The Trash Collector

Kevin jumped into the air, swinging his leg in a perfect roundhouse kick. He boxed an invisible, imaginary specter, a memory of his friends standing in front of him. As he calmed himself with a slow breathing exercise, he turned to the darkened room with a light hanging from a broken, creaking chain.

The light threw the shadows of beakers, tubes, flasks, funnels, and other chemistry equipment on the back wall of the cement basement. A rancid smell wafted into the air from a pile of trash collecting in the corner, a pile of rotting food mixed with wrappers, plastic bottles, and aluminum cans.

Kevin reached for a glass filled with milk on the table. He chugged his second favorite drink, growing a white mustache over his thick, brown mustache. When he finished, he slammed the glass on the table, cracking the glass edges. Pummeling his chest like a gorilla, he roared into the air. Reaching for his first favorite drink, a can of RC cola made by the sweet, loving Canadians he adored, he opened the metal tab.

A hiss released into the air as the carbonated liquid balanced with the room’s pressure. Kevin let the RC cola sit, wondering why he would waste such a lovely drink.

Knowing his cause, feeling the revenge deep in his heart, he poured the can into a funnel, letting the liquid mix with his concoction bubbling through the chemistry lab. The brown soda traveled from beaker to tube to flask, boiling away into a black mist. A condenser collected the steam into liquid droplets, letting it fall into a tube dropping Kevin’s experiment onto the trash pile.

With each drop, the trash pile hissed, trembled, and seemed to come to life for a moment, dying until the next drop fell.

Waiting for the RC cola to finish its path, he listened to a “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd. The psychedelic tunes poured into the air. Kevin punched his imaginary friends quickly. He jabbed to the right, the left, sent an uppercut to the neck. With another roundhouse kick, he screamed about pudding. He knew he could have some pudding without eating any meat.

Nothing would stop him.

He wiped the drying milk from his mustache and roared into the air, “Pudding!”

Watching the concoction finish traveling through the lab, he smiled with satisfaction. “It’s time.”

####

Kevin’s friends pulled up in a black suburban. They danced in the vehicle, causing it to sway from side-to-side. Opening his front door, Kevin walked out of the house, watching the fumes from the trash pile in his living room, brought up from the basement after the experiment finished.

He closed the door, heading for the car to go on another adventure with these morons—idiots with a sealed fate, a fate of fists.

Kevin got in the car and they drove away.

After hours adventuring around the latest commercial establishments, with Kevin screaming random insults in the air, singing songs made from fast-food chain commercials mixed with his own made up language, they returned to his home. Kevin walked to his front door, slowly turning the handle and waiting.

His friends shouted back, “Hey, Kevin!”

He turned, knowing what happens next.

They laughed as they emptied the trash from their car, throwing it into his yard. Fast food containers, water bottles, soda cans, candy wrappers, rotting food, it all ended up in his yard… his yard!

Kevin smiled viciously as they laughed. He yelled a frustrated, “Hey guys!” like he always did. Opening the front door, he walked in to fetch the trash pile.

The friends put their car in gear, slowly driving to the end of the circular driveway. When they found the entrance to the paved road, the car failed to move forward, spinning its tires in on the ground.

Confused, they looked around only to find Kevin smile, his teeth gleaming with ferocity, as he held onto the back bumper in a suit made from trash, their trash, years of trash, trash he collected when he finally had enough.

He yanked on the bumper, tossing the car towards his home. As it flipped over, he ran to the vehicle.

His friends pushed their dented doors open, slowly trying to crawl out in their confusion. Kevin reached in, pulling the first out, his trash suit giving him extra strength—like the tylenol he took earlier to eliminate a headache caused by the trash’s fumes.

He punched his friend in the chest with a hand covered in plastic bottles and rotting bananas. The friend dropped to the ground.

Grabbing the remaining degenerate still making its way out of the vehicle, Kevin growled as he tossed him into the air with ease, roundhouse kicking the friend in the chest with a foot layered in candy wrappers, aluminum, and the casings of milk jugs. The friend landed beside the other, both struggling to gain their breath.

As he stood over them, a tube released from the trash suit’s chest with a valve on the end. Kevin leaned in, whispering with intensity, “No… more… trash!”

He released the valve, dousing them in a mixture of milk, RC cola—Kevin’s favorite—and rotting liquids of foods and drinks left by the two friends. As the liquid drowned its targets, they screamed in pain while their skin bleached away.

Kevin laughed maniacally.

He punched an invisible target in the air, congratulating himself on a wildly successful experiment, an experiment of revenge—revenge he’d take to the rest of the world, those throwing trash into his yard from their passing cars.

As he walked towards the road, he left his friends, who were still alive, writhing on the ground as they shouted for mercy. Ignoring the screams, he focused on his goal, the paved road and passing cars.

Suddenly, a septic tanker drove by covered in mud, at least Kevin hoped it was mud, not the other thing, the thing septic tanks collected. He watched it drive down the road, disappearing in the distance. His mind turned to Pink Floyd, the schoolmaster saying, “You can’t have your pudding, if you don’t eat your meat.”

A fury rose in Kevin like never before. He smashed his hands against his chest. Trash fell from the suit as his strength broke bottles apart.

Angry, he mumbled, “How could I forget about the pudding!” He turned towards his house, passed his idiot friends, and walked inside to make some fresh chocolate pudding, not Kevin’s favorite, but it would do—with a side of RC Cola.

 

Inspired by Kevin, RC lover, Pink Floyd fan, & victim of trash thugs.
Musical inspiration by Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”

 

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