Good people? That’s some funny joke. Friends, family—everyone’s been gone for long. All I have left is a half-empty, insentient, floral refrigerator in the kitchen. Tacky, really. Even a vampire would flinch at how dreadfully crimson it is. A gigantic white magnolia is painted across both doors—a tragically large mistake if you ask me. Several smaller magnolias edge the corners of the fridge. They’re no less miserable. I’m no artist, but I think the refrigerator does a fantastic job of spitting in the face of Picasso, Van Gogh, and whoever else matters.
The biggest thing in this house next to the front door and my pride is that hideous fridge. I wouldn’t be so furious about it if I’d bought it myself. That ugly metal hunk was left behind by the people who lived here before I did. As it always is in my sorry hellhole of a life, money—my lack thereof—was the problem. I had two choices: use it or eat slowly rotting lukewarm food for the rest of my life.
The answer was obvious. Store-bought samgak kimbap was bad enough. I could tell eating a lukewarm, flea-infested version of it would only drag my ego down the drain. I took it. Named it, even. Bertha.
Not that I know anyone named Bertha. I named the visual cacophony after that crazy woman from Jane Eyre. The name suits its owners well. They’re both attention-seekers, setting fire to things they don’t like. For Bertha Mason, that was Thornfield Hall. For the ugly Bertha in my kitchen, I presume that’s me.
I stare at Bertha. It’s about six. Or seven. Or eight. I wouldn’t know. Paying attention to time just makes it run even slower than it already does. All I know is that I’m wasting my evening as one does after eleven hours of underpaid work and that I’m hungry.
I walk over and open Bertha up. Two samgak kimbap, a half-liter of water, and four dead flies greet me warmly. I take the water and a samgak kimbap. I don’t bother checking what flavor the samgak kimbap is, because I know it’s Jeonju bibimbap-flavored anyway. I only ever buy those ones.
I distance myself as much as possible from the eyesore in the kitchen. Of course, that doesn’t kill off Bertha’s stares—rather, glares. She glares at how my hair’s about as silky as a wooden broom, how creviced my skin is, and how my cheeks look almost caved in from famine.
She glares as if to tell me I’m uglier than she is.
I hastily rip off the plastic wrapping. I wolf the food down, biting off way more than I can chew.
And—of course. A heartburn spreads across my chest like fire in a gas station. Colossal.
It’s the damned flavor. It’s still too spicy, even after three years of trying to bear with it.
I can’t handle spice. I don’t even like it. I don’t eat Jeonju bibimbap-flavored samgak kimbap every dinner because I like how it tastes. It’s just the cheapest option at the store. Nine hundred won. It’s the only option my wallet offers, given that I want to live in at least a barely decent place. Cheaper than the Lotte xylitol gum they sell at the register. My dinner’s worth less than a packet of gum. When you’re broke, you’re obliged to watch your dinner tear holes in your stomach. You endure it. Or you don’t. That gets you tossed onto the streets.
I despise how alive my tongue is. I feel like a toddler, whining over even the slightest of flavors. I can’t afford to reject anything, but my taste buds don’t know that.
I finish my curse of a dinner just as the burn in my solar plexus becomes unbearable. My daily shift at the store always makes my dinner seem pathetic. I stare at Bertha—she’s as unappealing as ever—with a hungry look in my eyes. I’m a predator hunting down its prey, a rapist casting about for a new woman to kiss goodnight.
I know that if I open Bertha up again, she’ll welcome me with the four dead flies and the last samgak gimbap—tomorrow’s ration. If I just stand up, endure her Lovecraftian hideousness, and snatch the samgak gimbap off its cold shelf—
But I don’t. I know better than that. Today’s fullness guarantees tomorrow’s starvation. A ten-year hunger warranty, Satan-like, waiting for my fall. A hunger even more cavernous than today’s. Besides, being hospitalized for malnutrition is probably cheaper than being rushed into an emergency room due to a ruptured stomach. I’ll end up in a ward one day, anyway. I don’t even have insurance. Might as well spend less when I get there.
The emptiness keeps lashing out at my stomach. The torment climbs up my throat and tugs at my tongue. As if I were a piece of steel and Bertha a magnet, my eyes cling to her once more.
As much as I hate to admit it, she’s the only one that stayed. Not that she wanted to. She’s inanimate. If she were a human, I know she’d sooner jump off a building like her namesake did rather than accompany me in the kitchen.
But Bertha isn’t human. She’s the only one that ever stares at me. She alone pays attention to how distortedly macabre I am.
Her presence lingers in my mind like food stains on a tablecloth. Her grotesque magnolias engrave themselves in my dreams. She lovingly embraces the dents where I kicked her.
And I stare at how she does it. I glare at how ugly she is. I feel naked under her gaze. I dream every night of tearing her away, hurling her out the window—telling her to stop paying attention.
She never listens.
I don’t stop glaring.
We lock ourselves in a stalemate, two attention-seekers criticizing each other.
Then she has me under siege, and I am left in the dust.
