Departing

‘Honey, I’m off to work!’ Daniel shouted from the kitchen.

‘Hang on!’ I shouted back and hurried to the kitchen. Our kitchen looked as though it had been taken over by a technical crew; orange boxes and big bags were littering the floor and table. I quickly checked the sink – nothing left there – and the microwave. Unsurprisingly, there was a compass inside. I took it and firmly pressed it into my husband’s hand.

‘Thank you, darling,’ Daniel said, smiling sheepishly.

I merely shook my head with a resigned sigh; I knew my husband well enough.

‘North pole today?’ I guessed on the basis of his warm outfit, huge fur-lined boots, and red face in the cosy warmth of our kitchen. I glanced at the dial on the fridge. Good, he seemed to have set it at the right coordinates.

‘Not just today, hon.’ Daniel checked his phone. ‘I’ll be there till Thursday. You know what it’s like – too risky to let everyone return to their own fridges at night and then find them frozen stiff like an icicle in the morning.’ Daniel grimaced, he had obviously not meant to say that out loud in case I would worry.

‘A bit like that time in Ecuador, huh?’ I teased.

Daniel had gotten lost five years before when stationed in Ecuador for just one day; it had taken the company one week to find Daniel and another week to find his fridge. Daniel had been covered in mosquito bites from head to toe but had been otherwise okay. He had been very lucky that the company had invested in malaria immunity.

‘How dare you!’ Daniel cried in mock indignation. ‘That time was so not my fault – besides, I’ve got a compass now.’ He winked at me and slid the compass into his pocket.

‘Righty-ho, I’ll be off then.’ Daniel planted a kiss on my forehead. ‘Will you be all right all alone?’

‘I’ll manage,’ I shrugged.

‘You can always call,’ Daniel reminded me for the umpteenth time. He heaved a heavy bag from the floor and opened the fridge.

Instead of the mundane groceries one might expect to find in there, an icy blast of wind filled the fridge. I shivered and stepped back. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

‘Refreshing, don’t you think?’ Daniel shouted over his shoulder as he chucked a bag into the fridge. More bags and equipment followed, until the kitchen had emptied.

Daniel bent to peer into the fridge. ‘Ah, I see Frank has arrived already. Hey Frank!’ he shouted and raised a hand in greeting. He turned to me one last time.

‘Sure you’ll be fine?’

‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll go see Rebecca anyway.’

‘Ah good, I’m happy to hear you won’t be sitting around feeling lonely.’ Daniel smiled a warm smile and blew me a kiss. ‘Bye now!’

And with that, he squeezed into the fridge, which fell shut behind him.

I trudged up the stairs and into the bedroom. Kneeling beside the bed, I extracted a weekend bag from underneath it. My phone was still on the bedside table. I took it and dialled the by now familiar number.

‘Hey, it’s me. Ready to leave for Mallorca?’

Downstairs, the fridge was quietly humming away, ready for my departure.

I wrote this after a friend said that his kitchen 'was a wormhole to the North Pole'. 

 

Funeral

The coffin in the open grave lay forgotten.

Mouths had fallen open, eyes were bulging, gasps of indignation whispered among the graves.

The mourners stood in shock as the alien performed its ritual dance, damaging several gravestones in the process. As debris came hurling past her – she could just duck out of the way of a metal cross – Anne wondered what had brought the alien here. They had heard of them, of course. Little else had been on the news these past few weeks. But seeing one for real, well, it was… mind-blowing.

Huge, somehow slug- and dinosaur-like at the same time, with an armoured skin and stupendous power, they had instilled fear from the beginning. Anne puffed out her chest in pride at her family’s reaction. There was no screaming, no crying, no panic. Just silence.

The beast heaved a heavy leg up towards the sky, turning the headstone in its path into a cloud of rubble. Anne had seen one of the aliens perform the same dance on TV, in that case in the middle of a shopping mall. The federal agencies had tried to contain the aliens when they had first arrived, of course, but there was no reinforced concrete or bulletproof glass in the world strong enough to hold them in. The FBI had given up on trying to study them in private. The aliens roamed where they liked, and only if they strayed too close to the human population did the feds intervene. The aliens were tranquilized and released in the Everglades – probably in the hope that they would slowly sink to the bottom of the nature reserve.

Anne noticed a slow, heavy rumble roll down the graveyard. The alien in front of them froze, its paw still in the air, but its head twisted in the direction of the sound.

Slowly, Anne turned sideways.

A shock went down her spine as she spotted a second alien at the edge of the graveyard. The rumble intensified as the newcomer advanced, crushing several graves underfoot. Her mother sucked in her breath abruptly, letting it go again with a muttered ‘Aunt Molly!’.

Anne nervously cast a look at the original alien, but it still stood rooted to the spot. The new arrival quickly closed the distance between them and plonked down unceremoniously behind the mourners.

They held their breaths in unison.

The beast howled and stretched its hind leg. A shiver ran through the alien in front of them, as though it was shaking off its own shock. Then it started moving too.

Anne felt her mother’s grip on her arm tighten like a vice. They were trapped in between the dancing aliens.