So why does my hand shake as I grip the mop?
I push open the kitchenette door. It is dark, with just the faint green exit sign humming like a whisper. The three bins sat in their usual corner. This had been where it all began.
I hesitantly lift the lid and peer inside. It’s empty. My heart sank. I had hoped to see him again before our rendezvous, but I guess it’s fine not to see him.
“Thought I’d find you here!”
I scream like an absolute banshee, clutching the mop as a weapon once again. The Grouch stands nearby, leaning against a vending machine, arms crossed. The smug bin-born grin curls like cigarette smoke across his face.
He looks a lot more solid tonight - the greenish translucent hue that’s normally around him is faded and he looks less ghost now and much more man. He’s wearing the same outfit as he always wears too, but that also looks more real than an apparition. It’s as if the veil between worlds has thinned just enough for him to stand there, almost fully realised, in the dimly lit kitchen.
“You’re not supposed to be here right now,” I croak, lowering my mop.
He shrugs. “Neither are you.”
“I’m just finishing up. Ensuring the place is spotless for…”
“Aww, are you cleaning up for our little date?”
“I thought it wasn’t a date?” I clarify, placing the mop back in its bucket.
“Well… I don’t think it would be considered a date, no.”
“Then why would you say that?”
He stops leaning on the vending machine and starts slowly walking toward me. “It’s pretty special though, so while not a date, it’s an important night. We’re going to break each other’s curses!” He stops just shy of a few inches from me. His voice drops to a rough whisper. “Tomorrow night. You sure you’re ready?”
“No,” I admit.
“But you are going to come anyway, right?”
He doesn’t wait for my answer because he knows I can’t refuse him. He reaches out, seeing my glasses have fallen a little down my nose, and tries to adjust them. But his fingers pass right through me and dissipate like mist. Like a memory. I shiver all the same–it’s definitely not like the silky touch I felt that very first night. This is cold. Eerie.
As I look at him, I want nothing more but to grab hold of him. Touch him back. Kiss him. This goes beyond normal attraction. My heart feels like it is pounding out of my chest as I look into his eyes.
“If this works,” he starts softly, but I can sense a hint of sombre to his tone. “You’ll be free.”
This is true. I would no longer be aroused by rubbish. “And you’ll be free, right?”
His smile falters for the first time. “I am not entirely sure. Maybe I'll get to move on to the other side? Or perhaps I will just vanish into you.”
There’s no time for me to respond to that. He leans in, close enough for me to feel the cool touch of his ghostly breath against my cheek. He then whispers. “Either way, I’ll finally get to touch you. And that is enough.”
I swallow hard. I loudly blurt, “That’s not enough for me”. The words come out of my mouth before I can even think about them.
He recoils with a look I can’t read—something between hope and hunger and a thousand years of trash-stained tragedy.
“Oh, Janitor Boy.” I melt again. I am like putty, and he can have me any which way he wants. “Don’t let this be anything more than us helping each other out,” he whispers again, smiles, his amber eyes twinkle, and then vanishes in front of my eyes.
I spin on my heel and head to the bin. I peel it open. The kitchen is empty once more. It’s just me, my mop and a cursed erection I can’t explain to anyone. I adjust my jeans and look at the empty bin one more time. Tomorrow can’t come fast enough.
Chapter 8–Reservoir
It was the summer of 1979. I was seventeen, sunburnt and certain I was going to hell. At the time, I didn’t mind the sound of it, if I was being honest.
Hell sounded warm, and I hated the cold. It was loud, and I hated silence. And it was much more honest than everything in the same, straight up and down, prim and proper suburban hush that was Ghoulberg. The suburb I grew up in was the kind of place where husbands all mowed their lawns with military precision and housewives would say, “Poor dear” about my mother having to raise a faggot-for-a-son like me.
She bore that burden only for a short while. I left home that year and had been living in a shitty apartment near a service station, two streets over from the supermarket and four from the school I dropped out of. Well, not dropped out…I just never went back for my final year of high school.
