It started small. The milk soured, the vegetables wilted. “Only a few things it can be,” Tom said, attacking the refrigerator condenser coils with a hand vac. “There,” he said, but when he opened the refrigerator later to grab a beer, he disappeared inside.

We filed a missing persons report. When the officer asked for theories about where Tom might be, we pointed at the open refrigerator. The officer put down her pen. “Really?” she said, then rolled her eyes.

After the Tom Incident, we had concerns about risking another open, but Vicki had some expensive cheese in the fridge, and stomachs were grumbling: we decided to chance it. We paper-chained ourselves together, hands to waists, and Vicki came out with ice in her hair clutching a Camembert.

“We can work with this,” Vicki said. I nodded. So while we worked our way through the pantry - crackers, dry cereal, tins of sardines - we occasionally risked a human chain refrigerator grab for something choice, like yogurt or eggs.

Drew was next to go. He whinged all night about a cookie dough tube in the crisper: “Salt combined with sweet. Genius.” We sent him to the pantry for warm seltzers to distract him. After the movie, we found one grass-stained sneaker upside-down on the kitchen floor.

“That’s it,” I told Vicki. “We need to stick together. Have our hours of horror movie watching taught us nothing?”

“Yeah, buddy,” Vicki agreed, tipping an imaginary cowboy hat. “We don’t need anything that fridge has to offer. Plenty of people go without fridge food and lead perfectly normal lives.”

I made a list of food alternatives - grubs from the backyard, crickets if we could catch them, toothpaste for dessert - but Vicki resisted the new menu. “I don’t want to eat bugs and toothpaste!” she said, chewing a stick of linty gum she found in the bottom of her purse.

“Of course not! No one does,” I stroked Vicki’s hair. “But the alternative is fridge life, and I don’t think we’re cut out for it.”

“No,” she agreed, sniffling. “My coat is fashionable but not functional.”

“Right!” I nodded. This was the tack I wanted her to take. “No vitamin D if we live in there, so hair loss is a given.” Vicki patted her long locks and picked up her grub spade.

That night, while we watched a movie about dead prank callers, Vicki muffled her stomach growls with a throw pillow. “Do you remember when I got into clay sculpting?” she asked while the credits played. I remembered. It was right before her tap dancing phase.  “Well, there’s ice in the refrigerator freezer,” she said. “I’ve been thinking that that might be fun to sculpt.”

“Vicki,” I shook my head. Before I could grab her, Vicki threw a throw pillow at my face and sprinted towards the kitchen. Her CrossFit phase was serving her well. I heard the thwack of the refrigerator door.

Now I was alone with the hum of the appliances. Tim, Drew, Vicki - they didn’t have the self-control I had, that was clear. If you offered them one marshmallow now or two marshmallows later, they would grab that first sticky clump. I sat at the kitchen table chewing bark and considering options. I would not open the refrigerator. I would not, even though the night before, I dreamed of cans of whipped cream and jars of cold olives. What were Tom, Drew, and Vicki doing now? The cheese was long gone, no doubt, but I remembered some dark chocolate stashed in the door, and my stomach clenched.

I would not open the refrigerator. I didn’t want a refrigerator life. Eating and sleeping on repeat, teeth blackening from no brushing, no social or career prospects. But what were they doing in there? I put my ear to the refrigerator. Was that Drew? He had one of those laughs that starts in the back of the throat and then pours out like a bulimic’s dinner. I could picture Vicki twirling her red hair, telling one of her bartending stories through lips blue with cold. The thought of huddling in the chill with my closest friends, perched on a Tupperware dish of tuna salad next to the sriracha, having a good laugh and then nodding off into a hypothermic sleep? Well. Things were pretty dull on this side of the refrigerator door. Plus I had a work presentation tomorrow that I was dreading. Some might prefer a life of crickets and grubs to a life in cold storage, but I could see now that I wasn't one of them. I set down my piece of bark.

by Robin Wyatt Dunn, with Craiyon                           

Minette Cummings lives in upstate New York where she spends her days as a librarian surrounded by stories and her nights writing her own.