Story of the Day

Milk Crates

She began stacking milk crates at the age of ten. At first it was a hobby, the crates were free from the local supermarket and she didn't have many friends. She liked the lines of the crates, the squareness of their shape, the solidness of the plastic. They were light enough for her to lift and easy enough to stack. With some duck tape and Elmer's glue she found she could connect the crates and build things greater in size than she was. Her first project was a bench. The projects only got bigger after that.

Six years later and her crate house was complete. It was three bedrooms two baths with a porch and an eat in kitchen. She said she would live there if only the roof didn't leak, but that is the problem with crates, they aren't completely solid. The house was to be her crowning moment and it would have been but near the end of the completion she had run out of free crates from the supermarket and had to find other sources to supply her with materials.

The stealing began on a Thursday. She was walking home from school and saw a truck parked outside a warehouse loading milk crates onto the back. She nearly walked past, but her fingers began to twitch, her legs started to walk backwards, her eyes bulged as her pulse quickened. Then her feet quickened and she grabbed the first crate throwing the milk on the floor. Eight block later when she knew she was safe she promised herself she would never steal again because it was wrong. The only thing wrong was her posture was starting to bend, she could no longer stand completely straight.

It happened gradually. Since the age of ten her body was slowly bending its way into crate form. Her arms now hit the ground when she walked. She could no longer stack crates, her body wouldn't let her. At the age of twenty she was now a fixture in her own crate house. She stood bent over on the porch while people came to take pictures of the town's new attraction. People would sit on her as her new form made her into a chair. They would take pictures and bring them home to make scrapbooks. Eventually when she died, her skin hardened to plastic and she became the thing she most loved, a milk crate.


30 and wishing to rage it,

Melissa