Enter Robert Stack's creepy voiceover...

A terrifying experience took place today at work involving a dead body and a haunted appliance. The following is a creepy Unsolved Mysteries-style re-enactment. This story is not for the squeamish. You've been warned.

Tricia, our box office heroine, has been complaining about the smell in The Pearl Theatre box office for a week. When were assured by various exterminators the smell was most likely coming dead things from the walls and there was nothing to be done, but this morning when we arrived the cramped room was particularly noxious. As soon as she turned on the air conditioner this morning to alleviate the terrible smell she was blasted with a concentrated whiff of death to the face.

Like some corny movie psychic, Tricia declared the smell must be coming from inside the air conditioner! We ripped the permanently affixed appliance from the hole in the wall and dragged it inside along with it came the grotesque smell of decay. On the verge of tears and vomit, we proceeded to pry open the casing of the air conditioner. Like layers of an onion, screw by screw we slowly got closer to the cause of the reek, until my boss exclaimed "I see a dead mouse!" Everyone's skin crawled at the thought. In order to keep dead mouse guts from permanently staining the carpet, we hauled the air conditioner onto the street. We spent another hour attacking the seemingly endless amount of screws; each of us would crouch down and work on a screw till the stench became too overpowering, at which we would back away a try to fill our lungs with fresh less-undead air.

When all the pieces were taken out, the grill was lifted and the culprit revealed. Laying before us was the twisted remains of what was once a mouse. Eaten from the insides out by maggots, the corpse had been jellied and turned half-liquid. If that is what we look like when we die, I see the need to bury us far beneath the grounds surface, as far away from life as possible. We hosed down away the melted mass of mouse juice into the gutter and sprayed the air conditioner with vinegar to combat the left-over stench. We then spent the next half hour reassembling the unit and putting in back into the Box Office hole in the wall. Miraculously the air conditioner still works and now there is only the faint scent of dead mouse vinegar. But we hope that will go away.

I took a shower to get some of the gross off my skin, but the creep-crawlies were not so easily washed away. The kicker? Afterwards, I had Mexican for lunch. And those nachos never tasted better. Go figure.