The first thing I noticed about it was my cat. She started lying in front of my refrigerator staring through the inch and a half space between the bottom of the fridge and the floor. At first it was just sort of cute and funny. She was often there. Staring. But then she began staying there for most of the day. She appeared as though she was in a trance. Just staring at the dark gap underneath the refrigerator. I’d try calling her. I’d bring out her favorite food and offer it to her. Nothing. She’d stay in that trance unflinching. Sometimes for hours. I was always wondering… what does she see under there? Insects maybe? I don’t know. Or maybe there was a breeze blowing out from under it, sort of hypnotizing her? It became a weird thing. What was it about the fridge that made her behave that way?
And then the refrigerator started doing other weird things. Progressively weirder. First, the inside light would only turn on about half the time I opened the door. Then the refrigerator door started slamming shut for no apparent reason. And it just kept getting worse. I would put fresh food in the fridge at night, and when I took the food out in the morning it was rotted and looked like it had been left in there for months. I’d carefully put in a carton of eggs, but by morning every egg had been cracked and was leaking. One morning I woke up and every item in the fridge had frozen solid, hard as a rock. As though the temperature in there was minus 50 overnight. All of these strange things seemed to only happen at night. In the dark. During the day, it was a regular refrigerator.
I rationalized all of these examples as faulty technology. I now know how that sounds. I guess I learned just how far the human brain will go to try and make sense of the world around it. To cling to a false sense of reality. But then something happened that made me face the fact that something far worse was occurring.
I was lying in bed in the middle of the night. My apartment wasn’t quite pitch black but was very dark. I awoke to something and I sat up quickly in my bed. I had the feint recollection of hearing the sound of a glass or jar being placed roughly on a counter. I listened carefully. Silence. Whatever the sound was that woke me up had stopped. Then I heard from the kitchen the slow creaky sound of the refrigerator door closing, ending with a quiet thump. This was the first time that I considered the scale for how weird the whole refrigerator situation was. Did I really hear that? Or was I partly dreaming, not fully awake? My cat was lying in my bed beside me, looking unconcerned. I lied awake for hours but eventually convinced myself that this was all my imagination. I fell asleep.
When I woke in the morning I walked in the kitchen and I immediately had to accept just how real this whole situation was. That this couldn’t be weird technological problems any longer. That either someone else was involved, or this was supernatural now.
All of the items inside my refrigerator were now on my kitchen counters. Left over Tupperware containers. A carton of milk. Various sauces and condiments. Cheese slices. Juices. Vegetables. Everything. I opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. Nothing. It looked immaculately clean. Scrubbed. Polished. I closed the door. I brushed all of my spoiled items off the counters and into garbage bags. I brought the garbage out. I got in my car. I went to work. I did my job. I ignored what happened. By the end of the day, I’d convinced myself that most of this was just in my mind.
But then things got even worse.
I remember getting home from work and feeling ok about things. Nothing was wrong. I was convinced this was just my imagination run amok. I even fell asleep at some point. But then I woke up terrified for no apparent reason. Had I had a nightmare? I looked beside me and my cat was frozen in her usual trance. This was immediately strange. She was in her trance in the bedroom, not in front of the fridge in the kitchen. What could this mean? She was staring out the bedroom doorway, towards the kitchen. Even though things were really dark, I stretched my neck beside the bed and tried to peer in towards the kitchen. I saw the shadowy outline of the refrigerator. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. But then I saw something in the inch and a half gap under the fridge. Eyes. Staring at me. And these were not the tiny eyes of a rodent or something. No. These were human. Human! Which was impossible. There is only an inch and a half between the floor and the fridge. It’s impossible for there to be eyes that large looking at me. There’s barely enough room for the eyes themselves, never mind an entire human head.
But yet there they were. Staring right at me. They eventually blinked shut. I couldn’t see them any longer. I had one last bout of denial. I started thinking I didn’t even see them at all. Forgive me, I know… but I still tried to consider all of this my imagination. I turned the lights on and closed the bedroom door. I lied in my room, scared. My cat still just stared in the kitchen. Unmoving. I don’t know how many hours passed, but I eventually fell asleep again.
I awoke with a start some point later in the night. It was pitch black. The lights had been turned off. I lied in my bed looking around the room for a moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust. As they did, I noticed the shadowy image of someone standing at the foot of my bed, right in front of the bedroom door. I had no idea what to make of it at first. Only about 5 feet tall. Wider than seemed natural. My eyes continued adjusting. This wasn’t a person at all. Far too box like and rectangular. It was my refrigerator. It was in my bedroom. It was both comical and terrifying all at the same time.
I gasped and rolled in the opposite direction out of my bed. My sight was still trying to adjust. The refrigerator wasn’t moving. It was standing firm. Right in front of the bedroom door and the light switch. My only way to turn on a light or to get out of the room was to physically move the refrigerator out of the way. Behind me was a window. Small. No way to slip through it without smashing it. Those were my choices. Smash the window. Or physically move that refrigerator in almost pitch darkness.
I opted for neither. I was going to wait on the other side of the bed. All night.
And then I heard the ‘meow’.
From inside the fridge. My cat. She started hissing, and running around inside, bumping into the sides. Something else was in there with her. I couldn’t help but think… this was a trap for me, and my cat was the bait.
I didn’t have the courage to approach. I left her in there. I hated myself for it, but it’s what I did. I sat in near pitch black for what I estimate as 3 hours. Hiding on the other side of my bed. Staring at the refrigerator. Hearing the meows and the hisses. The fridge never moved. I remembered that all of the weird things happened at night, in the darkness. I had to wait this out for daylight. Those hours felt like weeks. It started feeling like the sun would never come up. Then I noticed a light glow in the sky. It was near dawn. My room slowly filled with light. No longer in darkness, it began to not feel so scary.
Eventually I approached the fridge. I opened the door, expecting the worse. But my cat casually just jumped out. She actually looked completely fine. She walked to her bowl and calmly ate. Nothing inside the fridge looked out of the ordinary. I grabbed it and moved it a few inches away from the door. Everything was ok. My cat was ok. I was ok.
I left my apartment and immediately called in sick for work. I called my friend who has a pickup truck. I told him my refrigerator broke and I need some help disposing of it. I couldn’t have it in the bedroom when he came, so I moved it back into the kitchen. He helped me pack it in his truck. We brought it to the closest dump and got rid of it. I no longer have a fridge. I’ll likely never get another one. I’ve thought a lot about it. Do I really need one?
Things started getting normal again. My cat seemed fine. The whole refrigerator thing seemed part of my imagination. It maybe didn’t even really happen. I finally started sleeping normal hours again. I was getting over it.
But then I noticed something strange last night, just before going to bed.
My cat appeared in a trance. Staring at the gap underneath my oven…
Submitted November 07, 2016 at 12:20AM by A10A10A10 http://ift.tt/2frRJVi nosleep
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