Shay Gilbert

Loot and Boot

Loot and Boot After barely an hour, it was turning out to be an agonising shift. SupaMart was always a ghost town on Sundays and the radio played cheesy power ballads just loud enough to keep me from blocking them out. The aircon was still broken, so my uniform clung to me in all the wrong places. My bra and singlet were saturated with sweat and it was starting to show on my shirt. I was restocking the shelves in the toiletry aisle: liquid soaps, toothbrushes, toothpastes, moisturisers, dental floss, shampoos, and conditioners. Luxury items, according to the Doomsdayers, though Woodrow preferred calling them the leave-behinds. He once told me people would make for the canned goods, then the condoms and the pill, as if this were all a joke, this nightmare.