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Our second place High School winning entry was written by Pranav Rajupalepu, a junior at the Briar Woods High School in Ashburn, Virginia. |
Hello. My name is Pranav. I’m sure that by this point, you have read so many stories that many of them start to lose their scariness. But this isn’t a story. This is an experience. I am 16 years old. I have been working in my local fast food place since I was 14, but this happened a little over a year ago. Thoughts of what happened still plague my mind from time to time. I’ve never discussed this with anyone, even the employees who I was there with when this happened. However, I think that things that like this can’t, no..., shouldn’t be covered up by company policy and local government any more.
Now I’m not going to explicitly say what company I worked for, just in case some paperwork I signed when I first joined makes me take this down or anything. It might become evident where I work as this story progresses, and those of you who live near this restaurant have probably heard rumors that are in accordance to what you will be reading.
Those rumors are true.
It’s hard writing this not being able to say where I work, as it makes a little more sense if you have that knowledge beforehand, but whatever. When I first joined, I got through the interview part fairly easily. The first few months went easily. The managers were nice, the other employees cared way too little to do anything to piss me off. In fact, the first major incident happened when I was employed for well over seven months - a lady passed out after eating too many fries.
It was another three months, when I was a cashier, before the janitors noticed that one table was especially cold. It was a problem for sure, as it was summertime, and we thought that the only reasonable cause for this would be a malfunctioning air conditioning. It wasn’t too hard to come to this conclusion, there was an air vent nearby too. The janitor saw to solve this problem by simply shutting off that vent.
Another month rolled by.
This time, A mom came in with her two children, ordered a couple of milkshakes and pies, and after picking up their food, went to sit at that same table. I heard one of the kids squeal, “It’s too cold!” I assumed they drank the milkshake way too fast, and went back to what I was doing. The mom was not so nonchalant. She yelled at me for not cleaning up the tables. First off, that's not really our job. I was also really confused about why she didn’t just choose a clean table. But that’s not what I told her. I apologized and grabbed a rag, as it was a slow day anyways. I definitely wasn’t ready for what I was about to experience.
I didn’t notice anything at first. I guess it looked a little wet, and I tried mopping it up with the rag, but nothing happened. Confused, I tried to rub some off with my fingers. The feeling associated with that choice wouldn’t be right to describe as cold. It just felt dark. The feeling you get when your leg falls asleep, but so concentrated, not comparable to any temperature or normal bodily feeling. I immediately pulled my hand away. The feeling disappeared immediately. Confused, I just led the family to another table, and thanked them for bringing up that issue.
I called the general manager and told her about it, then went about my day. When she arrived, she looked pissed, and I could tell she got ready in a hurry because her hair was still wet. She was pretty upset about me calling her for such a... non-emergency. I mean, I definitely agreed, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I was in a state of confusion when I called her. I knew she would realize where I was coming from when she touched the table anyways. I led here to the table. I still saw the frost on the edges. She noticed it too. The vent was still off. She touched the table. I could tell she felt the exact same thing I did.
We both stared at it in confusion. Other employees realized something was weird too, and they naturally wanted to see what it was, and came up to the table. I witnessed every single one of them experience the same void, until all of a sudden, we couldn’t.
The next week passed by okay. We covered the table with that really thin plastic and marked it off.
Three days after that week, one our night shift employees said that he could've sworn that they saw the iconic clown statue in front of our restaurant wink as he left the premises.
You probably know what company I work for at this point.
Nothing else happened for another two days. Then, just like that, the clown statue was gone. We checked the security cameras, to no avail. The only thing that looked off was one of the cameras would flicker every ten seconds.
Another day would make us realize that the table had lost it’s signature frigidness.
The whole event wasn’t published by any newspapers or anything. We were told not to talk about it. A few days later we were sent a replacement statue. But all of the employees who knew about that event still stay wary of that table, and the secrets it definitely holds.
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