Brian's brain starts making connections: caught in a trap... Elvis... I can't get out... he remembers a story he read in the newspaper he found on the bus a couple of days ago.
A kid called Elvis had been playing with some friends on a bit of wasteland. They'd found an old fridge, and someone had dared Elvis to get into the refrigerator.
It will be like a magic trick, one of them said.
Or like the Tardis, another said.
Yes, it might transport you to another planet, another time, another place.
Elvis didn't need much persuasion, apparently, and had jumped into the fridge. The friends had closed the door, but then couldn't get it open.
Poor Elvis was stuck in there.
By the time the boys had summoned help, Elvis had suffocated.
The paper warned others against the dangers of fridges. And about the evils of fly-tipping.
Brian thinks about that story a lot.
He wonders what Elvis had thought about in those final moments. He hoped Elvis' brain had taken him to another planet, another time, another place.
...
Solid freewriting exercise. The refrigerator trap is a unique angle. What happens next?
The way Brian pictures Elvis slipping into a kinder place in those last seconds really got me, like a tiny mercy inside teh noise.
Your weaving of danger with casual everyday stuff makes the street feel haunted, and your right, it’s not the fridge alone, it’s the dare and the delay that hurts.
The hope you leave there feels fragile and true, the kind that keep a person walking home a bit slower.
My brain does those jumpy connections too, like a bad radio at 2 am, and it made me hold my breath without noticing :)