Catnado Ignition: CHAPTER 2 — Lot 47

By the time I reach the shipping yard, the Catnado has fully kicked in and my brain is running about fifteen miles ahead of reality.

Fog hangs low over the lot. Not thick enough to hide anything, just enough to make everything look temporary.

The gate guard slides the window open halfway and stares at me like I interrupted something ancient.

“Pickup?”

“Lot 47.”

He winces.

Not a good sign.

He hands me a paper map that looks photocopied from another century and points vaguely into the industrial abyss beyond the gate.

“Follow the blue line.”

There are four blue lines.

I pull forward anyway.

The yard unfolds like a machine built by people who stopped communicating years ago. Forklifts drift across intersections without slowing down. Yard dogs yank trailers around like they’re playing speed chess. Every building has a number, but none of them appear in sequence.

Lot 12 sits next to Lot 83.

Lot 51 exists twice somehow.

Lot 47 appears on three separate signs pointing in different directions.

I circle once.

Then twice.

Then I start seeing the same red trailer every few minutes like the yard itself is looping.

My headset crackles.

Dispatch again.

“You there yet?”

I look around at the endless stacks of containers, puddles reflecting sodium lights, forklifts moving through the mist like predators.

“Define ‘there.’”

Static.

Then: “Well the customer says your trailer’s been ready.”

Of course they do.

I finally spot a shipping clerk smoking beside a dented golf cart. He looks exhausted in a way that suggests he was born exhausted.

“Lot 47?” I ask.

He stares at me for a second too long.

“You got the old 47 or the new 47?”

I honestly don’t know how to answer that.

Before I can ask, a forklift blasts past behind him carrying a pallet wrapped so badly it looks emotionally unstable.

The clerk sighs and points deeper into the yard.

“Keep going until it stops making sense. Then turn left.”

I should laugh.

Instead, I nod like that’s useful information.

The deeper I go, the stranger the yard gets. Trailer numbers stop matching paperwork. Dock doors blink red and green without explanation. One building hums loud enough to feel alive.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it—

I realize nobody here is actually confused.

They understand the system.

I’m the only thing in the yard that still thinks this place is supposed to be logical.

Then I finally see it.

Trailer 812.

Half-hidden behind a stack of empty containers like the yard was trying to keep it.

For a second I just sit there staring at it through the windshield while rain taps softly against the glass.

Found it.

Or maybe it decided I was allowed to.