Narrator: Luis M. | Louisiana, USA
The freezer door had an inside release. I checked it every shift after this happened. People who haven’t worked in a kitchen always tell me somebody could have been locked in. I know. That’s why I checked.
I was washing the last pans when three hard knocks came from inside. The rest of the staff had left except my manager, who was doing paperwork in the office. I opened the door immediately.
Nobody. Shelves, boxes, a bag of fries split across the floor. I picked the bag up and heard a knock from behind the back panel. There was concrete on the other side of that wall.
I got my manager. He unplugged the compressor and we listened. For several minutes, nothing. Then someone on the other side pressed something hard against the panel and dragged it down. A slow metal-on-metal squeal.
He told me to go home. He said he’d sort it.
The next afternoon he looked terrible. He didn’t volunteer anything and I didn’t ask. We were behind on prep and I was happy to have a normal problem. Then I went into the freezer for chicken stock.
Every box on one shelf had been turned label-in. There was writing in the frost on their exposed backs. Not proper words. Short upright strokes, grouped together and crossed through. I counted one group before deciding I didn’t want a number attached to whatever this was.
Behind me the release handle clicked down. The door was open. I was holding it with my hip. I watched the handle on the inside move by itself, stay down for a second, and spring back.
I walked out without the stock. My manager asked whether I’d heard the knocking again. I told him about the handle. He sat down on an upturned bucket and put his face in his hands.
I finished the week. Rent was due. That’s the unimpressive truth. We left the freezer door propped open whenever someone went in, and did it in pairs. On my last evening I heard the knocks once more, coming from an empty cardboard box beside the dumpster. I kept walking to my car.
