RAW EGGS

By Sarah Blackshaw

This tale is inspired by a mention of the creature in the short story Uncle Dobbin’s Parrot Fair, by Charles de Lint. I hope that I have managed to do it justice.

THERE WAS SOMETHING in the fridge.

Michael was unsurprised to find that his son Jason had noticed it first, both due to children often being the first to find these things and because Jason was rarely out of the fridge these days, his latest growth spurt leading to a ravenous appetite. At twelve years old Jason was curious enough to stare at it for a long time, noting the way it moved, the way it spoke, the way the tongue slithered round the inside of the fridge, questing for something it couldn’t quite find—but not curious enough to touch it. He wandered into the living room to find someone braver.

‘There’s something in the fridge,’ he said nonchalantly, disguising his trembling hands by lacing his fingers behind his back. Michael, a rational man of science, listened to the description of the creature before following his son back into the kitchen, chuckling to himself at the vivid imaginations of children. His laughter faded into silence as he viewed the creature before him.

It looked like some kind of large snake, an anaconda perhaps, with yellow, slimy skin that slicked the sides of the fridge with a creamy liquid. Its eyes were covered with the same filmy substance, but Michael knew instinctively that it could see him, and as he watched, it opened its mouth and hissed:

‘Raw eggssss…’

No teeth. No tongue, at least not by conventional standards. Just a long, thin, wicked looking needle of some kind, bright red and glowing hotly next to the creature’s pale skin. Michael could only stare in horror as, once again, it hissed its command:

‘Raw eggssss…’

‘How the hell did that get in there?’ Julia, Michael’s wife, entered the kitchen and stopped dead in her tracks.

‘Never mind that. What the hell do we do with it?’

‘RSPCA? Snakes are illegal—ones that size, I mean.’

‘It’s not a snake,’ Jason said quietly. ‘Snakes don’t talk.

‘Raw eggssss…’

The sound made them all jump. The fridge was still open; the creature looked at them expectantly.

‘Well, we can’t just leave it there! It’s hardly hygienic.’ Julia looked as though she was going to faint. Michael wrapped his arms around her.

‘All it wants is eggs,’ Jason said. ‘We can’t let it starve.’

‘Raw eggssss…’ the thing in the fridge hissed, bobbing its head. If Michael hadn’t known better, he would have said it looked as though the creature was agreeing with his son. He looked into its sickly yellow eyes, half fascinated and half unnerved by the way it seemed to be watching him through the film of fluid. If it had pupils behind the liquid, Michael wasn’t going to get close enough to see them. He sighed softly, and held his wife tighter. His chest felt tight, and his head was swimming.

‘I suppose it only wants eggs, like Jase said. If we call anyone, they’ll think it’s ours. We’ll probably end up in prison or something.’

‘So what do you want us to do with it?’ Julia asked incredulously. Michael closed his eyes, one hand to his head, massaging his temples.

‘Jase, go down to the shops, will you?’

He was having the dream again.

It started innocently enough—a walk in the park in autumn, or a picnic on the hill where he grew up. The colours rich, the textures vivid, it felt as though he was really there. Then, the tiny black spot lurking in the corner of his vision, that grew slowly with the panic rising in his chest. Colours fall into the darkness, and there is no sound for a good long while either, adding to the feeling of abandonment. Slowly, slowly, he can see less of the world around him, until all that is left is a dark, painful void where no light can ever shine. He hears Julia’s voice through the darkness, concerned, telling him to come to her, to follow her voice, but he can’t see and he can’t think straight. All that’s left is the blackness, and the sudden certainty that he will never see his wife or son again, will never see a sunset or a painting or something as bland as a pigeon rooting through yesterday’s food wrappers in the street. And then, just when he thinks he can’t take any more, when the blackness seems complete and the terror reaches its peak…

Michael awoke, bathed in sweat, a scream dying on his lips. Julia barely moved in her sleep, used to her husband’s irrational dreams. But Michael lay awake for a long time, eyes open, tracing the lines of moonlight over the ceiling to remind himself that he was not blind, that he could still see colour and appreciate something as small as cracks of light on the ceiling in the middle of the night.

And downstairs, in the fridge, something slept soundly, its belly full of raw eggs.

And so they continued for months, carrying on their lives with the thing in the fridge hissing its demand every other day. One of them would always hear it, walking through the kitchen:

‘Raw eggssss…’

They started an ‘egg fund’ in the kitchen, two or three pounds a week into the jar, to pay for the creature’s ‘habit’. Julia still wasn’t happy—just think what the neighbours would say if they knew—but she relented when Michael explained the penalty for keeping exotic creatures to her. They’d had it for too long, and it was theirs now.

It still only wanted eggs, but nobody really wanted to stay around to find out what it did with them. Whenever it was presented with a fresh box, it bobbed its head excitedly, before whipping its long tail around the box and gently closing the fridge door. Evidently the creature valued its privacy, and so the family left the eggs to their fate and continued to attend work, school, football practice, music lessons, Spanish classes, and anything else they could think of to get them out of the house and away from the thing in the fridge with the filmy, all-seeing eyes, the soft sucking sounds that came from the kitchen every so often, and the voice made of shrivelled leaves.

The dream again, more vivid than ever, making him scream in terror and wake sweating in the night. Michael didn’t know why he was scared of blindness—after all, millions of people across the world coped perfectly well with it—but the creeping, tingling sensation he felt when describing his fear to others quickly gave way to nausea deep in the pit of his stomach until he had to excuse himself to throw up.

Julia had never questioned the dreams, even now, when they were much more frequent than when they were first married. And the fear had never interfered with his capacity to function, whether in his job as a driver for the disabled or when caring for his elderly, partially sighted father. It seemed that Michael had no problems when interacting with the blind, but the thought of his own blindness was enough to make him break out into a cold sweat.

But there was something else tonight, he thought as he settled back down in bed. Something strange, that shouldn’t have been part of the dream at all. He couldn’t quite remember it, and it only became more elusive as he focused his attention on it, slipping away back into the land of sleep until he had to abandon the thought entirely.

And downstairs, the creature in the fridge smiled in its sleep.

‘Raw eggssss…’

Michael sighed. It was six months since the creature had appeared in their fridge, and its demands were becoming increasingly frequent. As if he didn’t have enough to do, with picking Julia up from her cookery class and dropping Jason off at the opticians—typical, he needed glasses, which would eat into their limited budget even more. It just seemed as though there weren’t enough hours in—

‘Raw eggssss…’

Michael jumped, his thoughts interrupted by the hissing noise coming from the fridge. Irritated, he wrenched open the door and stared at the creature inside. It was definitely getting bigger, taking up more space than it had done before, and it looked at him expectantly through its rheumy eyes.

‘Raw eggssss…’

A conversation with Julia the previous evening ran through his head. He knew she was right, they were spending far too much money on things they didn’t really need: new clothes, a new car, even food they weren’t using. Milk, bread… eggs…

‘Raw eggssss…’ the creature hissed, as though it could sense the thought. Michael glared at it. He hadn’t had any eggs to himself for months; if he put any in the fridge, the creature simply did whatever it did with them.

‘Raw eggssss…’

‘Not this time, buddy,’ Michael snapped defiantly. He grabbed his car keys and headed out of the house, putting the creature’s hissing demands out of his mind whilst he drove to meet his wife. ‘You’ve had the last eggs you’re ever going to have out of me.’

Darkness, never-ending darkness. The dream was more frequent, but again, there was something else, something that shouldn’t have been there at all. Through his panic, Michael tried to focus on the new intrusion.

It was a soft sound, growing louder the more he listened. It sounded like… like…

The sound came through, louder now, filling his head, a slow, slimy, sucking sound, pulling at the edges of what was left of his vision, swallowing the world completely and totally, as though something had pierced through his brain and was sucking out all the colour. Sucking, and sucking…

Michael woke up screaming, clawing at his eyes.

And downstairs, the hungry creature in the fridge waited.

‘When was the last time you fed it?’ Julia asked. Michael looked at her with tired eyes.

‘It’s not getting any more eggs from me,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s a waste of money.’

‘But what if it…’ Jason trailed off. They were sat in the kitchen eating breakfast—bacon, sausages, no eggs. Michael turned on his son.

‘What if it what? It hasn’t moved for over six months, it hasn’t even made any attempt to get out of the fridge, it just sits there and demands eggs. What’s it going to do if I don’t feed it? With any luck, it’ll move on to someone else’s fridge, and stop pestering us.’

‘Raw eggssss…’

Julia and Jason jumped up at the sound from the fridge, but Michael barely blinked.

‘Go to hell,’ he said softly, taking his breakfast into the living room and leaving his wife and son to stare at each other in disbelief.

The creature in the fridge hissed again:

‘Raw eggssss…’

Jason thought he heard a sound like something’s stomach rumbling. ‘We should feed it,’ he said to his mother. Julia shook her head.

‘We can’t go against your father’s wishes,’ she whispered.

‘But it might die!’

‘Maybe your father’s right. Maybe it will just go away.’

‘You don’t believe that, mum.’

Julia sighed. ‘No, honey, I don’t. But your father does, and for his sake we have to leave it alone.’

‘Raw eggssss…’

‘Not today,’ Julia said softly, standing to make a start on the washing up.

‘Raw eggssss…’

Jason looked at the fridge, then at his mother. He closed his eyes.

‘Raw eggssss…’

‘No,’ he said simply, going to his room and closing the door.

The creature in the fridge hissed, but nobody listened.

The sucking sound was back. Michael could hear it through his dream, only this time he wasn’t dreaming of darkness. He listened, entranced, as the sound became louder and louder, as though whatever it was that was making it was right next to him.

He rolled over in his sleep and continued to dream, but there was something that wasn’t quite right yet again. The sucking sound stopped, but he could hear something else, something that sounded like…

Julia. Sobbing.

A searing pain ripped through his left eye before he could open it, followed by that sound again, that horrible sucking sound. Michael woke with a start, but he couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t see what was causing him pain or making that sound. All he could feel was the pain in his eye, all that filled his ears was the sucking noises, and when the pain moved to his right eye he felt something slimy and slick slither across his face. He thought he could hear himself screaming, could still hear Julia sobbing, but the sounds were lost underneath the wet, sucking sound. And then, through the darkness, that terrible, hissing noise, so close now:

‘Raw eggssss…’

‘Jason!’ Michael screamed, stumbling through the darkness towards his son’s room. ‘Jason, where are you?’

‘Dad! What’s going on? I can’t see anything!’ Jason sounded terrified, although Michael could hardly hear him over the sound of his own beating heart. The hurried conversation he’d had with Julia less than a minute ago was still echoing through his head.

‘I… I should have… said… something,’ Julia sobbed. Michael reached out and grabbed her, clumsily, shaking what he thought was her shoulder. ‘Said what?’

‘I knew… I knew what it did… with the eggs. I found the shells.’ Julia broke off, crying again. ‘Oh God, Mike, I knew…’

‘Julia. What did it do?’

‘I should have said…’

‘What. Did. It. Do?’ Michael asked through gritted teeth, shaking her again. To think, he would never see her again, the curve of her cheek, the way her eyes glinted blue in the sunlight. Or were they green? Already he was forgetting… no. Concentrate. ‘Julia, tell me,’ he said softly.

When she answered, Julia’s voice was barely a whisper.

‘It sucked out the insides. It just sucked them clean out.’