Garbage Man

by Joseph D'lacey

  Every part of his body was cold but the soles of his feet, still receiving warmth from the ground, still bleeding out his darker energies. He would never be completely pure - nothing and no one could be. For then an absolute state would be reached and the motion and flow of things into each other would, therefore, have ceased. Such a state, he believed, was synonymous with the end of the world and, no matter how well he felt he understood these things, he was not ready for that.

  But the moon held him, its bright blade incising his eyes, the hook of it snagged into his mind. He could feel its draw on him too, coaxing his water, pulling him up. He closed his eyes a moment and hauled himself back taking a deep breath. Yes, time to go home.

  His feet were welded to the ground and came away reluctantly. He stumbled and almost fell over trying the take his first couple of steps. Then the grip of the moon and the grip of the Earth were eased and he was liberated.

  He didn’t get far before stopping again. There was wetness underfoot. Strange. The weather had been changeable but there’d been no rain for a few days. No puddles or muddy troughs belonged here, especially not on newly scattered soil. He looked down and scanned the darkness where only his feet were recognisable, fungus white against the black humus. Around them, oily liquid blackness was spreading out. The viscous fluid reflected the scalpel-sharp moon and even the yellow glow of the streetlights coming from Meadowlands, the estate where he lived.

  All manner of possibilities sprang into his mind. A water main had burst nearby and was flooding the landfill. A blockage had caused the canal to burst its banks. Something in the landfill had burst and its filth was seeping upwards. None of the explanations fitted what was happening. They came and went in a sliver of a moment leaving only fear behind. Something was wrong here; profoundly, unnaturally wrong. The longer he looked at the welling of black fluid around his feet, covering them now, the stronger became this conviction.

  Without taking another step, he crouched a little and put his hand to the surface of this rising flood. It was warm and slightly greasy between his fingertips. He held the substance below his nose and inhaled. It smelled rusty. This made sense to him. The landfill was full of oxidising iron and steel. Perhaps the leachate from the landfill had been blocked somehow and was backing up. Just as soon as he had this notion, it too was dismissed. The fluid should have smelled of things other than metal decay. It should have smelled of shit and rot. It didn’t.

  He walked now, suddenly and with purpose, away from the newly covered area of landfill and back towards the fence-line. The substance under his feet was tarry and when he reached a place where the fluid no longer welled, the loose soil stuck to his tacky soles. He collected his shoes and socks by the gap in the chain-link, bent low and stepped through. He turned and used his pocketful of wire ties to sew the fence breach together again.

  The way to his back garden twisted through low shrubs where small, well-used tracks had been made by badgers and rabbits. It led out onto an expanse of brownland where the grass that grew was sparse and clumped. Underfoot was coke and slag from the open cast coal mine that had been there before the days of the landfill. If this wasn’t hazardous enough to bare feet, much of the waste ground was littered with shattered glass from discarded bottles and other litter. Mason didn’t care; whatever was on his feet, he didn’t want to get it on his socks and in his shoes. He kept waiting for the substance to itch or burn the skin of his feet but it didn’t.

  And so, as he did so many nights of the year, he crossed the brownland like a shadow returning to its sleeping owner. He was lucky, he believed, to reach his back gate without cutting himself. Instead of letting himself in through the back door of his house, he unlocked the garden shed, stepped in and switched on its single bare bulb. After the darkness of the landfill, forty watts was like staring at the midday sun. He blinked until his pupils adjusted and sat on a woodwormed pine chair.

  Then he looked at his feet.

  ***

  ‘Agatha, come and get your tea.’ Agatha Smithfield hated her name.

  ‘Witch,’ she whispered to the walls of her room. ‘Witch-bitch-cunt.’

  There were footsteps on the stairs; her mother padding in her stupid, ugly pink slippers, a pair of flesh-tone pop-socks barely hiding the broken veins in her ankles. Her mother scuffing along the upstairs carpet; the footsteps of a very minor martyr. She could see it all without looking.

  ‘Aggie? Your tea’s ready. Are you coming down?’

  The voice was breezy, masking concern. Agatha swallowed her rage, stuffed it back down into her stomach to smoulder and pressurise.

  The only other Agatha she knew of was Agatha Christie, a boring woman - long dead - who had written boring murder stories populated by boring toffs from a boring age she had no interest in.

  Boring, boring, boring.

  ‘Yes, mother. Of course I’m coming. Don’t rush me all the time.’

  ‘Sorry, dear.’

  And don’t fucking apologise for everything.

  The soft footsteps retreated, a wound in their rhythm. Agatha felt guilt and disgust uncoil in her throat.

  The name Agatha was synonymous with boring. It was also synonymous with ancient, grey-haired people. It was no name for a seventeen-year-old woman of the third millennium. Plenty of other girls her age had used their middle names to escape the stigma of their first names. But Betty Smithfield sounded so similarly awful there was no point. Shit, what had her parents been thinking about when they named her? They’d refused her entreaties to let her change her names. She vowed to do it anyway as soon as she left home. It would be goodbye Agatha Betty. Maybe she’d even change her surname, begin a second life. In the meantime the contraction ‘Aggie’ was the best she could do.

  Downstairs, they’d all be sitting there already. Waiting. Don would have started eating even though their mother and father would have told him not to. Whenever she saw her brother, he was eating but there was no sign of it on his frame. The way he looked he might have been wandering the streets for a month. Nothing on him but sinew and gaunt, tight muscle. If she ate half as much as him she’d turn into a walrus.

  She swore softly and swung her legs off the bed. She smoothed down her clothes, feeling the gentleness of her own curves and enjoying it. She looked in the mirror. She was beautiful and she knew it. She had no idea why she was stuck here in the suburbs of a town where the future held no promise. There was no existence here which she could aspire to, other than single-motherhood and government handouts and daytime TV. Gossip and jealousy, binge drinking and bitter tears as life stole her looks. She wasn’t so stupid as to believe her beauty would last forever. If she wanted to use it, she had to get started. The sooner she left, the sooner her second life, her real life, could begin.

  It was the way out she hadn’t quite found yet. She knew it wasn’t as simple as hitching a ride to London and hoping for the best. She’d heard of other girls who had done as much. Some came back, beaten by the city and its takers, happy to sink back into the mould society had prepared for them, glad to be safe and obscure. Others had not returned but by the silence they left behind them, it was clear they had not succeeded. Not succeeded at anything except deviating from their grand schemes, succeeded instead at being exploited, succeeded at failure. It was no wonder they never came back, dragging the miasma of their filthy misadventures behind them like the smell of sickness. What family could live down such prodigality around here, where everyone talked and anyone could be destroyed by rumour without even knowing they were falling from grace?

  No. She was not going to follow that path. She was going to plan it and she was going to achieve her goals through careful preparation. There was a right way of leaving town and she would find it. She would leave Agatha Betty Smithfield far behind and she would transform. When she did finally come back, it would be with her head held high and against the odds. Those who wer
en’t proud of her would be nauseous with envy.

  Knowing this made it possible to walk down the stairs of her family’s uninspiring house, a house like too many others on the estate with an uninspiring family to match. Knowing this, she could take her place at the table and smile and eat the bland shit her mother cooked each day. She could do it because it was all part of her plan. Her time was coming. In months or weeks or days, the opportunity she was waiting for would present itself. There was a shiver of excitement in her stomach.

  Richard Smithfield looked at her over his glasses, a toad of a man - not sweaty; oily.

  ‘Finally, the queen arrives.’

  She sat down at the table. Donald looked at her out of the corner of his eye and put his fork down but he was already chewing something. Her mother, Pamela Smithfield, smiled but it looked like a wince.

  ‘For what we are about to receive,’ she said ‘may the Lord make us truly thankful.’

  They muttered Amen.

  Donald resumed eating, everyone else began.

  Aggie put lumpy mashed potato and dried out chicken in her mouth. The gravy was brown but had no flavour. It didn’t even smell of anything. The only smell seemed to be wafting in from the waste disposal unit in the kitchen sink. It was always getting blocked. Either that or the wind was blowing the wrong way from the landfill again. She ignored it and chewed. Under the table, Sasquatch the golden retriever waited beside Aggie for his share of the meal - most of which would arrive from her surreptitious fingers long before it could be considered leftovers.

  ‘Gosh, mother, this is lovely,’ she said.

  Pamela Smithfield’s smile returned, uncertain, faltering. She said nothing.

  Nor did anyone else.

  ***

  Not only did it smell like rust, it looked like rust. He picked off a dried flake of it. It came away reluctantly like a new scab. Crumbling this between his fingers, it even felt like rust as it disintegrated.

  Suddenly, more than anything in the world, he wanted it to be rust.

  But it wasn’t.

  He left the shed, locked it, let himself into the silent house through the back door and went upstairs to scrub his feet in the bath. Only when they were scoured red and no trace remained, only when he’d washed the tub out thoroughly three times, only then did he allow himself to run a proper bath.

  He lay there, knees poking up like strange tall islands, their dark hair matted flat to his white skin. Steam rose; the mist surrounding his anatomical seascape. He tried not to think about what had happened. All the evidence was gone now. It would be easy enough to let time pass and convince himself he’d made a mistake or that he’d stared at the moon for so long he’d hallucinated the rest of it. He became uncertain of his own judgement and was immediately glad for his fallibility, his untrustworthy perceptions.

  There was comfort then and his eyes closed against the knee-atolls and the glare of the bathroom bulb. It lasted only moments. His eyes snapped open. This matter would not lie. He could not ignore it.

  Mother Earth was bleeding.

  ***

  I consider my options.

  I can stay holed up in a room all night, recuperating and staying safe but I am wasting precious time by doing so - outside the situation worsens. I also run the risk of my scent being picked up by hungry assailants out on the hunt. One or two I can manage and, if the door is strong enough, I might keep them out until morning. But if one or two become three or four, there won’t be any door strong enough to keep them at bay.

  I can continue raiding houses but the strength and agility of the assailants is far greater once the sun is down. I risk losing more than I might gain from the plundering.

  The only real option is the bold approach: to take my katana onto the streets and hope I make it out of suburbia and up to the facility. There are routes, I know there are. Some of them will be almost uninhabited, even by assailants. But knowing which route to take is mostly luck. Stumble down the wrong alley or break through a fence in the wrong back garden and I’m likely to encounter odds I can’t match - not even with the weaponry of the Japanese warrior class. Not even with the skills I’ve developed, so hard-won over the last three days. The assailants have ways of moving, habits of attack and I’ve studied them well. Against one or even two at a time it gives me a big advantage. But against greater numbers I don’t think I’ll survive for long.

  This leaves a final possibility but it’s the coward’s way forward. I can use stealth. Creep from doorway to doorway, sidle along walls and stay in the shadows of alleyways. I can crouch and crawl on my belly in the dirt. It will be slow. It will drain me. But it’s safer than walking into God knows how many skirmishes and risking my life.

  While I consider all this, I stand with my back to a brick wall which forms the side of a three-bedroomed house. Opposite me is the wooden fence dividing this property from the one next door. I notice I’m panting, my adrenaline levels rising at the prospect of what lies ahead. Whatever I do, I will not sleep this night. I will not rest unless injury forces me into hiding.

  I drop to a crouch and creep along the wall towards the back garden. It’s unlikely there will be anyone back there. I can’t see too far ahead but to turn my head-lamp on will attract attention. I have to do this almost blind. I come to the end of the wall and I’m about to sprint over the back lawn to the rear fence of the house when I think I notice movement to my left, by the back door of the house.

  I turn to look.

  Assailants. Three of them.

  Heads cocked to listen, clothes torn or missing, decay visible everywhere. Ribs showing through ripped tee shirts. Lipless mouths grinning. Lidless orbs swivelling maniacal, unfocussed. They make a papery sound as they keep vigil. It is not breathing but the movement of their desiccated dead skin. They are agitated, hungry.

  Three.

  More than I can deal with even using surprise.

  I’m going to have to get on my face and slide over the grass. I’ll have to stop regularly to turn and check they haven’t discovered me. What are they doing here? So many in one place. In the wrong place. Gardens like this should be empty. They should be safe.

  Sick with fear, hands shaking, I put my face to the ground and start forward one stolen hand-span at a time.

  ***

  Tamsin Doherty twitches in their bed. Beside her is an expanse of linen across which she and Kevin rarely meet throughout the night. On the other side of this gulf is the cliff face formed by his back. Her eyes are closed. There is a waxy patina of sweat darkening her hairline, transparent pinheads above her lips. Her closed eyelids are two pregnant bellies in which twin eye-foetuses kick. She takes a sudden in-breath, fingers gripping the sheets.

  There is a tall building, a building made by the hands of men but one which reaches up very high. Some days the upper parts of this building are hidden by clouds. She knows there were people here once but now they are gone. There is only the building. It stands tall and alone in a silent landscape as if it is the last building on Earth, as if it is the first.

  She sees the building from above and notices something there. Something moving on its bare, flat concrete roof. She knows what this thing is long before she is close enough to really see it. All the people have gone and they have left behind a poor denuded baby. She feels she may have lived many lives but never has she seen such a solitary being. Perhaps, like the paradox of the building, this is not the last baby on Earth. Perhaps, somehow, it is the first.

  The baby crawls on the sky-scraper’s flat roof. There is a small wall and railing around the top of the building but the baby will fit through the rails easily if it finds them. It crawls well too. It might easily haul itself over the edge. She wants to go closer and help the baby, bring it safely to the ground but she cannot. She is here merely as an observer. The more the baby crawls, the more determin
ed it becomes. It is naked and its hands and knees and feet, where they scrape over the cold concrete have developed thick pads, thick as the paws of wolves and lions.

  The baby finds the door to steps that lead down. But the baby does not know about door handles and even if it did it would not be able to reach. It bashes its head against the steel door and when the door does not open, it crawls on, dogged.

  The baby does not cry.

  Sometimes this is as far as Tamsin’s dream goes. Nevertheless, she wakes dripping, swallowing, one hand clamped over her heart, the other clasped over her abdomen.

  Both places are empty.

  Beside her, Kevin Doherty sleeps on.

  3

  They lined the surface of every wall in Mason’s house, so much like wallpaper he barely noticed them. They were like memories of someone else’s life, someone else’s history, not his. Indeed, that was exactly what they were, for his bearded face appeared in none of them. Sometimes he caught himself staring at one of them, trying to recall if the moment had really been the way the camera had trapped it. He knew profoundly that cameras were like people; they never told the truth. There was so much happening in each of these kidnapped snaps - all he’d had to do was press a button and the theft was complete - but most of it the camera missed. The camera missed the hearts of these people he photographed but told you instead - insisted - that it had captured them faithfully. The picture convinced but the picture recorded only a fraction the event, a shard of the person, a shadow of the scene. It was like trying to catch and preserve snowflakes and this impossibility was what he had come to detest.

  In those moments when he lost himself in remembering, or at least finding his memory as fallible as the camera’s, he also found passion. He had taken pictures with a kind of anger and frustration and it was that, perhaps more than anything else, the camera had recorded. Mason was one of life’s observers, the kind of man who spent parties watching and judging the guests instead of talking to them. Or, if he did talk to them, their words only reinforced his condemnation. London life, photographic life and all the parties that accompanied it, had therefore not suited him. And yet, it was at many of these gatherings that he’d shot his finest work - what others classed as his finest, at least. It was in the times he felt most alienated by his own inability to participate that he caught that fraction of a face or gesture which made a subject so interesting to look at later.