Emptying
the Trash
Rick
McQuiston
Susan did her best to get her mind off it. She had made a
nice stir-fry meal with grilled salmon and watched the first half of a cheesy
romantic comedy, and even tried to finally finish the wool scarf she'd been
working on, but nothing worked. The nagging fear she had was incessant and
unrelenting.
She took a sip of wine and flopped down onto her worn but
comfortable couch.
“Susan, you need to get a hold of yourself.”
Her words did little to soothe her nerves though, for
there, squatting like an enormous toad, was a dark reality that couldn't be
denied.
The trashcan. That simple receptacle that was found in every
home, collecting refuse without complaint, regardless of how nasty.
Susan closed her eyes. It was a brief respite from the
impossible but was better than nothing. After all, what else could she do? She
could empty the can, but past experience taught her that it wouldn't make a
difference. There would simply be more garbage spilling out of it by the next
day, trash that wasn't from her. There were soiled food containers, crumpled
papers, used tissues, empty bottles, and a host of unmentionables that defied
description.
Susan opened her eyes and stared at the trashcan. It was a
cheap plastic model, thirty gallons she guessed, and was missing its lid. In
fact, she had no idea what happened to the lid. One day it was there, snapped
into place by the twin plastic knobs on either side, and the next day it was
gone.
Actually, that was what first alerted Susan that something
was wrong: the missing lid.
After that, she noticed that the
trash was spilling over onto the floor. Empty cartons of food she didn't eat,
plastic bottles of juice she didn't drink, discarded papers she didn't discard.
She had emptied it just a few hours earlier, and a few hours before that (it
was her way of trying to make things normal again) but the trash always filled
back up in no time at all.
Susan wanted to empty it yet again but knew it wouldn't
help. It would happen all over again. However, if she didn't clean it up the
mess would get out of hand quickly.
“What are you?” she mumbled under her breath. “And why are
you doing this?”
The trashcan didn't reply.
Deciding on a new strategy, Susan pulled up a kitchen chair
and slumped into it. She was going to sit and watch until something happened.
Eventually, she'd see where the trash was coming from. Eventually she'd
discover what was really happening.
Seconds slipped into minutes, which in turn slid towards an
hour.
Susan hardly realized how long she'd been sitting,
watching, waiting for something to happen, but when she did (courtesy of her
puppy-dog clock on the wall) she couldn't take it anymore. She jumped to her
feet and stomped over to the trashcan.
She watched it with bated breath.
The trash displayed its contents as if taunting her.
Garbage overflowed from the container, occasionally spiraling to the floor when
gravity had its say. It was a mess that refused to explain itself.
And then just as Susan was about to give in to her primal
urge to keep her home clean something happened that stalled any intentions she
harbored.
An empty box of Hostess Twinkies (something she had never
eaten in her life) that was perched on the top of the pile, suddenly shifted
noticeably and then shot straight into the air before crashing down to the
floor in front of the refrigerator. A hand, a scabrous yellow thing no larger
than a golf ball, then inched its way up from the depths of the trashcan,
poking around until it reached open air.
Susan gaped at the impossibility before her. Her world
would now have a new dimension added to it, a dimension of terror that shouldn't
exist but did.
As well as all the things that lived in that dimension.
She watched as the hand wavered in the air for a few
seconds before it was joined by two more. Identical in appearance to the first,
the hands seemed to sense she was there. The digits clenched and unclenched,
tightening into taut fists and then unfurling again to open palms. The skin
looked fairly normal, although yellowed and slightly mottled, with only the
two-inch long curved razor-sharp nails, each stained with residual food and
what appeared to be blood, betraying their ominous origins.
Susan could only stare. She guessed there were more of the
things lurking in the trash (possibly all attached the same creature) but
couldn't be sure.
And she didn't want to find out either.
Turning to flee, she stumbled over her own two feet and
fell in a heap to the linoleum tile floor; her left ankle twisted, sending a
lightning bolt of pain straight up her leg and into her lower back.
Crippled, all she could do was lie there like a fish out of
water, spasming to find some type of relief. She then craned her neck toward
the trashcan and was terrified to see more hands, nearly a dozen by her
pain-clouded count, clamoring just above the refuse. They were attached to thin
tentacles writhing about like drunk dancers.
And then, inevitably, it began to emerge.
Like the sun rising above the horizon, the head slowly rose
from the trash, nudging aside the flailing arms as it did so. Residual food
smeared its surface; it looked like a small beachball, smooth and yet imperfect
in its shape.
Susan could only watch as the thing rose from the trashcan.
In her desperate hope for anything to cling to she prayed that it had no eyes.
Somehow that would make it less horrifying.
But no sooner had the thought flitted across her mind, then
the eyes, all six of them (although the creature sported nearly a dozen
various-shaped orbs that had no visible pupils but very well could have been
eyes) rose above the obstruction of the garbage. Ranging in color from pale yellow
to a deep blue that bordered on black, to shades that she had no idea what they
were, the organs rotated in violent unison with their brethren before fixating
on the hapless human lying on the floor.
Susan shrank back into her own skin. Her ankle was
constantly reminding her that she couldn't use it, but the thought of sticking
around to see what was in the trash simply was not an option. She drew out
every ounce of strength she still had and forced herself to her feet. The pain
was unbearable, but she trudged on, intent on escaping.
After she had managed to stand, barely being able to orient
herself, she was shocked to see that the head, the eyes, the arms and hands,
had apparently sunk back into the trashcan.
“What? How... I don't understand. I...”
The words slipped from her mouth. In a way, though she was
relieved; the thing was gone. But on the other hand, its image would be
imprinted in her dreams for the rest of her life. And to top it off there
wouldn't be a person on Earth who would believe her.
“That does it,” she mumbled to herself. “I'm moving.”
Susan straightened herself up a bit and limped out of the
kitchen, her mind already whirling with her next course of action.
And the trashcan, now completely empty, still sat in the
kitchen where Susan had placed it when she had moved in the house. Having fused
into another dimension, the cheap plastic container now served as a portal into
another's living space, a thing with numerous eyes and hands tipped with curved
claws.
It shoveled another Twinkie, some dried fruit, and
something vaguely resembling crusty cheesecake into its gaping maw, gyrating
its jaws in a smooth rhythm to effectively churn the nourishment into mush.
Temporarily sated, the beast sunk back onto its haunches.
Its bulk flowed even as it rested. Several of its eyes scanned its
surroundings, spawning mental notes to clean the place up a bit. Piles of trash
dotted the cavern, most of which was directly underneath the portal opening.
The thing oozed out from its seat, scooped up a wad of
refuse, and hoisted it up to the opening, hoping that the creature living above
would remember to empty the trash.
