Hello All:
I’ve always been fascinated by those peculiar, vivid and
sometimes lucid dreams that we get just a few moments before waking up in the
morning. I’ve actually turned some of these into stories. And today’s new story
was an actual dream that I had a few mornings ago.
Dreams can often be used to help analyze the
subconscious. But I’m afraid I have no answers for this one. I can only guess
that it reveals a certain aversion towards socialism.
The Refrigerator
It was a Sunday evening as my
wife and I rolled the refrigerator out of the kitchen, through the main
hallway, into the foyer and then out to the garage. From the garage, we
struggled with guiding the small wheels of the refrigerator over the bump that separates
the garage from the driveway. But once it was fully outside, it was easy to
roll the refrigerator down the driveway and over to the parkway.
Now I really thought that
dragging the large and bulky appliance across the lawn of the parkway would be
next to impossible. But surprisingly it was quite easy to drag it over the curb
and position it just right. My wife and I discussed earlier that day whether or
not the doors of the refrigerator should face the street, or face our house.
But we eventually decided that it would be safer to go outside for food without
standing in the road. For this matter, the doors ended up facing our house.
At this point you are probably
wondering why we had moved our refrigerator outside, and spent so much time
positioning it just right in the parkway against the curb. And you are probably
even more curious of this mention of going outside to the street for our food.
Well, you see, after about a week's worth of careful planning, it was realized
that the optimal location for our refrigerator wouldn't be in the kitchen, but
outside near the street. For electricity, we simply plugged a long extension
cord into an outlet of the garage, and unrolled it through the lawn and across
the sidewalk to reach the refrigerator. It was that easy. And the refrigerator
looked so nice sitting outside in the parkway near the curb.
For the first week, there
weren't any problems with going outside if needing something from the
refrigerator. If someone wanted some milk, they would bring the glass out to
the street and pour some near the refrigerator. Eggs and bacon for breakfast?
We would simply go out to the street and rummage through the refrigerator. And
any leftovers from dinner would be carried out and stored in the refrigerator
for future meals.
Now about those leftovers; it
was late in the week—our second week of having the refrigerator outside—when my
daughter accompanied me to the street side curb to gather up leftovers in the
refrigerator from previous meals. Thursday nights are usually designated as
leftover nights.
Halfway down the driveway, I saw
something startling. "Whoa!" I exclaimed, and blocked my daughter with
the back of my hand from walking any further. I pointed to my car. "Who is
that underneath?”
Lying under my car was a strange
black man who looked like he was homeless, or at the least spent much of his
time out in the streets. He wore a stocking hat on his head, and had a scraggly
beard. And he started back at me with his beady, black eyes. I wasn't supposed
to see him. From the looks of it, he was up to no good. Maybe he was casing out
the neighborhood with plans of burglary.
"Let's get back in the
house!" I urged my daughter. We both ran inside, and I immediately reached
for the phone to call the police. While doing so, I watched out the front room
window and observed the strange, black man crawl out from under my car and
scurry back to his own that was down the street. From what I could see, it was
an old 1970s beater Cadillac with no license plate.
"Hello, yes, I would like
to report some suspicious activity taking place in my neighborhood." I
told the 911 dispatcher.
Within a minute, two squad cars
sailed down the street and parked near the curb of my house, right where my
refrigerator sat.
"Unfortunately, I couldn't
get much of a description of the suspect or the vehicle." I told the
officers. "He was just some black guy with scraggly beard and a stocking
hat. He looked like someone who lived out in the streets. And he drove an old
Cadillac that had dulled and faded maroon color."
"And you say he was lying
under your car?" probed the officer.
"Yes." I affimed. “It
looked like he was hiding.”
"And when did you first see
him?"
"It was when my daughter
and I came outside to the refrigerator to get dinner for the evening."
The officer said not a word, just
continued writing. While this happened, the other officer walked around my car,
probably looking for any evidence left behind from strange black man.
"Well..." began the
officer after jotting down all the information. "At this point all we can
do is keep an eye on the neighborhood. Give us a call if you see him again, or
notice any suspicious activity in the neighborhood."
"Will do." I reassured
the office. And as the two walked back to their squad cars, I dashed over to
the refrigerator and called out, "Hey, want something to drink?" I
pulled out two cans of Coca Cola.
Both officers shrugged their
shoulders. "Sure, why not."
I handed the sodas to the
officers. "Thanks for doing a great job in protecting our community."
***
A few days passed, and there
weren't any further sightings of the strange black man who was hiding under my
car. But there was something peculiar that we noticed. When going out to the
curbside for breakfast in the morning, the inside of the refrigerator appeared
messy and unorganized.
Then we started to notice that
food was missing, "Now I know that I put that leftover pizza in
here." I insisted to my wife. "And nobody else here ate it?"
"No..."
"No..."
"Wasn't me..."
Then came the morning that I
discovered that one of the shelves in the refrigerator had fallen off the track
and collapsed to the lower shelf. There were a couple of broken eggs at the
bottom of the refrigerator, and something sticky had spilled over the bag off
tossed salad.
"What the hell is going
on?" I exclaimed. I nearly yelled at my kids. "Just because we put
the refrigerator outside doesn't mean that you can now be messy. Come-on, kids!
That's our food! Now we have to clean that mess up."
"But, Dad, I didn't go out
there last night." sweared my daughter.
"Yeah, Dad, me
neither."
"Well someone made that
mess out there." I pointed. "And it wasn't me or your mother."
The only other explanation I
could think of was that maybe the strange black man had returned to the
neighborhood and was helping himself to our food at night while we slept. But I
wasn't ready to jump to such a conclusion.
***
There came a Saturday when I
happened to glance outside the front window and was shocked by a new disturbing
sight. The strange black man had returned, and he brought with him a few
friends. And they were all hiding under my car in the street.
"Son of a..." I exclaimed.
Curious of what they were doing under my car, I dashed away to the closet for a
pair of binoculars and returned. If a bunch of dirty street appearing people
hiding under my car wasn't disturbing enough, I could now see through the binoculars
that they were using drugs. Smoking crack cocaine and shooting up with heroin;
these people were nothing more than a small group of drug addicts who camped
under my car in a means to hide from the police so that they could use their
drugs.
And that's not all that was
happening! From under the car emerged a zombie-appearing, emaciated girl in a
black t-shirt, shorts and a pair of leather boots. She had ultra-short blond
hair and heavy dark under her eyes, probably from neglecting her health. She
had infected needle tracks all up and down her arms, as well as burns all over
her lips from—probably—a crack pipe. She opened our refrigerator and actually
crawled inside of it. Yes, her entire body slithered and wedged itself into the
refrigerator. She was thin enough to actually slip behind the shelves while
browsing the selections of food.
I was outraged to see this, to
say the least. I did not want a filthy drug addict with sores and burns all
over her body—not to mention whatever diseases she might have had—crawling
through my refrigerator and touching my food.
In horror I watched as she
opened a Tupperware bowl of barbecued chicken and started to help herself.
"No, not the barbecued chicken!" I cried out. "That's it, I'm
calling the police. Enough is enough."
The windows of the house were
not open that afternoon, so there would have been no way for them to hear me.
It was as-if they could somehow sense or read my mind that I was calling the
police. With phone in hand I watched in disbelief as about a half-dozen drug addicts
hopped out from under my car and ran down the street to their own cars. The
girl in the refrigerator, of course, followed. She, too, did not want to get
busted.
"Yes, there is a group of
people using drugs under my car. And they are stealing my food. You need to
send the police!"
While stepping outside to wait
for the police, I noticed that the drug addicts had pushed my refrigerator over,
probably to punish me for calling the police. Spilled food now stretched across
the road.
That wasn't very nice of them.
The End
