Confessions of a Shoplifter

The fluorescent lights flickered from the high, cement ceiling and reflected off of the hard, shiny floor of aisle four but the level of light cast on the shelves and the walls and the people walking drearily here and there did not change. The roof was covered with lights, and each time one was faltering or failing altogether, the others around it were shining strong, and making up for the lost luminescence. Shopping centres require maximum lighting – customers must be assaulted with the complete spectrum of colour, wholly, fully, unobstructed in their freedom to choose.

Aisle four is pet foods and cleaning products, it smells like artificial lemon-scent moulded plastic and is colder than the aisles over near the bakery section as it borders on the fridges. As a meandering figure with a yellowy-green backpack wanders aimlessly down the row, idly eyeing product after product and occasionally picking one out for closer inspection, his right hand drifts back and reaches for a zip on his bag. Not yet, only checking. His slow, pottering trail crosses the path of a security camera which is perched at the back end of the aisle and casts a watchful eye towards the front of the store. Always watching, always waiting.

The slowly walking, slowly looking, slowly thinking figure with the yellowy-green backpack rounds the end of the aisle and picks up speed, and as he brushes past the end of aisle five, unzips his backpack just slightly on the right-hand side facing the aisle. A small opening sits and waits while other shoppers drift by. A mother with a stroller, a group of foreign men with three bags between them, an employee pushing a trolley full of new stock to put on the shelves. The lone figure sees all, and quietly scans his surroundings, just as the camera does while it sits on the roof, still eyeing the same patch of floor, now empty and only reflecting light from the flickering fluorescents on the roof. As figures dart in and out of his eyeline, he twists his head back conspicuously, checking one more time for the authority figure that would spell the abortion of this mission. Only nerves can save him now... he traces the route out in his head and takes one more cursory glance at a packet of chips before turning around and heading back to aisle four. The goal waits on a shelf at waist-height, sitting in a small, rectangle box, with a price tag that says, “$7.99”.

He walks down the aisle, quicker this time but only slightly, and coasts down the right-hand side, almost brushing up against the shelves. A hand reaches out, upturned and ready and grabs the glittery box of toothpaste from the shelf, quickly fumbling it through the open hole in the bag as it brightly reflects the flickering light from the roof and the squeak from a hard rubber wheel on the floor echoes out from under the fixtures and seems to come from aisle three. The guilty perpetrator walks off, continuing towards the front of the store with a bunch of other items in hand and arrives at a self-service check out. Bags on the ground, items to the scanner. Another couple of items remain on the floor and are mixed up with those that are already paid for. A zucchini. A capsicum. They are carefully picked for their relatively high price. Too high to be included in this ten-dollar visit to the supermarket.

While money is inserted the criminal at the front of the store shines on the cameras, illuminated by a rotten glow and slowly pulsating red light that no one else can see. The cameras stay still and register no reaction – they cannot tell the world what they have witnessed. As the figure with the yellowy-green bag draws up a hood from his jumper and walks past the smiling shop assistant with a brief greeting, he fades back into the crowd. Gone. Escaped. A barely-perceptible spring in his quickened step, he paces onto the street and out of reach of the watchful cameras. The change clinks in his pocket: two dollars and forty-five cents, made up in silver coins, meanwhile a ten dollar note lays, nestled reassuringly in the back pocket of the bag. He plans out how to best spend the meagre amount, and stretch it out until pay-day next Sunday, and the spring quickly leaves his measured stride. Meanwhile the tills rattle back at the supermarket. The shoppers come and go, and the money rolls in. And the cold, still cameras keep watch under the wavering fluorescent lights.

Peace, Taco.