THE REMNANTS #1: The Offering
A STATION DARK public broadcast
What came before…
Something happened in this town. Nobody agrees exactly what it was. Some blame contaminated groundwater or industrial runoff. Others speak quietly about voices carried through wires or impossible growths beneath houses. Whatever happened, the worst of it eventually ended. Life returned to normal.
Yet something remained behind. Traces. Scars. A refrigerator developing unusual habits. A forgotten object appearing where it should not. A place acquiring a reputation nobody can quite explain. The town absorbs each new oddity and continues on, as it always does. These are those stories.
Explore what came before in STATION DARK here
The Offering
Rick Dawson’s refrigerator died sometime during the night.
He discovered the fact at six-thirty the next morning while standing barefoot in his kitchen preparing for work. The milk was warm. The butter had softened. A package of lunch meat felt suspiciously room temperature. He stared into the appliance for several moments before letting out a sigh and closing the door.
The refrigerator had come with the rental. Judging by its yellowed handles and faded manufacturer sticker, it had probably come with the house too.
“Thought for sure I was going to kick off first,” Rick muttered.
He spent his lunch break calling appliance stores. By evening he was standing inside a liquidation warehouse on the edge of town, staring at rows of used refrigerators beneath buzzing fluorescent lights.
The salesman led him toward a battered white model near the back wall. “This one runs great.”
“It looks terrible.”
“That’s why it’s cheap.”
Rick grunted. The salesman slapped the top of the appliance with an open palm. “Came out of one of those condemned houses over near the low ground.”
That earned a glance. “The mold houses?”
The salesman shrugged. “One of ’em.”
Rick considered asking another question. Instead he looked at the price tag. Three hours later the refrigerator was sitting in his kitchen.
At fifty-three years old, Rick’s life had settled into routines so familiar he could have performed them blindfolded. He worked days at the beet plant. Ate dinner in front of the television. Paid his bills on time. Mowed his patch of grass every Saturday whether it needed mowing or not. The divorce had happened long enough ago that it no longer felt recent. The routines had settled in afterward.
Most evenings he cooked for one. Most evenings he ate alone. The new refrigerator hummed steadily in the corner while he transferred groceries from a cooler and went to bed.
The next morning he found the lump. It sat beside the carton of milk as though it belonged there. At first glance it resembled a scoop of mashed potatoes somebody had forgotten to cover. Gray. Wet. Roughly the size of a softball. For several seconds Rick simply stood there staring into the refrigerator, trying to determine whether the thing had somehow been there the night before.
“What the hell?” he said, poking it with a finger. Soft. Cold. No smell. The texture reminded him of dough that had long since forgotten it was supposed to become bread. Rick grabbed a spatula, scooped the thing into a trash bag, and carried it outside. By lunchtime he had mostly forgotten about it.
The next morning there was another one. This time the lump sat inside a small glass bowl from his kitchen cabinet, now sitting in the middle shelf of the fridge. Rick frowned. He distinctly remembered the bowl being in the cupboard. He stood in front of the refrigerator for nearly a minute before opening the cabinet and confirming the empty space below.
The lump itself looked different. Not mashed potatoes this time. Something closer to scrambled eggs. Not good scrambled eggs, either. Not even competent scrambled eggs. More like somebody had attempted to recreate them after hearing a vague description of what eggs should look like. Rick threw it away.
The following morning brought something that almost resembled a dinner roll. The morning after that, a pale cluster arranged neatly on a plate. Then came a gray cupcake with an unlit birthday candle sticking from the center. Rick stared at the cupcake for a long time. The frosting looked vaguely organic, but the thing had no smell whatsoever. Eventually he carried it outside and dropped it into the trash.
“Knock it off,” he told the refrigerator. The appliance hummed quietly.
Over the next week the offerings continued. Every morning brought another attempt. A slice of pie. A biscuit. A bowl of soup. A sandwich assembled from ingredients that only approximately resembled bread and meat. The presentations became increasingly deliberate. Plates appeared from cabinets. Silverware materialized beside bowls. Napkins appeared folded neatly beneath serving dishes. The refrigerator seemed to be learning. That realization bothered Rick more than he cared to admit.
One Saturday morning he emptied the entire appliance and scrubbed every surface with bleach. He cleaned the drain line. Removed shelves. Checked seals. Pulled the refrigerator away from the wall and inspected the floor behind it. He found nothing. No mold. No hidden compartments. Certainly no explanation.
The next morning he opened the door and nearly dropped his coffee mug. A word had grown along the back wall. Pale filaments stretched across the plastic interior, forming crude block letters. EAT. Rick closed the refrigerator immediately. His pulse hammered in his ears.
For several minutes he stood motionless in the center of the kitchen. Then he unplugged the appliance. The hum died. Silence settled across the room. Satisfied, he went to bed.
The next morning the refrigerator was still cold. The cord remained unplugged, yet condensation coated the shelves, and a bowl of chilled soup sat neatly beside the milk. Rick called in sick for the first time in fourteen years.
The offerings changed after that. They became personal. One morning he found chicken soup that looked remarkably similar to the kind his mother used to make when he was a kid. Another morning brought sugar cookies shaped like stars and Christmas trees. A week later he opened the refrigerator and found a casserole that reminded him uncomfortably of church basement potlucks from decades earlier.
He could feel the thing studying him. Learning. Trying. That thought followed Rick through his days. It lingered at work. At home. At three in the morning when he couldn’t sleep. The refrigerator refused to stop trying.
As the weeks passed, the phenomenon began spreading to the kitchen. Plates appeared on countertops. Napkins folded themselves into neat squares. Serving bowls appeared on tables. One evening Rick returned from work to find the dining table set for a dinner for four.
The following evening it was set for six. Then eight. Every place setting contained food. Every meal sat untouched, waiting. Rick threw everything away. Every single time. The refrigerator responded by trying harder.
One night he woke to the sound of cabinet doors opening. A drawer slid shut and metal clinked softly against ceramic. For several moments he sat upright in bed listening as the noises continued. Purposeful. Someone was cooking.
Rick grabbed a baseball bat from the closet and moved quietly down the hallway. The kitchen lights were on and cold air spilled across the floor. The refrigerator door stood open. Rick stopped in the doorway, his bat nearly slipping from his hands.
Pale growths covered every surface in the room. Something softer than black mold but firmer than slime, the white branching structures spread across cabinets, countertops, and walls. They climbed table legs and stretched across chair backs. In the seats, the growth had shaped itself into forms. Human forms occupied the chairs around the table. A family, or at least the refrigerator’s approximation of one. The same way the food had always been approximations. Figures assembled from fragments of understanding. Each sat before a carefully prepared meal.
The table itself groaned beneath an impossible feast. Roasts and bread. Cakes and pies. Vegetables, too. Entire holiday dinners reconstructed from pale fungal tissue. At the head of the table sat an empty chair. One of the figures turned toward him with a face possessing no eyes or mouth, only clusters of tiny openings that expanded and contracted in unison. As they moved, a chorus emerged from somewhere within the growth, the sound of many voices layered together.
“We made this for you.”
The room fell silent. Another figure nodded. Then another.
“We made this for you.”
Rick stood frozen in the doorway. The room smelled faintly of warm bread and holiday dinners. Church basements. Family reunions. Potlucks. Birthday parties. Every gathering he had ever attended seemed present in that scent. A lonely smell.
The figures waited. The empty chair remained open. For the first time since all of this had begun, Rick felt something other than fear. He felt pity.
Rick lowered the bat. The figures watched. He stepped forward, pulled out the chair, and sat down. A slice of pie rested on the plate before him. The crust looked slightly fibrous. The filling too pale. The smell carried a faint earthy undertone that reminded him of damp soil after rain.
Still, he picked up a fork. The figures leaned forward. Watching. Hoping. Rick took a bite.
The pie tasted like Thanksgiving at his grandmother’s house. It tasted like being ten years old. It tasted like belonging somewhere. For a moment he closed his eyes. For a moment he felt full. When he opened them again, the kitchen was empty and the table stood bare. The refrigerator hummed quietly in the corner. Everything else was gone.
Months later people began noticing the changes. Rick had started attending church potlucks again. Then community fundraisers. Company picnics. Neighborhood cookouts. Retirement parties. Any gathering that involved food eventually seemed to include Rick Dawson carrying a casserole dish through the door. Nobody remembered him cooking before, yet his dishes always disappeared first. People returned for seconds. Then thirds.
One summer afternoon a woman sampled his potato salad and paused thoughtfully. “What do you put in this?”
Rick considered the question. Then he smiled. “Little bit of everything.”
The answer seemed to satisfy her. The food was excellent, after all. And in a town like this, people learned long ago not to ask too many questions when something worked.
*** End Transmission***
Loved it. Wow.
Transformation requires courage and trust. You masterfully guided me along with Rick.