Frozen in Suspense

It was the scream that made her remember.  She hadn’t meant to forget, but the whole thing had happened in the dead of winter, so what else was she supposed to do?

Another bone chilling scream came from the other room and she remembered that it had happened the winter before last, too.  The goosebumps of surprise on her skin took her back to the day it had happened – well, days it had happened, as they had really both died in similar ways, hadn’t they? She could remember the twisted limbs, the blood and hair stuck to the bars of the cage she had kept first one and then the other in for months.  The shock of finding each one gone so soon, before she could really have some fun with them.

With a sigh of regret, she got up off the couch and went to the kitchen to face the music.

“Calm down, Mum,” she said from the doorway.  Her mother was hyperventilating by the dishwasher, forgotten trays of freezer-burnt meat piled in the sink beside her, already wearing frosty fur-coats in the humid summer air.

“Why are there two dead bodies in my freezer?”, her mother exclaimed between wheezes.

“Well,” she said, “I couldn’t bury them in January, could I?” She reached into the back of the freezer and picked up the two Ziploc bags.

“Well, you get those hamsters out of my kitchen this minute! Out to the back garden with you and bury them deep enough that the cat can’t get to them again.”

“Yes, Mum,” she said, heading for the screen door.  “Sheesh, you’d think I’d stored a human head in there or something…”

run frogger,8,1

Back in the early 80’s, when I was yet a child of the single digits, the morning show of CFTR with Tom Rivers and Mike Cooper Brampton radio station CKMW ran a contest surrounding the hit new board game SuperQuiz. (Editor’s Note:  Mum corrected me on the station and says she can’t remember the DJ’s name but does remember that he was very good looking!  I think it was Russ SomethingOrOther…) My mother managed to get through on a regular basis and became one of the multi-show winners.  One of the early prizes, of course, was the actual game.  As the contest went on, Mum continued to win as did two other contestants.  All three became finalists in one last game held at the centre court of the Bramalea City Centre.  The grand prize was a brand new Commodore 64.

My father being a young electrical engineer, this was quite a coveted prize.  In preparation, he and Mum spent their evenings memorizing every card and every question in the box.  As a result, Mum was indeed crowned SuperQuiz Master and the computer came home with us that day with full fanfare from family and friends.  Its arrival in our living room was a grand party – complete with pizza and flowing alcohol.  The kids were spellbound and the adults jockeyed for position at the keyboard.  I’m sure my sister and I were carried off to bed just before our eyeballs dropped from their sockets.  The adults, meanwhile, stayed up learning all about BASIC, floppy disks and that oh so brightly coloured joystick.  Everyone had a great evening.  Except, of course, for the poor frog; he never did make it across the highway that night.