Sometimes my fridge sounds like a blizzard. I can hear it howl at night when the room is dark and the world seems quiet. I've always felt something melancholy about the way it howls. I can't help but let my mind wander about it. I am quite sure it's just a fridge, but perhaps there's a person inside, trapped in a blizzard

You can hear other things too. Every creak and crack. My old house used to be like this. Every scuttle of a mouse above me or the whining of the steps as my brothers sometimes try to sneak past the bear, my father, as he hibernates on the couch. Each step almost too loud. Deafening.

But what I remember most is the very same howl. The one that's inside my fridge. It's almost so loud some nights I thought I might break. But no, rest assured I'm still here. There were other noises. Fights. They happen in the kitchen. These are the times I wish I were deaf. Those would pass, but the howling was enough to break a man's soul.

The howling sometimes stopped, too. Unexpectedly, it would cease. Those nights, when I was left alone in a noiseless abyss no one moved; no one spoke. Even that edge-of-ear static dared not speak.

That room never changed. It was always dark. The room next door was bright, filled with the pale light of a TV playing. But mine was always dark. It wasn't always that way. I used to have a sound system from the seventies. The speakers were massive and the station had to be found by a dial, very precise. You couldn't even get a signal kit of it unless you used a coat hanger. Just me and the howling