Chapter 115 IKEA Diary
So, I'm stuck at IKEA. Sounds like a classic bad joke. The lights went out at 10pm. It almost gave me a heart attack. There was a sudden blackness after the huge electric clang. There were plenty of beds in the place, and my phone worked as a light—but there was no fucking signal—so I found a bed to sleep in. I spent almost the entire next day looking for an exit but to no avail. But I did find a restaurant that served meatballs, so at least I wouldn't starve to death here. The punchline to a joke. Anyway they were still hot and fresh, but I didn't see anyone cooking around. Maybe I should go to my bed before dark, since I can't search in the dark.
It's 9:10 a.m. and the lights have just come back on. I must have searched the whole area, and the exit was obviously not here, so I had to look in a direction and hope for the best.
On the third day of the Magic IKEA Mysterious Adventure, someone may want to ask me how I determine the time. First of all, I can look at my phone. Secondly, the light switches here are all regular. They turn off at a certain time and turn on at a certain time. Therefore, the cycle of day and night can be judged based on the light switch.
I wasn't sure this place was weird before, but now I am. It took me almost 3 hours to walk in a straight line (insert IKEA joke here), and then I walked through the ladder and came to a pile of huge shelves.
I climbed up to get my bearings, and the place seemed to stretch into infinity. It's like a scene from The Lion King, except the trees and grasslands are turned into shelves, tables, and trash. I did see someone moving not far away, and I wanted to go there.
At first I thought it was an employee - it was wearing a uniform.
But damn that's a maybe, maybe 7-foot-tall long-armed, short-legged monster with no face, the kind of thing they'd hope would work in a super IKEA. But this strange thing completely ignored me. Since it has no eyes or ears, I'm not even sure it knows I exist. I thought about throwing something to attract its attention, but his hands are big enough to crush a watermelon, so I decided not to do it.
It just kept walking and eventually left sight, so I decided to continue walking on the previous path.
Anyway, no comfortable bed tonight. It seems that I have entered the table area of this store that is extremely hard and sharp.
I'll probably have to get a few tablecloths to make do. My cell phone is out of battery today. It didn't help, but I felt like I had just lost a vital lifeline.
Have you ever seen that scene in a cartoon, where you enter through a door in a corridor and then emerge from another door in the same corridor? That's how I feel now. For two whole days, all I saw was the same bookshelf.
Row after row and row after row. I mean, come on, I love books as much as the next person but this is too much. I was definitely still moving forward and I could see signs passing overhead. But unfortunately none of them say "exit".
Not sure who I'm writing these questions to.
Let’s just consider it as preparation for my autobiography after I leave here. I'm going to call it "My Super Normal Journey in a Regular Old Ikea."
if i can come out
Finally found someone else! Turns out I'm not the only unlucky guy stuck here.
Just lucky, I guess. My sixth night here.
2 staff monsters came at me in the dark, different from the first ones I'd seen, but still a mess. Heard them coming, they were saying something like the store is closed and I have to leave, friendly and polite tone. I'm not sure which is weirder: the fact that they don't have mouths at all, and the fact that they're trying to kill me when they say that. Running like a mad dog.
So I ran away. Running like a fucking maniac through Ikea in the dark. But I saw it just as I was leaving a pile of large shelves, lit by torches and floodlights. They built a whole town here!
A huge wall was built with canopy beds, tables, etc.
I swear to God this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Anyway I think they saw me coming too (or heard my - [delete] sissy [delete] - manly scream of terror), because they opened the door and two guys waved me in. After the door was closed, you could still hear the employees snapping photos, and they were still politely announcing to us that the store was closing. But eventually they walked away.
They call the town "The Exchange" because that's what it says on the sign hanging from the ceiling. Returns and Exchanges.
A lamp they found, plugged into a wire, illuminated the night. There are beds, food, and people here. There are more than 50 wonderful people with normal faces and intact hands and feet. This is my seventh night here, and the first night I haven’t spent in darkness. Spend a whole week at IKEA. This could be a TV show somewhere.
Now that I have people around me, I'm starting to feel a little more normal. Maybe normal isn't quite right. But for a week with only the sound of my own footsteps for company, I became more and more certain that I was going crazy. Where I'm going to be put in a padded room and bang my head against the wall. But no, I feel pretty sane, thank you very much!
It seems there are some towns here. Some have more, some have less. I find it unbelievable – how so many people could go missing and not be found. Surely someone would have noticed that everyone went to IKEA and then disappeared. Or maybe not everyone. Maybe we are just the lucky few.
People here call these employee monsters employees.
It seemed like they were fine during the day, just minding their own business and wandering the aisles.
Once the lights go out, they turn into fucking lunatics. So during the day people can go find food, water and anything else they need. It seems there are restaurants and shops that are restocked from time to time.
No one knows what happened. Maybe the staff did it. They don't seem to be very good at their jobs either, as restocks sometimes come at intervals, which means food needs to be conserved.
Maybe they could do more work if they weren't so busy catching people in the dark.
In short, when night comes, the employees become crazy and everyone has to guard the wall.
Apparently that's the case everywhere in this place, wherever the hell it is. Uh-IKEA, where all the other IKEAs sprang up. Or maybe we're in some ordinary IKEA and it's all just a crazy dream of mind-numbing boredom. Who knows.
Have been here for 10 days. Most of the people I asked said they no longer remember dates, and one person, Chris, said he had been here for a few years.
several years.
There seemed to be rumors that someone had managed to escape. And those who saw the exit just said it would disappear before their eyes. I feel like not everyone believes this, but I do.
Could explain (part of) why we're stuck here in the first place. I mean, come on, monster staff, endless high quality Swiss furniture. I can't understand why they don't want to believe in disappearing doors.
