《Trapped》 Prologue Prologue Future Beep, an hour has passed, at least I feel like it has. The alarm that¡¯s going off beats me in the ear with every passing moment. It¡¯s been more like days, or months, I¡¯ve lost track. We used to have someone to count the days but they went insane. You¡¯re probably wondering what I¡¯m even talking about, but I don¡¯t even know myself¡­ All I know is that I¡¯m trapped, trapped in a store with no way out, the shelves feel to move infinitely alongside us, if we reach a wall it never ends, just teasing us with an idea of freedom. We¡¯re hunted in the dark by faceless creatures we call the ¡°Staff¡± or one of the people I met who created the creatures called them SCP-3008, although the person we met was killed off by their own creation and was short lived, we learned they turn friendly in the light, and some¡­ they¡¯re more inhumane than the others. Now, to make sense of all of this, I¡¯ll take you to the beginning, where all of this was merely a tale. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Beginning I was on break and simply looking over my phone when my boss broke into the break room, ¡°Hey Mina! Mind looking after the store after hours tonight?¡± My brain initially said no but then I remembered my overdue rent, the thing keeping me in this crappy job. ¡°Sure, but if I don¡¯t get paid you¡¯ll have to see me in court¡± I had responded in a way that I could have gotten fired, and I would have definitely not had enough money to even take a step in court but I knew what I was doing, I think. Boss simply glared at me and then threw me a card, ¡°If you think of leaving early, call them, they¡¯ll bring extra workers, for free.¡± His face had lit up at the word free and then walked out but before he left I asked him a question, ¡°Then why take me overtime?¡± The boss stopped mid-walk out the door and turned his head towards me, ¡°Don¡¯t ever question me!¡± and as he walked out he had muttered under his breath to where I could barely hear him, but I figured it out when I had free time to ponder when I wasn¡¯t running for my life, it¡¯s simply, ¡°Why does no one read the poster!¡± Now when I think back to the break room I remember a poster that was hidden by the door when it was opened said something along the lines of ¡®Rules of IKEA Workers! 1. Never be rude to a customer or you¡¯ll be terminated. 2. Never defy the upper class or you¡¯ll be terminated. 3. Never question the upper class or you¡¯ll be terminated¡¯ Yeah¡­ a lot of termination. But I remember when I looked at the card he given me, I actually still have it with me somewhere in my pockets. Ah yes it was under a panel board. SCP Foundations, Secure, Contain, Protect. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Beginning (Pt.2) Still clueless about that but I think it has something to do with the Staff. The old man we met at the cafeteria was a real conspiracy theorist, yelling about how this was all a social experiment by the lizard man government, how he had it all figured out and just had to find a wall to break out. He was weird and died the next night, all his yelling during the night made Staff pay more attention to him I guess. Oh yeah forgot to mention but during the day the Staff are still around. They seem to take notice of people during the day and sometimes unnoticeably follow you until the powers cut and everything goes dark and you rely on a battery powered lamp about to die while you watch your friends get murdered by ruthless creatures which no matter what¡¯s going on they ask you to leave the store which you can¡¯t which leads you to insanity¡­ yeah, not that bad, that¡¯s at least what Jules said, BUT I SAY HE¡¯S WRONG, ITS ABSOLUTE HECK HERE. But there¡¯s no chance anyone will find this journal or me unless they¡¯re another victim, so if you¡¯re looking for my body if it hasn¡¯t been made unreasonable by the Staff it¡¯s the 16 year old looking girl with dark red hair and brown eyes, just open my eye if it¡¯s closed while I¡¯m dead, I also have a lot of freckles so there¡¯s that and I¡¯ve been stuck in ripped clothes for months and I¡¯ve been having to rip apart poor stuffed animals to use their cloth to fix it. Jules recently found a craft section around the ¡°Entrance¡± of the store, by entrance I mean you can only walk into the store, not out. But he opted to make us better clothes than a penguin face on my leg and bear face on my sleeve. We found fabric that relatively matched our current clothes and enough to make another set of clothes. Stolen story; please report. Beginning (Pt.3) We saw a map on a column that we hadn¡¯t seen anywhere else, ¡®Maybe the Staff actually did something helpful?¡¯ I thought to myself, we saw that there was another craft section with a sewing machine that was almost opposite our direction but we decided it would be faster to make clothes with the machine. Tomorrow Jules is going out to explore and get more supplies along with the sewing machine so I¡¯ll be alone for a couple hours. I sit in the corner of our makeshift shelter sitting next to a purple lamp with no source of power but still running, I scribble in a book I found in the craft section and started drawing the Staff, the more details I drew the more I realized how uncanny they looked, a normal IKEA uniform, a orange shirt with purple stripes and jeans. But their faces and body, it¡¯s unsettling. They have no eyes, no anything really, just a smoothed out pale face. They¡¯re unnaturally slender most of the time and have an unsettling way they walk. Their hands usually sway by their side as if weightless and walk as if they¡¯re about to jump something, or someone. My phone alarm goes off for an hour passing by, we have no clocks and the sun is the power, never changing in the sky so no guessing, your insanity makes you second guess how long time has passed so we found that alarms work in telling time. I scratch another tally in the corner of the page, one tally for every hour Jules has been gone, I recount the tally¡¯s in my head and sigh, it¡¯s been three hours, where is he? I guess while I wait I can tell you more of how I got here, how everything started, it could give you clues on how to get out of here, find out what the heck is going on. I remember the night I pulled back up to the building, the feeling of being in the store during the night being a new idea, my co-worker joining me that night? Jules. We had worked together that night to restock and not let the darkness depress us, it¡¯s my fault he¡¯s here, if I hadn¡¯t left early, we would be at home, in the real world. But no, I was selfish, I had called the number on the card and as soon as I left I was here, along with Jules. I caused us to be here, and I¡¯ll be the one to come my way out. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Fake Logic I stood in the makeshift door way with the weighted door struggling to open, it was still day and I could sacrifice an hour to look for Jules. But as soon as went outside I heard the rattling of a shaky cart, Jules was running up to me with a rickety cart he had found days earlier which had a sewing machine and food along with other things to build with, but the thing that caught my eye was what he was waving around. A gun. This man had found a gun in IKEA. I sighed with relief when I saw him but am still curious about the gun, it has no bullets but I¡¯m wondering if the Staff can sense danger and run away at the sight, if they even can see anything. I put my sketchbook down and looked through the shopping cart, it looked like Jules raided at least 5 cafeterias on his way here, on the bottom part of the cart there was pallets to makes walls with, the thing here is physics is kinda jumpy, if something is attached to something then it¡¯ll stay up, even in mid air, but we can still fall and hurt ourselves here, the Staff have no problem jumping off a shelf in pursuit of someone though. Aside from that everything else was ¡°normal¡± I started taking stuff out of the cart while Jules shuffled through his backpack for something, ¡°I found this too! It¡¯s a medkit I found on one of the shelves!¡± I looked at it and shrugged, helpful for when we fall but not when the Staff find you, they get rid of you instantly with a strike to the heart. I know this because I¡¯ve seen it before with the old man, one of his crazed ramblings during the night and he was found and killed, right across from me when I was hiding. It¡¯s brutal and I won¡¯t tell you details but all I can say is they punch through your heart and you collapse to the floor like a doll. No moment of pain, just life then death. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.