Ashes to Ashes, Trash to Trash

[TonyTwoFingers]

Hello everyone,

Here's a quick little one-shot I've been cultivating for a while. It's at the point where if I asked people for more feedback, I may as well release the whole thing. Sometimes, you've just got to put it out there. Anyways, please excuse the shittier writing than usual. Feels like I've been regressing recently. Oh well.
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I sat in the naugahyde arm chair wistfully recalling all the times in my life I had done “alright.” Top honors included finishing second in my elementary school box-top collection, a thirty-hour straight MMORPG binge, and winning an all-expenses-paid two day vacation to scenic Wichita, Kansas (that I didn’t wind up taking) - courtesy of the Joplin Travel Company. Insignificant accomplishments, to be sure, but special to me. Like a comfort blanket to a child, the memories had a certain intangible weight to them. They felt snuggly.

My answering machine lay somewhere beneath Garbage Stack #2 (reserved for print-related trash, assorted wrappers, and non-functional electronics), probably still blinking about some 42 new messages from my mother - or from the Sanitation Department. After having the same conversations two-dozen times, and hearing the same bluffs over and over, it had gotten tiresome. I had learned that living in a state such as mine granted me a certain power over people. Nobody wanted to demolish my house, because the surrounding neighborhood would be dealing with the subsequent vermin infestation for weeks. They couldn’t evict me, either - for the bank, fixing up the house would’ve be more trouble than it was worth. So, it was a Mexican standoff between me, the town, and the bank. An unsolvable problem. The Kobayashi Maru of real estate. And starve me out? Not possible. The local grocery store delivered - but the stovetop was home to Garbage Stack #6, so for a hot meal, I had to get takeout. When I was living in that miserable place, every night was takeout night - and mother dearest wouldn’t let her only son go hungry. Sure as eggs is eggs, at the beginning of each week, an envelope filled with $150 found its way under the door - usually with some simple note like “Call me, please” scrawled on it. The envelopes all went in Garbage Stack #6, and the cash in my pocket. Slipping a twenty dollar bill into the doorframe for the delivery guy was usually enough for him, and as soon as I heard the delivery car pull away, I would jump for the food left on the front step like a trap-door spider. But the fundamental issue with takeout is the sheer amount of garbage one accrues over the course of a single meal. Packaged rice. Packaged pork. Packaged lo mein. Packaged drink. Packaged fortune cookie. It all had to go somewhere.

And the method to this mayhem? The Garbage Stack system. The Garbage Stack system was much more organized and byzantine than most people would assume. That being said, most people would assume it was simply slinging my shit around like some caged monkey. But I was a human. An amalgam of years of public education, books, and pop culture. I had made graphs. Diagrams. Power outlines. If there was one thing I had learned on Earth, it was the importance of a complex and systematic approach to the simplest of tasks. So, over the course of several months, I developed a battle-proven system for stashing my trash. Higher numbered garbage stacks were located progressively further from the kitchen door, with odd-numbered piles being dedicated to potential biohazards (things like old yogurt containers, used paper towels, and expired canned food I had bought long ago). Things that tumbled from these stacks usually just... stayed where they fell. Unless they landed on a vital surface, such as the armchair. To me, that armchair was the Dome of the Rock - all trash that somehow found its way onto the chair wound up in Garbage Stack #13, the miscellaneous trash stack.

I sighed, shifting my weight around slightly, trying to work my way out of the divot my ass had molded into the cushion - accidentally knocking over a stack of half consumed pizza slices from Garbage Stack #5 in the process. The air was damp and suffocating, reeking of mold and mildew. How had it come to that? Nobody chooses to live wallowing in their own refuse like some bipedal raccoon.

My eyes narrowed in on a particularly encapsulating slice of bare wall across the room. Maybe I had learned it from Aunt Hilda. She had always been kind of a pack rat. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, knocking over a dusty collection of magazines from Garbage Stack #4 that hadn’t made the trip over to Garbage Stack #2. Aunt Hilda - sister of my father. Never married. A stout, plump woman that liked to pinch cheeks and give uncomfortably sloppy kisses. Made good tea, but bad pie. Kept a house only slightly tidier than mine. Okay, a lot tidier. But still, less tidy than most.

Somewhere, a rodent scampered through a stack of discarded soda bottles. They had a nest somewhere around there. “One day, I’ll find it and clear it out. One day, I’ll fucking clean this whole place out!” I proclaimed to the empty room, slamming my fist down on an empty box of lo mein in a fit of bravado. Another sigh, half out of desperation, half out of physical weariness. I hadn’t slept on a bed in months - the only one in the house is home to Garbage Stack #15, a particularly unpleasant stack consisting entirely of discarded TV dinners.

I pulled myself out of the soda-and-cigarette-stained armchair. Magazines, newspapers, and paper cups crumpled beneath my weight with every step as I made my way to the kitchen door. The only way I could keep myself from tripping over the shifting floor was by using garbage stacks as guide rails, often knocking even more garbage onto the floor.

It was funny. Some days - rare days - I would go and wait by the door, looking for something, anything. Most times, I couldn’t stomach looking at the world pass me by, referring to me only in passing as that hoarder shut-in. But that day, something felt different. I felt drawn to the door, like some instinctive urge calling the bear forth from the cave of hibernation. Like a butterfly being pulled from its chrysalis, because it does not know it can stay inside forever. It emerges because emerging is all it knows.

Outside, the same grey bleakness that precedes winter year after year - the same brown patch of dead grass I’d stared at for so long for so many days. At Alcatraz, the prisoners’ quarters were architecturally designed to provide each inmate with a view of San Francisco - to torment them. To show them so much freedom, so much life, and put it just out of arm’s reach. That dead grass was my San Francisco - a mirage that looked real enough to touch. I rested hand on the cold brass of the door handle, sending a shiver down my spine. And there I kept it for seemingly hours, caught between my burning desire to leave that house, and the desire to resign to familiarity. My throat tightened in anticipation for something - a cry of sadness, a shout of frustration, a swallow of submission.

I had spent far too many days in this hell, waiting to be rescued. It was ridiculous. I had gotten myself into that mess, I should’ve gotten myself out of it. But I couldn’t do it. Like the collective weight of my very existence was pinned down on my chest, each new thought, hope, doubt, and every piece of trash was slowly crushing me from the inside.

And just as I prepared to leave the doorway in disgust, a flash of black and white broke my concentration like a magnificent flash of lightning. “No fucking way...” was all I could manage to say before the Jehovah's Witness was on my doorstep, looking at me through the window with some undeserved expectance. Tucked under one arm, several copies of some cheap magazine. The puzzled look on his face matched my own. He knocked on the glass, and the same force that drew me to the door opened it - just a crack however - convincing myself that if I didn’t open the door, the young man couldn’t see through the same glass window on which he’d knocked. A mad delusion of the isolated mind.

The boy was sharp and clean cut. Probably a fresh charge. He wasted no time before launching into his textbook pitch. “Good afternoon, sir...”

“Call me Gary.” I demanded in a stupor brought on by my first human contact in months.

“Uh, okay, Gary. I’d like to...” and the boy continued along his well-prepared and meticulously thought out pitch to convert me to his lord and savior Jesus Christ. But the name that entranced me was not that of Christ. Nor was it Abraham, Matthew, or even God. It was my own name. Sure, perhaps it was borderline narcissistic. But it was the first time another human had spoken my name in too long. “So, are you interested?” the boy prompted, encouraged by the fact that I hadn’t already shut the door on his face.

“Interested in what?”

“A complimentary copy of The Watchtower.”

“Eh, no thanks. I’ve got uh... quite a collection of reading that I’ve been meaning to get to for some time...” I responded, subconsciously sneaking a peek at Garbage Stack #2 - the musky pile of TV Guides and Newsweeks touting the release of some movie that had gotten a sequel quite some time ago. Following my eyes, the boy peered inside. “H... hey! What the fuck! Didn’t anyone teach you about fucking privacy?” The young man jumped at my outburst.

“I’m sorry! So sorry, sir...”

“Gary.”

“Right - Gary. I’ll just be on my way...”

“No, look... ugh... I’m sorry. That was rude of me. Look, why don’t you tell me something about your, uh... thing.” I pleaded, for some reason enjoying the human contact.

“My... thing?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah, your ‘thing.’ Whatever it is you’re peddling. What is it?” The Jehovah was taken aback, confused and confounded that I had both not listened to his pitch, and that (as far as he knew) I had never met a Jehovah door-to-door preacher before.

“I, uh... represent the Jehovah’s Witnesses. We’re a religious group whose beliefs we hope will appeal to both yourself and your soul.” Unfocused still, I scratch my face.

“My soul, huh?”

“That’s right, sir. We believe that following our religious beliefs yields a life of spiritual fulfillment and freedom.”

“Freedom?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How do you figure?” I asked, finding myself opening the door slightly further. “Freedom from what?”

“F-freedom from what?” The boy stammered as though I had asked to marry him. “Well, from all kinds of things. “Loneliness, oppression, depression...”

“So it’s a cure all?”

“I wouldn’t call it that, sir.” Silence. The Jehovah stood awkwardly, expecting to be doted on like some five-minute speed date. But, to his credit, he had gotten me thinking about books: something I hadn’t done in an awfully long time.

“What’s your least favorite book?”

“Sir?”

“Your least favorite book? You know, lots of words? Sometimes pictures?” The boy tightened his face, irritated by my sudden belligerence.

“I can’t really think of one off the top of my head, sir...”

“Gary.”

“I can’t really think of one, Gary,” he proclaimed, throwing his arms in the air in the first sign of exasperation he’d shown since arriving. “What about you, I assume you asked for a reason?”

“I sure do.” Somewhere amongst the endless sea of useless decay lay an old collection of fairytales by The Brothers Grimm. My mother used to read it to me every night, back when we were close and I was young. Before my life spiraled out of control, I used to read that book whenever I felt down - tracing my fingers over the same dog-eared pages I had in middle school. But as my life crumbled around me, so did the magic of the Grimm book. Instead of reliving my childhood, rereading the tattered pages felt like jogging laps around a prison yard. Going over the same old ground again, and again, and again. And as I became more reclusive, the more I hated the characters. “You ever read The Brothers Grimm?”

“Sure.”

“Can’t stand them. Take Rapunzel, for example. There’s the story of a girl who could’ve saved herself, but didn’t. Instead, she sits around for x-many years, waiting for someone to save her.”

“As opposed to what?”

“Anything, really. Why did she need Prince Charming to come and climb her hair? Why didn’t she cut the braid, tie it to the bedpost, and shimmy down herself?”

“I think you’re looking too far into it Gary, it’s a folk tale.”

“It’s learned helplessness. It teaches kids that the only way to get out of a rough situation is if someone else bails you out.” A wave of melancholy rolled over me, as I realized the irony of my own words. I was standing in the window of my own tower prison, waiting for someone to ride along and whisk me away from all my problems. Inhaling deeply, I begin speaking with renewed purpose. “Which is stupid. Sometimes, you’ve got to help you.” The boy looked puzzled, as though he had just watched a conversation occur in a foreign language. “Anything in the Bible about that, boy?” The Jehovah smiled, shaking his head.

“God helps those who help themselves, Gary.”

“God helps those who help themselves...” I repeat, the edge of the words carving into me. I nod, dismissing the young man from my doorstep. “Thank you for speaking to me. It’s been, uh, enlightening. To say the least.” And with that, I retreated into my tower, leaving my “rescuer” on the front doorstep.

That night I spent preparing. Collecting every scrap of spare change that I could find and stuffing it into my pockets. Hours were spent wallowing in my own mistakes - in my own failures. The old-fashioned gas stovetop had been piled with envelopes sent from my mother - reminders of my personal weakness and my inability to take care of myself. I stood in the threshold of the kitchen, looking into the house. Towards the armchair, towards a dozen festering garbage stacks. Toward the fire hazard sitting smack dab in the middle of the kitchen. I remember defiantly turning all of the knobs on the stove, igniting weeks worth of empty envelopes. The fire quickly spread to Garbage Stack #2. Cutting the braid. The front door was a barrier no longer. I turned the handle and pushed through the threshold, smoke already pouring out from behind me. The Jehovah had left a copy of The Watchtower on my step, and as I stepped over it - the feeling of liberation set in. I had escaped the tower. I had made it to San Francisco. I was free.

For a few minutes, I stood on the front lawn, hands shoved in my pockets, fumbling with the loose monies in the pockets of my thick jacket. Its quiet chattering growing increasingly hard to hear over the approaching sirens. But it wouldn’t matter. The house was a tinderbox, and a valueless one at that. It would burn, and they would let it. And that was the way it should be. Nobody would believe I burned the place down. It had been a fire hazard - any faulty wiring could’ve torched the place in an instant. Honestly, it was a wonder it had taken this long. A fortunate bit of serendipity for everyone involved. I was forced into the world, the bank didn’t have to fix the place up, and anything that would’ve overrun the town died with the house. And, surely enough, the story came and left, without getting so much as a third page headline.

Like the old saying goes, hunger is the best spice. And the past is the best fire-starter.

[Snuffkin]

In case I didn't say this when I was fixing grammatical errors, it's good. The subject matter is a bit mundane in comparison to a lot else you've written about and I would enjoy it more if you bothered to explain the backstory at all, but it's still pretty good and I certainly don't see any decline in the quality of your writing.