A true supply chain horror story.

It wasn’t just us. In fact there were a total of sixty-five other ships waiting too. I know this because we were the sixty-fifth ship in the queue. Some had been waiting since late June to dock at San Pedro Bay, but we’d barely been there a week. We weren’t even in the official queue yet. We were just drifting, waiting to get in the line so we could wait some more. We were dead last. 

“We’ll make it fun, we always do,” the captain reassured the crew over dinner. Despite our third night of canned tuna and beans, we were optimistic. For one, there was beer and two, we each got to pick one miniature candy bar for dessert. It wasn’t exactly a dreamy existence, but far far preferable to the nightmare that was to come.

Back then you could be somewhat optimistic on this ship because it was essentially one, giant floating candy store.

The AS Katharine was responsible for one thing and one thing only: candy bars. Specifically, bite-size, fun-size, miniature candy bars. The ones you get every Halloween. Every cargo hold on this ship was filled to the brim with them and, for the first time ever, we weren’t sure we’d make our delivery in time for the big box stores to start shelling them out in time for the holiday.  

The crew also made for pretty good company. There were twenty of us and, as dumb as it sounds, we were a lot like family. In the first few days, the time went by quickly. We cleaned the ship, played Scrabble and tried to get creative with a pantry full of canned foods. When alone, I’d call home or I’d play Candy Crush (ironic, I know). 

But as with most things, the shine wore off and we became increasingly bored. There’s only so many times you can clean your room or pretend canned tuna is some Michelin Star, sashimi-grade fare before it gets to you. 

On the fifteenth day, we sat in the mess hall eating beans. We skipped plates and bowls and started eating straight from the can. We all smelled. Bad. At this point, we were still drifting, waiting to get in the official queue.

 “Anyone want to... play Scrabble after this?” Paul asked the group. He was the only one who wasn’t tired of Scrabble, and he knew the amount of interested takers was rapidly declining. No one replied. “Just let me know,” he whispered, looking back down at his half-eaten can of beans. The room fell back to silence, then the captain walked in the room. We’d barely seen him at all recently. 

We collectively cheered, as if we knew he was about to tell us we were moving ahead in the queue. He grinned, then came up and grabbed my shoulders. He leaned towards the table. “Boys!” he shouted. 

Did he have good news?

He cracked open a Diet Pepsi. “I have good news!” 

Thank god.

“Next Friday – not this one, but the one after – we’ll officially be in the queue.” 

Everyone cheered, messily raising their cans of pop and beer to the air. 

From that moment on, it was like we’d collectively chugged a bunch of Red Bull and Five Hour Energy. We were encouraged, remembering what we were here to do and that we would, in fact, get off this ship eventually. 

It was a Tuesday, four days before we were supposed to join the main queue when we got the bad news. “We’re running low on canned food,” Alex told us. “We’ve got about, eh, another week’s worth of food but we’ll need to have something shipped in.”   

And then the news got worse: “It’s going to take a while to get the food to us. Every other ship in front of us gets priority, so we’re at the bottom of the totem pole.” 

And then everything went to hell. 

That same night, I woke up at around 2 am. Someone was upstairs, stomping around the main deck. It sounded like they were walking back and forth, back and forth. 

Then I heard them talking. Laughing? Hard to say. It was muffled. 

After 10 minutes, I decided to check it out. I never felt so much rage as I did in that moment.

“What are you doing!” I screamed. The captain glanced at me then tossed another can of food straight into the ocean. 

“Whoops!” he cackled. “No more food for us!” 

I ran and grabbed hold of the captain, “Please tell me you didn’t throw it all away! Swear to god!” At that moment, I never felt so afraid of him. Lit only by the moon, I could see his bloodshot eyes, nearly popping out of his head. And as he cackled, I could see all his teeth, yellow-casted and covered with brownish-black gunk. 

At this point, some of the other guys had come up from the cabin to see what was happening. They stood around in shock as the captain laughed his head off.

“We don’t need it! Any of it!” the captain yelled. “Come, come with me!” He giggled, scampering over the wheelhouse.

As I stepped in after him, I heard a soft crunch under my feet. It couldn’t be a leaf? A bug? 

I looked down and saw the floor was covered in candy wrappers. Every inch and crevice. The captain got on his knees, scooped up a pile of wrappers and tossed them in the air. “All we need is candy! Candy!”

Paul approached from behind me and grabbed the captain’s arm, then handcuffed him. “Sorry, it needed to happen. I’ll keep him in the observation room.” As he dragged the captive away, I could hear the captain’s voice grumble. “I don’t feel so good all of a sudden.”

The next morning, we sent an emergency call out for food. “We’ll get it to you by the end of the day, we promise,” the Coast Guard assured us.

But it didn’t take long for the hunger to set in. We sat around the table, our collective energy completely drained. I stared at the table and I swear in that moment, I started seeing things – faces in the woodwork along the table, you know, that kind of stuff. 

Alex was the first to break the long silence: “I suppose we could just… eat some of the candy? Clearly the captain already broke into one of the containers. Might as well just, you know, eat what he didn’t?” Alex said. 

“Yeah, sure, ok” – we all replied at once. 

A few minutes later, Alex and one of the guys came back with a couple boxes of candy. All the good stuff, too. No waxy Tootsie Rolls or piddling little Dum Dums. No one wasted any time digging in. 

Oh god, I forgot how good those peanut butter chocolate things were!

I needed another one of those, and so I grabbed another. Then another. And another. 

Everyone was now standing around the table, shoving their faces with candy, the wrappers falling in rapid succession down to the ground. 

“We need more!” someone shouted, running out from the room and towards one of the shipping containers.

I looked around and the room felt brighter, happier and more cheerful. Everyone was in a good mood, laughing and dancing around the room. Then we realized there was one, little candy bar left on the table. 

“What is taking him so long to get more candy?” Alex raged. The sugar high was taking hold. 

Complete insanity broke out over that last little miniature candy bar. I knew exactly where I could get more, so I ran from the room until I reached the open shipping container. A couple guys were already there, unboxing and devouring more candy.  

Soon more crew showed up, and before we knew it, we had just about cleared out the entire shipping container’s worth of candy. Some of the crew started to double over, sick from eating so much chocolate but deliriously happy from the sugar. 

I don’t even remember what was going through my own head at the time, to be totally honest with you. It really was all a blur; I just remember feeling happy. The last thing I remember, I was heading out to the main deck, my stomach churning.

As I leaned over to throw up overboard, a bunch of the guys came up from behind me and started to jump overboard.

“We’re going home!” they shouted, splashing aimlessly through the waters. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the captain getting ready to jump; someone must have freed him from the observation room.

I slumped over, closing my eyes to try and sleep it off. Everything was spinning and I could hear nothing but splashing in the water. The splashing grew quieter and quieter and soon, everything around me was blank. 

When I woke up, I saw a couple inspecting the deck. I didn’t recognize either of them and I didn’t recognize where we were. Were we at the front of the queue? Did we make it in time for Halloween?

“The team cleaned up nicely!” I heard one of them say. 

“Wasn’t an easy task,” another voice chimed in. “Never seen anything like that before. I guess you could call it death by chocolate,” they said, entertained by their own joke. 

“C’mon, man, not funny.” 

“What? It’s true!” 

“Seriously, though, I heard someone say they think the chocolate was tainted. Something about how it was processed? I don’t know. Seems weird, like they just died from eating too much candy? Can’t be right.” 

I stood up and walked over to where they were huddled. “What happened?” I asked them but they didn’t hear me. 

The other voice replied. “Let’s hope not. Apparently they didn’t get rid of the chocolate. Didn’t want to throw away any money.” 

“Typical.”

“What happened?” I said, this time more firmly. But they still ignored me. In fact they walked away from me and off the ship. 

I tried to follow them, but I was stuck. I couldn’t get off the ship and I still can’t. 

Anyways, thanks for listening. It’s nice that someone on this ship can see me. I know you’re new here, so just take my word for it and try not to go crazy eating the candy on here.