Trash Night, Pt. 1

The click and rattle of a resuscitated air conditioner set upon the room. The time displays of the oven and microwave began blinking, demanding to be corrected. Light burst forth from every working bulb in the room for the first time in forty-eight hours. Charley’s own electrical impulses were delayed. His eyes cracked open seconds later only to be scorched by the ceiling lights directly above his couch. The couch, his impromptu sarcophagus, was steeped in his sweat and molded to his frame. He hadn’t gotten up much since Hurricane Daniel killed the electricity. After all, what was there to do?

 

Charley sat up and blinked, adjusting to the reintroduction of the lights in his small apartment. His ceiling fan whipped up a torrent just overhead. Despite his relief that the power was back, it brought everything in his apartment back to glaring hyper-reality. He had grown accustomed to gray. The homogenous gray that the lack of electricity and even sunlight had allowed to seep in. The eggshell, popcorned walls and ceiling, in the gray, were a smooth comfort. Simple, soft, like putty, he fantasized. He could have stepped into a wall, he thought, become part of the room. Buried in it. Now in the light every surface was a glare, a reverberation directly on him, every tiny nodule in the walls and ceiling a spectator to the sulking, bleary behemoth on the couch. Everything was too sharp to touch, too blinding to look at. 

 

He kept his eyes closed a moment longer. He was no longer numb now that the gray was gone. He felt the stretch of his skin again, the resting of his tongue in his mouth, the itch of his unwashed scalp. By god, he even picked up on his stink. Every pore released a resounding, salty odor. He hadn’t bathed. He needed to, but not right now, he thought. Just give me a few minutes. He was alive again, in a sense, and he didn’t like it. Caught between the lights and the gravity well of the couch, Charley’s effort to stand was Herculean. Sheer willpower. The room was pressurized and stale. He waded towards his kitchen, turned the sink faucet, and splashed water on his face indiscriminately. That did the trick. He shook off the last remnants of his corpse-self. He was here. He was Charley. He reached for the paper towels and dried his face. He turned to face his oven to check the time, his cell phone battery long-dead at this point. The blinking display told him it was a few minutes past midnight. Charley couldn’t know for sure. It was definitely night. No trace of sunlight coming in from behind the blinds of the window on the opposite end of the room. It didn’t matter either way. He was awake.

 

As he made to throw away the wet paper towel, he caught sight of his trash can. Another wave of self-consciousness and smell crashed against his senses. The lid of the trash can wasn’t fully closed. It was fit to burst. He realized how much food he had eaten since the lights went out. He had gorged himself on as many perishables as possible before they went bad. His gut offered a queasy rumbling of acknowledgement and regret. He stepped on the pedal of the can and the lid sprang open. Charley marveled at his own refuse. All of that garbage: him. A horrid fingerprint. He tossed the limp paper towel on top. The trash within was colorful and embarrassing. A hellish marriage of soggy wrappers, containers, stains, smells, liquids all congealed together, commingling, cohabitating, scraping by each other. Extracting this cavity from his home suddenly became his number one priority, as important as survival itself. 

 

He snatched another few paper towels from the roll and used them to push down the garbage in the bag as hard as he could, hoping there weren’t any harsh edged items in there that would rip the bag. The trash flattened and a fresh burst of smell, a gaseous corpse-exhaust, wafted up. Charley held back a retch. He wasn’t done yet, though. He turned to the fridge and scanned inside. He needed to go shopping, but that was a concern for another day. It was mostly condiments inside. An onion in the crisper. Nothing of note. He closed it and opened the freezer. He was met with a stale, barely chilly gust from the small box coffin. It brought with it more stench. One container of ground beef and another of chicken cutlets, thawed and marinating in their own juices. The associated cows and chickens had died for nothing. He tossed these out along with a few boxed TV dinners that had been there for well past their expiration anyway. Charley’s imagination flared. He fancied himself an archaeologist from the future, exploring an urban ruin and discovering what people one-thousand years ago stored in their fridges and freezer. 

 

TV dinners? Everyone in the year 2500 drank warm, beige smoothie-like concoctions that had the perfect amounts of every essential vitamin and nutrient necessary to sustain them. What a pathetic ancient homo sapien this must have been to eat from this tiny tray of calorie-poor non-food and - 

 

Charley broke the thought off. The TV dinners went in the can on top of the meat. He pushed everything down again for good measure. His goblin’s hoard was complete. Holding his breath, he pulled on the drawstrings and started to lift the bag from the can. What a back-breaker! The bag was resistant, stubborn, sliding upwards from its cave in half-centimeters. Charley redoubled his effort, straining, trying not to inhale. A vein stood out on his forehead. With a brutal yank, the bag slid the rest of the way from the can. Charley exhaled, panting slightly. 

 

This fucker is getting compacted, he thought. 

 

He stared at his opponent. Asymmetrical protrusions dotted the gossamer skin of the bag. Just behind its translucence, Charley could see liquids streaming paths through chunks of garbage. The liquid squeezed and oozed through cans and boxes and wrappers, forming little rivers, veins, gravitating and settling at the bottom. The rancid cocktail was the lifeblood of the dumb, squealing slug the bag had become. It seemed to expand and contract, breathing, as the trash within settled and found shape again. It was in a death throe and Charley felt a visceral triumph standing there in his dingy kitchen, holding it aloft like a fresh kill. 

 

Then, the slug began to drip. A small patter on the linoleum. A vaguely yellowish liquid, the color of olive oil. There were lacerations in the bag from the trash. Extremely small, but enough to let the juices flow.  

 

“Oh, goddammit.” Charley croaked. He rushed the bag to the front door and stepped outside. The chill hit him like a taser. The rain from the hurricane was gone for the most part, but the wind kept steady. The storm had blown leaves, branches, dirt, and palm fronds all around the front stoops of him and his neighbors in addition to knocking out their power. Charley didn’t mind so much. In fact, he should have considered himself lucky. What was a minor, insular inconvenience to Charley in Central Florida was a cataclysm for those on the coast and the Caribbean. 

 

Hurricane Daniel was the act of an Old God. Houses torn from foundations, communities surrendered to the ocean, souls expelled under the thrush of waves and the rising waters. Hurricanes like these were only growing in frequency and intensity. Daniel was heralded by two lesser emissaries: Hurricane Nancy and Hurricane Laurence in quick succession. Both of which gave a sampling of devastation to those in its path but gracefully didn’t disturb Charley’s day to day much. 

 

He scanned the parking lot as he started his trek towards the community compactor. More fallen leaves and branches, lost in combat against the wind. A veritable battlefield. He couldn’t see much, though, as the lamp posts around the lot hadn’t kicked in yet. Nothing he couldn’t drive over in the morning, Charley surmised. He gave no thought to the flooded roads and towns not fifty miles away. Not a thought to those being electrocuted by downed power lines. Being a Floridian, hurricanes weren’t exactly noteworthy to Charley. From about August to October was hurricane season after all. He himself had never experienced much more than power loss during these events. Even now as these storms grew ever more wrathful, Charley hardly even prepped, he merely hunkered.

 

Charley stepped over the soaked trunk of a felled palm tree and continued on his way towards the compactor. It was about a three minute walk but he didn’t mind. He needed to stretch his legs anyway. He glanced at the darkened apartment buildings surrounding him. A few windows were lit, illuminated here and there up and down the three story buildings. The inhabitants were likely still asleep but left their switches on when they lost power so that they would be immediately aware when it came back on. Even those that were awake probably weren’t too keen to go outside. They also probably didn’t have a trash blight to get out of the house, Charley mused.

 

The bag was hefty and sagged. Charley held it above the concrete of the walkway just enough so as to not scrape the bottom, but it was an effort. He was nearing the compactor at the far end of an adjacent parking lot. The wind provided an eerie white noise to the evening. Crickets and birds were completely silent. His own sloshing footsteps were even drowned out. The wind wasn’t strong, just pervasive, encompassing. Charley didn’t mind it, though. Beats the normal Florida humidity.

 

The compactor itself was nestled within a specially constructed picket fence that hid its bulk. With his current haul in tow, Charley understood the facade. No one wants to look at trash. No one wants reminders of their shameful waste and excess. If you can soften the reminders as much as possible, all the better. Put up a fence. Compact it, flatten it, squeeze it until you can’t really tell what it is. Out of sight, out of mind, at least for the depositor. Only the opening of the compactor could be seen, at least directly. The sickly-sweet smell of hundreds of contributions sounded off. The smell lodged itself in the back of your throat, rolling over taste buds. You can’t soften that reminder. The rain amplified this smell, Charley thought. What’s worse than trash? Wet trash. There was a fishy quality to the smell that night that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was as if the trash was brined. Must be the rain, Charley thought, marching on. He would make his offering to the masked beast and be on his merry way in haste. To shower. By god, to shower! 

 

When he was about a hundred feet away, the two lamp posts that flanked the compactor flickered on. Their oily, amber lights illuminated the area directly in front of the compactor, where one would toss their trash in the opening, and the operating panel affixed just to the side of the opening. The panel itself had two buttons, one bright green to compact and one bright red as an emergency stop. 

 

The light illuminated something else, however. Something Charley noticed immediately. 

 

It lolled from the maw of the compactor, hanging all the way down to the concrete, ending in a small coil. It was pale. The color of excess fat on a pork loin: a ghastly, faded, organic pink. Charley’s approach slowed, his focus absorbed by the strange lure. 

 

What the hell is that?

 

And how long was it? Ten feet? Fifteen? Charley only saw the portion that was outside the compactor, so he couldn’t tell for sure, but it was undeniably long. His legs soldiered on. One hundred feet became ninety, eighty, and so on. The closer he got, the more definition the thing displayed. It was wet. Slick with a combination of garbage bag drippings, the recent rain, and something else. A putrid congealment. Mucus, perhaps, Charley couldn’t tell. It was gobbed translucent, small clumps up and down the length of the thing. It was only when he was within spitting distance did Charley understand what he was looking at. 

 

The coil ended in a limp spade. One side was covered in rows and columns of protrusions, suckers. 

 

Tentacle, his mind whispered, numb. 

 

The tentacle did not acknowledge Charley’s recognition. His eyes groped the length of it three, four more times. The moisture had evaporated from his mouth and even the reek of garbage seemed distant. Only he and the thing remained. He was now a mere five feet away. His legs worked for his curiosity now, not his instincts. 

 

Charley did what any sane person would do next. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone. Empty. The left one and back ones too. 

 

“Shit.”, he whispered. 

 

Why did I whisper?

Charley cleared his throat and licked his lips, trying to get moisture going. 

 

“Shit.”, he said, louder this time. The tentacle wasn’t offended. It offered no response. 

 

For the first time in at least two days, Charley smiled. A small chuckle slipped through his teeth. He didn’t know exactly why he was laughing but he didn’t try to stifle it. His circuits were fried from rotting on his couch in the dark. He took a step back to look over the thing in full again. The dumb smile persisted. It was funny, wasn’t it? This tentacle was a piece from the wrong puzzle, jammed in where it didn’t fit.

 

No one’s going to believe this, Charley thought. His smile weakened.

 

Who would I even tell?

 

Charley himself was nothing short of a hermit. He wasn’t obtrusively rude or maligned, he didn’t hold any hate in his heart or seek to destroy. He simply didn’t give much thought about others. Several of his friendships, if you could call them that, had ended shortly after forming because of how comfortable his own cloistering made him. He could never find the gumption to leave the house save for work and social events were completely off the table. Only now, staring at this tentacle, did Charley feel loneliness harpoon him for the first time. He had no one. No one to share this horror with. No one that could make this experience worthwhile by relaying it to them. It would be his and he would not share it.

 

The smell set back in. The trash bag in his hand felt heavy again. The tentacle seemed now deflated. Pathetic. Fetal, in a way. Weak and vulnerable. Was this even worth relaying? He turned to scan the apartment buildings again. Speckled lights, here and there. No movement. Would someone come to throw their trash away? Share this moment with him? Anyone?

 

He heard a rustle, something shifting. 

 

He whirled back around so quickly, he startled the raccoon that had entered the spotlight. It bolted to its hind legs in surrender, but did not retreat. The little beast was soaked through, shivering, but alive and hungry. The calming of the weather and the enticing smell of refuse lured the raccoon here. The smell of the tentacle was probably the most enticing thing of all, Charley thought. The tentacle itself, however, was still unmoving. The raccoon lowered itself back on all fours, assuming Charley wasn’t a threat. It sniffed the tentacle with caution, not getting too close.

 

“It’s dead.” Charley said to the raccoon. The raccoon ignored him. It continued to sniff the flank of the tentacle, the side without the suckers. 

 

Another thought bubbled to the surface of Charley’s mind.

 

Was it dead?

 

Charley realized he had no idea. If it was alive, he didn’t think he could tell from just a tentacle hanging out of the compactor. 

 

But what is it?

 

A squid, of course. Or an octopus. Or…what? Charley tried to suppress the thought. He tried to convince himself it didn’t really matter what it was. It was trash. Something someone throws away. Discards.

 

Who would throw away the Kraken?

 

Charley shot another glance at the windows. He imagined an odd neighbor with sordid tastes. A quiet, deranged man, an oddity collector, who purchased a squid off some black market. The squid outgrew every container he could keep it in until he decided to cut his losses and shamefully toss the thing in the trash. Charley looked up and down each window, trying to see if he could guess who did it, who the weirdo was. He smiled again. It was silly. He didn’t even talk to any of his neighbors. 

 

So how did it get here?

 

Goddammit, stop!