The first thing I see is the corner of one of the metal racks from the interior of the fridge. Stuffed between the rack and refrigerator body is a pack of hamburger buns.
I creep forward and see a plastic bottle of ketchup and then the husk of an ear of corn.
There wasn’t much food in there. I have been eating mostly from the pantry. I’m guessing that everything that I had in the refrigerator is now stuffed behind it.
The flies buzz in an angry cloud when I reach my stake forward and poke at the hamburger buns.
Something shifts inside the fridge.
(The door won't open.)
The door won’t open.
I try to wedge my stake into the rubber seal between the refrigerator door and the frame, but I can’t get it to budge. When I bang my stake against the fridge in frustration, I hear the thing inside. It shifts and the scales rub against each other making a dry, papery sound. When I hear that sound, my wrist throbs. It looks like the claw wound is weeping again.
I put one of the stakes down and slink forward until my trembling hand grabs the towel that’s tied to the refrigerator’s handle. The whole time, all I can picture is the door sliding open and long boney fingers slipping out to snare me.
I get a grip on the towel and back away.
With my first tug, the refrigerator actually rocks forward a little.
The second time, I really jerk it.
The towel starts to rip and then the door pops open.
For a second, I don’t see a single thing inside there. Someone has emptied the refrigerator and left it bare. Maybe it was just the vacuum that made it so difficult to open.
I know better than that. I circle at a distance until I can pick up the broomstick with the flashlight taped to it and get a good angle.
That’s when I see her. She’s up near the top corner, clinging to the plastic. When you really get a good look at them, they’re pretty small. She’s the size of a small alligator, I would guess. Her eyes make her look human. They’re such an amazing violet color.
I think I read that in ancient Europe, only royalty could wear purple. If that color was anything like this, I understand. The color of her eyes suggests infinite wealth and prosperity. It conveys a feel of deep satisfaction. Even with the sunlight dazzling through the broken windows, her eyes are bright.
Her eyes invite me to come inside the refrigerator. It will be our safe place as soon as I crawl inside and shut the door. Who needs light and oxygen? I’ll have complete happiness in there. Why would I possibly want anything else?
I take a step forward.
With my next step, I drop the stake that I fashioned out of the shovel handle.
I’m still holding the broomstick with the flashlight taped to it, but I let the light droop. I don’t need it anymore. There’s plenty of light coming from her perfect violet eyes.
The eyes seem to grow even larger with my next step.
It’s like they’re swallowing my whole field of vision, and that’s a wonderful thing.
Violet is the overwhelming color, but the eyes are actually made up of a billion points of light, like tiny stars in swirling galaxies. There’s an entire reality inside those eyes and it’s a perfect existence. Some people believe in reincarnation. If they could see her eyes, those people would understand that coming back to this life would be torture. The only afterlife I want is to be encompassed in that beauty.
Her mouth opens and I see the dripping fangs. It doesn’t matter. Those teeth are waiting to bite me and I really couldn’t care less. She’s welcome to this mortal flesh as long as that payment grants me entrance to the universe inside her violet eyes.
Light can’t last forever. Darkness always wins.
I don’t know where that thought came from, but it conjures an image for me. The invading image is Kimberly. It’s not the last memory I have of Kimberly with agony stretching her face. I had a handful of ice chips melting between my fingers as I watched them prep her for surgery. Whenever I think of her name, that’s what I always picture, but that’s not the image that comes to me now.
Instead, what I see is Kimberly on the day that she told me she was pregnant. I was in a terrible mood that day, and she held up the stick that she had peed on—the pregnancy test with its blue plus sign. She said, “Your darkness can’t last forever. Light always wins.”
Somewhere along the way, I reversed her words.
My version is clearly more true.
I take another step. I’m going to join that violet paradise in the refrigerator. That universe fills my eyes and banishes the memory of Kimberly that I had conjured.
A brilliant light glares from my right and I’m blinded by it. I stagger to the side, but I’m still assaulted by the beam. It’s a reflection in the glass that’s stacked on the windowsill. The blast from the truck broke the window, the vampire’s OCD forced it to collect the glass, and now it has reflected the sun into my eyes and broken the violet spell that entranced me.
I blink at the sunlight and glance back at the refrigerator.
For a fraction of a second, I see her for the disgusting serpent that she is. She’s part snake and part lizard. Her teeth are dripping with saliva and bacteria. She’s a parasite.
And then her eyes find me again.
I want nothing more than…
The sun interrupts the thought. I’m saved by that beam of light.
I raise one hand to block my view of her eyes and I raise the broomstick stake in the other. The flashlight reflects oily rainbows on her scales. She’s not even trying to camouflage herself anymore. All her energy is invested in hypnotizing me with
