘Welcome.’

I never went back to work. I quit immediately, told my family we were moving, and for months, I lived in terror, waiting for the faceless man to appear. But nothing happened. Slowly, I began to believe it was just a nightmare, a product of my sleep-deprived mind. But every morning, when I wake up, I check my reflection, to make sure my eyes are still brown, not milky white. And every night, I dream of that black sun, and I hear the cheerful voice: ‘You are still on the night shift, Elena. You just don’t know it yet.’ And in the back of my mind, I know it’s true. The sun I see is a lie, a pale imitation of the real one, which is now forever hidden behind the veil of the Sunblind. I am still trapped, and my shift will never end.