There’s Something Growing in the Deepest Freezer, What do I do?

I’m going to assume for a second that you’ve used a soda machine before, because everyone has, at some point in their lives, gotten fast food. It’s a 30 second process wherein you fill your paper cup with ice, then a drink of your choice, then you snap on a plastic top, slotting a straw into the center opening. It’s something you would never think twice about, unless you do it for a living, which I do.

I mean, my job is really a cashier for a drive through, but since we’re so busy we end up divvying different pieces of the cashier job to multiple people. Stacy took orders, Esther worked the window, and I made the drinks. When things got slow or we had an extra person we would shift Esther to the back window, and she would take orders and cash people out.

You might think this is a miserable job, and for the most part it is. 8 hours of standing, fingers pruned and sticky from the constant exposure to soda. It was monotonous, a job that really makes you feel like you’re just one piece of the conveyor belt that ensures David in accounting gets his heart-stopping grease-soaked burger and a large Cola. So, I ended up smoking a lot of weed.

It’s a bad habit formed out of necessity really. Everyone in a minimum wage job has to pick their vice, whether it be weed, nicotine, gossip, caffeine or online shopping, you need something to get you through those hours, something that keeps you sane. Well, I read somewhere that weed usage actually increases your risk of psychosis, so really it does the exact opposite of keeping you sane. Nonetheless, it made shifts manageable, despite the soda machine gunk.  

Every day at work, I would clean the soda machine. Wiping out the overflow tray, cleaning the nozzles, and everyday I see this brown gunk come off the machine. I know it can’t be getting that dirty every day. I mean this stuff is thick, and it clumps onto every surface of the machine. I’ve tried everything to get rid of it too, soaking the nozzles in disinfectant, bleach solutions, I mean everything. It had to be coming from somewhere else, some source for this primordial soda eating snot.   

I mean, I really have no clue what this stuff could even be.  Sometimes when I’m really high I’ll watch these time lapses of food rotting. I guess it just scratches that stoner itch, but this gunk from the machine reminds me of what’s left after everything has rotted. That kind of blackish-brown mush that remains after the maggots have digested anything good, stuff that even mold won’t touch. It gives me the heebie-jeebies when I clean the machine every morning. What’s too vile for even decomposers?

On the brighter side, Esther went MIA 2 weeks ago which means upper management has decided to promote me to shift manager, meaning I now have the honor of doing inventory checks on top of soda duty. It’s fine, I mean the basement gives me the creeps. I think somebody must have been eating their lunch down there, maybe Esther before she left. There's a bunch of old wrappers and empty shake cups that I need to clean up eventually, but what really has been getting to me is the deepest freezer.

Most fast-food places have 2 walk-in fridges, a refrigerator kind and beyond that a deep freezer. I had never been in either. I don’t work the line so I’ve never had to restock any of the cold products, but now, daily, I have to walk through both freezers and take inventory, count up the number of bags of tomatoes, fries, burgers, cookie dough. It would be fine, really damn cold, but fine, except I found another freezer beyond the deep one.

There’s no good reason why there might be an extra freezer, I mean, what would they even need it for? I spoke with management when I saw it and they were cagey about the whole thing, something about the buildings previous owners keeping something back there. That would be fine if that were it, but there’s stuff coming out from underneath the door and it’s the same stuff coming out from the soda machine. Management said it was just dirt tracked in, but I know that gunk personally; I’m sure that it’s the exact same stuff.

I know I shouldn’t have gone in. I should have just told management and left it at that, but I needed to know what was in there. I had been waging a single man war against the stuff for over 6 months now and I needed some sort of answer. I had imagined rotting produce, maybe even a dead animal even. I figured I’d just pop open the door and look around, maybe clean up the mess and finally be rid of the nuisance.

 It took a lot of effort to open the door to the deepest freezer. I don’t think it had been opened in decades. It looked old, definitely from before our building renovations. The door was rimmed with rust and reminded me more of a bank vault than a freezer door. Finally, I worked it open, a burst of frozen air spilled forth blocking my view and leaving me shivering as I entered the deepest freezer.

I removed my arm from over my face, previously blocking my sight and protecting my eyes from the bitterly icy air, finally revealing the frozen, slimy surface of every wall, floor and ceiling. Stalactites and stalagmites fell and arose made from curds of brown goo. I wanted to be sick just at the sight of the room, bile rising from the pit of my stomach. It only grew worse as the room warmed from the open door. The smell overtook me, horrid faint putrescence, it was like spoiled vinegar, like a stagnant pond, like burnt rubber. The smell was so foul I almost missed her, in the far wall, almost imbedded into its icy surface. A girl.

She was young, maybe 6, pigtails tied in 2 dull red ribbons, clothed in a tartan dress stiff with ice crystals. From the girl’s nose ran 2 streams of the brown ooze tailing back into the wall like a nose cannula from a hospital patient. From her eyes trailed tears of mucus, warmed into a soft paste from the heat of her cheeks, her ears draining chunks of the stuff. Her eyes slowly peeled open, cracking away flecks of frostbitten skin, revealing molded over irises, softly grey and fuzzy. She pulled herself away from the wall, peeling herself off, leaving strands of now partially melted goo knitted between the 2 surfaces.

I wanted to run, but in my initial distraction I had let the freezer door close behind me. My back pressed up against the door I could feel the slime covered wall defrost against my body heat, leaving strands now glued to my clothes. I dared not take my eyes off the girl as she moved closer, bringing her hands up, reaching for my face, stopping only to wipe her continuously running nose onto her sleeve.

The door wouldn’t budge behind me, now thoroughly glued shut by the warmed slime oozing between the hinges. I could only close my eyes as the girl’s hands touched my face, smearing luke-warm slime, covering me in a filmy residue. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of the gunk being worked over my face, the door fell away behind me, leaving me sprawled on my back. Almost instinctually, I reached up and closed the deepest freezer behind me, my eyes still blind from the slime.

I ran to the bathroom, my hands covering my face to conceal my ill-gotten gains.  I whipped and scrubbed my face with what must have been hundreds of handfuls of soap and paper towels, still too afraid to open my eyes, terrified I might open them and see fuzzy corneas staring back at me. Finally, I slowly opened them, gazing at my face in the reflection. I was fine. I mean, my face was dotted with broken blood vessels from the scrubbing, my eyes were a similar red from the crying, but I seemed fine. I gagged, relief and vomit both pouring forth from me. Finally relaxing, I curled up into a ball on the cold tiles of the bathroom, a halo of soapy grime coated paper towels surrounding me.

After an hour, Management asked me if I wanted to go home. I told them I wasn’t feeling well and that I probably should. They told me Corporate would be coming that night to do an inspection, that the freezer dirt would be cleaned by tomorrow morning and I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. God, that was a relief.

I made my way home and ended up falling asleep with the shower still on. I was desperate to feel clean. Within the shower, I dreamt that I was burnt alive, caught in a raging inferno, a cyclone of fire, suffocating me, dissolving me in a purifying flame. It was probably just my brain’s response to dreaming while still under the boiling hot spew of the shower head. But somewhere inside me I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew what I would see before I even opened the deepest freezer today, ashes.

Whatever was in that freezer is gone now, or at least gone for a while.

I don’t feel well, it must be the weed or falling asleep in the shower or the residual trauma of yesterday, but I couldn’t bring myself to clean the soda machine. When I saw that gunk again it was like something inside of me resonated with it, like I was a tuning fork, humming at the same frequency as whatever that stuff is. I just keep thinking back to that girl, producing that gunk like a spider produces webbing. Corporate must have removed her scorched bones from the deepest freezer, either that or she didn’t have any after what the goo turned her into.

Isn’t there some reason why you don’t sleep in running water, pneumonia or something? It must have given me at least a head cold; my nose won’t stop running and my ears hurt like hell. I asked Management for tomorrow off; they said I could, I just needed to clean out the deepest freezer after I finish my shift. They said there was some sort of cross contamination concern they needed my help with.

 I’m writing this on my phone during my shift, I’ll update you guys once I feel better or at least when I get home.