Best Before

Milk carton TF story (7340 words)

Contains following themes: flattening, folding, crushing, lamination, humiliation, objectification, recycling.

1

Josh had been looking forward to the school trip ever since his teacher had announced it a couple of weeks earlier. The upcoming excursion to a paper mill had taken on a life of its own inside the imagination of the fourteen-year-old boy, filling his mind with visions of conveyor belts, production lines, and even industrial robots. The fact that the place manufactured mostly just ordinary cardboard packaging hadn't made things any less exciting.

But now that he was finally there, shuffling his feet alongside his classmates while listening to the droning, monotonous voice of the tour guide, excitement was the last thing he was feeling.

"...and over here, we can see how the tips of the flutes of the corrugated medium have been applied with a starch adhesive," the guide explained. "The inner liner is then bonded to one side of the flutes, and the outer liner is bonded to the other side in order to create a single-faced sheet of cardboard..."

The paper mill itself was very impressive and Josh could easily have watched the machines all day, but listening to endless lecturing and answering inane questions had sucked all the fun out of it. Intentionally or not, he started lagging behind others and his teacher had to constantly tell him to keep up with the rest of the group. Despite that, the allure of the mesmerizing machinery was difficult for him to resist.

After a while, the boy suddenly found himself all alone. He spun in place, looking around in all directions, but there wasn't a single person in sight. To make matters worse, he realized he wasn't even sure which way he had come from. He picked a random path, hoping to at least find someone who could help him if it turned out to be the wrong way.

"Guys? Where'd you go?" he called out. "Man, I'm gonna be in so much trouble..."

A few minutes later, Josh caught a glimpse of one of his classmates behind rows of machinery. They were walking away from him, and no matter how loud he yelled, they couldn't hear him over the din. He started after them with haste, doing his best to navigate through the maze of metal. Unfortunately for him, he soon reached a dead end.

Between him and the other kid a long production line stretched out endlessly in either direction. The wide conveyor belt before him was stationary, beckoning him to take a shortcut. Trying to find his way around would most likely result in losing sight of his classmate. With a nervous glance over his shoulder, Josh climbed onto the conveyor belt and began to crawl across it. There wasn't much headroom, just barely enough for a boy his size to squeeze through.

Halfway across the belt, he felt a sudden jolt and started moving sideways. Panic seized him as it immediately carried him inside a large machine where walls blocked off both sides of the conveyor belt. All of a sudden, a hydraulic hiss sounded from above, sending shivers down his spine. He rolled onto his back just in time to see a massive metal plate descending upon him.

"Heeelp!" Josh tried to scream over the noise. He raised his hands in an attempt to push against the plate, but couldn't slow it down one bit. "Stop the machine! I'm in—nnnggh!"

Air wheezed out of his lungs as his body compressed, stretching outward under the enormous pressure. His ribs crackled like crumpling paper until every single one of them had become just as thin. His vision darkened when the machine flattened his face, the outline of his head vanishing as it melted into the rest of him along with his arms and legs. The ever-increasing pressure caused him to black out shortly after.

2

When Josh came to, he didn't know where he was. Feeling woozy, he decided that he must be dreaming. The darkness around him was randomly broken by brief flashes of light that gradually painted a picture of some sort of industrial building. Then everything started coming back to him. It wasn't a dream, not even a nightmare, he belatedly realized. It was all real.

A wave of relief washed over him when he suddenly emerged from a pair of rollers that slid him onto a slow-moving roller conveyor. Everyone from his group was standing right beside it, some of them staring down at him with curious expressions. His teacher, on the other hand, didn't seem to be happy. Their stern face made him feel ashamed about his little misadventure.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." Josh started to say, but no sound came. The words echoed inside his mind, heard only by him. He tried to sit up, but his body didn't respond. The rollers fed him forward as he lay on top of them completely immobile.

The guide stepped closer, turning everyone's attention to him. "Over here, we have a sheet of paperboard fresh out of the machine," they said. "Let's follow it along and see how it gets transformed into the final product."

"Wait, are you talking about me?" asked the sheet. "I'm not paper-anything, I'm Josh! Get me out of this thing already!"

Another pair of rollers caught his edge and pulled him inside the next machine before he even realized it. A sharp, chemical scent quickly overwhelmed his sense of smell. The steel cylinders trundling over him were wet with ink, covering his pristine white surface with complicated patterns one color at a time. Josh remained completely clueless as to what was being printed on him.

The others were already waiting for him when he came out into the open again. The guide appeared in the corner of his view and drowned out his thoughts with their dull but distinct voice: "Now that the product design has been printed, the sheet is ready to be laminated. This will turn it into what we call liquid packaging board, and as the name implies, it is used in containers meant to hold liquids."

"This isn't funny anymore!" Josh screamed silently. "I've learned my lesson! I'll never do it again, I swear!"

The rollers started feeding him into a machine and the smiling students soon vanished from sight. The warmth radiating from up ahead finally made him realize that nobody could recognize him. Panic surged through him as he slid between two spinning spools that laid a thin layer of transparent plastic film on both of his sides. Having helped his parents laminate some papers in the past, he knew all too well what would happen next.

Josh felt a burning sensation as soon as he touched the scorching hot steel rollers the machine guided him in. A wave of immense heat passed slowly through his body like an iron pressing against bare skin, melting the plastic film onto his sizzling surface. In a minute, he came out of the laminator as a brand new sheet of liquid packaging board, the ceiling lights gleaming on his face.

"Notice how the same pattern repeats multiple times across the sheet," the guide continued to explain, hovering their finger over his perfectly smooth surface. "The next machine will cut the sheet into smaller pieces, also known as blanks. Each blank will eventually be folded, glued, and sealed to become a single piece of packaging."

The guide's words filled Josh's mind with despair. He wanted to cry out, but silence was all he could manage. Regret welled up inside him as he was slowly fed into the machine that he believed would surely end his life. He sighed mentally with resignation, having no one to blame for his demise but himself. The students stared obliviously as one of their classmates disappeared between the rollers, never to be seen again in one piece.

A metal contraption with a striking resemblance to a giant cookie cutter descended upon him as soon as he was all the way in. Thankfully, there was hardly any pain at all—the cutting was so swift and clean that all he felt was a little pinch as the blades sliced effortlessly through his thin body. A strange shrinking sensation soon took hold of him, his consciousness still clinging stubbornly to one of the pieces cut from him.

Josh was ejected from the machine a moment later, now small enough to fit on a tray from his school cafeteria. Everything went dark when the other blanks were stacked on top of him, but even there, he couldn't escape the guide's relentless lecturing. Somehow, their words felt even heavier now that the weight of the growing pile of blanks was pressing down on him.

"In order to save space during transport, the blanks will be sent out to packaging plants for the final assembly," they explained. "These ones in particular will be delivered to a local dairy where a special machine folds them into finished milk cartons right before filling."

"Are they talking about me?" Josh thought to himself. His mind reeled, unable to understand what was happening anymore. "I'm not a milk carton! Why can't you see that?"

The voices faded away, replaced by the steady humming of machinery as the blanks were prepared for delivery. He kept telling himself that it would only be a matter of time before someone found out what had happened to him—even if it meant that he would spend the rest of his life as a piece of laminated paperboard. All he wanted was to get back home to his mom.

Hours passed in oppressive silence, but no one came to rescue him. For the first time, Josh wished he would hear the guide's voice again.

3

After sitting still for what felt like several days, the silence was finally broken. The muffled beeping of a reversing forklift seemed distant, but the sudden jolt made it obvious that the pallet Josh was on had just been picked up by one. Soon after it had been set down, he heard an engine turning over, presumably belonging to a truck destined for the dairy plant. He had come to the factory as a person, but was now leaving it as one of its products.

The truck arrived at its destination about an hour later and the cargo was unloaded. Josh spent another day or two in storage, still holding on to a hope that, sooner or later, someone would come and take him back to his family. His mom would know what to do—or so he believed. At the very least, she would keep him safe from harm.

Later that day, the stack started shifting again. The motions felt different to the ones he'd experienced before and he could've sworn that the weight on top of him was slowly decreasing. Strange mechanical noises had replaced the usual soundscape of the warehouse, something he hadn't even noticed until now. The sounds were gradually getting louder as well. All of a sudden, something grabbed him and pulled him out of the stack.

Before Josh could even realize what was happening, metal flaps had already closed in around him. They folded him, pressed him, forced his stiff body into a boxlike shape with mechanical precision. Sharp creases appeared all across his flat form, every fold perfectly aligned with the pattern printed on his surface. He was contorted into the shape of a carton in a matter of seconds, making him groan in discomfort.

A tiny brush spread glue along his edges, its scent sharp and chemical. Another mechanism pressed him into his final shape and held him still for a moment until the glue dried. When he was finally let go of, he desperately tried to straighten himself out and restore his earlier flat shape. The tension made his body ache, but the glue ensured he would have no choice but to get used to his new carton form.

Josh was turned upright and placed onto a narrow conveyor belt with metal railings on both sides. It reminded him of the moving walkway he'd once seen at the airport. Somehow, he could feel himself standing, though that word no longer meant what it used to. His new, angular body was hollow, rigid, and perfectly symmetrical. He was now a car in a long train of empty cartons gliding forward on the conveyor belt.

An array of nozzles appeared above him, one of them positioning itself directly over his open spout that felt disturbingly similar to a mouth. Without delay, a torrent of ice cold liquid started gushing down into him, flooding his empty interior in seconds. He could feel his body swelling, his stiff walls straining outward as the liquid pooled inside him. His previously lightweight body felt like it had suddenly become twenty times heavier.

The nozzle retracted once his insides had been filled to the brim. A thin strip of glue was applied around his spout and a mechanical arm squeezed it shut, sealing his papery lips together. Josh felt like he was holding his breath, but the release never came as his body was now completely airtight. A rubber stamp struck the flange that used to be his spout, leaving behind an expiration date.

Another mechanical arm lifted him in the air and lowered him into a metal rack with wheels. One of the dairy workers carted it away once it filled up, pushing it through a set of heavy doors. The bite of cold air on the other side quickly penetrated his walls, and Josh realized that he had been moved into a refrigerated storage room.

The place was absolutely frigid. The monotonous hum of ventilation filled the space around him, and the only thing keeping his teeth from chattering was the fact that he no longer had any. The bitter cold felt unbearable, and he started to hope that somebody would notice that one of the milk cartons was shivering slightly. That, of course, never happened.

Light seeped in through the small gap between Josh and the carton in front of him, faintly illuminating its back side. The wall of text printed on it filled his entire field of vision, inviting him to start reading. Despite his fixed, unmoving gaze, every word was in perfect focus.

"Ingredients: pasteurized whole milk," the text began. "3,25% fat content. Store refrigerated at +1°C to +6°C. Lasts 4 to 7 days after opening. Do not consume past expiration date."

Then came the nutrition facts, a long list of numbers marching in neat columns that would help consumers make informed dietary choices. Carbohydrates, protein, lactose, calcium, salt, fat—the list seemed to go on forever. Josh diligently scanned each line as if cramming for an exam.

The last bit at the bottom felt more personal: "Rinse and flatten before recycling. Sort as paper or cardboard." Those lines had nothing to do with the contents, but rather the packaging itself. It was like a set of instructions for its own funeral, printed conveniently on its back. No doubt his own back side boasted the exact same instructions.

Josh started again from the top to keep his mind occupied. Focusing on the words in front of him made the cold temperature just a little bit less unbearable, so he continued reading the text over and over again to pass the time. Soon enough, he had learned everything there was to learn about his contents, as well as how he should be properly recycled once he ran out of said contents. He now knew exactly what sort of dairy product he was.

Time blurred in the refrigerated suspense. Hours passed, maybe even days, but there was no way for him to know how long he had been there. The relentless chill made it difficult to concentrate on anything other than the text in front of him, still beckoning him to keep reading. It was his only lifeline against the oppressive cold that surrounded him.

4

At long last, the rack shuddered, then began to roll across the floor. The wheels rattled as the rack was pushed through one set of doors after another. Josh was relieved to finally get out of the storage room, expecting to be loaded into a truck next. The sounds he was hearing seemingly confirmed his suspicion.

Unfortunately, his relief was short-lived. The interior of the truck was just as cold as the storage room, the chill pressing against him from every side. The vibrations of the engine reverberated through his body as the truck rumbled forward. He felt the confined space swaying gently with each turn. Josh was starting to think he might never feel warm again.

The truck eventually jolted to a stop, and the rack he sat on was soon unloaded. It was wheeled directly into the wide, refrigerated display cabinet of the supermarket's dairy aisle. Just like that, Josh had hit store shelves.

For some time, he saw nothing but the familiar back side of the carton standing before him. Like he had done in the storage room, he kept reading the text over and over again in an attempt to ignore the chilly temperature, even though he already knew every single word by heart.

The door suddenly opened with a squelching sound and the carton in front of him jumped out of the rack, taken away by one of the customers. Through a thin, fogged layer of glass, the world beyond was finally revealed to him—bright aisles, shelves lined with products, people walking past, glancing absently at the milk cartons. Some of them carried baskets, others pushed shopping carts.

After a while, the door opened again and fingers closed around him, squeezing his sides firmly. A woman lifted him from the rack and carried him into the open air of the store. She turned him over in her hand and examined him for a second. Josh could almost feel her eyes tracing the words printed on his back, engaging in a silent conversation with him. Satisfied, she dropped him into her shopping cart with a dull thud. Another milk carton was set down next to him.

"Is that what I look like?" he asked in surprise when he saw the picture of a cow on its side. "I guess I should've expected something like that—but it's not who I am! I'm not a product!"

The milk sloshed around within his walls as the cart kept rolling forward. For a fleeting moment, Josh felt relieved—anything was better than the endless refrigeration he had been subjected to over the last several days. The warm air soothed his outer surface, leaving behind small droplets of condensation that trickled down his laminated sides.

At the checkout, the woman placed him onto the conveyor belt. The cashier slid him mechanically across the red light cast by the barcode reader. Josh saw his name appear on the screen in front of him—not his actual name, but his product name. He stared at it in disbelief as the belt carried him over to the bagging area. The other carton followed close behind, seemingly unbothered.

"My name's Josh!" he tried to yell, but to no avail. "I'm a human being! You can't do this! I have rights!"

Despite his protests, the woman slipped both cartons into a plastic bag with the rest of her purchases, blissfully unaware that one of them was sentient. The fact that she had bought him felt wrong on so many levels, but there was nothing he could do about it in his current state. Whether he liked it or not, he was now her property, and the only right he had left was the right to remain silent.

The ride in the trunk of her car was a blur of motion and muffled sounds. Josh felt like he had been kidnapped and was desperately trying to figure out a way to escape. But no matter how hard he thought, there was no way for him to escape the paperboard prison of his own body. Eventually, the car pulled up in a driveway and the engine turned off.

The woman carried the bag inside and proceeded to unpack its contents. Josh could only catch a brief glimpse of her home before he was shoved into the back of a refrigerator. The door slammed shut behind him with a hollow thunk, sealing him inside. The light above him flickered off as soon as the door had fully closed. Once again, cold pressed mercilessly against his sides.

5

The hours dragged inside the fridge, measured only by the occasional hum of the motor and shifting shadows when the door sometimes opened and closed behind him. There wasn't anything there for him to read anymore, and even if there was, he wouldn't have been able to do so with the light off. Josh waited apprehensively, dreading the inevitable.

The door cracked open yet again, the unexpected noise startling him just like it already had several times before. But this time, fingers squeezed his sides and he began to slide backwards.

Josh was lifted out of the cold fridge into the kitchen's light and placed in the center of a dinner table, his sides chilled and slick with condensation. A family of four sat down around him, about to start eating their afternoon meal. He tensed up when one of them wrapped their hand firmly around his sealed spout and pulled it open with a practiced motion.

The sensation made Josh want to retch—it felt like someone was prying his jaws apart with brute force. But surprisingly, the unpleasant feeling was followed by a strange relief. For the first time after being glued shut, he felt like he could breathe again. He tried to savor the moment, but was suddenly tilted sideways.

Milk surged up his throat, pouring out in a cold stream. Josh felt every drop rushing out of him, draining into the glass below. It was both dizzying and humiliating at the same time, like vomiting in front of total strangers. As soon as the glass was full, he was turned upright and set down on the table again.

Josh felt a little awkward standing in the middle of the table, thinking he wasn't supposed to be there. He became a silent witness to the family's private conversations, unable to cover his ears—or whatever passed for ears in his current form. Fortunately for them, their secrets would be safe with him thanks to his inability to utter a single word.

Someone grabbed him every few minutes, and he would dispense milk into their glass like some sort of servant. Each time he grew lighter and emptier, too scared to think what would happen once he ran out. The thumps his body produced when set down sounded progressively more hollow after each pour.

By the time everyone had finished their meal, Josh still had some milk left in him and was returned to the fridge. While his contents chilled, his thoughts began to drift in circles. Memories bubbled up without warning, from a life that now felt like it had belonged to someone else. He suddenly remembered being eight or nine years old, standing next to the kitchen bin with an empty milk carton in his hand.

"Josh!" his mother's voice had called him. "How many times do I have to tell you? Don't put it in the trash—recycle it!"

"What's the big deal?" he'd groaned annoyedly. "It's just a stupid carton."

"It's not just a carton," she had told him. "You have to think about where things go after you're done with them."

The memory lingered in his mind. Back then, he couldn't have cared less, but now, as the cold seeped through his paperboard body, he understood better than he ever wanted to. He instantly realized how all those things he had tossed into the bin must have felt, had they been able to. Now a carton himself, the feeling of being at someone else's mercy made him deeply regret his actions.

"I don't deserve recycling," Josh thought bleakly. "They should just throw me in the trash like I always did—that's exactly what I deserve. I'm just a stupid carton, after all."

The next morning, the woman took him out of the fridge again. He was tilted above a glass just like before, but only a thin stream of milk came out that barely filled half of it. She waited a few seconds for the last drops to fall from his spout, but that was it—Josh was empty. Sound echoed faintly inside his hollow body as her fingers tapped against him, their warmth spreading through his thin walls.

She carried him to the sink, turned the faucet on, and rinsed him out with lukewarm water. She squeezed his spout shut and started shaking him vigorously, the water churning inside him like a tiny storm. It was extremely nauseating, and Josh disgorged the water as soon as she let go of his spout and inverted him. She leaned him against the edge of the sink, water trickling out of his gaping mouth as he hung upside down to dry.

The rinsing had left him feeling dizzy and being upside down didn't do him any favors, but he had plenty of time to clear his head as he dried peacefully in the kitchen sink. Soothing warmth spread throughout his body as it slowly warmed up to room temperature. For the first time in over a week, he truly began to relax. He couldn't help but feel proud for fulfilling his humble purpose.

A few hours later, the woman removed him from the sink and laid him down horizontally on the countertop. Josh looked up at her through the haze of his thoughts, and for one fleeting moment, he saw not this stranger but his mother. The memory from earlier returned so vividly that it hurt—her mother's patient but firm expression as she scolded him about the importance of recycling.

"I'm sorry, Mom," Josh tried to say, but no sound came. "You know best, like you always do. I've learned my lesson—please don't send me to the landfill!"

The woman's hands reached for him. Her fingers pressed into his sides a lot harder than ever before, folding them inward with a sharp crackle. Josh winced as the paperboard buckled, each crease sending waves of discomfort through his form. Then she placed her palm on his face and pressed down, making him collapse under the weight, walls folding in on themselves until he was almost completely flat.

Josh suddenly remembered the text printed on his own surface, the words he had chanted in the cold storage over and over again. Rinse and flatten before recycling—that's what she was doing, he finally realized. Despite the rough handling, a ripple of relief passed through him. Maybe this meant that he wasn't going to end up at the landfill after all.

She opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out a large blue bin, sliding him inside it. His flat body slipped easily between flattened cereal boxes and other cartons. She returned the container to the cabinet and closed the door, leaving Josh alone to get acquainted with his new, two-dimensional roommates. They were of the silent sort just like him, but he felt a strange sense of camaraderie regardless.

For the first time since the accident at the paper mill, Josh felt like he was right where he belonged. He had been rinsed, he had been flattened, and now, he was waiting to be recycled—waiting to be given another chance.

6

The days inside the cabinet passed in muffled silence, broken only by the faint sounds of the household above. Every now and then, more pieces of cardboard were crammed inside the bin, squeezing Josh harder and harder until he was almost as thin as a postcard. There was no address written on him, but he figured he wouldn't need one to get to his promised destination.

Despite the rinsing, the greasy residue inside him was slowly starting to spoil, filling what little space he had left with an unpleasant smell. The whiff of rancid milk was becoming stronger by the day, making it difficult to get used to. Josh had no choice but to endure it, dreading to think how much more he'd reek if she hadn't rinsed him. The fruity smells of empty juice boxes mingling with his own didn't make things much better.

When the bin became too full to hold any more items, it was emptied into a large outdoor container where the smell of damp cardboard was heavy in the air. Josh eventually heard a truck pull up outside the container. Everything around him began to shake as the container was lifted above the truck and tipped over. Its contents poured out into the yawning mouth of the compactor below.

Josh watched worriedly as the hatch above him closed, plunging him into darkness. A deafening rumble filled the space when the compactor whirred to life and began its job. He was pushed violently against the other pieces of cardboard around him, his stiff body folding like a sheet of paper. The woman's touch from earlier had been downright gentle compared to how this machine was treating him.

"Urrnngh!" he groaned in unison with his body. "Let me out! I can't take th—hnnngh!"

When the pressure finally eased up, Josh felt like an unwilling origami. The tension in his body was hopelessly trying to undo every crease pressed into him. To his dismay, the compression cycle was repeated every single time more cardboard was dumped in, each more powerful than the previous one. The relentless crushing made him feel so numb that he hardly even noticed it anymore after the first ten times.

A wave of relief washed over him when he tumbled out of the truck at the recycling facility. The sorting machines separated him from other materials, and he soon found himself riding on top of a conveyor belt filled with various kinds of paperboard products. All of it was later compressed into dense bales under several tons of pressure, but Josh wasn't even aware of it—that's how numb he was. The bales were loaded onto another truck and sent to a paper mill for further processing.

Everything became hazy after that. Josh drifted in and out of consciousness as he was soaked, pulped, and cleaned, the large machines stripping him of his old identity with brutal efficiency. He was no longer a carton of milk, no longer anything recognizable. His body had literally been beaten to a pulp, but he felt no pain. The entire process seemed like a fever dream.

Josh slowly started coming back to his senses when the wet slurry was pressed hard under a massive steel roller and its edges were trimmed straight in order to create a large, rectangular white sheet. It was subsequently squashed flat by a giant press, fusing his fibers with millions of others into a fresh sheet of recycled paperboard.

"Feels like I've just been born again," he thought as the heavy steel plate started to rise. "I guess I have—sort of."

As he came out of the press and looked at his surroundings, he instantly recognized where he had arrived—it was the exact same paper mill he'd begun his journey in less than a month earlier. The tour guide's words came rushing back to his mind, preparing him mentally for what was coming next. Maybe, he suddenly realized, he had learned something useful after all.

This time, there were no students gawking at him as he was printed, laminated and shaped into a new product. The process was a lot less scary than it had previously been and Josh actually enjoyed every part of it—the moistness of the ink rollers, the warm embrace of the laminator, and the reassuring pinch of the blades cutting him into a blank. He caught a glimpse of bright green as he passed under a polished steel beam, and that was all he knew about his new appearance.

The machine proceeded to stack up the blanks just like last time. Despite not seeing anything, the noises and motions felt familiar to him by now. Josh could easily tell at which moment the stack was being palletized, carried by a forklift, and loaded onto a truck—it was all surprisingly predictable. An engine turned over, and he knew he was on the move once again.

Before long, he was pulled out of the stack and the world spun around him when a machine started folding him into the shape of a small box. A sharp crease split his face in half, bending it around a corner. It was far from pleasant, but if he had to endure a little discomfort in the name of efficiency, then so be it. The guide had said that good packaging was cheap and easy to manufacture, and that's exactly what Josh wanted to be. He might have failed as a person, but he hoped he could still succeed as packaging material.

Once the folding phase was over, Josh was ready to be filled. A total of eight objects were packed inside him before the machine closed his flap and sealed it with glue. Mechanical arms picked him up shortly after and lowered him into a large cardboard box, plunging him into darkness yet again. Lastly, the box was moved to a warehouse to wait for delivery.

7

The little green box remained almost a week in a quiet storeroom, slowly getting used to its new proportions. Josh spent the majority of the time trying to guess what he contained. The items inside him felt smooth and cylindrical, and they smelled faintly of lavender. He eventually decided that they must have been scented candles. At the end of the week, he was loaded into a truck and sent off.

The journey seemed to take forever, leading him to believe that he was traveling to the other side of the country—or maybe even a different country. After several days, the cardboard box was opened and bright light started seeping in through the tiny gaps between him and the adjacent packages. Josh was excited to have finally arrived at his destination, knowing he'd soon have his moment in the sun.

A female clerk lifted him out and placed him on a shelf. As he looked around, he saw shelves filled with brightly colored boxes and plastic packaging. Some of them had pictures of cats on them, others of dogs, fish, or even birds. Leashes and collars hung from metal hooks on the opposite side of the aisle. It was abundantly clear that he had arrived at some sort of pet store.

"Does this place sell candles?" Josh asked himself. "If not, what else could I be holding? Bars of soap, maybe? Pets have to be cleaned with something, right?"

He watched as the woman kept stacking the shelves with items, humming quietly to herself. Her hands kept moving with mechanical precision, grabbing boxes from a cart and setting them onto shelves in neat rows. She picked up another green box with the same size and shape as Josh and placed it right in front of his face, blocking most of his view. His heart sank as soon as he read the text printed on it.

"DoodyDuty – Biodegradable Pet Waste Bags – Lavender scented – 8 rolls / 240 pieces"

Josh was absolutely mortified. Just to add insult to injury, there was an unmistakable silhouette of a squatting dog right in the center of the box. The design left no room for imagination, and anyone would be able to tell at first glance that it contained poop bags for dogs. The simple fact that Josh was sitting right behind it was enough to convince him that he was an identical box with equally unflattering contents.

The clerk wheeled her cart away, leaving him to stare at the back side of his twin brother. As hours passed, its appearance was slowly imprinted on his mind, becoming his new, humiliating identity. He belatedly realized that his name wasn't Josh anymore—it was DoodyDuty, spelled out across his face for everyone to see. Thankfully, none of his classmates were there to make fun of him.

The following morning, somebody picked up the box in front of him, and his turn came later in the afternoon. He tensed up instinctively when a man's hand wrapped firmly around him, pulling him from the shelf. The man's young daughter trotted beside them, pointing at Josh.

"Daddy, what's that?" she asked, looking curiously at the green box with a silly silhouette of a pooping dog on its side.

"These," her father explained, "are bags for cleaning up after Charlie. We don't want to leave his messes on the ground, right? It's important to keep the streets clean for everyone."

The little girl frowned. "That's gross..."

Josh could feel all of his six sides turning red from embarrassment as the man dropped him into the shopping basket. The other items in it almost seemed to mock him for his ridiculous appearance, and even the cashier grinned at him when he was scanned at the checkout. He felt as though he was being paraded in front of everyone while wearing no clothes at all.

"This is my punishment," he said somberly. "I deserve to look like this for all the cartons I threw away without care. I deserve to carry the name of DoodyDuty—it's who I am now."

The man stuffed him unceremoniously into a plastic bag with the rest of their items. Josh was relieved to finally have a bit of privacy, quietly observing his surroundings through the translucent surface of the bag as he was carried out of the store. Swaying gently from side to side eased his mind a bit while his new owner and their daughter made their way to the parking lot.

After getting home, the man took Josh out of the bag and opened him right away. Being ripped open along the perforated line made him wince—or whatever the box equivalent of that might've been. It felt obscene to have his lid torn open like that. They removed one of the rolls before storing him in a small closet. He let out a mental sigh of relief as soon as the door was closed, no longer feeling exposed.

8

In the darkness of the closet, Josh thought about his friends, his family, and most of all, his mother. He hoped that she would pick him up from the store one day and take him back home. Maybe she would somehow be able to tell that it was her son? But even if she failed to recognize him, she would at least give him one last hug as she dutifully flattened him before disposal. Josh found the idea of his own mother unknowingly recycling him more than a little disturbing.

"One day, you're going to go places," he remembered his mother always telling him. Was this what she had in mind? Had she foreseen her son traveling through industrial machines, becoming disposable packaging for things most people barely even noticed? Josh didn't know. But his mother hadn't been wrong—he had gone places, and he still was, although in a very unconventional way.

After the first few weeks, Josh finally stopped feeling ashamed of his humble purpose. He realized that he was just a box doing its job, holding whatever things people needed him to hold. Ironically, the pet waste bags stored within his walls were soft, clean and had a pleasant lavender scent—in other words, they were preferable to the milk he had contained before in every way except for their status.

Josh's childish imagination was great at keeping boredom at bay. Whenever a roll was taken out, he imagined himself as an officer sending soldiers into battle. The baggies were out there doing the dirty work while he stayed comfortably in the closet, far away from the messy frontlines. He didn't envy their fate, but he thanked them for their sacrifice. Thinking about their lot in life made him appreciate his own more than before.

"What if those things can think and feel just like me?" Josh wondered, somewhat unsettled by this sudden realization. "I can't possibly be the only sentient object that ever came to be, can I? But I guess it doesn't make much difference when I can't communicate with any of them even if I met one."

The capabilities of his human body weren't the only thing he yearned for. Josh sorely missed his family and friends, painfully aware that he would likely never see any of them again. Nevertheless, the passage of time slowly started to heal him, even if it couldn't turn him back into the boy he once was. The grief weighing on his mind was removed bit by bit, just like the rolls inside him. He began to feel lighter both literally and figuratively.

"Goodbye, Mom," Josh said wistfully, hoping that she would hear him. "I know I'm just a box, but I still want to make you proud. Maybe it's not too late for me to do that."

His young mind proved to be quite adaptable, being able to adjust to his peculiar existence over time. After a few months, he had started taking pride in being a product and deriving joy from being useful. He decided that as long as he had a real purpose, however inconsequential, he would remain content. That was all an inanimate object like him could conceivably ask for.

The day finally came when the last roll of bags was removed, leaving Josh empty once again. The man who had bought him from the pet store lifted him out of the dark closet and brought him into the light. Neither the bags nor his grief weighed him down anymore—he was ready to let go of the past and look forward into the future, embracing his existence as paperboard packaging.

"So, what are you planning to do with me?" Josh asked as the man studied his boxy body. The seven months he'd spent in the closet had taught him to be patient, and he wasn't in a rush to get anywhere. "I guess I can still hold stuff for you, if you want. But if you don't need me anymore, I'd appreciate it if you did me a favor and recycled me. Please?"

He stared at the man's face, wondering if they could understand him. Their expression softened, and they proceeded to push out his bottom flaps and flatten him. He yielded easily under the pressure of their fingers, his frame crackling as it settled into its new shape. Despite the ache, Josh didn't protest, knowing that being flattened by hand ahead of time would make later mechanical compaction much easier to deal with.

The summer sun started to gleam on his green surface as soon as the man stepped out of the front door, fanning themselves with his flat body on their way to the wheelie bins. Josh was more than happy to provide them with a refreshing breeze as his final service moments before they flicked him into a large recycle bin filled with cardboard. A familiar musty smell greeted him as he landed softly on top of an empty pizza box.

"Time to start going places again, I guess," Josh thought to himself. "Here's hoping I become a valuable trading card or something cool like that. On second thought, it would probably be pretty boring to just sit in a binder and be gawked at once in a blue moon. Now that I think about it, being DoodyDuty packaging wasn't so bad, after all. Maybe prestige isn't everything."

The little green box watched silently as the lid cracked open every now and then, sunlight pouring briefly into the container before another piece of cardboard fell on top of him. Over the following days, he became buried beneath them until light could no longer reach him. In that dark, cramped space, waiting to be recycled again, Josh was finally at peace with himself.