At three o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by a roar.
It wasn't a dream. The sound was like someone putting a loudspeaker in my ear and shouting: "You bastard, are you stuffing overnight snail noodles into my stomach again?!"
I sat up with a start, my vest instantly soaked with cold sweat. The room was dark, with only the hum of the refrigerator echoing in the living room.
Wait, refrigerator?
I ran out barefoot and turned on the light in the living room. The old-fashioned double-door refrigerator stood there, the white paint was a little yellowed, and the magnets on the door had take-out orders from six months ago. Everything works fine.
He must have worked overtime to hallucinate. I rubbed my temples and planned to pour a glass of water and continue sleeping.
As soon as I opened the refrigerator door, the smell hit me. The sour bamboo shoot flavor of the snail noodles mixed with the greasiness of the overnight vegetables reaches straight to Tianling Gai. I did stuff some snail noodles into it yesterday and forgot to throw it away.
"You still dare to smell it? Smell it for yourself!" The voice sounded again, this time more clearly, with a kind of anger that hates iron. "I worked hard all night in refrigeration just to preserve your damn bowl of snail noodles? You know when I was managing the cold storage, that kind of crap that cost five yuan a bowl couldn't get through my door!"
I stared blankly at the refrigerator.
The sound came from inside, indeed from inside the refrigerator. It wasn't playing on my cell phone, it wasn't my neighbors quarreling, it was just this 20-year-old broken refrigerator that was talking to me.
"You... Are you talking to me?" My voice was trembling.
