Each box was labeled with a neatly typed placard designating who was inside. They sat on metal shelves, long rows of manilla and paper receding into shadows. As the Clerk huffed down the central aisle to his tiny office, he thought he could hear their whispers over the echo of his polished boots against the cement.
But today, he was running late. He winced at the screech his chair made against the floor as he collapsed into his seat.
His phone rang. Palms damp with sweat, the Clerk picked it up.
“Your inventory report is overdue,” the Commandant said.
He could almost smell the Commandant through the phone, cologne and cheap cigars gnawed on like a street dog on carrion.
“Yes, sir,” the Clerk said, out of breath. His spine snapped to attention. The Commandant yelled at him when he slouched.
“I want it today. Understood?”
The report was gobbledygook, destined to go straight from his desk into the Commandant’s musty file drawer. But the Commandant wanted it, and what he wanted, he got. The Clerk didn’t like the Commandant, but he understood what happened to people who didn’t follow orders.
The boxes were full of people like that.
“Yes, sir,” the Clerk said.
The line clicked and the Clerk exhaled. In the warehouse, the world was arranged as he liked it, but the Commandant’s intrusions disturbed all that.
The Clerk checked the ribbon on his typewriter. He’d finish the report. Then, he thought, grinning, he could spend some time in the warehouse with his friends.
“You two should talk things out. You have plenty of time now,” the Clerk said to the Wolf as he flipped through her files, indexing them and adding fresh documents.
The Bull and the Wolf, the newspapers had called them. The intelligence memos used their real names, but a sneaking admiration for worthy adversaries crept into their clinically dry language. They were siblings, but they’d hated each other, even founding competing bands of terrorists who spent as much time shooting at each other as the army. Yet when she was finally caught, the Wolf gave up no one, no matter how many fingernails were pulled or where the cattle prod had been applied. Despite everything, she’d loved her brother to the end.
“You fucking bastard,” the Wolf growled back at him from her mug shot. She was gangly with disheveled hair and a pointed face. Her sepia-toned lips didn’t move when she spoke, but the Clerk could hear her just fine. It was the same for all the people in the boxes. The Clerk suspected that only he could hear them, but then again, he was the only one who talked to them.
“You know, I also grew up in the south, close to the sea. We probably cheered for the same football team,” the Clerk said brightly.
“Fuck you, fascist scum!”
The Clerk sighed. “Hey, no reason for that kind of language.”
He and the Wolf weren’t close. She hadn’t been here that long. Maybe once she calmed down, they could have a nice chat, get to know one another. It usually took a while for them to warm up to him if they ever did, but it wasn’t like she had anyone else to speak to. In that, she and the Clerk weren’t so different.
The Clerk lined up the Wolf’s documents and placed them neatly back into the box. “We’ll talk later, my friend.”
“FUCK YOU BASTARD, YOU ARE NO FR—” the Wolf screamed. The Clerk shut the lid and placed it on the shelf. He shook his head and thought viciously of the paper cutter in his office. The Wolf would speak to him politely one day, he’d make sure of that.
The Clerk looked at his list. There were new people to add to the shelves. Revolutionaries, kids with a death wish, or more bravado than sense. He didn’t understand why they failed to follow orders. Following orders was easy, yet so many people did the opposite. That was the problem, he guessed. That’s why people like the Commandant, big men with crisp uniforms and gnawed-on cigars, needed to restore order to their country in the first place.
The Clerk pushed the cart through the aisles of the warehouse, its wheels squeaking whenever he made a left turn. He should requisition a new one, the Clerk thought absently, as he checked another box from his list. Daniel had sad eyes and didn’t speak when the Clerk opened his box to say hello. It usually took time for the new ones to start talking, confused by their circumstance, voices raw and broken from their last screams. Most of them never warmed up to the Clerk, but some came around. What else did they have to do?
Halfway down the list, the Clerk decided to take a break. He stopped by Oscar’s shelf, removed the box, and placed it on the floor. Oscar liked to talk.
“How'd my boys do yesterday?” Oscar asked as the Clerk pulled off the lid of the box and sat next to it.
“Lousy, as usual,” the Clerk admitted.
Oscar made an exasperated noise that sounded like ripping paper. Before all this, he'd played striker for the national team. He'd been active in politics too, a gregarious red flag-waver who ran with a crowd of intellectuals and degenerates. He'd been on the shelf since the beginning, well before the Clerk had started working here. “At this rate, they won’t even make it into the quarterfinals,” Oscar said. “Give me the highlights, will you?"
The Clerk pulled the newspaper article that he’d cut out that morning from his pocket. He rifled around the box for the last sports highlight he’d put in the box—too many and it would get messy, and he hated messy—and replaced it with yesterday’s game.
"Thanks, buddy. Hey, next time, bring a dirty magazine for me too, will you?" Oscar said.
The Clerk smiled and nodded before shutting the box and placing it back on the shelf.
This week, there was more to sort through than usual, stacks of carbon copies and photographs and neatly typed interrogation memos trembling under their own weight. The Clerk didn't mind the work, but it gave him less time in the warehouse. Talking to his people was his favorite thing to do. Otherwise, he came to work and then went home to NCO housing on the same base, where he had a cramped room—a closet, really—to himself. Sometimes, he'd go to the canteen for a drink, but he didn't like the taste of liquor much. No, he preferred it here.
As the Clerk shuffled yet another stack of documents, he felt a nip. He cursed as he yanked his finger away, blooming crimson, then scrambled for a handkerchief. After some one-handed fumbling, he finally found a handkerchief and wrapped it tight around the cut. His throat ached with nausea as he felt blood squelch against the cloth.
His hands busy, he read the report in front of him more closely than usual. It was familiar stuff. A new resident for the shelves, another dumb kid who thought she didn't have to follow orders. Her hometown was near the ocean, only a dozen miles from his own. Good family too—her father was a schoolteacher and her mother stayed home. Four siblings, none of whom had joined her foolish crusade. No, Marie seemed like the kind of girl the Clerk’s mother would have wanted him to marry.
He flipped the page. It was a mugshot of Marie standing against a concrete wall. Her blackened, soulful brown eyes glared defiantly at the camera. Her hair was cropped short, emphasizing strong cheekbones and full lips. Only slightly marred, he thought, from the marks interrogations always left behind.
He put the girl’s file back, re-ordering the papers and writing her name on an index card. The rest of the day went slower than normal, his mind adrift, but eventually he finished the stack. He flipped the lights off and left the compound, the sun glowing purple like a ripe bruise.
He tossed and turned in his bunk that night. Whenever he closed his eyes, all he could see was Marie’s face, a work of art, a hostile beauty.
The Clerk slid his boxer shorts to his knees and reached down.
“Have you ever been in love, Oscar?”
The Clerk sat on the floor, leaning against the shelves. The concrete was cool through his uniform trousers. His ears were still ringing from the Commandant’s shouting through the phone. He’d been sloppy in his distraction, and the Commandant made his ears and nerves pay for it. He was more irritable than usual these days. Always muttering something about incompetent fools and the war effort, which apparently wasn’t going well. The Clerk tried to ignore it.
The box next to him guffawed. “In love? Of course, dozens of times. I’m an old-school romantic.”
“No, really, Oscar. Were you?”
Oscar fell silent for a long moment. “Once. Broke my heart too.”
“How did you know?” the Clerk asked.
“Kid, if you don’t know, you aren’t. If you are, you can’t think of anything else. Like water in the desert.”
The Clerk licked his lips and sucked his teeth.
“What, you met a girl?” Oscar said.
The Clerk nodded to himself. “Yeah, I guess.”
The old footballer’s laugh echoed through the warehouse. “Ha! Even fascists have hearts that can melt,” he said.
“What should I do?” asked the Clerk.
“Talk to her, of course. Woo her. Show her that you want her. Make her yours. You’ll never get anywhere with pining. Trust me, life is too short for that shit.”
The Clerk smiled to himself. “Thanks, Oscar.”
He stood and put the box back on the shelf. Before he closed it, Oscar piped up. “Kid, bring me another one of those magazines, eh?”
The Clerk nodded and put the lid on then went back to his cart. The wheels squeaked against the floor as he rolled it up and down the aisles adding or replacing boxes. His stomach churned with anxiety. Could he do it?
Finally, he came to the correct row. Talk to her. Woo her, Oscar had said. He stretched up to the third shelf, the fresh cardboard just within reach if he stood on his toes. He hauled the box down and placed it on top of the empty cart, then pulled the lid off.
“Marie?” the Clerk said.
There was no answer. It had only been a week, he thought. Sometimes, it took weeks for the people in the boxes to show up.
“Marie? Are you there?”
The air in the warehouse was cool, but the Clerk could feel his face heat up as he blushed. He looked around furtively, as though there was anyone but the rats were watching. He dug into the box and snatched her photo, shoving it into his lapel pocket. He closed the box and put it back on the shelf, a light sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Safely back in the office, he stared at the photo. Marie stared back, frozen in time. She was so beautiful, he thought. The Clerk touched it gently.
The Clerk left the barracks just after dawn and hurried towards the market. He’d put on his dress uniform, the pants a half-size too tight. Mopeds and delivery trucks zoomed and clattered down the cracked streets, taking advantage of the lack of traffic. Passers-by kept their eyes down and gave him a wide berth. Several walls had been whitewashed to cover up the ever-spreading plague of spray-painted terrorist propaganda.
The market was already crowded even with the early hour. The Clerk lingered, taking in the smell of fruits and vegetables and cooking food, the shouts and songs of the vendors, the jibber of haggling at market stalls. Finally, he found the one he wanted. A brief exchange saw him hand over a few bills for a bouquet of roses, white and pink. He checked his watch and yelped. He’d be cutting it close even if he ran.
He reached the warehouse with less than a minute to spare. If the Commandant wanted something and he was late, it wouldn’t be good. His office was dark and empty and he breathed a sigh of relief. He flicked the lights on, set the flowers down, and then brewed his morning coffee. He had some cataloging to do, busywork. He jittered as he refiled index cards and organized the month’s arrivals by last name and then province, excited and nervous, his stomach full of wasps.
When he was done, he brushed his pant legs and straightened his jacket, the creases still sharp. He picked up the flowers and walked out into the stale air of the warehouse. His boots, freshly polished, clacked against the concrete. Finally, he pulled Marie’s box from the shelf and opened it.
“I brought you something. I hope you like them,” the Clerk stammered, thrusting the roses forward. There was no reply. The Clerk bit his lip. After a minute, he placed the roses delicately in the box, breaking the stems so they’d fit inside. He picked the box up and placed it back on the shelf.
It was unusually hot in the warehouse as the cooling system had broken. The Commandant had yelled into the phone for a while, but once he calmed down, he promised to send someone to fix it. In the meantime, sweating through his uniform in the stifling office, the Clerk typed up yet another inventory report. He didn’t want to make the Commandant angry with a late submission.
He was exhausted, and it wasn’t just the summer heat that had kept him awake at night. He visited Marie nearly every day. He spoke to her, pleaded with her, wrote her letters, but there’d been no response. He wanted her more than he wanted to breathe, but nothing he did cleared the fog in his mind. At night, his head against his thin pillow, he’d hold her picture close and dream of her. He’d do things to her—his mind skittered away from that, a blush rising from his collar—and wake up with damp sheets and the scent of perfume on his nose.
The Clerk put his head in his hands and moaned gently, sweat dripping into his eyes. His heart was breaking, and he had no one to talk to. Oscar just laughed and told him to move on, while the others were too busy cursing or weeping to listen to a word he said.
Marie. Why wouldn’t she love him as he loved her?
The Clerk stood and kicked back his chair. His heart thudded painfully against his ribs as he stormed down the aisles. He yanked Marie’s box open.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” he screamed. His voice echoed in the warehouse, like the scrabbling of rats against the cement.
There was silence. The Clerk wanted to wind up and kick the box, send the carbon copies and intelligence reports and interrogation notes and surveillance photographs scattering across the floor. Fuck her. He could leave her out, to be shat on by rats and turned to mildew by the moist air. He could shred every piece of paper in her box until there was truly nothing left of her at all, not even a ghost in a box.
“Why would I talk to you?”
The voice was raspy and sweet, like mango with salt. The Clerk’s incandescent rage drained away, leaving only a burning afterglow.
“Because I love you,” he said.
“You love me? You know nothing about me,” Marie said.
“I’ve read your file. I know all about you. Your—”
“You know trivia. You know fuck all. You don’t know who I really was,” Marie said.
The Clerk opened his mouth to speak, but he knew that Marie wouldn’t answer. There had been a finality in her voice, an order. It reminded him of the Commandant.
He knew what he needed to do.
The next morning, he asked the Commandant for a short leave. A few days to visit family, he said. The Commandant grumbled, his mustache quivering, but he stamped the Clerk’s paperwork. He had barely taken leave in two years, after all, and he was non-essential. His work could wait for a few days.
The bus rattled down the rural highway, the rear window obscured by a grey-brown haze of dust kicked up by its balding tires. The Clerk sat alone, the smell of body odor and gasoline filling his nose. The bus driver had given him a full seat to himself while the rest of the bus was packed, extolling his patriotism. The Clerk stared out the window at the passing scenery while the rest of the passengers chattered or slept. A few times, they’d been stopped at an army checkpoint. Grim-faced soldiers would come aboard, helmets and submachine guns glistening in the refracted sunlight as they checked passes and identification. They seemed nervous and the Clerk didn’t blame them. He’d heard rumblings, eavesdropping on other soldiers in the canteen. The terrorists had broken out of the eastern mountains, spilling into the north and south and even the bustling capital.
At one of the checkpoints, the soldiers had arrested a passenger, a young man with a heavy mustache and long hair. He’d protested as they dragged him away, screaming about his innocence, that they had the wrong man, that his name should not be on a list. The Clerk had shaken his head in the silence afterward. Maybe he’d see the kid’s face in a box someday and find out what stupid thing he’d done to get himself into that kind of scrape.
Around sundown, the bus finally trundled into the town’s dusty main street. Empty storefronts with darkened windows stared back like black eyes swollen shut. The Clerk hopped off the bus and checked the scrap of paper in his hand. He’d looked through the records and copied the address down by hand, then checked it against a map and written himself directions. Even from over the horizon, he could smell the sea air.
He wandered down narrow streets lined with tidy cottages. He dripped with sweat, awkwardly dressed in his fatigues and carrying a small duffel bag over his shoulder. Eventually, he came to his destination and stood across the street. It was a quiet little house, the same as its neighbors, brick and stucco with a tiled roof.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d stood there before someone came out. She wore a black dress and grey shawl, marks of a woman in mourning. She held a broom, emerging to sweep her porch. Her face was lined with age and stress, eyes heavy with dark circles. Marie’s mother’s motions were jerky as she swept, as though she was trying and failing to focus on what was in front of her. After several minutes, she looked up.
“What do you want?” she said, her voice a croak.
The Clerk opened his mouth to answer. I’m here for your daughter, he wanted to say. I love her. I would do anything for her. To find her. To be with her. But when he tried to speak, his throat filled with sand.
“I have some questions for you,” he finally said. “About your daughter.”
The woman stopped sweeping. She leaned heavily against the broom, its bristles spreading in a circle against the porch.
“Come in,” she said. “I’ll make you some tea.”
The cottage’s main room was carpeted with an overstuffed sofa and an armchair covered in floral patterns. On the mantel, he saw photographs in brass frames, the painted wood underneath cleaned spotless.
He stepped closer to the photos and saw Marie. There she was wearing a yellow sundress that hovered just above her knee, a sunflower behind her ear. There she was, crooked-toothed and in a school uniform, grinning amidst a crowd of matching children. There she was, standing in a row of three younger girls who looked just like her. There she was, her name typed neatly on a university diploma: she had studied civil engineering, it said. There she was, again and again. A shrine.
The Clerk heard the whistle of a kettle from the kitchen and strode back to the armchair. As he sat, Marie’s mother entered the room with a teapot. Her hands shook as she poured the tea into chipped porcelain cups. The Clerk took one and sipped. It was well-brewed.
They sat in silence as the clock ticked. The Clerk was nervous, but he’d come here for a reason. He pushed his question past his teeth. “Can you tell me about Marie?”
The woman stared down at the table. “I don’t know where she is,” she whispered. “I’ve told the others who were here already. I still don’t know.”
“I’m not looking for where she is,” the Clerk said. He knew that. “Can you tell me more about her? Or about your family?”
Marie’s mother’s head snapped up. The same brown eyes of the girl he loved, full of fear. She fell to her knees and grabbed at the Clerk’s hands. “Please, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about what she was doing!”
The Clerk recoiled. Her pain coursed through him like an electrical current. His veins felt like they were on fire. He needed to get away, make it stop.
“I’m loyal! My husband and I are patriots! The girls too! We’ve done everything you’ve asked. No more, please!” she cried, her voice splintering glass.
He stood and fled, nearly tripping on the mat on the way out. His boots clomped against the cracked pavement, his mouth filling with the bitter taste of dust. That night, on a half-empty bus back to the capital, he huddled against the window, his eyes full of tears.
The Clerk slumped in his chair staring into the warehouse. Stacks of delinquent filings surrounded him, slowly rising walls of ink and paper. His mouth was dry and his teeth clenched. Not long after his return, they’d all been confined to barracks except for their time at their posts. Military police patrolled the gates, white-gloved and grim-faced. Rumors spread in the barracks that the rebel advance was more than the ebb and flow of the war. The streets were alight with burning tires and barricades and the chants of an unruly people. They wouldn’t follow orders anymore.
The phone rang. The Clerk, startled, answered.
“I have something I need you to do,” growled the Commandant. His usual dominance was there, but there was something else underneath—a shakiness, an instability—that the Clerk had never heard before.
“Yes, sir.”
“I need you to destroy the documents in the warehouse. All of them. There are some cans of gasoline and matches in the storage area. There isn’t time for a more...individual determination for each file. Just get rid of everything. Understood?”
The Clerk’s mouth gaped. All of them? The Commandant wanted him to destroy everything?
“Sergeant. Do you understand your orders?” the Commandant barked. He sounded nervous, the Clerk thought. He sounded afraid.
The Clerk gulped. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Get it done, and fast.”
The line went dead and the Clerk’s mind raced. All of his work. His friends.
But he had his orders.
The Clerk grabbed the red cans of gasoline from the storage shed as the Commandant instructed, loading them onto his cart. He smelled smoke over the city, a thin, acrid haze. He went inside and walked the rows of shelves, pulling boxes down and dumping their contents into a pile in the center of the room. He would miss them, he thought, even the ones who cursed his name and condemned him to hell. They were his friends. Who would remember them after they’d gone up in smoke?
He got to Oscar’s box. He thought about saying goodbye, but the thought made him too sad. Better this way. He thought Oscar would think the same, he wasn’t the sentimental type. The Clerk dumped the papers onto the growing pile.
The Clerk worked in a daze. Folders slid through his hands one after another. Lives lived, and ended, in alleyways, and early-morning firefights, and under the frenzied glow of bare light bulbs. Screamed names of lovers and friends drifted forth from their mouths in a river of pain as ink and blood stained the pages. Photographs of people who had disappeared, melting into nothingness like mist and dew. Everything left of them was here.
Arms aching, he came to the last box then. The one he’d been dreading to touch. Marie’s box. He placed it on the pile. His hand trembled as he grabbed the gas can before he turned back.
One more try. The Clerk breathed in and opened the box.
“Marie? Please. Come talk to me. I can take you away with me. I can take you home.”
There was no answer. His breath rattled as he squeezed his tear-filled eyes shut.
Then, he heard his name.
Marie stood in front of him. She wore a stained and tattered white blouse and blue jeans. Her hair was tied back in a bun, face battered and bruised. She looked the same as the day she was arrested.
“Marie,” the Clerk said.
“Don’t do this,” she said.
“I have to.”
“Why?”
The Clerk didn’t say anything in response. He felt the gas can, heavy in his hand. Marie stepped forward. She was close now, very close. The Clerk could smell her perfume, and the scent of cordite and dried blood. Past her, he saw the roses, the petals dried and shriveled. He felt a gentle breeze. Strange, he thought. The air inside the warehouse was always so still.
“Come with me,” she said. “Come with us. You care about us, don’t you?”
The Clerk looked behind her and saw the others. There was a crowd, swollen lips and broken jaws, bloodshot eyes and burnt flesh, and gaps in mouths where teeth had been ripped out. He saw the Wolf, languid, leaning against a shelf. He saw Oscar, stretching like he was about to jump back onto the football pitch. He saw the Bull, barrel-chested and weighed down by guilt and grief. He saw Daniel, eyes narrow and full of malice. Marie seemed to glance at the Wolf and then at Oscar in turn, and they nodded.
“Where will we go?”
She didn’t answer. Then, she kissed him.
As they embraced, the wind picked up, swirling around them. Something brushed the back of his knee. The Clerk felt a whisper of pain, a throb, and a trickle of blood down his leg. Then another, and another, and another.
The Clerk’s knees buckled as Marie pulled him closer, her scent of salt and roses filling his nose. The sharp corner of a photograph nicked his eye, slicing deep. A manilla folder severed the top of his ear.
It was a hurricane of paper, the residents of the prison he’d maintained. They shredded his uniform and flesh, blood pooling on the floor. Lives he’d helped steal, lives that would do anything to preserve what was left of themselves for their comrades to find. Lives that would not let themselves be erased, be murdered a second time.
The Clerk squeezed his eyes shut, and the storm took him.
