Scary Stories: "My Brother Was Eaten"

The narrator and his younger brother Alex lived on the seventh floor of an apartment building. One sweltering summer day, the narrator convinced Alex to break into a vacant unit on the same floor—a place the narrator had never seen anyone enter or leave in years. Alex was reluctant. "We're not allowed to just break into somebody's apartment," he protested. "What if someone's home and they call the police? We'll get grounded for sure." But the narrator insisted, and Alex eventually caved. They entered through a window left slightly ajar, and the narrator soon joined him through the front door.

The cold apartment and its contents

The apartment was unnervingly cold—the narrator noted someone was paying a hefty electric bill to keep it that way. Inside was sparse: an empty coat closet with three pairs of formal brown shoes, cobwebbed bathroom, bare kitchen. But the kitchen held two refrigerators. The first was a massive seven-foot-tall metallic gray unit that wouldn't budge when the narrator tried to open it. The second was smaller, sickly yellow, and opened easily to reveal nothing inside. The living room had two long couches, an outdated television, and a stack of VHS tapes—"Balto, Annabelle's Wish, Toy Story, Ghostbusters, Batman and Robin"—none worth stealing. But between the sofas stood a tiny olive-green mini fridge. The narrator