STIFF
A Serialized Novelette
Brody Mercer wiped the sweat from his brow as negative seven-degree air slowly surrounded him. It felt like needles prodding at his exposed skin. This was not good. He remembered propping open the broken freezer door with the same box of tomato cans Cobb had taught him to use yesterday.
The box was gone.
The door was already shut, and the handle on the inside spun loose in his hand. The humming sound from the compressor kicking on echoed Brody’s dread. He was stuck in a well-stocked freezer, and it was getting colder by the minute.
After twenty minutes of pounding on the door, Brody made himself breathe. Body heat. The warmth he accumulated tending the griddle all night was slowly leaking out. This was his second day as Cobb’s newest short-order cook, and the embarrassing thought of him being shut inside the walk-in overshadowed the fear he should have had.
Brody had taken the job off a Greyhound with forty dollars in his pocket. Cobb was not interested in background checks or work history, only an honest day’s work. One handshake sealed the deal. It was the perfect part-time job for Brody since the secluded diner was only open on Fridays and Saturdays. He enjoyed the freedom, a whole five days of nobody expecting him anywhere. Now that freedom was gone.
He knew this box. The coils ran along the back wall behind a steel guard, and behind the guard, a fan drove air into the walk-in at sub-zero temperatures. A whirring breath of ice that never quit. The engine of the freezer. Stop the fan and you stopped the cold at the source.
The guard was screwed down tight, but the slats were wide enough for fingers to fit through. Brody searched the shelves for anything he could use that would fit the opening. There was so much meat to paw over. On the third shelf from the bottom, a kabob tray lay wrapped in plastic cling wrap. Perfect. Brody’s fingertips went numb as he busted open the Saran. He grabbed hold of a skewer from one of the kabobs and with one quick pull stripped the chunks from it. Frozen onion, peppers, and what looked like beef scattered onto the floor. He was left with nothing but a long metal rod.
He fed the skewer between two of the slats toward the gray blur of the fan blades. The freezing cold breeze pushed against the back of his hand. He missed. It barely kissed the spinning metal and skipped off. Brody tightened his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, and tried again. The rod caught.
The fan snatched the skewer out of his grip so fast that it took two layers of skin with it. The metal wrapped around the shaft of the fan’s motor, rattling against the damper. The guard buzzed under the grinding shriek of steel, chewing the rod with every labored turn of the motor. A high-pitched scream brought the fan blades to a screeching halt. The compressor stopped.
The silence was music to Brody’s ears. He did not realize how loud the freezer unit was until it wasn’t. The blood pumping in his arteries was now audible. Each throb cooling the only warmth he had left. He bought himself some time.
He wasn’t out of the box yet. Brody only delayed the inevitable, but inside there was a sense of relief. He noticed a pink patch on his hand that wasn’t there a second ago. It was missing skin. Due to his body’s overcorrection, there was no blood seeping from the wound. Both his arms were numb from the elbow down.
Brody turned his attention to the door. Three hinges ran down the swing side of the insulated steel. He couldn’t reach them. He quickly cataloged the available items in the surrounding area. A broken release latch still attached to the door, four wire shelves, a plethora of packaged protein, not much to work with, but doable.
He flung the meat from one of the shelves to the floor. Once emptied, he laid the wire rack onto its side. The standard kitchen wire rack had four support legs. Each support was constructed of three separate two-foot hollow stainless steel poles, threaded on each side.Brody grabbed a frozen solid roast from the floor and started beating the wire shelf off its supports.
He now had a six-foot segmented pole he could use to pry. It was too long. Brody carefully unscrewed the top segment of the pole counterclockwise. He was left with a two-foot section and a four-foot section. He then used the shorter piece as a chisel and the hardened roast as a hammer, pounding the tip of the longer segmented rod flat. He made a makeshift crowbar, wedging the flattened tip into the seam where the door met the frame. He threw all of his weight against the long end. The pole bowed as his boots skidded on the frosted floor. It bit through the outer plate before it lost its grip and skated off, cracking Brody in the jaw. The taste of warm copper stained his teeth red. His lips were purple.
On the second attempt, he leaned into the pole harder. Something gave. Not the door, but the inner skin of it. The door panel buckled. A long aluminum wrinkle ran from the seam, and underneath the torn metal lay a packed gut of yellow foam.
Brody dug at it. The flat end of the pole tore through the foam like butter. Pieces came away in stiff, frozen crumbs, sticking to the raw pink patch on his hand. Every hit felt like a shockwave of electricity running up his arms. His knuckles knocked steel. He scraped the last of the foam clear, and there it was. The back side of the door, and through a fat gap, he could see the hinges. Brody worked the makeshift crowbar into the gap. He pried at the hinge. The pin head turned, as Brody spit out an accomplished laugh.
The pin gave a quarter turn under the bar and he braced for the next one. Then he saw why it turned so easily. The pin was not seated. The head had been shaved flat, the whole thing welded into the barrel with a gray collar of slag so it could never walk up and out. He pressed his eye to the gap and found the middle hinge. Same welded collar. It did not matter what the bottom one looked like because Brody was stuck in here. These welds were not repairs; they were made for him.
Brody gazed at the bright scratches in the steel by the latch, gouges he had taken for old wear and tear when the door shut. He looked at the shelves packed floor to ceiling, more meat than a place that sat empty all week could ever sell. He didn’t finish the thought. There was no room for it next to what his body was doing. The shivering had quit. Brody took it as a good sign. He plopped down beside the wall he had torn open, crowbar still in hand. He could not feel anything. The frost on the floor stopped biting him. He tried one last time with all of his strength to lift his left arm, but it was stuck to the chilled grate that lay beneath him. Brody became stiff.
Five days later, Cobb pulled at the diner’s front door. The spring bell attached to the top let out a unique ding. Before it slammed closed, he flipped the sign hanging from a chain to OPEN. Then he reached for the cord to the left and pulled the blinds three-quarters of the way up. He bent down. On his way back up, he placed the HELP WANTED poster back in the window. The same spot it had been on display a week ago.
Cobb made his way to the white board menu behind the counter that had ‘Pot Roast Always Available’ permanently etched into the surface with a dry erase marker. He reached under it and grabbed his white apron and tied it with a double knot. He made his way to the kitchen, took out the small penny-colored key from his pocket, and placed it in the padlock on the walk-in freezer’s door. He took note of the silence, where a hum should have been. Cobb stood and listened to that quiet for a moment, then turned the key in the bright new master lock and slipped it off the hasp.
The air that rolled out was cool, not cold. Something wasn’t right. The ambient temperature was at least 40 degrees off. Cobb stepped right over Brody’s feet and immediately went to the condenser fan. The skewer was wound around the fan shaft right behind the coil guard. He worked it loose slowly, careful not to bend the blades worse than the boy already had. He drew the bent rod out of the slats. The fan turned rough at first, then equalized under the centrifugal force. Cobb watched it run for several seconds before he was satisfied.
He turned his attention to the meat. He pulled a white-wrapped bundle from the middle shelf and pressed his thumb into it. Still hard. He checked another one off the top shelf, and a third from the bottom one. All good. His modifications had paid off. Cobb set the last bundle of wrapped muscle and flesh back on the shelf and reached down, grabbing Brody by the ankles. He pulled as the body slid easily over the frost and specks of insulation, the torn panel snagging the boy’s shoulder for half a second before it let him go.
Cobb walked him backward out of the box and across the kitchen tile, past the griddle, over to the prep table. Cobb struggled to lift the body onto the butcher block as he grabbed at the center of his back. Brody’s head settled on the wood with a soft knock. He had done this many times before, and it was starting to wear on him. Cobb stood up slowly and with one quick motion took a large cleaver from the knife block, held it high in the air, and with all his might he started to swing.
The End
This story started out as a short fiction piece, but since it earned some awesome reviews I’ve decided to keep it going. If you enjoyed Stiff continue reading what happens next here 👇Stiff ch. 2
Read other works by Blake Dalton
Finished reading this yesterday and I'm amazed, man you must have done great work on this, expecting the next soon
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