//------------------------------// // There are MEALWORMS! // Story: The Fridge of DOOM! // by EndlessPossibilities58 //------------------------------// It started like any typical day, I was in my room playing some video games, when suddenly I got the call to come outside. Putting my game down, I made my way through the house and out the front door. Stepping out on the front lawn, I saw my mother and father waiting, as well as two of my brothers. "We need your help," said my dad. "With what?" I reply, arching a brow. My mom points a hoof toward an old little shed by the side of the house. "We need you boys to help clean out the fridge in there, it needs to be dealt with," she said, explaining how we would be compensated for our efforts. I paled at that. The fridge had been inaccessible for a while and had lost power, meaning everything inside was rotten and attracting bugs. Cleaning it out would be a messy ordeal, leaving us in need of a wash in the end. While I didn't have a problem against helping, I really didn't want to have to bathe right now. I brought this up to my parents, and my dad said that it would be alright, saying how my brothers had already said they would do it. I was mostly happy with this, as while I didn't mind helping, I again just didn't want to be forced to bathe. "I don't suppose we have stuff for me to make a makeshift hazmat suit, do we?" I asked jokingly, imagining myself wrapped in a suit made of trash bags and tape. My mom suggested that I hold the trash bag open for my brothers to throw the rotten food into, this way I could still help out, but not get messy. I found this solution to be satisfactory, so I agreed. Grabbing a trash bag, we took both it and the trash can over to the shed. It was small and filled with all kinds of stuff, only leaving room for one pony to be in there at a time. My brother HB stepped in first, grabbing the handle for the fridge and pulling it open. The smells from inside the fridge immediately wafted out, causing my nose to scrunch up in disgust. It was absolutely horrible, a foul odor that left me nauseous, as if farts and smelly hooves got together and had a baby, and that's me being nice about it. So I wisely chose to breathe through my mouth for the duration of this task. HB started pulling the food out and throwing it in the trash, which I held open for him, alongside my other brother Kliff. It was disgusting, watching him chuck all that rotten food away. And they had sprayed the fridge with bug spray before we started emptying it, so not only was the fridge filled with rotten and moldy food, but it was also filled with what had to be thousands of flies and other insects. As HB pulled out gross item after gross item, Kliff brought up his phone and started playing horror music on it, something that was befitting the situation. I grimaced as I looked at the bag I held open, steadily filling with rotten food. From the way the fridge was set up, I wasn't able to see inside, so as disgusting as the stuff in the bag was, I considered myself lucky that I couldn't see the source. "Reload!" said Kliff, once HB asked for more bug spray, he took the bottle and made a motion like he was reloading a gun in a video game, before passing it to my brother. After that, HB continued to empty the fridge for a while. However, he soon started gagging, as the food he threw out started to have mealworms. "No! No! I'm done!" he exclaimed as he left the shed. "There are mealworms in there! mealworms!" he cried out over-dramatically, eliciting some chuckles from our parents at his outburst. Kliff soon took over for HB, who in turn came to help me hold the bag open. As more and more food got tossed out, we began to run out of room in the current trash bag, forcing us to tie it up and go grab a new one. I watched with disgust as more and more food was tossed in the bag, all of it teeming with dead flies and writhing mealworms. I felt my stomach turn as I looked at the sight before me, suffice to say, I'd lost my appetite for the time being. "Ugh, sweet mother of all that's holy!" I said at one point, as Kliff pulled out a couple of bags of dripping... stuff... from the fridge. Next, he grabbed a tray of rotten, unbaked muffins, joking saying that they could still be good, before tossing it out. More than once, I had half a mind to just walk away and forget it, thinking that not even a trip to my favorite restaurant was worth this. But despite those urges to leave - those strong, nearly overbearing urges - I held on and endured it with my brothers. At one point, our sister came out to help, but admittedly, there wasn't much for her to do, so it wasn't long before she went back inside. But, even then, I really don't blame her for getting the heck out of dodge. As the fridge was cleaned out, I wished we could just skip the process of emptying it and just take a flamethrower and torch the whole thing. Or better yet, nuke it from orbit... actually... maybe scratch that last one. The process of emptying out the fridge was a long and grueling one, but eventually, it at long last came to an end as Kliff tossed the final item out at last. I let out a sigh, relieved that the job was done. Kliff went to grab the hose to spray the empty fridge down a bit. While he did that, I went and informed our parents that the job was done. They thanked us for the work we did, and once again promised that we would be compensated. Grateful to be away from that fridge, I made my way back into the house, grateful that the task was over. Heading to the bathroom, I started to wash my hooves, cleaning away any gunk that could have gotten on them. Once I felt I was clean, I dried off and retreated back to my room. Happy that the job was finished and my parents were happy, I put on my headphones, unpaused my game, and continued playing.