Grouches weren’t just ghostly leftovers. We were echoes sharpened into weapons. The more shame, pain and betrayal we carried into our deaths, the stronger our form was. And I waspowerful. Incredible, even.
The next time the bin was emptied, my afterlife world expanded. I learnt from Vodka Bottle about The Rot network–something I could travel through. I could move from bin to bin.
My first few jumps were wobbly, but soon I met other Bin-Spirits and traumatised souls. I was shown the extent of my abilities and learnt almost everything there was about being a Grouch.
We weren’t simply vestiges of brutal deaths–we get created when something within us refuses to decompose. That something is a hunger deep inside our soul.
Hungry for what? Vengeance.
Even though I no longer had a heart, I had an unfulfilled purpose. Soon, I became more confident in my abilities that I could wander the streets and leave the bins for short periods. These periods grew as I learnt I could hitch rides with litter along the street that would get caught up in the wind gusts.
I haunted backstreets and sewers.
I travelled aimlessly, long and wide, and watched the city move on as though I had never existed.
They all forgot about me.
That young boy named Eddy.
He died. He became what everyone called him.
Trash.
Trash now lived in the bins and spoke with rubbish. He made friends with crumpled paper, or used condoms thrown out with semen still in them.
His mother never found his body. Never looked for him.
And Mark?
Never found guilty of his murder, and got to move on entirely.
On one rainy night during my travels of the city, I caught a ride on an empty soda can rolling down a long hill. It and I landed on a small suburban street, and the can had made its way into a small garden with overgrown weeds.
As if fate had its way with me like everything else has had in my existence, this wasn’t any ordinary person’s home. I escaped the can and glided to the window, where I peered inside.
It was Mark. This was his home. But, Mark was much, much older than when I last saw him. Greying hair and wrinkled skin.
Time and the years out in the sun had weathered him. I pressed my hand against the glass. I wanted to get a better look at him.
Time stops mattering when you’re a spirit, so I hadn’t realised how much time had passed since I died. I would wager it had been twenty years by now. But I knew one thing. He didn’t deserve another day of happiness.
His contented look twisted something inside of me. It wasn’t just anger, but something deeper and more primal. Rage. And it just got worse as I was drawn back to the can, which started rolling away again, pulling me from his home.
I was reborn at that very moment. A new purpose.
I was going to haunt him.
Claw my way through inside his house, and I’d make him see me.
Then make him regret the day he ever murdered me.
Chapter 10-Revenge
Now that I knew Mark was happily living nearby, near the very bin he dumped my body in, revenge was all I could think about. They say you shouldn’t seek revenge because it consumes you. But those people probably were never murdered by their boyfriend for the crime of mentioning their wife-to-be’s name and standing up for yourself.
Most people would have moved on after twenty years. But I’m not most people; hell, I’m not even aperson. My soul definitely had not moved on, and given what I know about being a Grouch and being the manifestation of vengeance, I won’t rest until Mark is lying dead in a pool of his own blood.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him alive, smug, married. Happy. I thought of him married to Judy, fucking her, how miserable he would have been all those years pretending to be straight. With every sad thrust, did the memory of what he did to me fade from the corners of his conscience like old gum under his shoe? Or did it just make it easier to shove to the back of his mind, so long as he had a hole to fill?
