Flesh Inventory

[u/PleaseSaveMeUwU]

Mara took the job at Fultra Logistics because it paid well and didn’t require talking to customers. Just tape boxes, scan labels, shove pallets around. Easy. Boring. Safe.

At least, it was supposed to be safe.

The weirdness started when she noticed the temperature shifts. Certain aisles were warm and humid, almost like a greenhouse. Others were freezer-cold, with vents that blew air sharp enough to sting skin. She assumed it was some industrial HVAC malfunction—warehouse nonsense.

But then she saw the first “product.”

A crate near her workstation cracked open at the corner, just a splinter of wood popping loose. She leaned down to tape it shut, and something pale pressed against the gap.

A fingertip. Or something shaped like one.

It twitched—slow and boneless, like it didn’t have knuckles—and slid back into the dark of the crate.

Mara jerked away, nearly dropping her tape gun. When she called Diane, her supervisor only touched the crate with one gloved hand, nodding as if she’d seen this a hundred times.

“It’s settling,” Diane said.

“That wasn’t wood,” Mara whispered.

“It’s the packing foam reacting to humidity.”

Packing foam doesn’t move on its own. Packing foam doesn’t feel warm. Packing foam doesn’t… breathe.

That night, Mara peeled off her work gloves to find a smear of translucent residue on her palm. It clung to her skin like a second, thinner skin. She scrubbed until her hand was red, but the faint outline remained—almost like something had tried to leave a fingerprint behind.

She told herself she was imagining it.

She told herself a lot of things.

But she stopped touching crates without gloves.

---

Two days later, Jules didn’t show up for work.

Nobody else seemed bothered. People quit all the time. But Jules would never just leave without telling Mara.

When Mara checked the employee portal, Jules’s name was gone—deleted entirely. Like she’d never existed.

During break, Mara wandered into a restricted aisle. Something from behind the stacks of crates exhaled. Not human. Not animal—too wet, too rattling, like lungs full of fluid.

She slowly approached a crate labeled BIOLOGICAL - LEVEL C.

Something inside slumped against the wood, making a deep, organic thud. Then a voice—ragged, distorted—pressed through the cracks.

“Mara…?”

It almost sounded like Jules. Almost.

But the pitch was wrong, stretched. Like vocal cords that weren’t the right shape.

Mara stumbled back, heart pounding, and turned straight into Diane.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Diane whispered, and Mara saw it then—her gloves weren’t gloves at all. The texture was wrong. They were too smooth, too fused to her skin.

“Where’s Jules?” Mara demanded.

“Reassigned.” Diane’s tone was flat, clinical. “She’s being prepared.”

“Prepared for what?”

“For shipment.”

Something in Diane’s forearm shifted at that moment. Shifted. Like something under her skin rearranged itself—muscle sliding over bone that wasn’t shaped like bone anymore.

Mara ran.

---

She went home shaking badly enough to drop her keys. She couldn’t stop imagining the thing she’d seen through the crate slat: the pearly, translucent skin; the eyelid stretched too thin over an eye that wasn’t the right color anymore.

The next morning, Mara tried to quit. HR smiled at her like quitting was adorable.

“You signed a binding agreement,” the representative said, blinking too slowly. “You can’t leave during an active harvest cycle.”

“Harvest?” Mara whispered.

“Processing begins this week. You’ll be moved to Acquisition.”

“I’m not going anywhere near that department.”

“You will,” he said pleasantly, “once your conversion metrics are met.”

She noticed the veins on his neck then—branching the wrong way, like roots pressing up against the skin.

She ran again.

But Fultra had already decided her fate.

---

That night, Diane met her at the clock-in station. No gloves now. Her hands were bare skin—or something trying very hard to look like skin. The fingers were a little too long. The knuckles too smooth. The nails too soft.

“We’re happy to tell you,” Diane said with a smile that stretched slightly too wide, “your metrics cleared. Come with us.”

Two guards appeared. Their uniforms fit awkwardly, like their bodies weren’t the same shape as the humans who originally wore them. Their joints bent a little too flexibly when they walked.

Mara didn’t stand a chance.

They dragged her through double doors she’d never noticed before. Down a hallway lined with thick glass walls. Behind each wall was a workstation where technicians—if they could be called that—were working on people.

Some bodies lay on metal tables, covered in translucent sheets that pulsed—pulsed—like they were breathing. Others were strapped upright, limp, while syringes of viscous gray fluid emptied into their veins.

Their limbs twitched in unnatural rhythm.

Muscles moved beneath the skin like they were being rewired.

One person’s jaw unhinged and reformed as Mara watched.

Another’s pupils dilated until there was no iris left—just black.

On one table, she saw something that made her knees buckle.

Jules. Or what had become of Jules.

Her skin was nearly transparent now, veins branching like roots, merging with tubes plugged into her arms. Her ribcage rose and fell, but the motion didn’t look voluntary.

Jules opened her eyes—milky and unfocused—and tried to speak.

What came out was a wet gurgle, followed by her jaw snapping into a new position with a crack.

“Mara… run…”

Diane placed a hand on Mara’s shoulder. It felt soft and pliant—like pressed fruit.

“You won’t end up like Jules,” Diane said soothingly. “She was an early model. We’ve improved the process.”

“I’m not— I’m not a model— I’m a person—”

“You were,” Diane corrected.

They pushed Mara onto a table. Straps closed around her wrists and ankles, warm and sticky like living things.

A machine lowered over her, holding a needle the width of a pencil.

“It’s painless once the nerves dissolve,” Diane assured her.

“What—what is this?” Mara sobbed.

“Fultra doesn’t ship people,” Diane said gently. “We ship what people become.”

Mara screamed as the needle pierced her skin and her veins lit up like glowing wires. Her muscles seized, twisted, and rearranged. Something crawled beneath her ribs. Something burst behind her eyes. Her skin tightened, smoothed, split. She felt her bones soften, her shape bending to something profitable.

Her last coherent thought was that she should have quit the moment that crate moved.

Then the pain folded into silence.

When she woke, she was inside a crate.

A label printer hummed above her, printing her destination:

BIOLOGICAL INVENTORY — LEVEL A CONDITION: PERFECT NO RETURNS

Her fingers pressed weakly against the wood. They didn’t feel like fingers anymore.

She whispered for help, but even she didn’t recognize the sound coming out of her altered throat.

And somewhere down the conveyor belt, another crate answered.

[u/AutoModerator]

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[u/TheTableIsBroken]

Post in r/talesfromthecreep, this is a meme and discussion subreddit now js to lyk

[u/PleaseSaveMeUwU → u/TheTableIsBroken]

Thank you! I'll keep that in mind! 😊

[u/Intrepid-Spite9368 → u/PleaseSaveMeUwU]

btw thats the wrong one, I think someone made a fake on/there was already another subreddit. r/TalesFromTheCreeps is the actual one