Solus
By Karen Mitani
CW: brief confinement; mentions of animal death
Riggs tells me to get into the old refrigerator, but I don’t think I’ll fit. There’s something already in there, something in a dirty bag stained brown and seeping. Plus, it stinks worse than the time those two squirrels got caught in the cellar and couldn’t get out. Then all the flies, so many the cellar stairs were black and alive, and we found nothing but squirrel bones, clutching each other like they were hugging when they died.
They say things at school about Riggs, that he’s the reason Nelly Glick’s beagle Cooper was dredged out of Mercy Lake. Dumb dog went over the falls, that’s all. Riggs is my friend. I know he trusts me cause he shows me stuff. Like his fridge. There was a frog in there once, rubbery and dry. Another time, a cat, its eyes grey and bulging.
Riggs tells me to take the bag out of the fridge. It leaves a sludgy puddle behind. I don’t want to touch it, so I wipe it out with some torn tarp and my foot.
Inside it’s pitch black. The stink’s stolen all the oxygen. Riggs is sure I can get out. I’m smarter than a dumb frog or cat or pair of squirrels, aren’t I? I want to make him proud. But the door won’t budge, and I listen for Riggs but don’t hear anything but my own tinny breath as I pound on the door and grasp in the dark for something I can trust.
Karen Mitani lives in Brooklyn with her daughter, looking up for birds and down for words.