This is the first piece I have written for Creative Writing. It still needs some tinkering:
The Milk Crate
Written by Leora C-W
The happiest day of the milk crate’s life was the day he was thrown into the back of a garbage truck and crushed into oblivion…
He came out of the factory: shiny bright and blue. A feeling of contentment, contentment that one, perhaps, would not expect of an inanimate object, washed over the plastic crate as he was loaded into the back of a delivery truck.
The milk crate: He would bring health and happiness; hope and fulfillment. Every morning he would greet a different family, bearing the rations they so greatly needed. He embodied the symbol of a prosperous future, and couldn’t help but feel a little proud, if not honoured.
“I came into this world through no choice of my own, with responsibilities and expectations thrust upon me from some industrial god. But this is what I was created for, and so I will gladly carry out my responsibilities until the day I cease to exist.
And so, for many years — many, many years, the shiny blue crate would dutifully provide milk to gracious families all over the city. He would listen intently to the brief exchanges between the milkmen and the housewives, wondering what it must be like to be human; wondering what went on beyond the doors and the walls of all the houses he visited.
But tragically, as should occur with all naive, pure beings, the milk crate’s feverous approach to life only lasted as long as his abilities were needed.
A day came where no longer the milk crate was shiny, and his coat was a mere grayish-blue. A Velveteen Rabbit in a sea of low-cost, high-bulk goods, the milk crate was left for dead in an alley behind a local crêperie.
Sad and confused, the milk crate sat in the alley for months, as other unwanted crates were piled atop or beside him. Empty — every single one of them empty. He did not understand why or how he could exist, no longer having a purpose in life.
One day, a boy of about nineteen came into the alley from the back door exit of the crêperie. He eyed the grayish-blue object intently, and the milk crate was briefly filled with an ounce of hope.
What the boy did next would go down as the most painful experience of the milk crate’s life: The boy pulled the crate out from under its fellow abandoned compatriots, and if you can believe, sat on it!
A painful epiphany came over the milk crate: He had spent so much of his life fulfilling the needs of others, so humbly and proudly. Never once had he been thanked, and never once had he been acknowledged for his fine service to society. And now. Now? Now the crate had been reduced to nothing more than a makeshift seat for a disrespectful teenager to sit on while he smoked cigarettes behind a crêperie.
Several unfortunate events were to follow the run-in with the boy in the alley: One day, he came outside on his break to find a dead seagull in plain sight. Disgusted, he picked up the milk crate, turned it upside down and placed it over the bird, so as to obstruct his view from something so unpleasant. The following day, a destitute man in rags asked the boy, “May I use this crate to defecate in? You see, I have no home and I have no toilet.” The boy, somewhat repulsed, but equally compassionate, shrugged “yeah whatever.”
The milk crate watched the pain that other humans experienced, as they would use him as a seat in otherwise furniture-less apartments, while watching loved ones shoot heroin from dirty mattresses with dirty needles.
And so, the milk crate was given a new purpose. But this purpose did not fill him with pride; it filled him with anger. Anger towards those who had taken his accomplishments for granted; anger at the world for creating people who lived in such desolate conditions that they never could have enjoyed his gifts during the time he was still valued. Most of all, the milk crate was angry toward himself for having been so wide-eyed and unaware that there was a world beyond happy families drinking milk and leading fruitful lives.
Used! So used, yet neglected, the milk crate had lost his faith in humanity, and had no desire, nor expectation to bring good fortune to anyone who should cross his path. And his sentiments were echoed by hundreds of thousands of milk crates, soured by the harsh truth of humanity. They no longer could deal with the humiliation of being misappropriated into the whores of the manufacturing world. Collectively, in a karmic fashion, they would reap revenge on those who had created, enjoyed, overlooked and abused.
It started out one mild May evening at a house party the milk crate had found its way into. A drunken young woman danced with the drunken young man she had so foolishly thought was the love of her life. They danced briefly, until the man picked her up to swing her around in the air. Consequently, due to his impairment, the man dropped her head first on the milk crate’s unforgiving edges.
Fifteen stitches. “Let him feel the guilt of causing the pain to one of many who have caused so much pain to me.”
From that night on, isolated incidents began to spring up across the country. The teenager at the cr êperie fell off a pile of milk crates that had been unsteadily stacked. The man who defecated on the crate was hit by a car while he crouched in an alley, searching for a place to relieve himself. Plastic companies went out of business, not only because they had over-produced milk crates, but because of environmental concerns revolving around plastic “goods”. And so life went on, and milk crates found their new place in society as a most reviled, feared object, all because of the mistakes by those who had created them.
The milk crate was not happy; he was not pleased. He was mildly satisfied that he, too, could inflict pain, though disturbed that he had evolved into such a monster. He was miserable, but at peace; resentful, but accepting of his place in the world. And, most importantly of all, the milk crate felt as though he understood what it must be like to be human.
