MoC’s Cursed Packing Peanuts
A lessor known part of the business is the extensive amount of packing supplies we go through. Two rooms of cardboard boxes, an attic of bubble wrap, and a very creepy room in the back of the basement housing the packing peanuts. Within this dark room waits 15+ giant bags of packing peanuts like something out of an alien nest. Also, they’re taller than most of our employees.
On your quest to reach the sacred lair of packing peanuts, you first brave the creaky staircase. To even reach the light, you must stumble your way over the first flight of stairs to the switch. You question the point of this endeavor as the light is an old florescent that flickers with unnerving tempo. The illumination it spares reveals a Michigan Basement (Never heard of one? Go watch Silence of the Lambs or the first season of American Horror Story. Standard issue Michigan Basements.)
A cracking checkerboard linoleum floor and furnace are the only reminders this place exists outside of the underworld. Though you have your doubts for there are distinct tally marks etched into the concrete walls and a red stain the Realtor swore was just paint. You can’t shake the feeling this was the fate of the last store owner.
The second room funnels you deeper into your doom. No lights connect above. The linoleum, disgusting as it was, is a luxury you long for atop the cold concrete here. This room serves no purpose beyond the resting grounds for the old shelves of businesses past and as a test of willpower to the final stage of your journey. Perhaps it is good to not have the light so you do not dwell on what else joins you?
You reach the final doorway, a new dark portal you must reach your hand into blindly for a light. You find it with the immediate sensation you have trespassed upon a world you are unfit for. This room is unlike all before. The lights are numerous and illuminate everything in painstaking detail. Everything is white from the walls to the ceiling tiles to the carpet that squishes at your step to the rows of packing peanuts. And was that the carpet shifting or something else? You hoist a bag of peanuts over your shoulder and bolt back to the stairs.
Through the dark storage room, through the cobweb ridden furnace room, and up the rickety steps you dart before bursting back into reality...as long as your bag does not wedge itself stuck in the narrow doorways. The mammoth bag only causes minimal damage this time, knocking over a shelf and a small child before it’s settled in the packing room.
Some ask us if it’s creepy working with dolls. They will never know the true horror that is handling our packing peanuts.