The corner seam where the wall meets the floor smells faintly of ozone and old cardboard. We are crouched low, tracking the faint, rhythmic squeak of the dolly wheel as it navigates the inventory. The bins are stacked in a perfect, impossible spiral, arranged by size alone, ignoring any category labels. Yellow masking tape strips crisscross the plastic edges, holding the structure together as if it were a piece of unstable architecture. Dust motes hang suspended in the fluorescent air, catching the weak light just before the overhead fixtures flicker off. I spot a single, misplaced barcode sticker on the third tier, a detail that feels utterly out of place in this mathematically perfect, yet entirely arbitrary, arrangement. We have to finish the count before the lights die, and the spiral keeps pulling the eye inward, making it difficult to track the total volume.
static · strange