“I’m not grouchy!”
An empty vodka bottle clanged against the side of the bin. Its voice sounded cartoonish and goofy. “Not ‘grouchy’, aGrouch…Gawsh, they don’t make spirits like they used to! This one ain’t listening a darn bit.”
I misheard. “What’s that?”
“A spirit who lingers where they died.” The vodka bottle said smugly. “But the death has to be linked to a particularly violent action. Otherwise, you’d just be a lost soul. A drifter, sad and aimless. Like a sock missing its pair, chewed up by the dryer.”
“Charming.” I muttered and grabbed the soggy newspaper beside me and threw it at the bottle. My brain didn’t register at the time, but over eight years had passed.
“You died in a bin,” added a cracked makeup compact, its shattered mirror reflecting fragments of my new form.
I hadn’t seen my reflection since I was alive, and if I weren’t already dead, the sight would have made my heart stop. I was completely translucent, and everything from my hair to my skin gave off a greenish hue. My eyes had black rings around them, truly channelling my inner Fester Addams, and I looked entirely drained of all life.
Whichduh? I was dead. But it still shocked me.
“How you died made you perfect grouch material. Reborn from rejection. Baptised in the garbage. Congratulations!”
Something inside me shattered.
“I don’t want to be a Grouch or a Bin-Spirit.” I groaned, trying to stand up in the pile of garbage bags, only to feel the weight of… nothing. No bones. No muscles to pull me along. But there was still resistance. Like I was glued to the bottom of the bin.
“I was just at the reservoir where Mark…” My eyes went wide, and my voice halted as I heard his name leave my mouth. “I wasn’t meant to die!”
“It really doesn’t matter what you want,” sneered the compact.
“What matters is what TheRotwants.”
A long silence stretched across the dumpster. I didn’t understand this place. And my brain could only take me back to my final few days of living. I could no longer remember much before that, just feelings. As if it were slowly decaying away like my body was.
I was at the reservoir, and Mark took my hand in a way that I could remember was kind. Gentle. I turned as he pulled me back, and I was happy…Irememberfeeling happiness.
I didn’t understand why I had been brought to this place. This new world wasn’t just filth and fragments; it was discarded memory.
Everything in this bin contained a story.
Including me.
I could still smell the heavy exhaust fumes from Mark’s Jeep. Hear his laugh through clenched teeth. Then, it flashed before my eyes.
The taste of copper in my mouth.
I held my fingers to my lips and then to my side. There was an ache in my ribs. But it was worse than my mortal injury.
It was shame. And it curled around me like a blanket I couldn’t unwrap from my body.
I should have fought back or screamed for help. Should have valued myself more and not ended up with someone like Mark. Should have never got in his Jeep that day. Scratch that, I should never have let him near me or let him fuck me so good I craved him.
I should never have let him cum in me.
But I knew that what we had, him being my boyfriend, wasn’t real. He used me.
Mark, hell,no onecared about me when I was a human. I was trash.
And the irony was, I was now a spirit that inhabited trash.
But I refused to allow myself to wallow in my grief over my death. My newfound friends Vodka Bottle, Q-Tip and Compact pulled me from my stupor and taught me all they knew of this rotted world.
Over the following days, I learnt the rules of The Rot or, as I liked to call it,The Rotted Hellscape known as the Afterlife.
