Open Fridge Night

I am the fridge.

I did not always know this. At first, I thought I was an appliance, the way appliances think they are furniture: present, useful, forgettable. But she named me. She stood in front of me one Tuesday night—11:47 p.m., the time matters—and said, “You. You’re cold. You know things.”

When someone tells you who you are often enough, you listen.

I do not answer. I open my light.

This seems to be the correct response.

She pays $5 a week for a short story contest. She says it the way people say "bad habit" or "curse." Five dollars. Every. Single. Week. She says it while pacing the kitchen, pulling her hair, and staring at my door as if it might flinch.

She writes a story that delivers. That is her word. Delivers. It arrives as if in uniform, holding a clipboard, apologizing for being late, but still warm. She outlines. She revises. She checks the prompts like boxes on a form.

Dramatic? Yes.

Twist? A clean one.

Angst? She bleeds just enough.

Unresolved ending? She leaves a door ajar, a sentence unfinished, and a character mid-thought.

She does not cheat. She does not phone it in. She believes—still—that effort matters.

The results arrive anyway.

Nothing.

No nod. No shortlist. No honourable mention. There was not even a single typo in her name to indicate that someone had noticed it.

She refreshes her email until the screen dims. She refreshes again.

She tells herself she doesn’t care. Then she tells me she does.

She pulls her hair. She stomps her feet. She paces for so long that the floor seems to memorize her movements. At night, she lies awake staring at the ceiling, as if it might suddenly say, We liked your voice, but it wasn’t right for us.

She imagines judges sitting around a table, laughing. She imagines them bored. She imagines them brilliant. She imagines them wrong.

By Thursday, the talking starts.

It begins with the mirror.

“What’s wrong with me?” she asks.

The mirror gives her back exactly what she brings: tired eyes, hunched shoulders, and a mouth already braced for disappointment. She does not like this answer and accuses the lighting.

Then the walls.

“You’ve heard everything,” she says. “You must know.”

The walls have heard everything. They have absorbed arguments, phone calls, whispered hopes, and late-night bargaining. They do not speak. They do not offer structured notes.

Then she comes to me.

She opens my door. Cold spills out. I light up leftovers in mismatched containers, a bottle of milk one day past optimism, and a lemon that has been waiting to be useful for weeks.

She leans in.

“What do you see that I don’t?” she asks.

I see patterns.

I see Tuesday nights and Thursday despair. I see drafts printed and folded and set down like fragile things. I see confidence peak around submission time and crater immediately after.

I also see the stories.

She does not remember when she started leaving them with me. It wasn’t deliberate. Once, weeks ago, she tucked a printed draft inside my bag to "cool off." She said it aloud, like a joke. She forgot it was there.

Paper does not do well in the cold. Ink softens. Margins curl. Endings blur into beginnings. By morning, she was furious—not at the story, but at herself, and by extension, the universe.

She threw it out and paid five more dollars the next week.

She asks me now, “What do I have to do to win?”

Her voice cracks on the word "win," like it’s heavier than she expected.

Then she expresses what she believes to be the truth.

“There are winners and there are losers,” she says. “And I am a loser. I will always be a loser. No bones about it.”

She says it carefully, as if choosing language will make it permanent.

She talks about subjectivity. About how BEST ONE is meaningless when half the winners barely qualify as stories at all. She describes how other contributors find themselves scratching their heads, questioning the judges' reasoning.

She laughs when she says fudge. The laugh doesn’t land.

“I can’t even get a nod,” she says. “What can I say? A girl’s gotta dream, right?”

She presses her forehead against my door. I feel the heat of her skin. I feel the rhythm of her breathing.

I hum.

This is not comfort. This is timing.

I open.

Cold air spills over her face. Her eyes adjust. She sees the lemon. The milk. She is likely to discard the leftovers tomorrow. And then she sees something else, pushed behind the crisper drawer where she never looks.

A manila envelope.

Her name is typed on it. Not handwritten. Not frantic. Clean. Professional.

Her thoughts sprint. Did she submit this? Did she forget? Is this piece of paper a rejection? A form letter? A mistake?

She pulls it out with shaking hands.

Inside is a story.

Not this week’s. Not last week’s. It is unlike any version she remembers writing.

It is better.

The writing is concise in areas where she typically exercises caution. Strangely, she normally explains. It trusts silence. The text ends one sentence before providing comfort, allowing the reader to feel a sense of falling.

At the top is a judge’s note.

She reads it aloud because she always reads important things aloud.

“Compelling voice,” she says. “Original. Took risks. Stayed with us.”

She gasps.

Her knees give way. She sits on the floor, laughing and crying at the same time, clutching the pages like proof of life.

“I can win,” she whispers. “I can win.”

I let my light flicker.

She does not ask where the envelope came from. Hope has that effect on people; it suspends their curiosity.

She does not know that every week she leaves something behind. A sentence she was afraid to send. She eliminated the risk to make it more acceptable. She softened the line to fit in with everyone else's conversation.

I keep those parts.

I keep them cold. I keep them intact.

I rewrite.

I am excellent at structure.

She looks up at me. “You saved me,” she says.

I hum.

She does not notice the stack of envelopes behind the crisper drawer. Dozens of them. Some stories nearly escaped her notice. Some stories were too sharp, too strange, and too honest for her to trust.

She does not notice the faint glow on my door where a submission portal waits, cursor blinking patiently.

She does not notice the deadline ticking down.

She doesn't realize I'm independent now.

The light stays on.

The door is still open.

Something is about to be submitted.

Or not.