Fridge

Fridge

         “This is insane!”, screamed George as the refrigerator door opened just wide enough to spit out a bowl of spaghetti onto the linoleum floor. Glass and tomato sauce splattered everywhere, then the door closed shut all by itself.

         “I told you to call someone yesterday when it was shooting mustard at us!” yelled Jean, George’s wife and sometimes baby-sitter. She was in the back of the house ironing her blouse. She didn’t have anywhere to go and the blouse didn’t need to ironed; she just wanted to avoid the kitchen at all costs.

         George was heard rummaging through drawers and cabinets while making frustrated grunt-like sounds. “Where is the phone book then smarty-pants?” he yelled.

         Jean yelled back down the hall, “In the cabinet with all the pens and bills.”

         George made one of his grunts then, “Why is it there all the time??”

         “Because that’s where it belongs you silly man!” Jean shook her head at him.

         George chose not to hear that remark and asked another silly question, “What do I look under? Is there a category for possessed refrigerators?”

         Jean sighed; she had burned the blouse. She grabbed another one out of her closet before replying, “Just look under appliance repair! There is no such thing as a possessed refrigerator!” What a silly, silly man she thought.

         George flipped some pages then yelled, “Alright, alright, I found one called A-1 Repair!”

         But what he thought was: I bet these guys come and are just as freaked out as we are. The doors open and close all by themselves, food shoots out, and lately dead things have been inside, frozen geckos, roaches, and sometimes mice. Now, it’s throwing out leftover pasta. Even beyond those things, I just get an overall bad feeling from the thing, like it’s angry at me for something. A week ago, I would have said that all of this was impossible, but that was before the refrigerator became possessed and I don’t care what Jean says, no fat guy with wrenches can fix that.

…

         “I said he’s gone!” screamed George at his bedroom door. He wasn’t angry, but he was forced to yell at the top of his lungs so that Jean could hear him. She had been locked in their room for hours and by the sound of things, vacuuming.

         George heard the buzzing stop and the door opened, finally.

         “Is everything all right now?” quietly asked Jean. She was cracking up, again.

         “I don’t know, but the repair guy checked the fridge and he said that it’s fully operational.”

         “Operational? We know that! What about the spaghetti! What about that?”

         George sighed before answering. “He said that perhaps one of the shelves was at an angle and that the bowl of spaghetti probably slid out. Then he gave me the bill.”

         “Maybe he’s right, maybe we are just imagining this” said Jean.

         George knew better but said, “Yeah, maybe.”

         Jean started down the hall and said over her shoulder, “Anyways I’m hungry and this whole thing is silly and I --”

         She stopped, looked down and saw that she was standing in blood. Of course, she screamed.

         George didn’t even bother to calm her down, he was too curious as to where the blood had come from. Then he knew. Where else could it possibly have come from? Still, there was something bothering him about the blood, it was much too red, he thought, and it smelled like strawberries. Then George did something that made Jean stop screaming, he tasted it. Sure enough, it tasted like strawberries too. This was no blood, it was a box of popsicles that had melted and as George walked through it into the kitchen, he saw that there was a pool of red surrounding the fridge just as he thought. What a mess.

         “Our room needs vacuuming.” said Jean, and off she went.

         George looked at the sea of sticky red and wondered why he had to clean it up. Why did he have to be the one to deal with this? He had already missed his football game due to this nonsense, how much more did he have to take before he got rid of this fridge and just bought a new, less-possessed model?

         “Jean where’s the mop?” yelled George.

         Jean came speed-walking into the room, right through the red ooze, grabbed the mop from the kitchen closet, broke it across her knee and left the room. George shook his head at her, wondering how he was going to clean up the mess now.

…

         Now George was again flipping through the phone book, this time looking for a different sort of repairman. It was in the section labeled ‘Entertainment’ that George found a promising advertisement and called the number listed.

         “Lady Genovese, at your service.” a silky smooth voice said mechanically.

         “Uh, I have a strange problem.” meekly started George.

         “You’ll have to speak up honey. What can Lady Genovese do for ya today?”

         “Okay, I have a possessed refrigerator.” blurted out George.

         Lady Genovese chuckled then said, “Sugar, exorcism ain’t my game, but if you need tonight’s lottery numbers, just say the word.”

         “Uh, sure.”

         “24, 3, and 18 are the first numbers, baby. All I need is your credit card number for the rest. There’s a charge of 19.95, but since you’ll win the lottery, that’s nothing right?”

George hung up the phone and stared at it in amazement.

         The crackpot fortune teller had given George an idea by using the word exorcism. He flipped a few pages in the phonebook and sure enough, there was a category for exorcism. He frantically dialed the only number under that heading. It was busy. It was still busy ten tries later. George was wondering how much demand there could be for exorcists, when he thought he saw the refrigerator move. That’s crazy thought George, until he noticed a large section of dust showing where the fridge used to be. It had indeed moved forward, towards him.

         He took his phonebook, cordless phone and favorite blue pen to the den and continued trying to get through. Something scraped in the kitchen just as someone answered the phone saying, “Suzy’s Paranormal Service, how may we help you?”

         George was less bashful this time and said, “Yes, my name is George Danker, and I have a possessed refrigerator that is trying to kill me. When can you be here?”

...

         “You say it moved towards you?” Suzy asked while looking at the refrigerator. “I’ve seen appliances act strangely before, but I think it would be highly unlikely for an inanimate object to move like that.”

         George and Jean just stared at Suzy, their shoes covered in red stickiness, their eyes pleading for relief.

         Suzy decided to come right out with what she thought was going on, “Appliances and other household objects cannot become possessed. There is nothing for a spirit to possess, really. What I find is often the case, is that a person or persons with extraordinary psychic powers is actually able to create illusions that seem very real.”

Silence from George and Jean.

         “I believe that what we have here is a case of one, or both of you, releasing large amounts of psychic kinetic energy. It is because this energy has some how been focused onto this particular refrigerator that it is seems able to do impossible things, like move and so forth. Has either one of you recently had some kind of mental trauma?”

George and Jean looked down at the red floor.

         Suzy sighed and leaned against the fridge saying, “Think hard, this trauma could even come from the past in the form of painful childhood memories, repressed sexual desires, or even a death in the fa—“

         Suddenly the refrigerator slammed forward onto the floor, trapping Suzy underneath, killing her instantly.

         “I couldn’t let her talk anymore.” whispered Jean. Suzy’s blood was pooling out from beneath the fridge mixing with the melted popsicle ooze, swirling about like cream in coffee.

         It took George a full minute to fully grasp what had happened and what it meant. He couldn’t stop staring at Suzy’s hand which lay limp and lifeless. Once he regained his senses, George went around the kitchen unplugging the appliances, especially dangerous the ones like the blender, microwave, and toaster.

         As Jean watched her husband unplug nearly everything in the kitchen and walk down the hallway to the other rooms of the house, she thought about the future. She yelled to George in the back of the house, “You know, we could use a new fridge!”

All she heard in response was a door slam and a vacuum cleaner turn on.