đź“– Chapter One
The sign on the glass door read:
"Closed for Renovation. Thank you for your patience."
Nobody thought much of it. The store was always shutting down for repairs — broken freezers, leaking pipes, bad wiring. The locals rolled their eyes and waited for it to reopen. They knew the owner was strange, but he stocked the cheapest produce in town. That was enough.
Inside, the aisles were stripped bare, shelves half-covered with dust sheets that sagged like old curtains. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a pale hum that left more shadow than glow. The place smelled of plaster dust, oil, and faintly of rot that no one ever seemed to question.
In the back room, a single shopping cart rattled against the concrete floor.
Inside the cart, a man lay tied, gagged, and barely conscious. His breathing came in short, panicked bursts, chest heaving like a trapped animal's. His eyes darted toward the exit, then toward the owner, as though weighing impossible odds.
The owner didn't look back at him. He walked slowly along the walls, inspecting their surfaces as though checking for leaks. His face was blank, businesslike, as if he were waiting for a delivery truck rather than preparing to close up a man inside a wall.
He set down a bucket of mortar with a careful thud, adjusted a neat line of bricks stacked against the wall, and wiped his hands on his apron. The apron bore faint smears of paint and dust, the kind anyone doing repairs might carry home.
"You're lucky, you know," he said casually, eyes still on the wall. "Most of the repairs I do here are boring. Pipes. Wiring. Floorboards. But this…" He tapped the plaster with his knuckle. Thud. Hollow. "This is the important kind of work."
The man whimpered. His body writhed against the cart's metal bars, making the wheels squeal.
The owner checked his watch. "You'll fit," he said simply. "Right about here."
No sermon. No ritual. Just work.
He cut the ropes with a box cutter, dragged the man across the concrete by his collar, and shoved him against the unfinished wall. Dust puffed up from the floor as he hit. The gag muffled the begging, words swallowed by fabric.
The owner barely reacted. He stacked the first brick. Then another. Then another. Each one placed with deliberate patience, each line smoothed with mortar.
When the cries grew louder, he pressed his boot into the man's chest and leaned with calm, steady weight until the struggling quieted. He didn't hurry. He didn't flinch. A few more bricks, and the voice dulled. A few more, and silence seeped through the seams.
He stepped back, wiped his brow, and admired the wall. It looked solid, clean. Professional.
But he wasn't finished.
He crouched low, running his fingers along the mortar lines, searching for imperfections. A tiny smear here, a hairline crack there. He smoothed them over with patient precision, eyes narrowed the way a craftsman might check the grain of wood. To anyone else, it would look like maintenance. To him, it was presentation.
He pulled a notepad from his apron pocket and wrote a few quick notes in neat block letters:
Section sealed.
Noise stopped.
Finish looks natural.
The page joined dozens of others, each dated and catalogued in a drawer back in his office. A ledger of repairs. A record no one but him would ever read.
Behind the wall, a muffled sound shuddered faintly — weak, fading. The owner paused, listening. He pressed his palm flat against the surface, feeling the faint vibration. It was like listening to a washing machine through drywall. Then it stopped. He withdrew his hand, expression unchanged.
After a moment, he picked up a paint roller, dipped it into a tray, and began coating the new bricks. Pale beige, the same color as the rest of the wall. Stroke after stroke until it blended perfectly. By the time he finished, it looked as though nothing had ever been there at all. Just another wall in a grocery store, plain and unremarkable.
Still, he wasn't satisfied. He stepped back, tilted his head, and studied the surface from different angles — left, right, crouching low, standing tall. He ran his palm across the paint, then knocked once with his knuckle. Solid. Finished.
He allowed himself a thin breath through his nose, the closest he came to a smile.
He gathered the tools, stacked them neatly in a crate, and wheeled the empty shopping cart back into place. He checked the floor for drips of paint, for dust disturbed where it shouldn't be. A rag wiped away the last trace of mortar from the concrete.
Finally, he turned to the door. The "Closed" sign still hung crooked, one corner of the tape peeling loose. He straightened it, pressed the tape flat, and flipped the sign to face inward.
Through the glass, the street outside was empty — just the glow of a streetlamp and the faint outline of the bakery across the road. He lingered a moment, watching for movement. None came.
"Good as new," he murmured, almost proud.
He clicked off the lights. The store fell into darkness.
The wall stood quiet.