Fridge

By Audrey Adams

 

Dr. Prairie Carmichael crossed and uncrossed her ankles, a gentle movement she hoped would be distracting enough that she could flick her eyes toward the clock on the wall without her client noticing. Harold was often sensitive if he noticed her keeping time. She certainly wasn’t trying to rush; but he had ten minutes left in his session and clearly twenty more left in this story. 

“My boss just doesn’t understand the stress I’m under,” Harold complained. 

Prairie nodded along with him. “I wonder if now is one of those times that we can practice our distress tolerance.”

“No one gets it,” he continued. “One day everything in life is just as normal as it can be and then pow!” He spread his hands wide. “Nothing will ever be the same.”

Prairie nodded again. “Does no one get it, Harold?” She smiled gently.

“You get it, Dr. Carmichael,” Harold conceded.

“And the folks in group?”

“They get it.”

“So you’re not alone, really. Maybe your boss doesn’t understand, or your wife, but you’re not alone. And your experience is valid.”

Harold nodded. Then nodded some more. 

“Sometimes,” he whispered. “Sometimes, late at night. I think I still hear the hum… the machinery … I can smell that cold, clinical odor … like nothing else. I still see them. Their bulbous eyes, that sickly pallor of their skin …”

“Trauma can try to trap us in the past,” Prairie said, her placid voice smooth as a windless day. “It can trick our senses. But you’re not back on that ship, Harold. You’re here now, in the present. Safe. Listen to the sounds in this room. No metal, no machinery.”

“Just the zen fountain in the corner,” Harold added, his voice shaky.

“That’s right. No strange odor. No little green men. You’re here now, and safe.”

Harold took a deep breath and sighed. 

“Shall we look at next week?” Prairie asked, perking up as she flicked to a new page in her planner. 

 

Dr. Prairie Carmichael had earned her masters and doctorate along with multiple certificates and specializations in psychology and trauma counseling at Insert-Ivy-League-Institution-Here. She then went on to earn a Bachelor’s of (pseudo)Science in Paranormal Studies and Cryptozoology at Suspiciously Cheap Online University. 

Her small private practice catered to those who had experienced a distressing encounter with the paranormal, including — but not limited to — alien encounters and abductions, ghost apparitions and visitations, demon hauntings and cohabitations, and the occasional encounter with a cryptid or shapeshifter. 

None of these events were true or real in any capacity other than their effects on her clients. No, to Prairie’s knowledge, there were certainly no such things as ghosts, demons, Bigfoot, or aliens, and the Chupacabra was only what she called her neighbor’s hideous chihuahua. But telling her clients that wouldn’t help them. 

She wasn’t a fraud. She was an Ivy League scholar, after all. It was simply a fact that the paranormal did not exist. But she could help these clients cope with their perceived traumas and paranoias. She didn’t exorcise demons or sage-smudge their houses for them; the only investigation she did was into the emotions that remained after a client’s alleged encounter. If her work in psychology had taught her anything, it was that everyone had a boogie man under their bed. And she could help them cope.
Prairie stepped out onto the stoop of her office, Third Eye Therapy. She hated the name, but it got the point across. She wanted her only clientele to be those who had experienced the paranormal. Carving out a niche specialty would set her apart from her peers. 

She pulled the old wooden door shut, then the iron bar door after it, locking several deadbolts. Unfortunately, she couldn’t afford to house her practice in the best of neighborhoods. Or her apartment for that matter.  

The heels of her Mary Janes made satisfying clacks on the pavement as she started up the block’s walk home. She adjusted the strap of her leather messenger bag of case files draped across her plaid vintage swing dress. She dropped some coins into Kenny’s cup a few stoops over. Kenny had experienced alien abductions a record thirty-seven times. He was clearly a subject of great interest to the aliens. Prairie often told him if he would stop spending his change on crack, he could afford an appointment with her. He chose crack. 

She arrived at her apartment just in time to catch Callum, her neighbor and dog walker. As she greeted him, he was bent over the sidewalk gingerly scooping a large turd that she recognized as belonging to her own Great Dane.

“Oh good!” she said, scratching behind Pavlov’s ears. “All done with the walk then?”

“So it would seem,” Callum replied in his lilting English accent. He tied up the poop bag and tossed it in the trash can next to the stoop. 

As he handed over Pavlov’s leash, their hands almost brushed. Prairie felt a whoosh of relief drop right to the pit of her stomach. Last time he accidentally touched her, she’d gone all babbling and red and it was mortifying. It wasn’t that he was particularly good-looking. He was simply close to her age, that’s all. Prairie was thirty-four, looked fifteen, and lied and said she was thirty. Callum was thirty. He looked thirty. He didn’t ever say how old he was but she knew his birthdate from his background check. She also knew he had a creative writing degree from Mid-Tier College in the northeast and a traffic citation (unpaid) back in Surrey. He was tall, and lanky, with the floppy sort of hair that was a bit too young-looking for him. He was terribly skinny, like he’d have an awful lot of sharp edges in bed. Not that she had thought of that, of course. It was fascinating how skinny he was, honestly. Where were all of his organs? Prairie thought herself to be pleasantly plump, like a juicy plum on a summer’s day, or a delightful banana muffin from your favorite bakery. She knew where all of her organs were. 

Anyway, Callum was thin and tall and wore too many sweater vests and was, in general, the kind of hipster catnip that she had better stop thinking about in bed because she paid him to walk her dog and all of these thoughts were highly unethical. 

“How’s the novel coming?” she asked. She was being polite, out of habit. She was dying to go upstairs and open a bottle of wine immediately. 

“Oh, you know,” Callum shrugged. “Dialogue is hard.”

“Quite right,” she said. She could feel herself absorbing his accent. An unfortunate side effect of being overly empathetic. “Thank you, as always. Goodnight!”

That was enough small talk, surely. 

She hurried up the steps with a wave. Once inside her apartment, she breathed a sigh of relief. She slipped her shoes off, kicking them halfheartedly under the loveseat in the middle of the living room. Her stockinged feet padded over to the kitchen. She flicked open her vitamin case and popped a Biotin, a Vitamin C, an Evening Primrose Oil, a Fish Oil, and a CBD gummy, in that order. Then she poured herself a generous glass of pinot noir. She took a sip. Then another sip. Then poured herself a second glass.
She scooped a cup of dry food into Pavlov’s bowl. Pavlov sat at attention, not yet digging in. She was very well trained. Prairie opened the refrigerator, reached past the demon head, and grabbed a can of wet food. She cranked the can opener along the edge of the can, then upended it over Pavlov’s bowl, where it landed with a sick splat. 

“Go ahead,” she said. Pavlov immediately pounced on her food, wagging her tail and letting out a little toot of thanks. Prairie wrinkled her nose and waved her hand in front of her face. It smelled foul, like rotten eggs. 

“Hell, Pav,” Prairie gagged. “Next time you’re getting boiled chicken.”

Next, Prairie focused on her third glass of wine and the meal planning chart stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet. “WHAT PART OF WOOF DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?” the magnet declared. The meal plan declared that today’s meal was an avocado BLT wrap and a boiled egg. Pav’s egg farts smelled straight from hell. Prairie would be abstaining from boiled eggs tonight. 

She switched on the lavender oil diffuser in the corner of the room and opened the refrigerator door. 

“Bacon is bad for your colon,” the demon said. 

Prairie cocked her head to the side. She clutched her wine glass a little closer. 

“You know your mother has that gene that puts you at risk for colon cancer,” it continued. “You never went and got tested for it.”

Prairie stood perfectly still and blinked at the thing squatting atop her carton of Greek yogurt. It had three, maybe four, eyes planted in the center of a lion’s face and mane, and five hairy goat’s legs, encircling its head like the spokes of a wheel. It was definitely a demon, though she had never seen one before. And it definitely wasn’t real. 

“That lavender smells lovely.”

Prairie slammed the refrigerator door shut.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay okay okay.”

She set her glass of wine down on the counter by the demon. Oh, okay, the demon was on the counter now. Great. 

She snatched the glass of wine back up. She sat down on the loveseat in the living room. She blinked her eyes hard as she lied down, her feet poking out over the armrest. Breathe in deep, Prairie, she told herself, Activate your parasympathetic nervous system. When she opened her eyes, the demon was perched by her Tiffany lamp. 

“And how does that make you feel?” it asked. 

She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed harder. Slower. She pressed one ring finger to her nostril and breathed in; she switched nostrils and breathed out. Pranayama yoga was a proven reliever of stress. And this hallucination was stress-inducing. 

She peeked one eye open. The demon was gone. She slowly sat up. The demon materialized on the coffee table. 

“Fuck!”

“Would you like to try a lifeline?” the demon replied. 

She stared at it. She took a sip of wine.

The demon’s face morphed into what looked like a police sketch of Regis Philbin. 

“Would you like to try a lifeline?” Demon Philbin asked again. 

Right. Right. Not a bad idea. She shouldn’t be alone right now. She was clearly having an episode. She should call someone. 

She couldn’t call 911. If she was hospitalized, she could kiss her practice goodbye. Mom? She remembered the gene and shook her head. Mom had enough going on. Calling her shrink would also prove embarrassing, plus she couldn’t afford the copay.

If she stopped spending all her money on pinot noir, she might have been able to afford it. She chose pinot noir.  

Right, so. No point in calling her ex-husband, since the grifter had surely changed his number by now. Her ex-wife was now an Episcopalian priest, and might have access to holy water or something like that. Except demons weren’t real. This wasn’t a demon. This was an embarrassing moment. Better call someone that might help her rationalize, help ground her, distract her from this stress-hallucination. But also someone who was a bit more pathetic than herself right now. 

She picked up her phone and dialed. As it rang she pierced the demon with a glare. 

“I’m phoning a friend,” she told it. “Can you just go back in the fridge, please?”

Something like a grin ripped and stretched across its lion face. “I’m so glad we’re finally talking.” 

 

Thirty minutes later, there was a soft knock on the door and Prairie yanked the door open, shutting it just as sharply after her guest entered. 

They looked at each other awkwardly for a moment. 

“You said there was a problem with your fridge?” Callum asked. He was in the same sweater vest as earlier. 

Prairie nodded. She was so desperately awkward, she worried he probably thought this was a sex call. 

“Um, yes. I’m definitely having a problem.”

“Okay,” Callum eyed her suspiciously, “Shall I … take a look then?” He gestured over to the fridge and headed that way. 

“Let me just say first,” Prairie said, rushing ahead of him. She paused. “Actually, nevermind.”

She opened the refrigerator. “What do you see?” She asked, eyeing Callum’s face hopefully. She didn’t know what she hoped for, honestly. 

“Well, I see you have a troubling amount of almond milk,” he said slowly. 

Ah, so that’s it. She was hallucinating. She was finally cracking up. 

“You know, while almond milk is better for your health than cow’s milk, its production actually has quite a detrimental effect on bee populations in southern California,” Callum said. “Also, there is a demon atop your egg carton.”

Prairie sunk to the floor. 

“Oh my god,” she said. “Oh my god. I just thought I was going insane. Or I’d had too much wine.”

“How much have you had?” 

“Two-point-five glasses pre-demon and three glasses post-demon.”

“That doesn’t seem like too much, considering the circumstances.”

Callum sat down cross-legged on the linoleum next to her, the two of them bathed in the refrigerator light and the gaze of the demon. 

“Well, surely you’ve dealt with this before, right? Given your line of work?”

Prairie shook her head, her red hair in this light curling and furling around her face like a ring of fire. 

“I’m a psychologist. I treat people who have hallucinations, often trauma-induced or paranoid fixations. Demons aren’t real. Nor are ghosts, fairies, aliens, the Jersey Devil. None of it. None of it.”

“Oh,” Callum replied. He gazed up at the demon. It seemed most content with listening in on their conversation, and scratched absentmindedly behind its ear with one of its topmost legs. 

“I thought I was going mad,” Prairie said, not bothering to catch her slipping accent. She rubbed at her eyes, forgetting her mascara. “Now I don’t know what to think.”

What would she do now that these impossible things, presumably, were real? Was there somewhere she could get a paranormal investigator license? It might be beneficial to expand her practice.

“I’m just so glad you’re here.” She reached forward to grasp his hand. 

Her hand sank right to the floor. 

Callum glanced down at her hand, phased through his own, and sighed. 

“Oh right,” he sighed. “I might have mentioned that I do believe I, um, died this morning. As it were.”

Prairie’s chin tipped forward toward her chest. 

“So, I might be one of those ghosts you also mentioned that don’t exist.”

Prairie nodded sympathetically.

“So far,” Callum continued, “I’ve gathered that I can touch objects, but not people. I can take off these clothes but I can’t put other clothes on. So I suppose it’s this sweater vest for eternity, or nudity.”

“Nudity is your natural state,” the demon chimed in. 

Prairie lowered herself so that she was flat on her back on the floor. 

How utterly miserable. What on earth was she supposed to do with a demon and a ghost? And now this new development posed the possibility that both the demon and Callum were hallucinations, since Callum could hardly be trusted now in his confirmation of the demon.  Who had been walking her dog this whole time? Did she even have a dog? Pavlov had been awfully quiet this evening. 

What were her options? She could:

     1. Sprinkle salt all around her house, in a circle, and therefore if the demon was truly a demon, he would be expelled from the house. Right?

     1.a.) A note: she had defaulted to calling the demon a “him” in this thought exercise. Likely because of the Regis Philbin thing, but was that cisnormative of her? Should she ask the demon for his pronouns? 

     1.b.) Would asking for the demon’s pronouns tip him off that she was preparing to expel him via salt circle? Or would it seem considerate, and leaving him/her/them to ultimately feel more betrayed by the exorcism? 

     2. She should definitely, certainly, call her shrink. 

     3. Where the hell was Pavlov?

“You’re thought-spiraling,” said the demon.

Prairie groaned and shoved the heels of her hands against her leaking eyes. The refrigerator air had started to fog out into the warmer kitchen.  

“I used to think about you in bed,” she confessed to Callum, through her hands. “I guess I can tell you that now that you’re dead.”

She raised herself up slowly. Callum rubbed the back of his neck. 

“Sorry, that was rude,” Prairie said quickly. 

“No, it’s quite all right. I, um, thought about that too.” He smiled at her sheepishly. 

“Oh.” Prairie blushed. Callum couldn’t. “I guess there’s not much to do about that now.”

“You’re a psychologist. Certainly you’ve seen people make do in worse situations.”

His face was actually pretty good-looking, in this refrigerator light, after all. Not just young. His eyes were a nice, warm brown. The sharp edges of his bony frame certainly weren’t a problem now. She reached to touch his elbow and marveled as her hand phased through, like touching a cloud.

“If things are going to get weird, I’m going to leave the refrigerator now, Prairie,” the demon said. It moved its legs so that it spider-climbed or rolled or somehow navigated down the fridge shelves until pop! it appeared on the floor with the bottle of wine that was sitting in the empty space where the dog bowl had once been. Prairie blinked. Funny, she must have taken the bowl away earlier. Though she didn’t want to, she glanced toward the hook by the door where she had hung Pavlov’s leash. Empty. She frowned and looked back at the demon, but with another pop both the demon and the wine bottle disappeared. 

“At least you’re not alone. In unpleasant discoveries for today, I mean,” Callum said. Prairie snatched her attention back to him. 

“I know you’re probably feeling very anxious,” Callum said placidly. “I can imagine this is all very traumatic for you.”

It’s very uncomfortable being empathized with, Prairie realized. 

“I’m very sorry you died,” she said. “I’m sure it must be hard.”

Callum smiled sadly and shrugged. “At least this is interesting, right? I’m a phenomenon now. Isn’t it nice to believe in something phenomenal? In something beyond comprehension, bigger than myself and more mysterious than the universe?”

Prairie glanced once more at the empty hook beside the front door, then smiled back at Callum’s faded brown eyes. “Sure. I’m sure it is.”