The final bell rang on Friday afternoon, which was probably the most anticipated moment of every school week for both the students and teachers at Central Valley High.  Voices were loud as the masses moved out, leaving only a few people remaining in the school.  One of these was Denise, a 38-year-old history and geography teacher, and she was waiting for a very special delivery.

The economy had hit the schools especially hard, and the biggest impact had been felt on the classroom supplies budget.  Denise, like most teachers, had been given a much smaller allowance than normal to replenish her classroom supplies, and she had a lot of needs in her classroom.  In particular, her class globe was in desperate need of replacement: it was worn, wobbly, and woefully out of date.  It was so old, it still had the Soviet Union on it!  

Her desire to try and find the best deals around had led her to search the Internet.  Unfortunately, most of the globes she had come across that were up to date and big enough for a high school classroom were more than her entire supply budget!  But she never gave up, and her persistence finally paid off one evening.  She came across a website offering deep discounts on a number of school-related items, and to her amazement, one of the items was a new globe!  The picture it showed was one she had seen before, on another site – the globe was about two feet in diameter and came with a stand to raise it about four feet off the floor.  It would be a huge upgrade from what she had now, and the best part was the price – even with shipping, it was a third of what any other seller was asking!

The only condition that the website listed was that the items must be used by schools only.  In order to complete the purchase, it asked Denise to supply some information they would use to verify this: her name, the school’s name, address, and phone number, and the classes she taught.  ‘Perfectly reasonable’, she had thought as she filled it out without much thought, put down her credit card information, and submitted the order.  She even emailed the link to her colleague at school, Kathryn, whom she knew could use a new globe as well!

This had all happened about two weeks prior to this Friday afternoon.  The day before, as Denise had been getting ready to leave her classroom, a new UPS delivery driver had stopped by.  He explained that he had a delivery scheduled for her classroom the next afternoon, and since this route was new to him, he wanted to make sure he knew ahead of time where he was going.  ‘It must be my new globe!’ she thought excitedly.  He was big and tall, and muscular, and as he left, the unattached teacher couldn’t help but think that she had two reasons to look forward to the next afternoon!

Her class had emptied very quickly, and Denise took a few minutes to walk around and straighten up the room, get her things packed up, and be basically ready to go whenever the delivery man arrived.  She was standing over her desk, setting her purse down on it, when she heard the knock at the door, and quickly rushed over in anticipation to open it.

“I have a special delivery…” he said as he looked down at the clipboard in his hand,   “Miss Denise Miller?” the UPS man smiled as he stood there in the doorway.  

“Yes, that’s me! Please, come in!” she said excitedly as she pulled the door wide open.  “You must be bringing my new globe!”

He turned to grab his hand truck and bring the box through the door.  The first thing Denise noticed was how large the box was – it made it through the doorway, but not by a lot – it was about six feet tall, five inches taller than her! – and over two feet wide and deep.  At first glance, she thought, it looked like she was getting a refrigerator delivered instead of a globe!

The man paused as he wheeled the box into the classroom, looking for a good spot to sit it down, and as he did, he looked over the pretty brown-haired teacher standing before him.  She was dressed in a nice short-sleeved white blouse, a navy skirt that stopped just above her knees, black stockings, and four inch open-toed black pumps with straps.  “I’m going to sit it down here,” he said, setting it down slowly and deliberately, right next to her rolling swivel chair.

Denise walked over next to it, looking up wide-eyed at the large, sturdy cardboard box.  The delivery man reached for a small clipboard he had tucked into his belt.  He looked it over for a moment, carefully.

“It says here that because of the fragile nature of the contents, I am supposed to have you inspect it before I go, to make sure it hasn’t been damaged in transit.”  He said this all in a very businesslike tone, as if he had said it many times before.  He reached up to the top of the box and cut open the tape holding it open, pulling the top flaps open and down to the sides.  A couple of packing peanuts popped out with the opening flaps and drifted down to the floor.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Denise agreed, as she looked up at the box.  She quickly decided that the best way to get a good look into the box would be to stand on her chair, using it like a stool.  She stepped up onto it carefully, grabbing the edge of the box as she pulled herself up to her feet on it.  She could now see easily over the edge of the box, but all she could see at the moment were lots of packing peanuts.  She looked over at the delivery man, who was standing next to the box, his hand against it, supporting it.  He seemed to be looking at the packing slip, not paying her much attention.  “I don’t see anything but packing peanuts so far,” she said.

“You said it’s a globe…it’s probably down in the box a little more.  Just push those peanuts out of the way if you have to,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Okay,” she said as she leaned over the edge of the box, reaching her hands into the packing peanuts, and digging at them, pushing them aside, as she tried to find the globe.  As Denise leaned farther over into the box, she went up onto her toes a bit,  The chair started to move a bit as she did, and she stopped for a moment, as she slid her feet around, trying to steady herself.  But the chair was starting to slide farther back, when she suddenly felt a pair of strong hands grasp her legs, just above her ankles, keeping her from falling.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” the delivery man said as he held her legs firmly.  Denise felt herself steady once more, and she resumed her search with renewed confidence.  The effort it was taking for her to get to her new globe only increased her anticipation in seeing it!  She leaned a little more over the edge of the box, digging her fingers deeper down, through the seemingly unending pile of packing peanuts.

“I’ve got you,” he repeated, and as she leaned farther over into the box, he slowly lifted her legs a little bit higher into the air, to keep her steady.  Denise kept digging deeper into the box, sending packing peanuts flying all over the place as she knocked them out of her way.  Her waist was sliding over the edge of the box as she leaned inside it even farther.  “It must be close!” she exclaimed.  She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t found anything yet.  She was now hanging over the edge, her head and arms into the packing peanuts almost completely, as she dug deeper and deeper.

“Oh, you are, you’re very close now.  Just a little bit farther..” he concurred, as he held her legs firmly, letting her slide farther and farther into the box.

“Umm,” she mumbled, “I’m slipping, pull me back up!” But instead of pulling her up, he relaxed his grip a bit, letting her slide down more.  “Hey, pull me up!” she shouted.  “I’m losing my balance!  Ohh…fuck…”  Denise gasped as she felt his grip disappear completely.  She slid straight down, through the packing peanuts, all the way into the box, not coming to a stop until her hands hit the bottom of the box.

“I’ve got you,” she heard him say, in a stronger and more commanding tone.

Denise was kicking her feet, trying to find his hands again, but all she felt was the packing peanuts, all around her.  “Hey!” she screamed out, “there’s no globe in here…just peanuts!”  She tried pushing herself up but it was no use, her upside-down position made that impossible, and her arms quickly tired out at the effort.  “Pull me out of here already!” she yelled, but the only reply she heard was the sound of the top flaps being folded back up and new strips of tape going across the top to secure it.  “What the hell are you doing?” she screamed as she struggled.

The delivery man didn’t answer her as he calmly and quietly stuffed his clipboard back into his belt, and carefully tipped the hand truck back, onto its wheels.  He saw her purse sitting there on the desk, and picked it up, taking it with him as he began to roll the box and its shocked cargo out of the classroom.

Inside the box, Denise was sliding around helplessly, whimpering in protest, her arms having totally given out.  The top of her head was almost down to the bottom of the box. She could feel the Styrofoam peanuts pressing all around her body, up under her skirt and down inside her blouse, as the box, and her, began to move. ‘So this is what being shipped feels like!’ she thought to herself, at it finally dawned on her.  There never was any globe.  The box was meant for her.  It had all been an elaborate ruse, a clever trick, and she had never suspected a thing, not even when she was leaning halfway inside the box a few minutes earlier.  He wasn’t a real UPS driver, it was the cover he needed to make his escape without anyone suspecting.  She gasped as she realized she had made it all so easy; she had given the kidnapper all the information he needed to find her, her girlish excitement at getting a new globe at a reduced price had caused her not to think that it might all be too good to be true.

The delivery man whistled as he rolled his acquisition out of the classroom and down the mostly vacant halls.  Denise’s head bumped against the bottom of the box as it rolled.  She was already very lightheaded from being upside down, and so it didn’t take a whole lot of bumping to knock the foolish teacher silly.  She could hear an occasional voice outside the box, as there were a few people still in the school.  She tried to shout out, but the peanuts were muffling any sound she tried to make.

She heard the outer door to the school open, and the bumps got harder as he rolled the box over the threshold and down the sidewalk towards his truck.  By the time he rolled the box up the ramp and into the back of the truck, Denise was completely dazed and stunned.  She heard the noise of something being poked through the side of the box, close to her head, making a few holes, and she realized they were air holes, so she could breathe.  “Please…let me out of here…” she weakly groaned.

“Not gonna happen, little one.  Might as well get comfortable if you can, you’re going to be in there a while.”  She heard the sound of heavy straps being pulled around the sides of the box, securing it to the inside wall of the truck.

“Please…what do you want with me…?” Denise gasped, but she could hear his footsteps getting quieter as he walked away without any more of a response.  She continued to struggle, trying somehow to bust the box open, but it was no use; the box was too strong, the Styrofoam peanuts packed tightly around her didn’t allow enough space to kick her foot or swing her fist, and her upside-down position left her too weak and dizzy to make much of an effort anyway.