A Wasted Day

The almost empty refrigerator exhales cold air as it swings open and a voice hisses at him.

“You don’t feed me enough”

The words form eerie, yet distinct, coming from the direction of the bare, open fridge. He stumbles back looking around for the source of the voice. He sees his wife, Sarah, still sipping her coffee while carefully scorching a single egg, half scrambleds. Both of her eyes are glued on the wrinkled page of a water stained romance novel and she doesn’t look up to acknowledge the voice. Still searching for the voice, he looks over at his son, Tyler who is hanging upside down over the edge of the sofa, the already threadbare fabric of his shirt is further stretched by his antics, and he seems bound and determined to break his neck before the start of the school day. That boy hears everything, every sharp muttered word, every shrill protest, every bitter exchange, but he seems as unfazed by the unfamiliar voice as his mother. 

Aside from the mysterious voice, the kitchen is strangely quiet. The silence crawls under his skin, and his stomach roils with sudden nausea. Unbidden, calloused fingers begin pulling at thinning hair and clumps of dried scalp nestle under dull yellowed nails. He looks down at a handful of his hair...his skin. Another wave of nausea hits him accompanied by a sudden pain that pierces his temples from both directions. He doubles over shivering and sweating, the silence is broken by the sound of his teeth grinding as the air suddenly becomes much colder. After a moment the sensations dull and he regains control. 

Sarah’s egg is blackened, Tyler’s shirt is torn, and his own toast looks dry without Sarah’s homemade blackberry jam. He looks over at the shiny chrome monstrosity that seems to occupy over half the kitchen, and he realizes that he has completely lost his appetite. 

Sarah puts on her hair net and pointedly avoids his outstretched arms leavinf without a goodbye or a glance backward. Tyler trails behind her, ducking out of the reach of his fatherly attempt at affection. They both shrink away and leave him without a word of acknowledgement. He shouts after them and Sarah turns. Her face is set in hard lines, she opens her mouth to say something, but instead she grabs Tyler by the arm and hurries him toward the bus stop. 

This time, the doorframe is the only victim of his frustration. He ignores the splinters under his nails and habitually descends into the basement taking some well-deserved time for himself before he also heads off to work. He’s been out of the office for a while, they’ve probably missed him. The 20+ voicemails on his home phone are a testament to his lamentable absence. That place can hardly run without him. He’ll wait an hour and surprise them all before lunch afterall, its important to have time for himself. Sarah and Tyler make him worry too much, they make him so tense, he needs to have time to relax before heading into the office. 

Still, he promised himself he would make it out the door today, unlike yesterday he made it all the way from the basement to his bedroom. He even slung on a tie and dabbed on too much cologne, but then halfway to the threshold his feet became too heavy. Ah not today, but tomorrow yeah, I’ll go back tomorrow. 

His tired weighed down feet led him back to his worn out easy chair, he lets his fingers dangle over the corduroy armrest. His grip loosens. All the lights in the house get dimmer as glass shatters against linoleum, stray drops of liquid splash upwards catching his fingertips, bloodshot eyes droop closed as his shadowed chin hits his chest. 

He wakes up minutes, (hours?) later to the sound of an ungodly screech. Nails scraping against slate? No, metal groaning into metal? Not quite. Bleary eyes dart around searching for the source. The living area is quiet but the single light in the kitchen has gone out. A dream, just a nasty dream that’s all. He stumbles to his feet and ambles lazily toward the basement stairs again. Unsteady feet still know the way down the concrete steps. He gropes his way through the darkness feeling blindly for the light switch. The single bulb flashes brightly, practically blinding him before it settles into a steady pattern glow, blink, flicker, go out, repeat… It’s a familiar sight marking the boundaries of his space. Sarah never would want to come down here and Tyler doesn’t dare. He grins and swallows back the uncomfortable dryness. He staggers towards a pile cardboard boxes. Each one broken into eight neat sections and each one empty… He tosses aside the first box he sees and reaches for the next, each one seems more empty than the one before. The dry, gaping spaces mock him kindling a special kind of rage. 

He thunders back up the stairs and into the darkness of the kitchen unaware of the growing chill and the unnatural darkness. Without thought or hesitation he grabs both handles of the barren refrigerator and prepares to swing it open. He’s sure he left at least one bottle upstairs. That’s where he used to keep them so they’d be fresh and cold. Sarah always hates it when he leaves them upstairs. She is such an unreasonable woman. A few months ago he put a few packs in the spacious refrigerator and poor Sarah fell down the basement stairs trying to carry them down and away from Tyler’s influence. Her collarbone was shattered but the stubborn woman won that argument. 

Just the thought of her victory annoys him. He grumbles as he reaches into the barren refrigerator shelves. The light inside has burnt out, but he feels his way around the empty darkness until his fingers close around cold glass. A thrill of triumph course through him before something wet and cold drips down onto his knuckles. Condensation he tells himself, but the way the liquid slides between his fingers, makes him pull away instinctively. 

“You don’t feed me so I’m always hungry”

The voice from earlier rasps and as the hollow refrigerator doors close in on him he looks down at the glass bottle in his grasp and the last thing he sees before the cold void swallows him whole, is the faded, handwritten label of his wife’s blackberry jam. 

Stapleton County Coroner’s Report 

Name: John Buck

Age: 43

TOD: 5:33pm

COD: Hypothermia