The freezer’s chill cut deep, down to the bone. At least, it would have if they’d had any bones left; their captors had seen to their removal. Whether they were alive or dead was all but impossible to tell from observation but at least one of them, lying beneath an ever growing layer of frost, was trying desperately to hold on for just one more day.

  The light came on and a warm draft washed over them, shriveling the ends of the growing ice crystals. As soon as the survivor acclimated to the light, it saw with horror how few of them there were left. When they first arrived there were hundreds of them. Now a scant few dozen remained.

    Impossibly tall, a dark figure stood silhouetted in the doorway.

  Don’t see me, one of them, Patty, thought as the figure stepped into the freezer, Leave me to freeze.

    Though they didn’t know all that awaited them outside of the freezer, from what they had glimpsed they knew it was a fate countless times worse than what faced them within. Here, in the freezer at least, there was the cold numbness to ease their passing.

  Still the figure drew closer, and as it did it selected more and more of them until just the one remained.

  Yes, take them, Patty thought, ignoring the guilt it felt for its selfishness.

  The figure paused to count it’s overburdened load.

  Please, leave me.

  Patty was not so lucky. With the glare of the freezer light all but obscuring the figures face from view, it turned to the last remaining one and reached out to lift it from the cold slab on which it lay. Patty would have screamed out loud were it possible and, quite suddenly, something rippled through it. It wasn’t a shiver, those were long since past, but even still its cold and frozen body quivered and the figure paused, inches from picking it up.

  Another, more violent ripple tore through and threatened to split it open from the force. The figure stumbled backward, unable to believe what it saw, and slipped on the icy floor. A cry, a thud and a crack before all was still and silent in the freezer once more. The door began to close. The survivor couldn’t turn to see the floor where the figure lay or where its companions had landed.

  Luck, for the moment, was on Patty’s side. No grunts or groans came from the floor below. No scraping or slipping on ice. The freezer door was almost shut; the light would be going out soon. How long would it take for others to realize what had happened and come searching in the freezer for their fallen comrade.

  A foot shot out and caught the door at the last possible moment. The light flickered but stayed on as the foot swung the door back open wide and the figure on the floor got back to its feet. It gathered up those that it had dropped and then turned to the one remaining, Patty. It hesitated, then reached out and lifted Patty up, placing it with the others.

  The heat of the outside was like fire on raw flesh. The hoarfrost vanished from their withered forms as they were carried closer to the source of the blazing heat. The figure stumbled a bit, still dazed by its fall and passed Patty and the others on to another.

  Fear gripped Patty, though it could not help but feel some small amount of satisfaction as the figure from the freezer had to hold onto some pipework for support while it massaged its’ head. The new figure carried them swiftly to the fires and, with terrible sizzles that sounded like screams, placed them one by one onto the burning rack.

  What was frozen became thawed, thawed became red, red became black. Oh, the agony! Where for days they’d been freezing, pitifully numbed by the cold, now came the utter shock of sensation, the burning and charring of what little remained of their boneless, mangled bodies.

  Right at the point when Patty could bare it no more, it was taken from the fire. They applied cool creams to its body and layered chilled, moist wraps before encasing it in a soft, absorbent material to stem the fluids that were dripping from and around its burnt form.

  Why wouldn’t they let it end, Patty wondered as they set it on a hard metal slab beneath bright lights. Most of Patty’s companions were already there and their collective juices congealed around them.

  One by one, they were selected and taken. So far, Patty knew what to expect, had seen and heard enough to surmise what awaited beyond the freezer doors. But now they lay on the edge of their knowledge and everything beyond was unknown. Patty never expected to have survived this far.

  At last its turn arrived and Patty was placed on a wide tray with fluid containers and stacks of strange objects never seen before. A new figure, one who did not look or dress like the others took the tray and carried it into a place where countless other, giant figures roamed. Patty saw its companions scattered among them; they were being eaten.

  Horror as Patty had never known before swept through it but there was nothing Patty could do. It couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t make its pleas known. Patty could only await its time when, hopefully, mercifully, it would all be over.

  Someone screamed. With delight Patty recognized the voice as one of the figures who put them to such use. Through the pain that gripped much of what remained of Patty’s cognitive abilities, it saw them carrying the figure from before, in the freezer. Blood dripped from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. He was dead.

  The place where the figures had congregated to feed now emptied, the shock of seeing one of their own dead seemed too much for them to bear, never mind how much tortured flesh they had been consuming moments before.

  The figure that carried Patty, took it outside where a cool breeze helped sap away some of the pain. The figure pulled away some of the outer wrappings and Patty braced itself. If it could have looked away it would have but Patty’s gaze was fixed on the opening maw.

  Patty shuddered, and jolted, just as it had done in the freezer before. The figure paused, looking puzzled at the meal in its hands. Patty tried with all its might to repeat the motion, to somehow save its life, agony though it was. Patty quivered and the figure’s eyes widened. Patty shook and the figure gasped. Though reason said it should have been impossible, though Patty’s bones were long gone and its body chopped, processed, frozen and burned, Patty could move.

  The figure dropped it, the fall softened by the many layers it had been wrapped in. Clutching its chest, the figure stumbled, fell backward and landed with a satisfying thud. It did not rise again.

  Patty squirmed and wriggled until it was free of the wrappings and began the long trek to find its way back to its own kind, to warn them, to teach them. So that when the figures came for them, perhaps then they’d be ready for them.