Work Text:
Some days, the world treats you gently. Kyle wakes up to the Sun, a familiar cyclical routine that he didn’t even realise he’s missed until he’s back in its orbit. The way his bones feel right in his skin is tell-tale of Earth’s gravity holding down the flesh-and-blood body made for staying on solid ground, and his lungs fill with the natural ratio of oxygen he hasn’t had in a long time. The world wraps around him and he’s never felt more in the present, alive and aware of all the tingly feelings in his fingertips.
Some days, the world treats you kindly and Kyle stretches as he stands, feeling the satisfying pull in his back. It’s a late morning and he yawns, scratching absently under his sleep shirt as he trudges out of the guest room in Guy’s place. Earth will always be home but there’s no longer a place for him to come back to, so Kyle has always crashed at his friends’ places, and right now Guy is off-planet so Kyle has the apartment to himself. He has no immediate duties to attend to—the JL feed has been staying low-priority the past few days—so Kyle already knows he’s going to spend the day eating hippie shit and drawing.
Some days, the world stands by and lets you approach the kitchen. Some days, the world watches impassively as you wrap your fingers around the fridge handle. Some days, the world doesn’t let you open the fridge.
He stands frozen, muscles locked and refusing to budge. Logically he knows where he is—he’s in Guy’s apartment, a nice neighbourhood where he can hear birds in the morning, not the first-storey apartment on that busy bustling street years ago. Logically, he knows that if he opens the fridge, all there will be are the remnants of groceries he bought yesterday when he just arrived back on Earth. Logically, he knows.
But his hands are clammy and he feels all too hot, sweat rolling down his sides like he just ran a marathon. He’s so tense his neck twinges and tries – he swears he tries to relax.
This shouldn’t be so hard. It’s dumb , being afraid of a fridge. You can’t be afraid of it because you need it to eat, you need it to live. You approach the fridge everyday to eat and it’s a human ritual, something that will happen for the rest of your life—you walk up to the fridge, the same way you did every other time (the same you did that day, the very same), and you open the fridge, and you eat. You eat to survive and you survive because you eat—you eat from the fridge.
Are you getting this? You need to open the fridge. That’s how this works. You open the fridge, and you live. You leave it closed, you die. You fade away. You need to eat. Open the fridge.
He can’t. He can’t fucking breathe .
Kyle lets go of the handle as if burned, stumbling away from the fridge and into the counter. His hands reach out blindly to grip the counter’s edge, knuckles whitening from the force of it.
Open the fridge. You know what’s in the fridge, shelves like teeth. This was always going to happen. She’s been dead since the beginning. There’s nothing you can do and leaving the door closed doesn’t mean she’s going to still be here. You already ate her, and you’re going to eat everyone you’ve ever loved. You need to open the fridge. You’ve known how this is going to end since the beginning; the story reads ‘he opens the fridge’ and that’s all you need to do. Open the fridge and eat.
He’s gasping, a desperate attempt for breath, and the fridge sits there, closed. It sits there, but Kyle already knows what’s behind it. He’ll open the door and her folded legs that had been leaning against the fridge door will spill out, and her lifeless eyes will stare up at him accusingly because this was his fault, this was set in stone the moment he picked up the ring. It eats and it eats and it eats and she is just meat in the end, blue and grey. Her lips are pale bloodless and her fingers are near rotted off, held against her chest as her arms are folded into the container, and she’s too small, she’s never too small—she was always the biggest, the brightest, and she filled up every room she walked into, and sometimes Kyle felt drowned in her smile—but here she’s small, fit snugly into this ice box. A ring of bruises mar the usually smooth skin around her throat, stark against the pale decay of her flesh, a brutal reminder of what he could have prevented but did not—what he never could have prevented because he’s already eaten her, already consumed her because you hunger , because this was always going to happen, you just needed to open the fridge.
Kyle retches, whatever small vomit splatters to the kitchen floor. God, he’s sick, he can’t even think about food right now, not with her in there.
Maura Rayner, afflicted with being a mother, spent all her time in the kitchen, loving him and feeding him and giving him this life. Kyle would do his homework on the kitchen counter in the evening while she cooks, pots and pans clacking against each other, the fridge door opening and closing. He and Alex had sat side-by-side at her kitchen counter as well, a mug each for them, the drink permeating warmth through him the way her proximity did. God – God, he hates the kitchen. It’s hearth, it’s family, it’s the Goddamned fridge that ate her.
This is how this works: you open the fridge. They always die at the end, you know this; you just need the proof. You feel like Schrödinger and here in this kitchen she is alive dead, dead alive.
You need to live—open the fridge door. You are nothing without the food inside. They die and you eat and they live on inside you, as you. Eat it. She will always be a part of you.
He can’t. God, don’t make him do this again. He’s on the floor next to his puddle of sick and he needs to clean that up, this is Guy’s kitchen—
It’s Guy’s kitchen.
The fridge is grey, not white. It’s a modern design, sleek but not in the minimalist way. There’s a picture of three Lanterns on it, and Hal has white hair at the temples in the picture. There’s a ridiculous fridge magnet of Putin on a bear, pinning another photo of four Lanterns this time, and Kyle was awkwardly standing at the end of the frame, afraid he’s intruding on something that was older than his legacy, as Guy tried to pull him into the photograph. Hal’s hair is completely brown here.
It’s Guy’s kitchen and Kyle is pathetically lying on the floor after having thrown up because of a fucking fridge. He tries to get up. Fails. The ring on his finger stays dull and he can’t will himself to get up.
The fridge is personalised, a map of someone’s life, a record of something happy. Kyle wonders if Guy has casual dinner with his other friends on the kitchen counter as well. Wonders if he can nonchalantly open the fridge to grab a beer and pass it along. It would swing open so easily and all that’s in it would be foods, physical foods for human beings who need physical foods. Not for something as twisted and ruinous as Kyle.
His breath is loud, obtrusive in the quiet morning in the kitchen. Move, he tells himself. Get up.
He does, eventually.
God, defeated by a fridge, that’s pathetic, Rayner.
Alex was also—
Kyle chokes on a sob. It barely comes out, dry and hollow. His face is dry save for the sweat soaking his temples and rolling down his forehead. It’s strenuous, falling down and getting back up again. He leans forward, nearly not catching himself against the cool surface of the fridge. His hands are trembling on the door handle.
You cannot starve. If you do not open the door, it will open by itself. You’re so hungry and you need to eat food. That’s how it works—you approach the fridge, you open it, you feed. You eat.
Sometimes, the world loves you and it shows that with kindness.
Sometimes, the world loves you and it shows that by feeding you. Sometimes, all it does is eat and eat and eat until there is nothing left.
He opens the fridge.