Ridley's

“Oh, so you bought a new fridge?”

“No” I told Jimmy. He thought I was joking, but I wasn’t.

You see, a while ago my old fridge broke down and I couldn’t get it to work again. I thought about buying another, but I couldn’t afford it. Then, one day, it was gone without a trace. It disappeared and a shiny new fridge took its place. The outside was solid white and looked generic yet distinct from any other model I had seen before.

How did it got there was anyone’s guess. I asked my neighbors if it was theirs, but apparently not. At the time, the only explanation I could come up for that thing was that it was a present from God, or something. Despite being the exact thing I wanted at the moment, I had a very bad feeling about it. But could you really blame me for not trusting such “gift”? It was too strange, too convenient that a fridge would magically appear at my house just when I needed a new one. The thing was too good to be true, but I gave it a shot anyways, hoping that it would make my life easier. And boy, was I wrong.

At first, it didn’t seem too bad, it worked just like any other fridge. But then it came that night, and I realized there was more to it than I imagined. My friend, Jimmy, came to visit and we were having a great time until he asked me to grab him a beer. I knew there was a can in the fridge, but that wasn’t what I found when I opened it.

There was a human ear inside.

A single severed ear.

I didn’t even have a moment to process what was going on before Jimmy grabbed the damn thing and drank from it. He couldn’t see it, in his eyes it was just a normal beer can, but I couldn’t help but notice the thick black liquid pouring from the ear’s canal. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t convince him that it wasn’t beer. Jim thought I was just seeing things, that I was drunk or something, and for a moment I thought that too. Not even I could believe what I was seeing, nor did I wanted to.

A couple of hours passed and Jim had to leave, but my mind couldn’t focus in anything other than the fridge. The hell was that thing? Where did it come from? And more importantly, is still there? I opened the fridge very slowly and took a peek inside, expecting the worst to happen.

The answer was yes; the ear was still there. Which would mean that it wasn’t a figment of my imagination. I wasn’t brave enough to touch it, much less to check if it had more of that strange liquid inside. I couldn’t bring myself to look at it any longer, so I went to sleep, but not before securing the fridge’s door with tape. Suffice to say I didn’t sleep well that night.

I checked on it again the next day, and fortunately, the horrid thing didn’t move. I didn’t know if it could, but I had no interest in finding that out. Was it dangerous? I couldn’t tell. Jimmy seemed ok after drinking from it, and he responded as usual after calling him, though he got worried about my mental state.

For hours, I struggled to decide what should I do with the fridge. I was curious, but not enough to try and experiment with that thing. Well, that was not entirely true. I did try to show the ear to my neighbors in the next few days, but it was pointless, as they too saw it as a beer can. In the end, that only served to fuel the mysteries instead of solving them. I stopped using it since the night I found the ear, so it felt almost like I had a broken fridge again.

But then I was presented with the opportunity to forget about it, even if only for just a moment. I remembered that it was only a few days before my sister’s birthday, so I thought about getting something for her. It had been a long time since the last time I saw her, but we were in good terms with each other, and spending time with my family would have been a perfect distraction from thinking of my weird fridge.

I should have known better.

The drive to her place wasn’t much of an issue, but it was a long trip and I had to stay at a hotel, and precisely there was where things started to get weirder. I woke up after a good night sleep, it was the first time in two weeks I could sleep well, and man, I really needed that. For once, I thought I could forget about the fridge and relax, as if none of that ever happened. As I opened my eyes, I took a look at my room. Those beautiful wooden walls, the small TV showing endless commercials, the solid white fridge on the corner…

“Wait, what?” I thought to myself and looked in horror at what had come to visit me that day. It was that thing. That damned thing followed me.

There was no way that could have happened, and yet it did. I didn’t know what to think of it anymore. It clearly wasn’t a normal fridge, but what was it then? A ghost? No, everyone could touch it just fine, so it couldn’t be. A demon? Probably not either. As far as I know, demons are evil, and while the cursed thing was certainly unsettling, it didn’t show malice either. I mean, that ear looked like it came from a corpse, but I doubt the fridge killed someone to get it. How would a fridge kill people?

That left me thinking about the ear again. I dreaded the mere thought of it, but I knew what I must do: I had to take off the tape and look inside that thing one more time. So, I did… and the results were nowhere near what I was expecting. Eyes, innards, and half-formed limbs were accompanying the ear this time. I can’t recall if there were more things besides that, as I had only a moment to look at them before quickly closing the fridge and going to the bathroom to throw up.

“What have I done to deserve this?” was one of the many thoughts that went through my mind at the time. I just needed a new fridge, not whatever that thing was supposed to be. Was it too much to ask for? The more I thought about it, the less sense it made, and I started to question my sanity. I had an employee of the hotel come to my room and check the fridge too, who gave me a weird look but didn’t even asked how I managed to get an entire refrigerator there without anyone noticing. He found nothing but frozen food and that freaking beer can. In a way, I was lucky that he hadn’t seen the severed body parts and thought I was some kind of serial killer, but on the other hand, I was still the only person able to see them.

Questions flooded my head again. The cursed thing was clearly not a hallucination, because other people were able to interact with it as normal, and the fridge seems to be the same one that was in my house, as it still had the tape I put on it. In fact, that last thing was the most puzzling part of it. Since it had tape all over it, there could have no way to open it without removing it, and yet it somehow got more body parts for its collection. So, if no one opened it, how did it got them? Did they just… grow in there? As weird as that sounded, it was the only explanation that made even a little bit of sense. I had finally gotten an answer, and though I still had a ton of questions left, at least it was progress.

After hours of thinking about that cursed thing, I went to see my sister and give her a little gift I bought days ago. We had a great time together, but I knew what was waiting for me when I had to come back to my room. The following day I drove back home and, as expected, the fridge was there again, as if it had never moved from its place. I stared at it for a while, thinking to myself. If it was capable of growing human body parts and seemingly teleport from one place to another, what else can it do?

That was when I decided to take a peek inside. Even if the contents were horrible, it was a relief to know it hadn’t changed much from last time. But I noticed something I didn’t before: some of the body parts were stitched together. The thing wasn’t just growing human parts, it was assembling a body. What was that for? Another thing I took a note of before closing the fridge was that those parts looked oddly familiar to me, they reminded me of someone, but I wasn’t able to remember who at that moment. This whole mess was too strange for me and I just wanted to forget about it.

A few days passed. No matter how much I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t, that damn thing was still there. I was planning to throw it out, but I didn’t know if I should, or even if I could. “What if it comes back? What if it comes back and angry at me?”, I thought. Its mere existence worried me, I was never sure what was going to do next, as the little it did was enough to leave a scar in my mind.

One night I was sleeping quietly in my room when I heard strange thumping sounds downstairs. The first thing I thought it was that it must have been a burglar, so I took my shotgun, not with the intention to kill that person but to try scaring them off. I walked slowly, trying to not make much noise and get close to them, but then they saw me, and I saw them. And I saw me.

That… thing had my face and my body, but I recognized the latter from somewhere else, I saw those stitches before. His face showed no emotion even while I was pointing the gun at him, he knew I wasn’t brave enough to shoot him, nor did he care. He simply crouched down, grabbed my fridge from below and carried it away with him. I didn’t know what to make of it, I was baffled and disturbed by the whole situation, but I did manage to ask him one question before he went away:

“Why?”

He stopped for a moment and looked at me before saying with my own voice “We’ve got a new client.”

It was tempting to follow him, but I was tired and I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to believe this had been all just a weird dream and go on with my life. So I went back to sleep, trying to forget that this ever happened. The next morning, I woke up and found out that the damn thing was gone. I finally felt free from that nightmare, but I had only a little time to savor that feeling until I got a call from my friend.

“Geoff?”, Jimmy asked. He sounded worried and a little bit scared.

“Yes, it’s me. What happens?”