The freezer
Quite a while back, my girlfriend of the time was performing in a play in Edinburgh.
She rented a flat with the rest of the cast from someone who would move out for the festival and sublet their flat whilst on holiday.
I got up there about three weeks into their residency and set up happily walking round the city whilst they did thespian things.
After a few days in the flat I began to notice a smell. It was like a muffled scream, you knew it was a noxious smell but was being masked by something.
I decided to find the source of this odour and almost instantly tracked it down to the freezer.
Upon opening the white box I was assaulted with a smell like no other. As soon as I opened the lid I threw it shut an tried to physically jump out of the way of the stench.
My God! It was like nothing I had come across before.
Now that the lid had been opened the smell quickly found it's way around the entire flat, calling the occupants out of their rooms to ask what the shuddering fuck had happened.
We all stood around this innocent looking white appliance that was slowly releasing it's stinking cargo.
As the only bloke in the flat it was decided with no word uttered that it was my job to see to the problem.
I first had to open the freezer again and inspect the damage. A big breath was taken and held, the lid thrown open and I peered in. The freezer was half full with ready meals, chips, unidentified bags of goop, collapsed cardboard and water that made the most rancid bin juice look like Evian.
I let in a little gasp of air and almost projectile vomited into the stinking mess.
The next half hour was a contstant battle to keep my stomach from hurling it's content out in disgust.
As it was a chest freezer I had to lean further and further into the thing to pull out the contents and bag them up. Every time I bent over the freezer and stuck my face in I would get nearer and nearer to vomiting. Kind of like touching the cloth but from the other end.
Eventually I had got the solids out and was left with the swamp of murky water with floating chips, peas and scum in it.
This "water" had to be scooped out with cups, into saucepans then carried across the flat to be dumped in the toilet. When I had almost finished the task I lent far over the side of the freezer to try to get the last dregs, rested my stomach on the side, reached and knocked the air out of myself. I involuntarily inhaled to re inflate my lungs, pulling in a huge breath of stagnant fish fingers and chicken kievs. The breath quickly came out, followed by the morning's breakfast, which splashed into the final bits of freezer juice, which splashed back up into my face and mouth making me heave once more.
Oddly enough, the acid smell of vomit cut through the blunt stench of the freezer and made the final cleaning up (even with the added chunks) much easier. Either that or it could be that I'd lost all self respect, standing in a stinking flat, covered in the remnants of someone else's freezer and regurgitated fry up.
Soon after I found the reason for the freezer failure was one of the actresses unplugging it to put in their hair straighteners the day they got into the flat. I wish I could say that I got my revenge some how, but all I wanted to do was forget the experience.
( monkeyboyalpha jumping on the bandwagon since, Wed 22 Jan 2014, 9:21, 6 replies)

great story
"It was like a muffled scream" deserves a click for that phrase alone...
(Carpe Cyprinidae, Wed 22 Jan 2014, 9:28, closed)

They didn't get their deposit back, then?

( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 22 Jan 2014, 10:08, closed)

You know chest freezers have a drain plug, right?
Just asking...
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 22 Jan 2014, 10:29, closed)

Not all do
And as it was on a carpeted landing I would not have been sure of keeping the scum off the floor.
Also, I was feeling pretty woozy from the effects of the fumes and holding my breath.
Ideally I would have preferred to take the whole thing outside and dump tilt the freezer up but the 3 girls sharing the 5th floor flat with me didn't want to carry it down the stairs.
( monkeyboyalpha jumping on the bandwagon since, Wed 22 Jan 2014, 10:59, closed)

You really should
Have got your own back, by pissing into her mouth.
(Deskbound You insignificant speck of dust, Wed 22 Jan 2014, 11:36, closed)

I think
they charge extra for that
(Bob the Builder killed Captain Alex, Wed 22 Jan 2014, 20:12, closed)