Handwerk

She sat in her car and waited. She did nothing to pass the time, would not take the chance on not being precise. She did allow herself to count her breaths as she watched the digital clock on the console.
The parking lot was wet and cold and the bright of the neon reflected in the puddles. Soon, they would come out in their smocks and name tags, and pull the baskets of crap inside. Hopefully some of the goods that had been left outside all day would somehow be gone, hopefully that would shave some time off the next endless inventory.
That's what she thought they would be thinking. She pursed her lips, and momentarily lost count of her breaths; she knew a thing or two about inventory.
The bald heads in perfect rows. One by one she called their names. Hours.
In and out she breathed, her gloved hands folded in her lap.
She was not like them. She was secret.
She did not care that the Employee of the Week taught Sunday School. She was unaffected by the pregnant teenager. She was uninvited to put a little money together for Donna, times-are-tough-for-her Donna. No, what she cared about was how much longer the neon M was going to last, it was looking a little dim. She cared about the Custom Framing area, and she wanted to make sure everyone cared about it just as much as she did. She cared about the machine; mercantile.
It was supposed to last for two-thousand years.
She had been trim, then. Her body had had a cruel silhouette, and her blonde was not forced.
She resisted clenching her fists and looked at the picture setting on the passenger seat. Some verdammt coloring book page. This is what her superiors had sent her with? She almost smiled and thought, there was a time when my superiors were Superior.
From here she could see the woman leaning down to the PA system to announce The Store Will Be Closing In Fifteen Minutes. A little early, but she wasn't here to test her, that was something the DM would have to deal with.
She plucked the page off the seat and studied it, some Disney character with a little caption. This was her punishment for trying to bring about the greatest society the world had ever known. This was her punishment for believing in something greater than herself. This is why she had to change her name. Griese. Grace. Grace. She breathed; in-out, thirty-three.
I'll tell them my dead son colored this, she thought, Why else would I get it framed? Wasn't that true, in a way? Her womb had been barren for some time now, wasn't that a death in itself? What else could she say? She wanted a custom job for something her retarded nephew did?
It was time. It was time to do one of the most useless jobs on the list. It was time to do a job that was found to be the complete inverse of the station she once held. This was her punishment, this was her Hell. And she would do it with aplomb. One day her Hell would be over.

Secret
Shopper