This is a short story about a cardboard box. We take these things for granted, we really do! Is it ever on your mind? Do you ever stop to think about how bad cardboard boxes have got it?!

Exactly, no you don’t! But after reading The Box… you may well do. You may well do.

Cardboard Box-Based Short Story on Boredom

Synopsis: A cardboard box sits bored out of its mind in a retail store warehouse wondering what in the name of bejeezus is it all about.

Cast of characters:

• One very bored cardboard box 📦

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What words rhyme with box? Let’s think… fox. Stocks. Blocks. Locks, socks, rocks, clocks, docs, the pox. Breadbox? Botox. Cowpox. Boondocks. Yes, what a great word! Boondocks! Cool, that was a fun activity. Next word, I guess. Do any words rhyme with no frills baked beans? Don’t know about that… worth a go?

I guess I’m board.

I’ve made that joke many times before. I’ve made it so many times now I no longer find it funny. Even on the first time it merely elicited from me a mild chuckle. “That’s quite clever!” I thought, but not after the 7,656th time it isn’t I can assure you.

Okay, for the uninitiated here what’s going on? Well, I’m a cardboard box and I’m stuck in the bottom right hand corner of a big pile of cardboard boxes, thankfully at the front so I at least have a view across the warehouse. I’m in a budget supermarket, occasionally I see the feet of humans rushing by to do human stuff. Otherwise, the rest of the time I sit here until I’m needed. That may be today, tomorrow, or another seven months from now. Then, some employee may fill up my box with no frills baked beans. Right to the top, probably about 30 tins could fit in me. What a day that would be!

Do you see now why I’m bored? Have you got it this bad!?

I’ve been so bored over the last seven months I’ve tried many and various tactics to keep myself alert. That includes:

• Inventing a box-based language I’ve called Box (it’s a mixture of English meets Japanese meets Russian and I’m not even sure I understand it yet, despite being the only thing fluent in this language).
• Inventing a box-based philosophy I’ve called Box, which postulates the Universe is stored in a giant old cardboard box stored in a budget supermarket in some higher, transmundane version of reality.
• Creating a box-based polemic that argues boxes are inherently evil as boxes just store stuff in themselves, which is arrogant and lazy (at least in my opinion).
• Attempting to solve physics mysteries, but failing because I’m not so good at advanced mathematics.

The next time a human picks me up to move me, my intention is to present the various theses and hypothesising to them to get a verdict on my work.

Although I appreciate I have a box-based bias, I’ve tried working around that by thinking outside the box (as it were). I was inspired to do so by a rat that scurried past me one morning. From that rat, I realised boxes such as myself should consider the world from a different perspective. One where I can at least apply my experience as a box into a fundamental framework for the meaning of existence.

That’s great and everything, but I am just so very, very bored.

With all the philosophising out of the way and that, what’s there to do now? Word games, which I’m a bit fed up with. After switching over to guessing games last week, that didn’t go very well. The box next to me, we had a game of I Spy. Unfortunately, all we can spy directly ahead of us is a giant pile of cardboard boxes… you can see the conundrum we’re facing here. Wall-to-wall boxes and, after a while (like seven months!!!), that places a limit on even the most active of imaginations.

Hmmmmm…

Do you want to hear the box song I wrote? It’s called The Box Song. Here it is.

Boxes are really great,
And you can keep them in a crate,
But never put them on a plate,
Because you may well suffocate.

Boxes, boxes, ra ra ra!
Boxes, boxes, ra ra ra!
Boxes, boxes, la la la!

For a while, me and the other boxes sang this every morning to try and gee up our flagging spirits. After several weeks we realised just how awful the lyrics are, so we stopped. My bad! It’s just a shame I can’t be bothered writing a better song now, really, I’m just so world-weary, bored, and jaded. Boxed in—relying on inane aphorisms and puns.

Comprehending my lot does make me think of the future.

Perhaps I’ll be recycled.

That’d be great! Turned into something useful and worthwhile, such as propaganda as part of an aggressive leaflet campaign for some political faction of revolutionary maniacs who want to overthrow society. I’d be there leaving my mark as humanity implodes and there’s carnage and mayhem! Then maybe after I’d be recycled into Doomsday literature! Me right there, bearing the news of the world ending. That’s memorable, that is, and I’d be carried about by some panic-stricken human roaring stuff like “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!” and I’d witness the most exciting things. My moment in history…

Gosh, I’m being morbid. Boredom does strange things to a box.

I apologise. I’m not misanthropic. Just bored.

Erm… maybe I’ll think of a thesis on boredom. That might cure my boredom… or is that being stup… ooh! 

OOH! A human! A human employee is here!!! She’s looking around prodding at boxes so she’s in need of a box. Here we all are, the bored boxes, shouting in silence at this woman to pick us up and fill us with something. Anything! Spare us of this tedium! Hell you can pack me to the top and sellotape me shut with instant noodles if it bloody well has to be that, but I’ve been sitting here for seven months empty and it’s not what a cardboard box is supposed to do! And she rummages… SHE’S NEARING ME! SHE’S NEARING PICKING ME UP! AND… 

She’s picked the box next to me up. That bastard who played I Spy with me. Gone. Shit.

SHIT! Is this it, then, for eternity?!

I’m vacant. Empty. Uninhabited. Untenanted, tenantless, free, available, evacuated, depopulated, abandoned, and forsaken. The barren, bombastic box sitting here waxing lyrical because there’s sod all else to do.