I use my stapler a lot. I work with a lot of paper and it needs a lot or organisation and filing done. That’s why I noticed straight away when my stapler was missing. I could have just gone to the stationary cupboard and found a new one but I really liked MY stapler. It had cute stickers on thanks to my daughter’s wonderful decorations. I browsed my coworkers desks to see if someone had borrowed it but no luck. It hadn’t been missing for long. I’d used it only a couple hours before I realised it was gone.

I tried the lost and found. There was a lot of weird stuff in there. A chewed on pen, a pack of olives, and a small wooden carving of a penguin. That was pretty cute. No stickered stapler though.

As I left the lost and found room though, I noticed a trail of staples that led from my desk to a room I’d never seen before. Had it always been there? Did I really just never see the door there before?

When I got the room the door opened but it took a lot more strength to push than I expected. I took a step into the dark room, where the only light came through the glow of a computer screen.

As I got closer, the door closed behind me.

I clicked on the screen and it woke up to show me camera footage. Camera footage of the office. It had cameras everywhere. Even the bathrooms. Something felt off. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be here.

But front and centre was a camera that showed my desk. A rewound a little and sure enough my stapler was on my desk a couple hours prior. I scrubbed through the video slowly and one minute the stapler is there, one minute it’s gone. How could it disappear like that?

I went to exit the room and the door opened a lot easier this time. I noticed straight away a new trail of staples leading from this room to our stationary cupboard.

Maybe someone put it away in there, ignoring that it had stickers.

I walked in and there were what seemed like hundreds of staplers taking up every inch of shelf space in the room. None of them were stickered though. I rummaged through them to no avail.

I noticed one last trail of staples leading on into a room but just a flat blank wall.

I approached the wall and noticed nothing interesting about it. I looked back at my desk to the spot where the stapler would usually sit. Still vacant.

I held my forehead and went to rest my hand against the wall but it went through it, causing me to stumble.

I looked up at the wall, eyes fixed. I reached out and my hand went through the wall.

I swallowed, hard, and then pushed my entire body through the wall and I immediately fell into a dark room with an endless pit of staples.

Before I could take that in, I saw my stickered stapler just ahead of me. I reached out to it but every time I tried to move, the mountain of staples swallowed me further. I reached as hard as I could and grabbed the stapler.

Doing so made me sink deep into the pit of staples. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t breathe.