Working in our family-run grocery store as a kid, I would be locked up by my sibs in the meat cooler for shits and grins. It was maybe 8-by-8 feet and always packed. Hunting season or no, there were always a couple deer carcasses, several cows, maybe a pig or two, and some weird shit like pheasant and quail. I think I saw a squirrel once. (The smaller the corpse, the greater my fear. Weird.)
I can't tell you how it smelled (I blocked it out; a therapist will drag it outta me under hypnosis someday). But it was dark and cold.
Turn-your-lips-blue cold.
Colder-than-a-thousand-Michigan-winters cold.
So I'd huddle freezing, in the dark, listening for the smallest sound that might indicate a bloody carcass hopping off its hook to smother me to death with its slimy, smelly, ice-cold body.
No amount of humidity can stave off the icy tendrils of fear at the mere memory.
