A mysterious box in the fridge contained a stinkier mess than leftovers

I grew up in a “fixer upper” house. It was built in the 80s and hadn’t ever been lived in before we moved in. My parents bought it to flip but ended up keeping it and living there to save money. It was basically a small ranch with a garage and a big backyard. My parents threw some paint on the walls and replaced the God awful shag carpet, but most of the time I just grew up being told to “get used to it.” One of the weird things about the house was the fridge. Not that there was anything wrong with it, it worked fine and stayed cold, but it was “fitted” into a section of cabinetry in the kitchen, where it was basically built into the cabinetry. The cabinets on either side were at counter height, like normal, but the fridge had one of those fold down counters on top that my mom used to make sandwiches on and do all sorts of things when I was a kid. When I moved back into the house as an adult, I had no idea the fridge even existed. I couldn’t figure out why my stovetop was so small and why it was tucked all the way into the corner. I grew up with the idea that normal fridges were built into a long section of cabinetry and had all sorts of gadgets built into it like ice makers and wine coolers. Anyway, after I moved in, my dad called me and asked if I had checked the fridge. I asked him which one and he told me the one in the kitchen. I tried the drawers under the counters, thinking that maybe the cabinetmaker had wanted to be fancy, but they were all empty. I called my dad back and told him which drawers I had checked and he told me to “pull them all the way out.” I tried the drawers on either side of the stove, thinking that maybe I hadn’t tried the right ones before. When I tugged on the drawers I realized there was a series of cabinets behind them that I hadn’t noticed. One of the cabinets was the fridge and another one was a little “dishwasher”. You could fit like two plates and a fork in it so it was pretty ridiculous. I had to duck down to see inside it because it was at a weird height and smaller than my college mini-fridge. After I found the fridge I started looking through it. It was mostly empty except for leftovers and condiments. A lot of the leftovers were from the week before when we had cleaned the house and were moving stuff around. There was some Chinese takeout, Indian takeout, and left over pizza. I didn’t know if my dad had put it in the fridge and forgot about it, or if he had meant for me to have it but there were no date labels so I just tossed all of it in the trash. I tried to wipe down the fridge but it was an old fridge so I couldn’t get all of the stains out. There were a lot of drips on the shelves and “mystery smells”. The fridge was built solidly enough that it didn’t have any missing parts or broken drawers. It just kind of reeked of old food. I tried several times to get all of the stains out but nothing seemed to work. The mint and lemon smelling cleaning products just masked the smells. I got really frustrated because it was the first night in my new home and I didn’t feel like scrubbing a fridge when I had moving and unpacking to do. Out of frustration, I opened the mint and lemon cleaning products and put them on the bottom shelf to let the fumes sit and “soak off the smells”. Then, I put the shelves back into the fridge and closed it up for the night. I figured I’d get back to it in the morning. I went to bed without even doing the dishes, exhausted by how much work the house needed. When I got up in the morning, I went into the kitchen to make some coffee. The mints and lemons I had left on the bottom shelf were on the floor. They were just sitting upright next to each other on the floor, looking sinister. I opened the fridge and checked the bottom shelf and all of the mints and lemons were gone. Everything else was in place. It just really struck me as odd that someone had specifically chosen to remove just the lemons and mints, especially since mint and lemon are complementary spices. Out of curiosity, I opened all of the cabinets in the kitchen, looking for anything else that seemed missing. I had always been the type of person to question things, but this was the first time I had ever really had a reason to question anything. One of the cabinets had a very faint “minty” smell and I know that I had put the lemons and mints on the bottom shelf. There wasn’t anything in the cabinet that would have given off that smell. It was just empty shelves. I ended up closing the cabinet and going about my day but when I opened the mint cabinet (I started calling it that) I couldn’t help but notice that the minty smell was strong and it seemed to be getting stronger. I started checking the lemons and mints that I had cleaned with the day before and one by one they started to go missing. I would move them to a new cabinet and end up finding them in the mint cabinet. I had to keep moving them because I couldn’t stand the smell. When I left the house, I would take the mints and lemons with me. I tried to “catch” whoever was moving them but never did. I started to get a little paranoid and worried that there was someone in the house with me who was moving mint and lemons around, but I knew that it couldn’t be true. I had been all over the house, I had checked all the rooms, and I couldn’t find any sign of another person. I thought about calling the police but I didn’t know what to tell them, beyond “there is mint in my cabinets.” At the very least I would have ended up with a weird police report that the mint was missing and at the very worst, someone would have shown up at my house with a straitjacket and a bunch of cops to lock me up in a padded cell. I wasn’t about to give up on my new home. I decided to just leave the mints and lemons alone. I figured it was a pointless battle to keep moving them around. So, I let them sit in the mint cabinet and went on with my day. I had to go to work, but it was hard to focus. It’s hard to focus on “data entry” when you’re wondering why someone is putting mint and lemons in all of your cabinets. I found myself “checking in” obsessively at home. God forbid I had to do actual work, but if it was work related, I was the most on the ball employee in the world. When I got home from work the next day, all of my food was gone. I tried calling animal control, just on the off chance that some raccoon had come into my house and gotten into my fridge, but they basically laughed at me and said that wasn’t their problem. Out of curiosity, I opened the mint cabinet and it was filled with food. All of my leftovers and condiments and the mint and lemons were there. There wasn’t a lot of food, but it was a lot considering I had only lived in the house for a few days and hadn’t done any major grocery shopping yet, and all of it was in the mint cabinet. I tried to figure out who was putting all of my food in the mint cabinet but it was a full time job. No one was ever in the kitchen. At least, no one was ever in the kitchen when I was. I had a very confusing phone call with my dad to see if he knew anything about the food, but after I told him that all of my food was missing but had suddenly shown up in the mint cabinet he kind of laughed at me and said it sounded like I had a mouse or something. I tried setting traps but nothing ever came of it. The traps never even moved. It was kind of like living with a magical roommate or invisible person. I had put out a few boxes of cereal on the counter because I didn’t feel like unpacking them yet and every time I woke up in the morning, one of them was a little bit emptier than it had been the morning before. I’d eat cereal for breakfast and another box would be a little emptier. I never heard any noise but it was always the plain corn flake cereal that had been eaten. I tried setting traps and buying different cereals. The traps never worked and no matter what cereal I put out, it was always the plain cornflakes that had been eaten. I ended up moving the cornflakes into my room, thinking that this new invisible person was only active in the kitchen. That solved the problem temporarily. But then, I started getting really sick. I would wake up with headaches and my mouth would be dry. I tried drinking more water and avoiding “heavy foods” before bed but nothing seemed to work. It wasn’t until I woke up covered in sweat with a pounding headache that I realized the cornflakes had been open on my bedside table. I had eaten the cornflakes before bed but I didn’t remember eating them. I started wondering if I had some sort of sleep eating disorder. My dad said he had never heard of that and neither had I, but I decided to move all the food into my room and set up a camera. I already had a few cameras from my old apartment, so I moved them and set them up. I tried

A mysterious box in the fridge contained a stinkier mess than leftovers

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