The Camera at Mile 88

They hired me for the night shift at the truck stop off mile 88 because nobody else wanted it. Twelve hours, 8 PM to 8 AM, one customer every two or three hours if the moon was kind. The pay wasn't bad. The coffee was. And the security system was brand new — eight cameras, one monitor glowing behind the counter like a little television full of ghosts. On my third night, around 3:40 AM, the screen flickered. Camera six, the one over the far pumps. A woman in a gray dress walked across the lot toward the store. Hair down. Barefoot. I looked up through the glass doors — the lot was empty. Floodlights, asphalt, moths. Nobody. I looked back at the monitor. She was closer now, twenty feet from the doors, walking like she had all the time in the world. "Hello?" I called out, louder than I meant to. Nothing. She reached the doors on camera six, and for one frame — one frame — she was standing right there, at the glass, both palms flat against it, face pressed close. Then static. The monitor went gray for a full ten seconds, long enough for me to hear the bell above the doors ding. Nobody was there. No wind. No woman. No footprints on the concrete, though the asphalt outside had that thin sheen of overnight dew. I checked every camera. Empty. I checked the lot with a flashlight because I needed to prove to myself I was awake. Empty. The tape from that night was archived to a server in another state, and I've never been able to pull it back up. The regional manager said the system "hiccups sometimes." Sure. I don't work nights anymore. But last week I drove past mile 88 just after three in the morning, just to see. The floodlights were on. The lot was empty. And above the pumps, camera six, I swear the little red recording light blinked twice — like an eye, closing slow. Have you ever seen something on a screen that vanished when you looked up? Or watched a doorway when nobody walked through it? Tell me yours — I'm listening. And sleep tight. This story is: FICTION.