Not long ago, there were several stories in the news about people buying freezers and finding body parts in them which they did not put there. Nothing is worse than not being able to identify Uncle Bill’s hand as not the left-over pot roast.
If you are going to kidnap and dismember someone, be sure to start with an empty appliance.
ATTN: Scrapers
Fridge for the taken
Thanks
I’m sure the taken appreciate getting a roomy freezer all to themselves. Thanks, Ralph, you live near interesting places.
Advertisements
It was a tremendously unsettling call. Jimb (the B was not silent) had no idea who the man on the other end of the line was, and apparently the sentiment was mutual. He did seem really quite angry — a quiet, menacing kind of anger — vowing as he did to find and kill him, muttering something in his sinister voice about not knowing what it was that Jimb wanted, but that he was a man possessing of particular skills that made him a nightmare for people like Jimb. He actually said that. A nightmare.
He was certain it had to be a wrong number — Jimb was a high school waste technician, the only ones who wanted him dead were rats and the various scavengers who cursed his use of animal-proof bins. Well, proof against all but one particularly intelligent raccoon who’d learned to work the locks. He sometimes lay awake at night wondering when that one would figure out how to open his front door. Just the same, the call left him feeling very shaky. What if it wasn’t a wrong number? No, he couldn’t afford to think like that. Maybe he should report it.
Later, he thought. He’d just gotten his new refrigerator home. Well, not new, exactly, he’d bought it used off Craigslist, but it seemed in remarkably good shape. He’d just slid it out from the back of his minivan. The seller had taped the doors shut so they wouldn’t swing open accidentally as he was moving it about. That was just good packaging, right there. Had it been from eBay, he’d have added another star and a “would buy again.” Once he’d properly assessed the state of the appliance and was satisfied with its working condition, anyway.
Jimb was kind of disappointed in it, mind you. His old fridge, which he _did_ get off eBay, but which had just completely lost its cool, had an ice maker, a digital temperature readout, and a severed foot in the crisper. The latter was quite unsettling, but on the other hand, free foot. He had no idea what to do with it, so ultimately he reported it to the police, that seeming like the right thing to do in the end. The police took his fridge for a while as evidence, and it seemed to take forever for him to get it back. When he did, it smelled funny.
But Jimb cleaned it up, plugged it back in, and it had been working fine for the last six years. That fridge had been through a lot. Not just the investigation, but also family gatherings, his wife leaving him to join a convent, that time a fresh whole chicken he bought for dinner was a little more whole than it should have been and tried to escape through the cat flap. Jimb had history with that fridge. He was sad to see it go. But once it stopped working, there was little he could do. He needed a new one.
And here it was, standing upright outside the rear hatch of his fan. Now he had to get it inside. It was a heavy beast. The seller had helped him load it into the van, but now that he was home, he had no one to help him get it into the house. He felt a brief pang of regret at that. His wife had left him more than a year ago but he felt like he’d never fully processed it.
Maybe, Jimb thought, he could make it a little lighter if he removed the doors and took out all the shelves first. Yes, that was a good idea. He was proud of himself for that one. Excellent, good, okay, so first thing was to remove the tape from the doors. Then he realized he was going to need a screwdriver, so he went inside and grabbed the driver with all the bits stored in the handle under a screw top. He loved that screwdriver. Clever bit of engineering, that. He returned to his van and opened freezer door, removing it quite handily with the driver, took out the one rack in the middle, and put them to side. He then opened the main door, and the fridge gasped desperately.
Jimb was startled, and shut the door with a whump. Hang on. Something wasn’t right here. Jimb went back over the details of the story in his head. Remove tape, yadda yadda, screwdriver, blah blah, freezer, something something, gasp.
Yes, that was it. The fridge gasped. That wasn’t usually the sort of behaviour one expected in a refrigerator.
Jimb opened the door again, cautiously this time.
Somebody was in it.
Jimb blinked.
The fellow in the fridge blinked.
Jimb had a flash of recognition. “Indy?!”
He was still trying to catch his breath, unable to speak yet, but it was definitely him.
Well, this was certainly an unexpected stroke of good fortune. “Hey, could you help me get this fridge inside?”
LikeLiked by 4 people
Jimb is so lucky, around here if you want a free foot you have to sit on the beach and wait for one to wash ashore and there is no telling how long that can take.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If he lived in BC, at the current rate he’d only have to wait a year or so on average. Although that average is skewed by several showing up in one year, so, the foot harvest may not always be so reliable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly!
LikeLike
Scrapers? Isn’t that IF’s Carbide cover band?
LikeLiked by 1 person
This would make an excellent coffin for a Foy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Taken in a scrape
The fridge please take away
The door is ajar
LikeLiked by 1 person
You take this fridge back!
Want fridge with door that is door
Not door that is jar
LikeLiked by 2 people